Thanks to Image we already have TONS of new (and renewed) comic books to look forward to in 2015!
Image Expo, the first major comic book event of the year, held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts took place January 8, 2015. The keynote revealed a slew of creator-owned projects set to launch this year. Highlights include new books from Scott Snyder (Wytches, Batman), Skottie Young (Fortunately, the Milk, Rocket Raccoon, Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz) and Jeff Lemire (Trillium, Sweet Tooth).
See below for all the announcements!
AD: AFTER DEATH
W: Scott Snyder (Wytches, Batman), A: Jeff Lemire (Trillium, Sweet Tooth)
AD: AFTER DEATH will be set in a near future where death has been cured and one man must come to grips with what comes next.
AD: AFTER DEATH will launch in November 2015.
BLACK ROAD
W: Brian Wood (Star Wars, DMZ, Northlanders), A: Garry Brown (The Massive, Iron Patriot), Lauren Affe
Set in Viking Age Norway, BLACK ROAD follows Magnus The Black, a fixer for the Christian Church who loses a Roman official to bandits on the infamous Black Road. Heading north to fix the problem and complete his contract, he uncovers a secret, something so big it threatens to change the balance of power in all of Europe. But with one foot in the world of the pagans and the other in that of the Church, who can trust where his loyalties lie?
BLACK ROAD will launch in September 2015.
I HATE FAIRYLAND
W: Skottie Young (Fortunately, the Milk, Rocket Raccoon, Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz) A: Skottie Young, Jean-Francois Beaulieu (Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz)
Gertrude is a snarky, slightly deranged 40-year-old with a battle axe who happens to be trapped in a Shirley Temple-esque body and confined to the technicolor funworld that is Fairyland. I HATE FAIRYLAND is an all-new series full of morbid, dark humor and snark—perfect for fans of Invader Zim and Fight Club.
I HATE FAIRYLAND will launch in Fall 2015.
ISLAND & 8HOUSE
Emma Ríos & Brandon Graham
Making a rare U.S. appearance for Image Expo this year, comics creator Emma Ríos officially announced three upcoming projects. ISLAND and 8HOUSE, both collaborations with Brandon Graham, are due in 2015.
ISLAND, a collaboration spearheaded by Ríos and Graham and featuring a murderer’s row of the most interesting artists in comics, will be an oversized 72-page monthly magazine, scheduled for June 2015.
KAPTARA
W: Chip Zdarsky (Sex Criminals, Howard the Duck) A: Kagan McLeod (Infinite Kung-fu)
KAPTARA follows Keith Kanga, a young bio-engineer flung across the universe onto a strange planet filled with weird danger. And if he doesn’t get home then Earth—the place where YOU live—is DOOMED!
KAPTARA will launch in 2015.
THE LUDOCRATS
Kieron Gillen (The Wicked + The Divine, Phonogram), David Lafuente (Ultimate Comics: Spider-man), Jim Rossignol, Ricardo Venancio
“The Ludocrats is a decade-in-the-making opulent fantastical comedy,” said writer of THE WICKED + THE DIVINE and PHONOGRAM, Kieron Gillen, “This is a book which has hyperbole as its baseline, and considers the impossible as an aim only fitting for underachievers. It’ll change your life. Primarily by letting you own a comic called The Ludocrats, where BARON OTTO VON SUBERTAN and PROFESSOR HADES ZERO-K are the last defenders of a ludicrous aristocracy against the insipid forces of normalisation.”
THE LUDOCRATS will launch in Summer 2015.
MONSTRESS
W: Marjorie Liu (X-Men, Tiger Eye) A: Sana Takeda (Ms. Marvel)
In MONSTRESS, readers are transported into the early 1900s, where immense Leviathans roam the Earth, wielding unimaginable powers that many have long desired to exploit. When a teenage girl with a mysterious past forms a tenuous psychic bond with the most dangerous of all the Leviathans, she becomes the target of both human and otherworldly authorities who will stop at nothing to possess her—to control her, and control the Lord of the all the Leviathans. What they don’t count on is the courage of the girl herself—and the fact that she is slowly becoming more than human…
MONSTRESS will launch in 2015.
NO MERCY
W: Alex de Campi (Smoke/Ashes, Grindhouse), A: Carla Speed McNeil (Finder), Jenn Manley Lee (Dicebox)
It was just a trip, before college. Build schools in a Central American village; get to know some of the other freshmen. What could go wrong? After tragedy strikes, these once-privileged American teens must find their way home in a cruel landscape that at best doesn’t like them, and at worst actively wants to kill them. No phones. No passports. No mercy.
NO MERCY will launch in Spring 2015.
PAPER GIRLS
W: Brian K. Vaughan (Saga, Runaways), A: Cliff Chiang (Wonder Woman)
PAPER GIRLS is the story of four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls who experience something extraordinary one day…
PAPER GIRLS will launch in 2015.
PHONOGRAM
W: Kieron Gillen (The Wicked + The Divine, Young Avengers), A: Jamie McKelvie (The Wicked + The Divine, Young Avengers)
Emily Aster’s the hyper-acerbic cover-queen whose one liners are sharper than her fringe; she’s been the one people love and love to quote. In this new chapter of the PHONOGRAM series, readers discover how she got that way, and where it got her. She sold half her personality for power. This is what happens when that faustian deal catches up with her, and what that half her personality has been doing all these years.
