Vertigo

“American Vampire” continues to show signs of life – or, well, undead-ness – during its hiatus. Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque’s Eisner Award-winning Vertigo series about a new breed of bloodsucker has been on a planned break since January, but Hero Complex has the exclusive announcement that “American Vampire Anthology” No. 1, an 80-page special, will be released Aug. 7, and offers readers a first look at the cover by Albuquerque, right, showing a more-dapper-than-usual Skinner Sweet. “Anthology” comprises eight “lost tales” of familiar favorites and new characters by a star-studded roster of writers and artists including multiple Eisner winner Greg Rucka (“Whiteout,” “Stumptown”), Jeff Lemire (“Animal Man,” “Sweet Tooth”), Gail Simone (“Batgirl,” “Secret Six”), Ray Fawkes (“Constantine”), Becky Cloonan (“American Virgin”), Francesco Francavilla (“The Black Beetle”) and the Brazilian brothers behind the Eisner-winning limited series “Daytripper,” Fabio Moon and Gabriel […]

Writer Steven T. Seagle and artist Teddy Kristiansen are best known in the comics world for their collaboration on Seagle’s autobiographical graphic novel memoir, “It’s a Bird,” which won Kristiansen an Eisner Award for the art in 2005. That wasn’t Seagle and Kristiansen’s first collaboration, however. That work, the supernatural series “House of Secrets,” has been hard to find ever since its publication in the mid-1990s. But that’s about to change with a hardcover omnibus collecting the entire series under one cover for the first time. “House of Secrets” was originally a “Tales From the Crypt”-like anthology series that ran from 1956 to 1978 and was mostly known as the title that introduced the character Swamp Thing. But in the 1990s, DC Comics took several defunct or second-tier properties and allowed certain respected writers to reinvent them in wildly new […]

DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint is continuing its translation of the original screenplay for Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-winning western onto the paneled page this week with the release of the third issue of its six-part “Django Unchained” series. Hero Complex readers can exclusively check out the early pages from the issue, in addition to getting a look at the cover by Massimo Carnevale and a variant cover by Guillem March. Cover | Variant Cover | Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Page 6 Reginald Hudlin, the Oscar-nominated “Django Unchained” producer who penned the miniseries, told Hero Complex earlier this year that fealty to the original iteration of Tarantino’s acclaimed screenplay — about freed slave Django teaming with the grandiloquent bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz to search for a trio of ruthless overseers known as the Brittle […]

Stephanie Horn played the outre party game Cards Against Humanity on Friday night with multiple-Eisner-Award-winning “Fables” artist Mark Buckingham, but the devoted fan isn’t ratting him out. It was “hysterical,” she says, “and that’s all I want to say because I don’t want to get anyone into trouble.” Interactions like hers and Buckingham’s were an aim of the Fabletown and Beyond gathering in snow-white-blanketed Rochester, Minn. Horn, who traveled from Ventura for the show, had enjoyed limited interaction with several of its special guests at larger events, but relished “deeper access than a standard convention,” a common sentiment during the weekend from readers and professionals alike. In addition to the usual signings, artist sketches and comic-book discussions, attendees could see Cthulu dangling his legs over the edge of a pool, a veteran of local theater performing the Bard’s Sonnet 71 […]

This weekend, an acclaimed comic-book creator, colleagues and fans will attempt to open a portal between our mundane reality and the worlds of legend. Fabletown and Beyond, “Fables” mastermind Bill Willingham’s convention devoted to “mythic fiction,” becomes a reality this Friday through Sunday at the Mayo Civic Center in Rochester, Minn. But will the gathering itself enter lore? When the creator of the long-running, mature myths-in-modernity Vertigo series spoke with Hero Complex in November about plotting the con, named for the New York neighborhood where many fables reside in his comic, he said he’d learned that “good convention hosts must be just a little bit suicidal” and “this is not something I would wish on anyone.” Willingham was kidding (a little). But the goal of the gathering is to create an environment where fans and creators “talk about the meat […]

Superheroes were never in Jeff Lemire’s plans. The Canadian cartoonist read DC and Marvel comics as a boy, but when he started creating his own work in the mid-’00s, he gravitated to small, human stories, published in such acclaimed graphic novels as “Tales From the Farm” and “The Country Nurse.” Then Lemire did a one-off book for Vertigo — an “Invisible Man” riff called “The Nobody” — followed by the recently completed 40-issue post-apocalyptic fantasy series “Sweet Tooth.” While working on “Sweet Tooth,” Lemire was asked by Vertigo’s parent company DC to try his hand at penning a couple of their ongoing titles, which ultimately led to Lemire’s takes on “Animal Man” and “Frankenstein” becoming a core part of the company’s “New 52” relaunch. Now, at a time when DC has been taking a lot of heat from fans for […]

The cover for “The Girl Who Played With Fire: Book One,” part of a graphic novel adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy, reveals the story’s anti-social heroine, Lisbeth Salander, surrounded by flames. Hero Complex readers get a first look at the cover, by comic artist Lee Bermejo, whose DC Comics work includes drawing for “Before Watchmen: Rorschach,” “Lex Luthor: Man of Steel” and “Resident Evil: Fire & Ice,” among other titles. The book is the third installment in a planned sextet — two volumes for each of Larsson’s novels– released by DC’s edgy imprint Vertigo and adapted by Scottish crime writer Denise Mina with art by Andrea Mutti and Leonardo Manco. Mina, whose résumé includes 10 novels, a handful of plays and a stint writing “Hellblazer,” told Hero Complex in December that comics are the ideal form for a retelling […]

“Django Unchained” has raked in more than $100 million at the box office, but Quentin Tarantino’s blood-soaked revenge drama is finding success in another format too — on the paneled page. This week, DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint announced that the first installment of its planned six-issue adaptation of “Django Unchained” sold out; a second printing is set to land in stores in early February, just before Issue No. 2 hits stands Feb. 13. No. 1 Cover | No. 1 Variant Cover | No. 2 Cover | No. 2 Page 4 | No. 2 Page 13 The success of both the movie and the comic book is welcome news for Reginald Hudlin, the Oscar-nominated “Django Unchained” producer who penned the miniseries. Hudlin was a logical choice for the assignment — the former BET president and “House Party” director wrote the “Black […]

It’s hard to imagine someone better suited to adapt Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” as a graphic novel than Scottish crime author Denise Mina. After studying law at Glasgow University and researching a doctoral thesis the University of Strathclyde on the ascription of mental illness to female offenders, she taught criminology and criminal law before publishing her first book, “Garnethill,” about a woman who wakes up one day to find the body of her therapist boyfriend in her living room and herself a suspect in the murder. “Garnethill” won the Crime Writers’ Assn. John Creasey Dagger for the best first crime novel and was the start of a trilogy completed by “Exile” and “Resolution.” Her resume also includes plays and, of course, a stint writing “Hellblazer,” in which she took John Constantine to Scotland. Her work is […]

Bill Willingham can trace his love of mythic fiction all the way back to his childhood, when he first became fascinated with comics starring a certain hammer-wielding Norse god. “I assumed Thor was just another Marvel superhero made up just like Spider-Man…. But one day my brother insisted that Thor, in his terms, was ‘stolen’ because the same character is in the encyclopedia,” Willingham said. Determined to prove his brother wrong, he checked the encyclopedia. “And sure enough, there was Thor, right there, wonderful mythological character. That just kind of opened my mind and probably started my love of folklore and mythology right there, just the realization that these modern stories we’re reading can be drawn from old sources, and that those old sources are wonderful…. That stayed with me forever, the fact that just normal guys like me can […]