Image Comics set for big 2015 following Expo announcements
For fans and media alike, Image Comics’ annual Image Expo has been an important date on the calendar. Every year at the event, the company announces its slate of new titles for the coming year, and from the sound of this year’s crop, Image is poised to have another incredible year. Several items jumped out from the announcements: the return of Todd McFarlane, two new projects from Brian K. Vaughan, a new series from Darwyn Cooke and a collaboration by two of the industry’s finest. Here’s a rundown of what was announced in San Francisco.
AD: After Death
What would you do if you lived in a world where death had been cured? Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire team to tell the story of one man struggling to adapt in this brave new world. This will be the first long form story Lemire has drawn that he hasn’t written himself.
Black Road
Brian Wood returns to the Viking genre for the first time since his critically acclaimed Northlanders ended at DC. Set in Viking era Norway, the series tells the story of Magus the Black, a fixer for the Christian Church. Magus uncovers a secret so big that it could topple the power structure in Europe. Garry Brown provides the art for the series.
I Hate Fairyland
Gertrude is a 40-something, mildly deranged woman who totes a battle axe and is imprisoned in a Shirley Temple-esque body. She’s also trapped in a shiny, happy place called Fairyland, much to her chagrin. Skottie Young and Jean-Francois Beaulieu bring Gertrude’s story to the four-colour page.
Island & 8House
Emma Rios and Brandon Graham are the driving forces behind these titles. Island will be a 72-page oversized monthly magazine, featuring an artistic lineup second to none. 8House is a shared universe that several different creative teams will construct in their independent miniseries, starting with Rios’ Mirror and Graham’s Arclight.
Kaptara
Chip Zdarsky and Kagan McLeod bring the story of Keith Kanga to the fore in Kaptara. Keith, a young bio-engineer, finds himself across the universe on a planet fraught with danger. Adding to his stress is knowing that if he doesn’t get home, the planet will be destroyed.
Ludocrats
Writer Kieran Gillen describes his new series as decade-in-the-making opulent fantastical comedy. 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. David Lafuente, Jim Rossignol and Ricardo Venancio are on board to help tell Gillen’s fantastical story.
Monstress
Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda team up to tell this tale of an alternate Asia in the 1900s. In this world, giant creatures known as Leviathans roam the earth. The most dangerous of these creatures forms a psychic bond with a mysterious teenage girl, the girl becomes a target. What her pursuers don’t realize is that she’s becoming more than human.
No Mercy
A group of teenagers, prior to starting their freshman year of college, take a trip to Central America to build schools in a small village. When tragedy strikes, these kids must survive in a cruel world, a world where people want them dead. Alex de Campi, Carla Speed McNeil and Jenn Manley Lee team to tell this tale.
Paper Girls
Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang team up again. Do we need to say more? Paper Girls tells the story of four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls whose lives are changed when they see something spectacular on their route.
Phonogram
Kieran Gillen and Jamie McKelvie reunite for the next installment in the Phonogram series. This installment will explore Emily Aster’s origins, as readers discover what makes this multi-dimensional character tick. She sold half her personality for power, and we learn what that half has been up to all this time.
Plutona
Jeff Lemire, Emi Lenox and Jordie Bellarie bring us Plutona, a story of good and evil and of friendship. Five friends make a horrible discovery while walking home from school: the dead body of Polara, the world’s greatest superhero.
Pretty Deadly
Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Rios are back for round two of Pretty Deadly, their fantasy western tale. The mantle of Death has been bestowed upon a small child, Sissy. Sissy must gather souls of those whose time has come and those who have hung on past their time. After meeting an old woman with a dying request, to see her son again, Sissy sets out to find him and encounters the Reaper of War himself.
Revengeance
Darwyn Cooke’s first fully creator-owned title will come out in June. Revengeance tells the story of Joe Malarky, a man who, when faced with criminal tragedy, sets out to make things right on his own. The book is described as a psychological thriller with darkly humourous overtones.
Run Love Kill
Eric Canete and John Tseui return from their brief hiatus from mainstream comics to present this futuristic, action/sci-fi tale. The story follows the life of Rain Oshiro through two distinctive moments, The Past (her life as a student) and The Present (her now and how she deals with the decisions she made as a youth. Rain has just 24 hours escape a barricaded city and a military force hellbent on her demise.
Savior
Todd McFarlane returns to comics as co-writer of this new eight issue miniseries with Brian Holguin and art by Clayton Crain. A strange man appears with no memory, no place to call home and no background, but he possesses strange powers and abilities that harken back to the Old Testament. Will he be the world’s savior or will he lead to its downfall?
Sons of the Devil
In the vein of shows like The Following and True Detective, Brian Buccallato and Toni Infante will tell the story of a 25-year-old orphan who learns that his long-lost father is a cult leader. If you like Image’s hit Southern Bastards, this could be the book for you.
Starve
Celebrity chefs are all the rage, with access to them seen as a symbol of elite status. Chef Gavin Cruickshank returns from a self-imposed exile to find his television show, Starve, has morphed into a battle royale of blades where chefs prepare rare and exotic animals for their delighted clients. Cruickshank sets out to stop this runaway train of decadence as he tries to repair both his personal and professional lives.
Tadaima
Emi Lenox writes and illustrates this personal look at her return to Japan after a lengthy absence. When she was a child, Emi traveled to Japan often to visit her grandparents, but during a dozen year span she spent away from the country, both grandparents passed away. Tadaima is a travelogue of sorts, her chronicle of a return to Japan with her mother for a memorial service.
We Stand On Guard
Brian K. Vaughan and artist Steve Skroce team for a story set in the 22nd century, where a small group of Canadian civilians are forced to take up arms against their oppressor. In this case, the oppression comes from an unlikely source: the United States of America, perpetrators of a violent invasion of their neighbours to the north.