PHONOGRAM will launch in 2015.
PLUTONA
W: Jeff Lemire, A: Emi Lenox, Jordie Bellaire
PLUTONA follows the story of five suburban kids who make a shocking discovery while exploring the woods one day after school… the body of the world’s greatest super hero, Polara, laying dead among the mud and grass.
PLUTONA will launch in 2015.
PRETTY DEADLY
W: Kelly Sue DeConnick (Bitch Planet, Captain Marvel), A: Emma Ríos (Pretty Deadly)
In this second story arc of PRETTY DEADLY, the mantle of Death has fallen to a little girl, Sissy, who, along with her tattered band of reapers, is tasked with gathering souls whose time has come, or come and passed. An old woman has a dying request. Her son has been missing for more than a year, gone east, and from there to fight in the trenches overseas. She wants to see the boy one last time before she passes. And so Deathface Ginny is dispatched through clouds of mustard gas to find the young man, but between her and her quarry, atop bitter black mount of twenty hands, sits the Reaper of War himself.
PRETTY DEADLY will launch in September 2015.
REVENGEANCE
Darwyn Cooke
REVENGEANCE is a psychological thriller with darkly humorous overtones. When Joe Malarky is faced with a criminal tragedy, he sets out to make things right on his own. What follows is Joe’s odyssey through the underside of the city and the madness that seems to drive his crazy world.
REVENGEANCE will launch in June 2015.
RUN LOVE KILL
Eric Canete (The End League, Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin), Jon Tsuei (Comic Book Tattoo), Leonardo Olea, Manu Fernandez
The story follows a wanted woman in hiding named Rain Oshiro. The narrative style will prominently feature two very different but significantly connected moments throughout her life: “The Past”—which will explore her history as an impressionable student, an abiding soldier, and a wanted fugitive; and “The Present”—which will show her as she is now and how she copes with (and runs away from) the decisions made in her past. At its core, the story is an exploration of choices—both good and bad. And now, how her choices have formed her into the person she has and will become. Set against a background of a futuristic world as only artist Canete can imagine, Rain has just 24 hours to escape a barricaded city while trying to evade a military force determined to either capture or kill her.
RUN LOVE KILL will launch Spring 2015.
SAVIOR
W: Todd McFarlane, Brian Holguin (SPAWN, Mr. Majestic), A: Clayton Crain (X-Force)
A man appears with no background, no memory, and no place to call home. But this much is clear—this individual possesses certain powers, abilities that harken from the Old Testament… Could he possibly be this corrupted world’s SAVIOR in the flesh? Or will he be the world’s undoing?
SAVIOR will launch in April 2015.
SONS OF THE DEVIL
Brian Buccellato and Toni Infante
SONS OF THE DEVIL is a dark look at a blue collar 25-year-old orphan who learns he is the son of a cult leader. Like True Detective and The Following, SONS OF THE DEVIL is an exploration into the dark side of human psychology. It’s a grounded take on cults that balances the real world with the supernatural.
STARVE
Brian Wood (Star Wars, DMZ, The Massive), Danijel Zezelj (Northlanders, Loveless), & Dave Stewart (The Walking Dead, Star Wars)
STARVE is set in a world where chefs are practically royalty, and access to them is the ultimate status symbol. Chef Gavin Cruikshank, back from self-imposed exile, finds his little foodie television program “Starve” transformed into a gonzo arena sport where chefs slice and dice rare and endangered species for their super-rich patrons. Since his personal life is as much a shambles as his professional career, Chef Cruikshank works to repair his relationship with his grown daughter while dismantling the monstrosity that Starve has become.
TADAIMA
Emi Lenox (EMITOWN)
Throughout childhood, Emi visited her Grandmother in Japan frequently. But through the years of high school and after, she hadn’t been back in nearly twelve years. Sadly, within those twelve years, both her Japanese grandparents passed away. TADAIMA is a travelogue documenting a trip back to Japan with her mother for a memorial service to renew the sobota, a wooden grave marker, at her grandparents’ tomb in Fukushima. Touching on Japanese spirituality and cultural differences, TADAIMA is more than a book about landmarks and foreign cuisine. It’s about family.
WE STAND ON GUARD
W: Brian K. Vaughan (Saga, Ex Machina), A: Steve Skroce (Doc Frankenstein, storyboard artist for The Matrix and Jupiter Ascending)
WE STAND ON GUARD is an action-packed, military thriller set in the 22nd century. The series follows a heroic band of Canadian civilians-turned-freedom fighters who take up arms against a violent invasion of their country by a technologically superior nation: the United States of America.
HEAVEN
James Robinson (The Saviors) and Phillip Tan (Spawn, Uncanny X-Men)
HEAVEN introduces readers to a distant future where the forces or man and alien combined have used religion to conquer this universe and are now ready, about to invade the next one — Heaven itself. The “Good War” between man and angel will span galaxies and dimensions, building to a final conflict that threatens to negate all of reality itself. Along the way many players on both sides of the war will be featured; soldiers, spies and politicians all with different goals and agendas even as their two distinct and differing realities explode around them.
Oofta! There you have it. What are titles are you excited for in 2015? Let us know in the comments below!