Posted in: Comics, Solicits | Tagged: Comics The Magazine, CTM, Mark Spears, Prana

Mark Spears' Monsters Comes To CTM #5 In Prana's July 2026 Solicits

Mark Spears' Monsters Comes To Comics! The Magazine #5 In Prana Direct's July 2026 solicits and solicitations

Published Fri, 01 May 2026 10:58:09 -0500

Article Summary

Mark Spears' Monsters headlines Comics! The Magazine #5, featured in Prana Direct's July 2026 solicits.
The issue promises a horror-focused deep dive into Mark Spears, his career, creative process, and indie rise.
Mark Spears' path spans Magic cards, major comic covers, and the breakout success of Monsters via Keenspot.
Comics! The Magazine #5 also teases new Chew comics, creator interviews, staff picks, and sales rankings.

Mark Spears' Monsters comes to Prana Direct's Comics! The Magazine, with its fifth issue in August 2026, although they are promising that this is not the final cover. That's a shame, I think it should be, including the NOT FINAL COVER scrawled across it. It's rather meta, is it not?

Mark Spears began his professional career around 2007, initially working on trading cards, including sets for Magic: The Gathering, and licensing/concept art for over a decade. He broke into mainstream comic covers more significantly in the early 2020s, contributing to Spawn, Gunslinger Spawn, King Spawn, and Scorched, as well as covers for DC Comics, Marvel, Image, Vampirella, Red Sonja, Power Rangers, and other properties. He also worked on licensed properties like Star Trek, Harry Potter, and Universal Monsters. But his biggest personal success is the creator-owned horror/comic series Mark Spears' Monsters, published via Keenspot. The series blends pulpy horror, crime, and Universal Monsters-style elements, with characters like Slayer and others. He has expanded the universe with spin-offs like Mark Spears' Monsters: The Monster & The Wolf, a prequel miniseries that raised over $288,000 on Kickstarter, and MidKnight Man. This "overnight success" story is actually the result of 20+ years of persistence – he pitched Monsters to publishers for years with little traction before it took off. Anyway, I'm sure the magazine will have a lot more. And here's the listing as well as all the Prana Direct comic books listed through Lunar Distribution, a number of which we have already covered, and will do so more over the weekend….

COMICS THE MAGAZINE #5
(W) Various (A) Various (CA) Mark Spears, Rico Renzi
THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE MONSTERS! MARK SPEARS REVEALS ALL! Mark Spears creates the massive hit series, MONSTERS, and draws in-demand variant covers for titles from DC Comics, The Energon Universe, and Spawn, but WHO is this man? Where did he come from? How did he become the artist he is today? How did he build an independent comic book empire that took the industry by surprise? ALL THIS AND MUCH MORE IN A HORROR-CENTRIC ISSUE OF THE MOST ENTHUSIASTIC COMICS MAGAZINE OF ALL TIME! KEY SELLING POINTS: • MORE NEW CHEW COMICS BY JOHN LAYMAN AND ROB GUILLORY! • Creator Interviews About What You Do Read! • Features On What You Should Read! • Staff Picks Of What You Will Read! • Actual Comics You Can Read! • Power Rankings with Real Sales Data! • Art Instruction and Classifieds! • Comic-Sized to Fit on Store Racks!
$2.99 7/1/2026