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After making his presence in the comic book industry felt in a big way on a run with Warren Ellis on Moon Knight, Declan Shaley moved over to creator-owned with the writer. They set off on a series more complex and less marketable than one about a white-caped crusader, to great results. I spoke to […]

Image launches an assortment of brand new number ones each month, however, May‘s selection of new Image titles features some huge names creating important new properties. Before May comes around the pipe, lets take a look at all the new titles launching in that month. Thanks to CBR for posting these solicits and covers.

We heard about projects like Valhalla Mad at the Image Expo before last, so it’s a relief to finally be seeing author Joe Casey‘s take on the god flavored funny fiction. Casey’s new batch of comics riffing on Marvel’s Thor with veteran artist Paul Maybury deserves to be on your radar come May.

VALHALLA MAD #1

STORY: JOE CASEY

ART / COVER A: PAUL MAYBURY

COVER B: NICK PITARRA

MAY 20 / 32 PAGES / FC / T / $3.50

Their names are legend: the Glorious Knox! Greghorn the Battlebjörn! Jhago the Irritator! Three warrior gods vacationing on Earth, just looking to get their drink on and have a good time! Join the drunken festivities with toastmasters JOE CASEY (SEX) and PAUL MAYBURY (SOVEREIGN). The new mythology begins now!

The hottest new title coming from Image in the next couple months has to be Injection, the new comic book series from the awesome creative team of Warren Ellis and Declan Shalvey. The two creators are coming off of a fan-favorite run of Moon Knight. With their new Image project solicited with a brand new beautiful cover here:

INJECTION #1

STORY: WARREN ELLIS

ART / COVERS A & B: DECLAN SHALVEY & JORDIE BELLAIRE

MAY 13 / 24 PAGES / FC / M / $2.99

Once upon a time, there were five crazy people, and they poisoned the 21st Century. Now they have to deal with the corrosion to try and save us all from a world becoming too weird to support human life.

INJECTION is the new ongoing series created by the acclaimed creative team of Moon Knight. It is science fiction, tales of horror, strange crime fiction, techno-thriller, and ghost story all at the same time. A serialized sequence of graphic novels about how loud and strange the world is getting, about the wild future and the haunted past all crashing into the present day at once, and about five eccentric geniuses dealing with the paranormal and numinous as well as the growing weight of what they did to the planet with the Injection.

Next up is Mythic, a new title from Phil Hester and John McCrea about how science is dead. With a stunning cover and an excellent first two names associated with the project, the story is due for a look from fans searching for something a little different in the comics market. The high concept is that magic has to be suppressed from the surface world as science doesn’t exist. Take a look at the cover and solicit:

MYTHIC #1

STORY: PHIL HESTER

ART / COVER A: JOHN McCREA

COVER B: SEAN GORDON MURPHY

MAY 6 / 32 PAGES / FC / T+ / $1.99

SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE OF $1.99!

Science is a lie, an opiate for the masses. The truth is, magic makes the world go ’round. And when magic breaks, MYTHIC fixes it. Apache shaman Waterson, Greek immortal Cassandra, and cell phone salesman Nate Jayadarma are the crack field team assigned with keeping the gears of the supernatural world turning, and more importantly, keeping you from ever knowing about it.

Join Eisner nominee PHIL HESTER (Green Arrow, The Coffin) and Eisner winner JOHN McCREA (Hitman, The Boys) on their latest expedition to the dark heart of weird comics.

Ed Brisson, the creator of hit indie comic Shelter is working on a new comic entitled The Mantle. Brian Level is joining him with art for the title. The two creators are telling a superhero story about a young man getting the powers of mysterious object called (you guessed it) The Mantle.

THE MANTLE #1

STORY: ED BRISSON

ART / COVER A: BRIAN LEVEL

COVER B: PHIL HESTER

MAY 13 / 32 PAGES / FC / M / $3.99

Robbie never asked for any of this. While drunkenly walking home from a punk show, he’s hit with lightning and wakes to find that he’s been chosen as the new host for The Mantle, a power set of unimaginable scope. Despite his lack of interest, he’s forced into action. The Plague, a being who has spent 50 years killing every previous host of The Mantle, is already coming for him.

