Last week was the Image Comics Expo which took place in San Francisco. Whilst I didn’t really follow it when it was on, I have been reading up on the fallout from it, and I wanted to round up what announcements I was most excited for.
Firstly, and some would say this was the biggest announcement, was the announcement that Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips had signed a 5 year deal with Image that will allow them “complete freedom, creative control, and ownership” of all of their work. The first part of this deal, due to arrive this summer is, The Fade Out, “The Fade Out is my ultimate noir story. It’s a brutal crime story set in late ’40s Hollywood, and all spinning around the mysterious death of an up-and-coming starlet,” was how Brubaker described it. Whilst I’m not particularly familiar with any of their previous work, this does sounds very nice indeed!
Next up was WYTCHES, from the minds of Scott Snyder and Jock, this will be a new horror series which promises to be scariest thing that Snyder has ever written. Taken from the blurb on Image Comics, WYTCHES takes the mythology of witches to a far creepier, bone-chilling place than readers have dared venture before. “I like taking classic monsters and reimagining them in a fresh, contemporary, and much scarier way,” said Snyder. Sounds great to me!
Another new horror series which caught my eye was Nameless from Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham, not a lot was said about it, apart from it will be a 6 issue series centring on a man simply named the Nameless and he is a super smart – like Benedict Cumberbatchs Sherlock, hero.
Next to firmly grasp my attention was Paradigms, being billed as a contemporary fantasy epic, which explores a world that exists ‘behind’ ours. There is magic, warring clans battling for power and the favour of the gods. Brilliant premise if you ask me!
Probably the most exciting one for me was the announcement of LOW. Which is set in a the distant future, where humanity has relocated under the sea due to massive amounts of radiation on the earth’s surface. A probe has returned to earth with information about possible new planets where colonisation may be possible, the only problem is the probe landed on the earth’s scorched surface.
In case you hadn’t guessed, I’m a bit of an Image Comics fanboy. But with all these exciting new ventures, who can blame me! From what I can tell most of these are due to start emerging in the summer, but they don’t have official release dates as of yet. But I can’t wait!
A full list of the announcements can be found on the Image Comics site here.
Are there any others that you are hotly anticipating this year?
– Will
No Invincible, no deal.