7 of Nice

Let's start the week off with the color versions of John Byrne's first three STAR TREK: ASSIGNMENT EARTH covers. The series, featuring Gary 7, begins in May, and the cover colors are courtesy of the great Tom Smith.

The Great and Secret Team

Gabriel Rodriguez, my artistic partner on, first, GEORGE A. ROMERO'S LAND OF THE DEAD, and then the 12-part CLIVE BARKER'S THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW, and BEOWULF, visited America from Chile for the first time ever this past week. He spent the week at my house, and we spent a day in LA with Clive Barker (and another top-secret meeting I'll talk about in a couple months from now). Here we are with our biggest fan, my daughter Lucy.

Gabriel's time with IDW actually predates mine--he was the artist on multiple CSI series , and has likely drawn more pages for IDW than anyone else in our history. And in less than two weeks, you can catch his latest project, LOCKE & KEY, with author Joe Hill. Issue 1 is in stores on February 20. It's 32 full pages of story and art, and rather than repeat my raving about it again here, I'll direct your attention below to the little "movie trailer" we have for the book.

Gabe also got to visit the great Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles, although our timing was a bit off--we missed their "Y the Last Party" by one day, but Gabe got to show off his work a bit with the advance copies of L&K 1 and 2, and talk Chile with the Chilean owner of the shop. And soon enough, I'll spread word on a coming "frat launch party" planned at the store to coincide with the launch of Brian Lynch and Dave Crosland's EVERYBODY'S DEAD comic.

Rogue Angels

The office move will be complete on Monday, but until then, I don't have that much artwork here at home. But I do have a couple nice pieces to share--one is the cover for ROGUE ANGEL #4, by Rebecca Wrigley. Rebecca's covers for this series (and for ANGEL and MACK BOLAN) are just stunning--I'm really happy she's one of us now. The other piece is also ANGEL-related, but in this case, it's a page from Wesley's "First Night" tale in an upcoming issue of ANGEL: AFTER THE FALL. Art is by Nick Runge and colors by John Rauch.

Ghost in the machine

Before we shut things down today for the big office move (pics of the nice new digs coming soon!), I thought I'd post a few covers for our GHOST WHISPERER series, since this one seems to have slipped a bit below the radar, marketing-wise. The interiors will be by Elena Casagrande, who did such a nice job on our ORIONS comic. And the series is written by Carrie Smith & Beka Smith, both of whom work on the show itself. The comic has a nice, dark mood to it, similar to the current (well, it'll be current when the strike is finally over and episodes are running again) season of the show. This comic's a great thing to point out to people who might normally avoid comics that are too spandex-y and testosterone-filled. The first three images here are from Joselle Ho, the final one from Brian Miller.

The Doctor is in

As the delayed DOCTOR WHO #1 is ready to debut--we have printed copies in hand here, and the book finally hits in two weeks, I thought it'd be nice to show some of issue 2. Nick Roche had to bow out on interiors but Jose Maria Beroy, the artist who did VULCANS for us, pitched in, and his work on the issue just fit the mood of the story and the time period so nicely (especially when aided by Charlie Kirchoff's vibrant colors).

In other news, did anyone at all get a room for Comic-Con today? That system of releasing all the rooms at one time never works for me--the phone is constantly busy, the Web site is locked up... it's nice to at least have a back-up plan of an actual residence not far from the con, since the hotel reservation situation gets more challenging every year.

Transformers Spotlight on...?

In the couple years we've been doing TRANSFORMERS comics, the fans have been to be incredibly savvy, often knowing what we're going to do seemingly as soon as we figured it out ourselves. Well, it's time to put that to the test. The questions before you here are, based on these sketch pages, who is the focus of this upcoming (in June) SPOTLIGHT? And who is the artist? No answers coming from me right away, mind you, but I welcome any guesses you might have... and if anyone nails it, I just might award the first person a cool little gift, too.

Granada-bound

I'm going to be a special guest of the Salon Internacional del Comic de Granada at the end of this month, and the full guest roster (to this point; other names are still likely to be added) includes esteemed names like Brian Bolland, Brian Azzarello and Jill Thompson, Carlos Pacheco, Phil Jimenez, Will Dennis, IDW's own German Torres (Speed Racer) and Stefano Martino (Doctor Who) and many others. So if you happen to be in Spain at the end of this month, come by and say hey...

Zip it!

ZIPPER is easily our best-reviewed and most creatively sound of the Gene Simmons comics line. Tom Waltz and Casey Maloney just seem to improve every issue, as evidenced by this page of Casey's pencils from issue 5.

And don't just take my word for it--here are a couple good reviews of the latest issue, ZIPPER 3:
Broken Frontier ZIPPER 3 review

Comixtreme ZIPPER 3 review

Never mind those Super Bowl commercials

All Hail Nick Roche's art

This is for a promo for an as-yet unannounced (but some resourceful fans have already nailed down what it is) TRANSFORMERS book. Nice, da, comrades? Art by Nick, and "aging" and effects done by Trevor Hutchinson.