Scooby-Doo Team-Up! #42

DC comics have a long history of featuring gorillas, apes, and monkeys. If you’d like a capsule history of just how many, check out the latest issue of Scooby-Doo Team-Up! It’s “gorilla warfare” in issue #42 as written by Sholly Fisch and illustrated by Dario Brizuela. The mayor has called in the kids...

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Doctor Who: Thirteenth Doctor Comic Will Have 13 Covers (Duh)

Titan Comics is excited by the new Doctor Who, played by Jodie Whittaker. They’re launching a new series, Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor, which will debut with a #1 on November 7. It’s written by Jody Houser and illustrated by Rachael Stott. No plot information is available — before the new Doctor’s...

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Oni Launches Video Game Series by Going Direct to Audience, Bypassing Retailers

I haven’t played Dream Daddy, a yaoi-ish dating sim (visual novel) game where the user plays a single dad “new to town and eager to romance other hot Dads.” I did see a lot of people on Twitter enjoying it, though. Now Oni Press is putting out a five-issue tie-in comic series where each issue is by...

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A Helpful Panel Topic

So many large comic convention panels fall into the promotion bucket. A publisher wants to talk about their new and upcoming releases, or a show wants to provide a way for lots of people to hear from a hot creator at one time. Nothing wrong with those items, but I’m intrigued by panels that assemble...

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Seven Seas Announces Yuri, Memoir Manga Releases

In amongst more isekai titles — although the press releases meant I learned that word, which describes a normal person trapped in another universe, usually a fantasy or video game world — Seven Seas will be releasing some interesting-sounding titles next year. The most prominent is Blank Canvas: My...

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Wotakoi: Love Is Hard for Otaku Volume 1

Wotakoi: Love Is Hard for Otaku by Fujita is something of a rarity still in the US — it’s a manga starring adults in an office setting. It’s a comedy about nerds in their workplace and romantic lives, which I tried because I like seeing more mature characters in manga than the usual school-age kids....

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Wizard World Cancels Another Show a Month After Last Cancellation Announcement

That’s pretty much it, in the headline. A month ago, Wizard World cancelled two of their remaining 2018 shows. Now comes word that their Sacramento convention, to be held October 5-7, has been cancelled less than a month in advance. That abrupt change doesn’t bode well. Heidi MacDonald has the details:...

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Ghost-Spider May Have a Problem

Spider-Gwen, a younger, female character with the fourth-wall-breaking appeal of Deadpool (since she knows she’s in a comic), is one of the characters in the new Marvel Rising franchise. Only there, she’s been renamed “Ghost-Spider”, because “Spider-Gwen” is a silly in-joke. (I’m guessing. I don’t know...

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Supergirl: The Complete Third Season

Review by KC Carlson I unfortunately had a lot of issues with Supergirl: The Complete Third Season. Those of you who remember me from a previous life as an editor for DC Comics (hired specifically to edit The Legion of Super-Heroes, among other things) can probably guess where this is going. I wasn’t...

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Marvel Seems to Have Given Up on Younger Readers

This is not new news, but I find it interesting that Marvel Comics is farming out comics for younger readers, using some of their most visible properties, to other publishers. Where DC is creating new imprints to reach this important, fast-growing market, Marvel seems to have decided to stick with the...

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Batman: Complete Animated Series Comes to Blu-ray With Digital Copy

Ten years ago, one of the world’s favorite superhero cartoons made it to home video in a deluxe package. Batman: The Complete Animated Series was a 17-DVD set put out in 2008 to allow fans to rewatch the astounding, deco-influenced animation and the milestone-setting voice acting. Now, to keep up with...

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Towle Drawing Combat Animals for the Naval Institute

I haven’t talked much about Dead Reckoning, the graphic novel imprint of the Naval Institute Press, because their first four books were a little too military for me. (Usual disclaimer: there are so many things to read these days and so little time!) But Ben Towle (Oyster War, Midnight Sun) has just...

