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Image Comics In April – A Few New Books, A Few New Starts – Shotgun Wedding, Dream Police, Self-Obsessed And Genesis

Published Tue, 21 Jan 2014 21:00:12 -0600

So what are we due from the idea factory that is Image Comics of 2014? Here are a few:

From Top Cow/Minotaur a four issue mini-series all in April, once a week. Shotgun Wedding by

Mike Stone wants nothing more than to marry the woman of his dreams… but the last woman of his dreams wants nothing more than to stop him.

William Harms (Impaler) and Edward Pun (Ninja High School) introduce an assassin named Mike and his smart, sexy, 2nd-grade-teacher fiancée, Denise. Mike loves Denise more than anything in the world, but Chloe—his first fiance who got left in the lurch—has been plotting her revenge.

Genesis is a new one-shot from Nathan Edmondson and Alison Sampson.

GENESIS is a trippy journey of creation and destruction as one man finds himself with the ability to manifest anything by thinking it—only to learn that with seemingly unlimited power comes unstoppable terror.

"Genesis was a fun opportunity to let storytelling and art run wild with the idea of creativity itself—of the boundlessness of imagination and the inevitable vertigo that comes from the unlimited ability to manifest anything into being," said Nathan Edmondson.

Sampson has a background in architecture which informs her style. "The comic page is built up like I'd design a bit of architecture, with leading and secondary spaces and places and so on. I found it hard to be linear, to cater to a reader—comics and architecture are not always the same," explained Sampson. "It amazes me what level of design skills comic artists bring to their pages, even as someone who designs every day. I miss the excitement of being on site, but you can do all sorts of things on paper you can't do in real life, and there is a lot of that still to explore."

Dream Police by J Michael Stracyzynski and Sid Kotian.

Joe and Frank have been partners for as long as they can remember, patrolling the alternate universe of dreams, nightmares, and the great void beyond, an alternate but very real dimension of changelings, echoes, wisps, ethers, and nightwalkers, those that died in their sleep and wander the dreamscape forever.

The Dream Police have seen it all. But when Frank steps away and disappears… and the woman who returns says she's Joe's partner, that she's always been Joe's partner… he begins a journey into the unknown that will shake the dreaming down to its very foundation.

Self-Obsessed by Sina Grace is a one-shot collecting his auto-biographical work.

"I feel like I've been teetering between mainstream and indie," confessed Grace. "Self-Obsessed is a fun middle ground for the fans who love my slice-of-life stories like Not My Bag, and for the readers who got behind the raucous romp that is Burn the Orphanage. Plus—how fun are convenient one-shots jam-packed with quirky insights?"

Loaded with new stories for this edition, SELF-OBSESSED is packed with quirky and humorous insights about comics, love, dreams, and frenemies.

Thief Of Thieves gets a new ongoing writer in the form of Andy Diggle.

From Robert Kirkman, the creator of THE WALKING DEAD, new ongoing writer Andy Diggle (SNAPSHOT, Green Arrow: Year One, The Losers), and dedicated artist Shawn Martinbrough comes THIEF OF THIEVES #20. Conrad Paulson is after a big score once again, but this time he may not be so lucky.

Conrad pulled off his last heist, but not without making some new enemies to add to his ever-growing list. Diggle hinted that the stakes would be raised in this new arc. "Master thief Redmond was hoping to retire after the biggest heist of his career, but instead it's dropped him into the crossfire of an international gang war," hinted Diggle. "He's been on the back foot for too long; now it's time for Redmond to go on the offensive. Things are going to get bloody."

Vietnam zombie comic, '68 returns as '68: Rule Of War by Mark Kidwell, Jeff Zornow and Jay Fotos.

In a doom-shadowed Cambodia infested with the living dead, CIA Special Agent Declan Rule and his canine companion Nero stalk a human monster, a neurosurgeon bent on carrying out grisly experiments that turn P.O.W.s into vicious instruments of war.

In '68: RULE OF WAR Kidwell focuses on the horrifying capabilities of humans, rather than just zombies alone. "Readers will see how a human imagination, backed up by years of medical and scientific education, can take a threat like a shambling, cannibalistic demon and make it worse by wiring it to a radio transmitter frequency, packing it with high explosives and aiming it at an unsuspecting opposition," said Kidwell. "Also, with the dead, surgical application and augmentation could be performed without boundaries. The threat of 'losing' a patient due to lab table trauma is zero as long as you don't destroy the brain. Think Frankenstein on steroids with the bedside manner of Joseph Stalin and you're getting warm."

In Vietnam, Private Kuen Yam and his ragtag band of survivors battle their way across a murderous no-man's-land in a desperate search for a ticket to the skies. The war is over, but the battle for humanity's survival has just begun.

And Robert Kirkman semi-relaunches Invincible.

INVINCIBLE #111 is the first issue of a bold new direction, a startling new era, and stories for a new generation from Robert Kirkman, the creator of THE WALKING DEAD empire and up-for-anything artist Ryan Ottley. Suddenly infused with more gore and terror than a zombie apocalypse, INVINCIBLE takes a turn down the dark path of horror when Invincible is betrayed by one of his own.

"If The Walking Dead is the zombie movie that never ends, Invincible is the superhero movie that never ends. Like The Walking Dead, it takes a well-worn genre and puts a new spin on it, raising the stakes and treating things a little more seriously than they otherwise are," said Kirkman. "With these new issues, starting with 111, we're really going to be ramping up those elements of the series to their highest peak. I don't think people are prepared for all the lines we're going to cross… and not look back. This really is an exciting time to be an Invincible fan."

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