Ales Kot and Will Tempest‘s Material contains the high concept ideas of Kot’s other work, as the story tells various plot threads seemingly unrelated to each other that will all line up to something? Tom Muller is back designing the covers for the project, showing off the artwork in some exciting new ways. The cover should be enough to hook some into the brand new Image comic.

MATERIAL #1

STORY: ALES KOT

ART: WILL TEMPEST

COVER: TOM MULLER

MAY 27 / 32 PAGES / FC / M / $3.50

A man comes home from Guantanamo Bay, irrevocably changed. An actress receives an offer that can revive her career.

A boy survives a riot and becomes embedded within a revolutionary movement.

A philosopher is contacted by a being that dismantles his beliefs.

Look around you. Everything is material.

We conducted an interview with Brian Buccellato on his upcoming Sons of the Devil project, a story that he’s launching with artist Toni Infante switching from Kickstarter to Image comics. The comic is contained in both a short film and this upcoming project about a man that learns of his dark familial ties to a deadly cult.

SONS OF THE DEVIL #1

STORY: BRIAN BUCCELLATO

ART / COVER A: TONI INFANTE

COVER B: FRANCIS MANAPUL

COVER C: PAOLO RIVERA

MAY 27 / 32 PAGES / FC / M / $2.99

From New York Times bestselling writer BRIAN BUCCELLATO and artist TONI INFANTE comes a psychological horror story about TRAVIS, an average guy trying to get by, who discovers that he has familial ties to a deadly cult.

Told across three decades, SONS OF THE DEVIL is an exploration of cults, family, and the dark side of human nature. It’s TRUE DETECTIVE and ORPHAN BLACK meets HELTER SKELTER.

Jim Nisbet's Windward Passage continues to received extraordinary review attention from all over the globe. Here's a new one, written by book critic Woody Haut for Crime Time, a terrific website from the International Association of Crime Writers:

"Jim Nisbet, author of The Damned Don't Die, Lethal Injection, Prelude to a Scream, Death Puppet and Price of the Ticket has long been one of my favorite noirists. In Windward Passage, his tenth book, he pulls out all the stops, combining his long-standing noir sensibilities with an off-the-wall post-modern disposition and cultural critique. Pacey, but filled with enough tropes to keep the most hardcore Jim Thompsonite happy- at least those partial to the final section of The Getaway or the surrealism of Savage Night- Windward Passage centres on a ship that sinks in the Caribbean, its captain chained to the mast. A logbook, a partially written novel, a brick of cocaine and the DNA of a President are all that remain. The appropriately named dead sailor's sister, Tipsy lives in San Francisco, where she hangs out at bars with her gay friend Quentin. That is until she runs into Red, Tipsy's brother's old employer.

Scrambling genres and voices, Windward Passage flits around geographically as well as linguistically, high-tailing it from San Francisco to the Caribbean and back again, dove-tailing from fast-talking, never-less-than-witty dialogue to tangential asides, reportage, paradoxical quips and a novel within a novel. With his ear to the ground, Nesbit not only updates the traditional noir narrative, combining it with a sea adventure story, conundrums, a dash of cyberpunk, and a sprinkling of literary concerns (including the likes of Tom Raworth, Paustovsky and Leonard Clark's The Rivers Ran East). From a prologue that will leave you scratching your head for at least a hundred pages, Windward Passage sometimes reads like a hardboiled Saragossa Manuscript, and bound to appeal to anyone looking beyond the confines of the genre. Still, I remember thinking while reading the novel that this is the sort of book we're told doesn't get published these days. So hat's off not only to Nisbet, but to Overlook Press. Because this is Nisbet at his wildest and weirdest. I'm still not sure what it all adds up to, other than an entertaining, insightful and highly recommended adventure."