The Forgotten Realms have never been more fun, as the familiar setting continues to expand and flesh out fun characters like warrior Minsc and miniature giant space hamster Boo, half-elf/thief/poet Krydle, cleric Nerys Kathon, halfling rogue Shandie Freefoot, and Delina, the young moon elf wild magesorcerer, all in the pages of IDW comics. Writer Jim Zub is back partnering with artist Max Dunbar in Dungeons & Dragons: Infernal Tides. IDW Publishing and Wizards of the Coast have brought forward the best from the D&D game books and card games, and combined good fantasy storytelling with classic artwork like you’d find in D&D manuals and great humor fantasy like Mike Wieringo’s Tellos. It’s also the closest thing to Don Bluth’s video game Dragon’s Lair since Dragon’s Lair. The latest D&D graphic novel and next adventure in Baldur’s Gate arrives in comic shops and online stores this week.
The Forgotten Realms have never been more fun. Writer Jim Zub has partnered with artists Max Dunbar & John-Paul Bove, Nelson Daniel, Thiago Ribeiro, Milen Parvanov, and Glauber Matos in a huge compilation book, Dungeons & Dragons: Days of Endless Adventure. IDW Publishing and Wizards of the Coast have brought forward the best from the D&D game books and card games, and combined good fantasy storytelling with classic artwork like you’d find in both D&D manuals or J.R.R. Tolkien’s magical worlds, with humor similar to Mike Wieringo’s Tellos. Best yet, it features the Dungeon Mayhem’s Minsc and his trusty partner hamster Boo, meaning lots of bravery (and laughs) await you.
It’s a comic book nearly two years in the making. Or maybe 27 years. And it may be the best single comic book issue of the year. But as strange as the tale between the covers, the story of its creators is stranger still. What you probably know is this: In 1984 Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird published a single issue comic called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Intended as a spoof-parody-mash-up concoction of Marvel’s Daredevil and The New Mutants, Frank Miller’s Ronin, and Dave Sim’s Cerebus, the book sparked something much bigger for readers, becoming one of the most popular franchises for a few generations of readers and cartoon watchers (not to mention the impact it had via toys and movie tie-ins). A couple unrelated–short-lived–parody spin-offs of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlescame and went unrelated to Eastman and Laird, including Pre-Teen Dirty-Gene Kung-Fu Kangaroos and Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters.
What you don’t know is that eight years after the Turtles saw their first comic–in 1992–comic creators Shane Bookman and his brother Paul released their scrappy indie creation on the unsuspecting comic book universe: Radically Rearranged Ronin Ragdolls. Like Eastman and Laird, the Bookmans had their own share of ups and downs, tales of fame and fortune (evidently Eastman sold off his rights to the Turtles some 20 years ago, etc.). So in 2017 Eastman and writer David Avallone and artist Ben Bishop (with Troy Little, Brittany Peer, Tomi Varga, and Taylor Esposito) took the Bookmans’ story to Kickstarter, and nearly 1,200 backers brought in more than $100,000. Now it’s all done, first to tell the Bookmans’ story in a new monthly comic beginning this past week called Drawing Blood, and at the same time with a companion comic they created and discussed in their comic industry exploits, Radically Rearranged Ronin Ragdolls,Issue #1.
The result? Radically Rearranged Ronin Ragdolls is an idea as good as any Turtles tale you’ve read, and as finely crafted an origin story, full of action, top-notch writing, beautiful layouts, and exciting new characters: referred to as the Ragdolls (from the cat breed), they are three female cats who encounter gamma rays, cosmic rays, genetic mutagens, and who knows what other comic book superpower trigger was tapped, to become Tezuka, Otomo, and Miyazaki. Speaking, Ronin-trained, defender cats. Otomo is the most fearsome, Miyazaki speaks in Haiku poems, and Tezuka is a master tactician.
Today writer Dan Slott and artist Sara Pichelli are bringing back the title Fantastic Four to Marvel Comics with a re-launch beginning with part one of a new Issue #1 story, “Fourever,” arriving at comic book stores today. Marvel Comics sidelined the team of Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Ben Grimm, and Johnny Storm since the end of its Secret Wars series. Now fans of the team and “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” will find out what they’ve been doing since then. We’ve gathered the dozens of cover options available for this issue, shown below.
As Marvel states in its marketing materials for the new series:
A void no other team can fill. And it’s time for the world to move on. But can it? A life-changing decision by the Thing! A momentous declaration by the Human Torch! A clarion call-to-arms that summons Doctor Doom! And a signal in the sky that heralds the return of hope to the Marvel Universe! All this, and Alicia Masters adopts kittens! So cute! Plus, the Impossible Man!
Marvel has amped up its cover artists yet again for the variant covers for this latest of several recent renumberings of main titles. So you’ll find covers from Alex Ross, Artgerm, Art Adams, Adam Hughes, Steve Epting, Sara Pichelli, Esad Ribic, George Perez, Mark Brooks, Skottie Young, Simone Bianchi, Joe Quesada, Eric Powell, Humberto Ramos, Nick Bradshaw, Mike Wieringo, Jack Kirby, John Cassaday, Emanuela Lupacchino, Walt Simonson, Rob Liefeld, Jen Bartel, Will Sliney, Mike Mayhew, Bill Sienkiewicz, and many more–more than 55 including virgin art and blank covers, most new, some pulled from archives of artists of the past, plus some homages to comic book covers from the past.
Bonus stories will be included in the issue by Simone Bianchi and Skottie Young. New Fantastic Four pins and backerboards will also available at some comic book stores today.
A secret project nearly three years in the making was shared this month with the announcement of a tribute to the artist who created the fantasy comic book series Tellos. Artist Mike Wieringo, a friend of many, died from a heart attack in 2007 and the industry banded together as the “Secret Friends of Ringo” led by Tellos writer Todd Dezago to create a heretofore undisclosed tribute project and give something to one of Wieringo’s favorite causes in the process. The Mike Wieringo Tellos Tribute is a giant 500 page, original graphic novel to be released in two over-sized, hardcover volumes. It features the artwork of more than 200 of the comics industry’s most popular and talented artists, dedicated to the memory of Wieringo, with all proceeds from this project being donated to the ASPCA.
The Mike Wieringo Tellos Tribute continues the adventures of characters in the original Tellos series created by Wieringo and Dezago and published by Image Comics (and briefly by Gorilla Comics): Jarek—a young hero with “magikal” abilities, Koj—a tiger-warrior who is Jarek’s partner and protector, Serra—the swashbuckling pirate queen, and Rikk—the fox-thief bent on finding his fortune. The original comic book series of ten issues ran from 1999 to 2000. Three one-shot issues followed: Maiden Voyage,The Last Heist, and Sons and Moons, followed by a three-issue mini-series, Tales of Tellos, in 2004. Not long before he passed away, Wieringo had talked about working on a new Tellos.
You can only order the books at this link. Because of they way the group is providing the proceeds to the ASPCA, these books will not be available through any other source.
