Zape al que pregunte por el final de Image United...

El miércoles se llevó a cabo la Image Expo. Un pequeño evento realizado antes de los grandes anuncios de la Comic Con, en el que el Publisher Eric Stephenson se pone de quejoso sobre lo que hacen las editoriales grandes, y donde los creadores anuncian sus nuevos proyectos creator-owned. Esta vez se anunciaron 12 nuevas series, con creadores que ya tienen experiencia en la editorial, como Rick Remender, Joe Casey y Warren Ellis, y algunos que llegan por primera vez como el gran Kurt Busiek.

Parece que la tendencia actual en cuanto a temática se está yendo por las historias de ciencia ficción desarrolladas en el espacio, combinadas con otros géneros. 

Yo, el Pingüino Vonice, el mejor corresponsal noticioso del Polo (después de que Lolita Ayala debido a una acalorada discusión con Diavolo sobre quién se veía mejor en vestido rojo) estuve ahí para traerles todos los detalles que alcancé a escuchar desde el paquete de FedEx en el que fui enviado de contrabando.

                                  

-Tokyo Ghost, de Rick Remender (Captain America, AXIS, Uncanny Avengers, LOW, Black Science, Frankencastle), el dibujante Sean Murphy (Joe The Barbarian) y el colorista Matt Hollingsworth (Hawkeye). Con toques de Judge Dredd, Lobo y películas de acción ochenteras, muestra un mundo futurista gobernado por las compañías de entretenimiento.

TOKYO GHOST welcomes readers to the isles of New Los Angeles, 2189. Humanity has become nothing more than a sea of consumers, ravenous and starving wolves, sick from toxic contamination, who have to borrow, beg, and steal for the funds to buy, buy, buy their next digital fix. Getting a thrill, a distraction from reality, is the only thing left to live for. Entertainment is the biggest industry, the drug everyone needs, and gangsters run it all. And who do these gangsters turn to when they need the “law” enforced? Led Dent and Debbie Decay, constables of the law, which is a nice way to say “brutal killing machines.” The duo are about to be presented with an assignment that will force them out of the decay of LA and into the mysterious lost nation of Tokyo.

-From Under Mountains, de Marian Churchland, Claire Gibson y Sloane Slung, una historia del género de fantasía.

Set in the isolated country of Akhara, rival houses face off in the struggle for political power and military security in FROM UNDER MOUNTAINS. Three unlikely figures—a lord’s daughter, a disgraced knight, and a runaway thief—will change the fate of their world, but the only hope of peace may lie with the mystery shrouded goblins and witches, and the ancient powers they command.

Claire Gibson: I’ve always been fascinated by the way wars — particularly wars that span a number of years — can affect a nation’s identity and culture. Ahkara is very much a country shaped by war. All our main characters, but especially the ex-knight, Fisher, have been affected by war in different ways. 

Marian Churchland: The lord’s daughter and the disgraced knight are written by Claire, so I’ll let her expand on them. The thief’s name is Tova, and she starts the story in pretty desperate circumstances. She owes people money, she hasn’t delivered on promises, and she’s forced to take drastic measures to get out of her deepening mess — and you’ll see where that lands her, by the end of the first issue.

CG: Elena is the daughter of a lord, with all the privilege and restrictions that such a position implies. Elena is profoundly aware of her own lack of freedom, and amidst a personal tragedy she sees an opportunity to change her life, but she has a lot to learn. In some ways our disgraced knight, Fisher, represents the perils of everything that Elena longs for. He’s seen much more than her. War played him a devastating hand and he’s been running from what happened to him ever since, but — as they say — you can’t run forever. 

Sloane Slung: I don’t usually feel a deep connection to sword and sandal high fantasy epics outside of video games, mostly because I feel like the stories end up being really played out machismo hero narratives which of course has its place and can entertaining. I think end up embracing more historical stories like Kaoru Mori’s charming yet grounded Otoyomegatari or lo-fantasy tales like Daisuke Igarashi’s Hanashippanashi or Majowhere subtle magical elements work as surreal extended metaphors for the character’s emotions or narrative events. Another strong influence is Sergei Parajanov’s films which somehow contain this heavy melancholic whimsy that I find appealing and I particularly love his strong composition and staging, his use of poetic symbolism and how grounded yet loudly theatrical his characters can be.

SL: The art style and the coloring is just me, trying to whittle myself down to the best of my visual vocabulary. Marian and Claire and our editor Brandon were really helpful in encouraging me to just be myself instead of trying to conform my style to what I thought a fantasy comic should look like. As for the in story look and feel, Marian and I talked a lot about how we wanted this not to be another eastern European influenced fantasy comic so we both did a lot of research into different cultures and their histories. There’s a lot of desert in the comic so I was inspired by a lot of ancient North African (Berber, Moors) and Indian rock-cut architecture and design as well as pulling interesting clothing styles and patterns from Choctaw, Zapotec and Hawaiian fashion as well.