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 12: The Reckoning #4

Here’s where it all ends. (At least, I assume, for a while.) Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 12: The Reckoning #4 is the last Dark Horse Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic after a twenty-year run. And, as expected, it’s a lovely finale. The slayer legacy is in danger from a crazed boy from the future who’s...

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Doctor Who: Tales of Terror

What an odd but effective mash-up. Doctor Who: Tales of Terror is a collection of twelve scary stories, each featuring one of the twelve Doctors. This would make an excellent Halloween gift for your favorite Whovian. I wouldn’t have thought to put the two together, but then I remembered that Doctor...

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Is Kichijoji the Only Place to Live? Volume 1

What Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy! does for Tokyo restaurant reviews, MAKIHIROCHI’s Is Kichijoji the Only Place to Live? does for neighborhoods in the city. Kichijoji is regularly voted the most popular neighborhood, but the Shigeta twins help their clients find other, better-suited...

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Tokyo Alice Volume 1

Tokyo Alice is superficial fun and an excellent example of how digital-only releases allow for more diverse types of manga titles in the US market. In this case, it’s a story of a group of young women looking for love (whether they realize it or not) in the big city, told by Toriko Chiya. Josei manga...

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My Brother the Shut-In Volume 6

The final volume of this digital-only manga series illustrates just how much the premise changed from what I liked about the first book. My Brother the Shut-In volume 6 by Kinoko Higurashi is mostly about Tamotsu, the brother of the title. You might have guessed that, but I was much more interested...

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The Two-Pencil Method

It’s been fascinating to see Mark Crilley’s how-to books move from genre, with the Mastering Manga trilogy, to a story about learning how to draw, to a set of illustrations with a wide variety of influences, to hyperrealistic art. His latest how-to book continues in the vein of that last one, although...

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Support Free Speech With SPX Legal Defense Fund

As TCJ.com reported, in August, Rape, Sexual Harassment Allegations Prompt Defamation Suit from Small-Press Comics Publisher Cody Pickrodt I’ve never heard of Pickrodt or his imprint Ray Ray Books, but he has picked a method certain to make him notorious. He sued eleven comic creators and a publisher...

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The Beatles: Yellow Submarine

Titan Comic is justifiably proud of its recent release of The Beatles: Yellow Submarine, a graphic novel adaptation of the animated movie to celebrate the film’s 50th anniversary. I’m told that it’s a faithful reproduction of the movie — KC liked it, for example — which I believe, although I think I’ve...

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Oni Wants to Draw Out the Vote

Bravo! Oni Press has created Draw Out the Vote, “a free state-by-state comics voting guide”. For each state, there’s a page with a comic by a different artist from that area about an election topic as well as information on how to register and vote in that state and community organizations to get involved...

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Free Copies of Hit Reblog at SPX This Weekend

This weekend at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, Amazon will be promoting its ComiXology Originals line. These publications are creator-owned comic books and graphic novels that are available to read for free if you belong to Amazon Prime, Kindle Unlimited, or comiXology Unlimited. The particular...

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The Sabrina Teaser Is Certainly Creepy!

Netflix will release The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, starring Kiernan Shipka, on October 26, just in time for Halloween. Originally planned to run on the CW as a Riverdale spin-off, the show, written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, moved to Netflix for a planned two seasons of ten episodes each. Probably...

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Manga in Real Life: Fired for Dating

It’s a common plotline in the many manga series that deal with some aspect of the entertainment industry: “We can’t reveal our romantic interest in each other because we’ll lose our careers! Our managers won’t let us date!” Now, it’s happened in real life, and it made the NY Times. Two of South Korea’s...

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20-Some Things I Learned From DC Comics Absolutely Everything You Need To Know

Review by KC Carlson DC Comics Absolutely Everything You Need To Know is a brand-new, 200-page book, published by DK, packed with information about the entire DC Universe (and its history). However, unlike previous DC Comics books from DK, it has a somewhat skewed sense of the minutia of the DCU that...

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