Dynamite has been making a lot of announcements, and there isn’t even a con coming. Here’s the round-up:
• CEO Nick Barrucci is selling art from his personal collection by Tom Raney, Mark Bagley, Scott Hanna, and Patrick Zircher from books like The Outsiders, The Punisher, Uncanny X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man, The Order, Robin, and more. A portion of the proceeds will go to benefit the CBLDF. Barrucci owns hundreds of pages of art, and fans can order by artist: orders will be filled randomly for $75 a page.
“Art collecting has been a passion of mine for years,” Barrucci explained. “For the past 30 years, I have been picking up pieces from my favorite artists whenever I can. I look at my collection on a regular basis, as I love to appreciate the form, and I was looking at some of these pages by great artists including Mark Bagley, Patrick Zircher and one of my favorite contemporary art teams – Tom Raney and Scott Hanna, and thought that while I have a great collection, I couldn’t possibly appreciate it all properly, as with Mark, Patrick, Tom and Scott I have over 400 pages of these fantastic artists and a few other incredible contemporary artists. I had contemplated selling these via auction houses, but realized that many fans may not have access to original art, and thought it would be cool to offer to the comics fan base first. This is the ultimate one-of-a-kind comics collectible as there is only one of each piece of original art, which is why we need to fill each order randomly.”
• Reanimator, a character created by H.P. Lovecraft in 1921, is coming back in a four-issue miniseries written by Keith Davidsen and illustrated by Randy Valiente, debuting in April. Variant covers include Jae Lee (Dark Tower), Francesco Francavilla (Afterlife with Archie), Tim Seeley (Hack/Slash), and Andrew Mangum (Wilder).
In Reanimator, Dr. Herbert West heads to New Orleans to continue his life’s work: the revival of the dead by purely chemical means. To accomplish this task, he recruits Susan Greene, a young and wide-eyed pharmacologist fascinated by his macabre experiments. Initially unfazed by West’s unorthodox practices (including how he funds his research – by selling zombie brain fluid as a narcotic), Susan may regret her scientific curiosity as sinister forces – those aligned with Elder Gods and Haitian Voodoo – begin to align against the Reanimator. Reanimator blends mad science, Lovecraftian tentacle terror, backwater Louisianan superstition, and fan-favorite elements of such television shows as Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead.
• Jungle Girl is also coming back in April, with cover art and writing by Frank Cho. Frank Cho and Jungle Girls…it’s like peanut butter and jelly. The series is co-written by Doug Murray (The ‘Nam) and illustrated by Jack Jadson (The Savage Hawkman).
Jungle Girl: Season Three picks up where the previous series left off, following Jana’s escape from an underwater city and a gigantic, otherworldly creature. However, her father soon reveals that those actions have doomed the Lost World in which they all live, as a wormhole appears in the sky and flaming debris begins to fall through. As the jungle burns, Jana and her friends must contend with stampeding behemoths and displaced, murderous natives. Furthermore, the rift presents a new, fearsome threat, for the fire from an alien dimension was not the only thing to come through.
“I’m delighted to be back with my co-creator, Doug Murray, and finish out the final story arc of Jungle Girl,” says Cho. And surely many will be delighted to see him back. What is it people like about jungle girl comics anyway? Could it be…the themes?
“Jungle Girl appeals to readers for the same reason that other such stories do,” says Murray. “We are fascinated by the ‘Noble Savage’, the man or woman who, untainted by society, lives a life filled with the challenge (and pleasure) of the hunt as he/she fights for survival. It’s a genre that has existed for over a century but was perfected by Edgar Rice Burroughs in Tarzan and associated books. The TV series Lost touched upon the same challenges and appeals.”
• AND the 2008 Shuster Award winner for “Outstanding Canadian Web Comics Creators” Looking For Group is getting an ongoing series. Written by Ryan Sohmer and illustrated by Lar deSouza, Hawk, Ryan Dunlavey, and Ed Ryzowski, with variant covers by Ty Templeton and Becky Dreistadt, and bonus stories from the Non-Playable Character and Tiny Dick Adventures spin-off series.
Looking For Group follows the adventures of Cale’Anon the elf and Richard the undead warlock, as well as their companions, through Fantasy, Pop Culture, and Gaming tropes, set in a reality and time unlike our own. It’s a place where the eating of small children is not necessarily frowned upon; where beings of extraordinary power can destroy entire villages with only “because I could” as an excuse; where magic and adventure are as commonplace as setting fire to, and then reanimating, a chipmunk into a skeletal minion (it happens more than you’d think); and an epic journey can begin by an accident of fate.