-Joe Casey y Paul Maybury presentaron Valhalla Mad, una comedia sobre tres dioses nórdicos que viajan a la Tierra para ponerse hasta las chanclas, con un estilo que recuerda a las viejas películas de Locas Academias, que saldrá a principios del 2015.

-John Arcudi y James Harren, quienes han trabajo juntos ya un tiempo en el spinoff de Hellboy, B.P.R.D., traerán Rumble.

-El escritor de Batman Eternal Ray Fawkes presentó Intersect, descrita como algo inspirado por Twin Peaks, David Lynch y David Cronenberg, y quizás por David Copperfiled, David Hasselhoff y David Finch. Fawkes también dibujará (o mejor dicho, pintará) la serie, que saldrá en Noviembre.

-Tom Neely y Keenan Marshall presentaron The Humans, algo que al parecer no será apto para Chimpo, nuestros simio escritor Senior.

-Gabriel Hardman y Corina Bechko (quienes han trabajado en miniseries de Planet Of The Apes y Star Wars) anunciaron Invisible Republic, con harta intriga espacial.

Hardman and Bechko are working together on a new Image ongoing series, "Invisible Republic."

Hardman: Our book has action, adventure, death, sex, honor, psychopaths, loyalty, deception and much more set in a sci-fi world. But it’s not fantasy like Star Wars or speculative like Kubrick’s 2001, it’s a gritty sci-fi adventure story. INVISIBLE REPUBLIC is set in a fairly realistic sci-fi world in a future where distant multi-generational colonies have sprung up far from the reach or over-site of Earth. The bulk of the story takes place before faster-than-light travel, so these colonies have no one but themselves to rely on. This insular quality breeds corruption and a certain amount of backwardness. It also brings retrograde technical capabilities since they’re not being resupplied by Earth. They don’t have the interconnected world we know now. For them, there are still secrets.

 

Becky Cloonan and Andy Belanger join the presentation to talk "Southern Cross," a sci-fi mystery story. Cloonan will write, Belanger will draw. Cloonan said they're planning a "wintry" release for the book. Belanger described "Southern Cross" as "'Robotech' meets Stephen King."

Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen -- both DC Comics mainstays in recent years -- enter the presentation to talk "Descender," about "a boy robot on the run from pretty much everyone," as Lemire put it. Nguyen is water-coloring the series.  "Descender" is set for spring 2015.

In March 2015, Jeff Lemire (“Sweet Tooth”) and Dustin Nguyen (“Batman: Lil’ Gotham”) will be bringing us a story from a universe where “all androids have been outlawed and bounty hunters lurk on every planet,” focusing on one young robot’s life in that world.

Ten years ago massive, planet-sized robots called “The Harvesters” materialized without warning and invaded the orbits of all the United Galactic Council’s worlds, wiping out entire planets and civilizations before disappearing again. In a fear-fueled response to this machine holocaust, the galaxy blamed millions of robotic companions, whom they suspected of somehow spawning The Harvesters. All robots and androids were immediately outlawed and ruthless bounty hunters called Scrappers were charged with scouring the universe for any surviving robots.

-Jeff Lemire (Green Arrow, Frankenstein: Agent Of S.H.A.D.E.) y Dustin Nguyen (Lil' Gotham) trabajarán en Descender, ahora que ya terminaron su contrato de exclusividad en DC, marcando su debut con Image.

An incredibly life-like artificial boy, TIM-21 may hold the secrets to the origin of The Harvesters deep in his machine DNA—and as a result is the most-wanted robot in the universe. With only his small pet-bot Bandit and the lumbering mining droid Driller at his side, TIM-21 goes on the run. Before long the entire galaxy is looking for this rag-tag group of unlikely companions, as they make their way from one exotic planet to the next with new foes advancing on them at every turn.

-El escritor Ivan Brandon se unirá al dibujante Nic Klein una vez más (trabajaron juntos en Viking) para Drifter, sobre el escape de la raza humana de la Tierra y su búsqueda por un nuevo hogar. La serie saldrá en Noviembre.

 "The idea for me is that space has always been presented as a very glossy, starch version, and that's not really how things get built, "'Drifter' is about the dirty hands it takes to build a future.""We're playing with the dirtier side of science-fiction. And the danger of trying to expand society beyond the overwhelming point it's maybe already at." 

