Pages and Panels

This week’s wrap-up is just focused on hitting the highlights from each publisher. (The joys of traveling make our word count shrink.)

This week, Archie Comics released the first volume of Big Ethel Energy. This print novel collects the first season of the Webtoons original series in a paperback trade. The series focuses on Ethel Muggs’s return to Riverdale and all the drama that comes with it. This is a great find for those who don’t love the digital comic format and would rather a physical copy of the digital first comic series.

Boom! Studios announced the hiring of Rosalind Morehead as the retail sales manager. Boom!’s been seeing a huge rate of growth, and establishing themselves as one of the biggest indie publishers in the game. Morehead’s hiring brings over 18 years of entertainment industry sales experience to the Boom! Management team. Congratulations!

There was a bit of celebrity creative teams at play at Dark Horse this week, with actor Patton Oswalt’s team up with writer Jordan Blum, artist Scott Hepburn, and colorist Ian Herring. For fans of comics from the fifties and sixties silver age of comics, Minor Threats follows a team of low-ranking villains who team up to take out the top supervillain before the heroes cross a line after the death of a teenage sidekick. With a modern take on the silver age’s slapstick, this fun title seems like a perfect fit for Oswalt’s brand of humor.

John Ridley’s another pretty big name, and his run of I Am Batman has been fairly well-reviewed. I’m a big fan of John Ridley (Five Days at Memorial on Apple TV is my current non-comic obsession), so I’ve enjoyed reading this title. But if single issues aren’t your thing, DC released the first volume of a trade paperback graphic novel. This volume collects issues #0-#5, so it provides the background of this different take on a Gotham vigilante that embraces the bat, but also has their own take on the mythology.

Announced from Image is a new work from creative Jonathan Luna, coming this November. A dark fantasy story about a knight returning to his wife after fighting in a war against demons is faced with temptation from a mysterious swamp-dwelling woman, The Knight and The Lady of Play features more than just a unique story. Luna has revealed that the art for the piece will be done in physical format rather than digital drawing, and will feature graphite as the medium.

Comics offer so many incredible opportunities for representation. Marvel continues to spotlight diversity in their creative teams with a new season of Marvel’s Voices podcast. This season features how the Marvel universe is impacted by global influences. The first episode of the sixth season is now available, but don’t worry- Marvel Voices will be featured in the coming weeks when they welcome Peach Momoko to the podcast. I’ll be doing a tie-in with that podcast about my profound love of her artwork.

In an announcement this week, Valiant has partnered with collectible development company Bedrock Collectibles to offer limited edition premium statues of their characters. The first of these is a 1/4 scale Bloodshot with multiple poses and weapons. Until September 28th, this figure is available for a preorder price of $679 at their website.

Webtoons is currently recruiting fans of the webcomic and social app to enroll as Webtoons ambassadors. For those who love making Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, or Twitter posts about their favorite webcomics, this is a great way to get involved. Pages and Panels has applied, and fingers are crossed!