Dynamite

With The Shadow already scheduled Dynamite is now scheduling their second pulp adaptation, The Spider. The Spider was effectively The Shadow's nastier little brother. Originally created to tap into the popularity of the Shadow's pulp magazine, The Spider amped up the Shadow's format: more violent, more lurid, wider-ranging schemes from the villains, more outright "weirdness" in the "Weird Tales" sense of "weird." The other major difference was that The Spider had a more streamlined backstory: only one identity and a much smaller circle of sidekicks/assistance.

Army of Darkness (as in Evil Dead) returns to the world of comics today with a new first issue. We caught up with Army of Darkness writer Elliott Serrano (who likes to pretend he's a mild mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper as the "Geek To Me" columnist at the Chicago Tribune's Redeye) to talk about Ash, Bruce Campbell and the new series.

You may have noticed the Warlord of Mars, Fall of Barsoom tpb was in stores today. Maybe you'd like to read the first issue and see if you like it?

New comics! Fun stuff for everyone! (And, of course, before you hand the book over to a young impressionable mind, you have to read it first to make sure it is age-appropriate!)

One of the questions you ask when you hear about a new Shadow comic is "what kind of take are they doing?" Another is "how serious will it be?" And then there's "how faithful is it to the source material?" As it happens, I've had a chance to read the script for The Shadow #1. I can't speak to Aaron Campbell's art -- I haven't seen that yet. I can, however, tell you what the tone and the take are going to be.

The past year has seen an unusually large number of Sherlock Holmes adaptations, both in comics and on the screen, but not all Holmeses are created equal. Last night, British viewers got to see the last episode of Season 2 of the BBC's wildly popular starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, and Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows starring Robert Downey Junior and Jude Law is still doing well in theaters a month after it opened. So if you're in a Holmesian mood and wondering what to read next, here's run down on the Holmes adaptations which have come out or had new installments in the past year. Varying from inspiredly odd to unreadably awful, don't go to the comic store without reading this first!

The rumor that's been making the rounds is true: Garth Ennis is the writer when Dynamite launches their ongoing revival of the classic pulp franchise, The Shadow. Joining him as the artist is Aaron Campbell, who's been doing Green Hornet: Year One and Dark Shadows for Dynamite.

You may recall that Dynamite laid hands on the comic book license for The Shadow, a little while back. Come to find out, they also laid hands on the reprint rights for the previous Shadow comics. You know how Dark Horse reprints Marvel Star Wars and Conan comics? Dynamite's going to be doing something similar with DC Shadow comics, and they're starting out with Howard Chaykin's "Blood and Judgement" reboot of the franchise from the mid-80s.

Dynamite has some new books on the way, including The Bionic Woman, by Paul Tobin, Leno Carvalho with Paul Renaud on covers. Today it's Merciless - The Rise of Ming #1, which is written by Scott Beatty and drawn by Ron Adrian, with Alex Ross covers. This is a spin-off prequel of Flash Gordon - Zeitgeist (a title that just begs for spin-offs called Flash Gordon: Weltschmerz, Flash Gordon: Der Zauberberg and so on.) The book debuts in April:

Although you'd think he was busy enough drawing THE WALKING DEAD every month, artist Charlie Adlard occasionally has time to toss off something like CURSE OF THE WENDIGO (reviewed here) a horror comic written by French screenwriter Mathieu Missoffe and released in France in 2009. The story is set in World War I and finds French and GErman soldier teaming up to fight a greater horror. An American edition is out today from Dynamite, and here's a preview:

Curse of the Wendigo is a graphic album coming out tomorrow from Dynamite written by Mathieu Missoffe and drawn by Charlie Adlard. Missoffe is a French screenwriter who moonlights in comics (an increasingly American thing to be doing, it would seem). Adlard is probably most familiar to comics audience as the artist on Walking Dead. As you might guess from the phrase "graphic album," Curse of the Wendigo was originally published in France by Soliel in 2009. Yes, the same Soliel that Marvel was publishing translations of a few years back.

Here's a peek at the cover to issue #7 of Dynamite's Patricia Briggs adaptation by Jenny Frison.