-El veterano escritor Kurt Busiek hace su debut en Image con el artista Ben Dewey en Noviembre con la serie Tooth & Claw, una épica historia protagonizada por animales antropomórficos con elementos mágicos, y un mundo variado e inmenso, que ha sido desarrollado por Busiek durante más de 10 años

Busiek: I've been in bad health for quite a while, and as I slowly recover, the first step was to get "Astro City" back on schedule and coming out. We've done that. The next step was to get something new going, to realize some of the ideas that have been kicking around in my brain demanding release. I actually talked to Eric Stephenson about this book a couple of years back, and he was very enthusiastic about it, so that started the process of finding the right artist, putting together a team, getting longest term storytelling plans nailed down, all that sort of good stuff.I've said before how lucky I am to have run across Ben's [Dewey] work -- I saw his stuff at Emerald City Comicon, and really liked it -- and it was heavy on animal drawings to boot -- but it was a story he did for a "Planet of the Apes" annual that made me realize he'd be a good choice for the book. I knew he could draw great looking animal characters, and I knew he had a sensational visual imagination from reading "The Tragedy Series" but that was the first time I saw multiple pages of his storytelling, and I thought he had a great sense of place, of depth, of emotion, on top of all that other stuff.A lot of my work has been all-ages yeah. And that's partly because I've done a lot of stuff for Marvel and DC, both under the Comics Code and, when that went away, for books that they wanted to be all-ages anyway. And partly, it's because I have no problem writing for an all-ages audience -- I'm usually happy to do it.But I like variety, too, and I don't ever want to do only one kind of thing. I read a lot of stuff that's not all-ages, and go to movies that aren't all-ages, and I have no problem with writing material that's for mature readers, as well. When Cary Nord and I did "Conan," and when Carlos Pacheco and I did "Arrowsmith," we kept bumping up against the mature-readers line, and several times had to have the colorist obscure things to avoid nudity or gore or whatever. So on this series, I went in knowing it was going to be a brutal world, where the violence was important, and where I didn't want to tease nudity the way we had to in "Conan" -- I wanted to do the story the way it felt right to me, and if that added up to mature readers, then so be it.Tooth and Claw" is the kind of series that, on TV, would be on cable somewhere and start with a deep voice calmly saying that it's recommended for mature readers, due to violence, nudity and "strong language." In the movies, it'd be somewhere between a PG-13 and an R. But the reality is, I'm writing this for me and for readers like me, and I'm an adult with an adult sensibility. So I want to write it for adults, not "for-adults-but-with-coy-shadows-and-constrained-language" to make sure it's inoffensively adult. That doesn't mean we've got a quota of "mature content" to hit -- if an issue plays out without any profanity or nudity, well, that's fine. 
 It's about fate and treachery and idealism and pragmatism and romance and adventure and saving the world, and about the world not being threatened by what you expected, and saving it not involving what you expected. It's about cynicism and disillusionment and tragedy and hope and passion. And it's about blood and death and magic and gods and humanity and animals and the difference between the two.It's about exotic civilizations, about wicker cities that float in the sky, about great ocean-going empires, about slavery, about pack-roaches, crystal badlands that coruscate with power, undersea nomads eternally marching across the ocean floor, decaying golems of nuclear fire, boarding schools that have become governments, the limits of magic, the persistence of technology, and the bonds of loyalty.
Our two leads are the Great Champion and Dunstan -- Dusty -- the orphaned son of a wizard of the Cities Above the Plain. I don't want to say much about the Great Champion, since we don't actually meet him until #2, and who he is and what he's like will be a revelation for the characters at least as much as for the readers. Actually, I think the readers will see some of what's coming with the Champion more readily than the characters, because they're watching from outside, and have a different perspective.Dunstan, though, is a youngster from the canine tribes, a bull terrier who'd expected to follow in his father's path, as a senior wizard handling supplies and trade for his city. By the end of #1, though, Dusty's expectations of life are completely blown to shit, and he has no idea what's coming. But Dusty, overall, is young, enthusiastic, hopeful, and very sheltered and privileged -- he thinks he knows a lot about the world, but it turns out he only knows a corner of it, and it's a smaller corner than he would have imagined.

 Ben Dewey: I lamented to one of my studio mates that 'I wish I could just draw something like Kamandi as an ongoing series and get paid to do it, but I might as well wish that I could go on the road and play guitar with Neko Case'A week later Kurt called and said, "I've got this project I think you'd be a good fit for; have you ever heard of Kamandi? Well it is kind of like that but with magic." If Kurt didn't have a distinct voice I would have assumed it was a prank. Here is Kurt Busiek, writer of many of my favorite comics, asking me to do our version of Kamandi on magic steroids

-Finalmente, el escritor Warren Ellis, el dibujante Declan Shalvey y la colorista Jordie Bellaire seguirán su primera y gran colaboración en Moon Knight con Injection, una serie que desmuestra el toque distintivo de Ellis con una descripción de la que no entendí ni madres.

INJECTION explores how loud and strange the world is becoming, and the sense that it’s all bubbling into chaos—a chaos poised to become the Next New Normal — and that we did this to ourselves without thinking for a second about how we were ever going to live inside it.

Vía: Un chingo de páginas, miren nada más qué desmadre.