Buffys, Angels, Jeffs, & Dianas

(we got it all)

We got it all.

Sorry I’ve been MIA. May was insane, I wrote about three times the amount I usually do, due to deadlines. Even though I was exhausted, it felt great, and I was excited to head into June really ambitious. And then we got the monster flu. The whole house (the cats were even sick for two days…I WISH it had only been two days for us…we’re honestly STILL crawling out). Anyway, we’re back and I’ll do my best to get us back on schedule here. First up, some housekeeping…

Orders HAVE ALL SHIPPED. FINALLY. Thank you for your extreme patience. Check your paypals (or some of you got emails) for your tracking information if you’ve been waiting. THANK YOU for being so cool.

I have some ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN #21s to put up in the web shop, as well as some ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN VOL 2 HARDCOVERS as I finally got some that are undamaged — those will go up in the shop on Friday if you want to keep an eye out. However, for some reason I have never gotten any of my ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN #20 comps.

DC is trying to sort it out for me, but I have no idea when or if it will resolve. *sad shrug emoji*

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BUFFY STUFF!

So, if you’re excited about Buffy, things are about to get interesting as the BUFFY and ANGEL PR ramps up — as you’ll see below I’ve been doing a lot.

First up is the actual ANGEL #1 announcement that I missed while I was down:

I don’t want to put my finger on the scale, cover-wise, but Meredith McClaren is doing some covers for ANGEL — and they’re some of my favorite of the series. I’ll make sure to highlight them as they release or when I’m given the greenlight. I think you guys will really enjoy them. Her first one for ANGEL #1 is below…so smart and cool:

And here’s the full selection of covers for ANGEL #1 — notably the Crain option has some pretty heavy redaction going on — the cover looks much cooler in reality:

Angel #1 Covers by Nakayama, McClaren, Crain, Hetrick, and a reprint “icon cover”

If you missed my previous post about BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, including the covers for the first issue you can read that here. But here’s what we’ve got for issue 2, some real favs here from Mattia, Swaby, and Nimit for me though they’re all great:

Buffy #2 covers by Nakayama (redacted), Mattia De Iulis, Swaby, Nimit, and an icon cover by Bachalo

As noted above, I have been on a pretty intense BUFFY PR TOUR of podcasts — of course I planned to space these out a bit — but thanks to my illness I’m gonna have to go more fast and furious style:

Omar and I talked Buffy (and I probably complained about collections again?) at Near Mint Condition.

Robbie and I talked Buffy and more at Pop Culture Philosophers.

I talked with Rachel Bellwoar at Comicon.com about Buffy and the new Angel announcement.

And I chatted with the lovely folks at Forces of Geek about all things Buffyverse.

I also talked with Megan and Matt at Nerd Initiative, again, mostly about Buffy, but a few other things sneak in!

I get invited onto Geek Hard about once a year and I always have a great time talking with Andrew and James — this year we talked mostly Buffy and Diana — and it was delightful.

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I did an interview with Christian Holub at Publisher’s Weekly — which has been transcribed into this piece — all about ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN and our road to the Eisners. Thank you so much, Christian!

ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN #21 is out TODAY. And it’s brutal. And I’m sorry. You can check out the gorgeous but extremely upsetting preview here if you like. This is a two-part arc called “Friends & Neighbors” with guest artist Dillon Snook and colors by Jordie Bellaire.

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There is so much Jeff stuff you guys. Again, like the Buffy stuff, I had intended to break this up over a few posts, but monster flu and thus chaos reigns — you’re getting it all in one shot!

Before we get into the comics — real quick for a toy stop — this is apparently coming from McFarlane Toys and is pretty amazing looking:

Back to the comics…so this CBR piece is fun, but that’s definitely not Logan piloting an Iron-Man-ish suit. lol. It’s jut WOLVERINE-MAN. And he’s great.

Comic-Watch also wrote about our new series and some of the mash-up characters. I’m going to show off the mash-up characters below in part because I haven’t really seen all of them in the same place. But before we get to that — some more cover stuff.

Here are the covers available for JEFF THE LANDSHARK: SUPERSTAR #1 (out July 8th):

Jeff Superstar #1 Covers: Gurhiru, Tokitokoro Variant, Gurihiru Knullbuster Variant, McFarlane Toys Variant, Netease Games Variant, and Rian Gonzales Variant.

One of the cool things we’ve gotten here — and I only sort of knew this was happening — so I’m sorta playing catch up — but a bunch of our new mash-up characters will be featured on other series book covers. This Kate-Locke one by Leirix on X-MEN #34 is one of the stand outs right now to me, pretty fucking fun, right?:

Ooh! There’s also this gorgeous Storm-Dazzle variant on X-MEN OUTBACK #2 by Mateus Manhanini:

Kris Anka did a crazy cool MagikHot…as expected. This is on X-MEN #33 I believe: ;D

We’ve also got a terrific variant on WADE WILSON DEADPOOL #6 by Nicoletta Balderi…on the surface it doesn’t seem like it has any “mash-ups”…but there is a secret one there…arguably my low-key favorite of the mash-ups…KAWAII WOLVIE. But even if you’re not into that, it does have Gwenpool, Jeff, AND Ken — which is pretty rare in and of itself given Ken’s fairly new creation, it’s also just freaking adorable:

And last but definitely not least — Rambit has gone the most viral of all the mash-ups so far! — this terrific UNCANNY X-MEN #31 by Rickie Yagawa:

Okay. So the actual mash-ups — I’ll let Tokitokoro’s gorgeously fun work speak for itself!

First up…STORMDAZZLE — a Storm/Dazzler mash-up — her name was originally Dazzle Storm…but the Storm is more prevalent in the mash-up than the Dazzler so we ending up switching it:

MAGIKHOT — a Magik and Longshot mash-up:

RAMBIT - a tragic Rogue and Gambit mash-up, ‘natch:

KATE-LOCKE — a Hawkeye (Kate Bishop) and Psylocke (Kwannon) mash-up:

ELSA STRANGE — an Elsa Bloodstone and Doctor Strange mash-up:

And of course, WOLVERINE-MAN — a Wolverine and Iron Man mash-up:

These have been so much fun, you guys. I hope you’ll enjoy them! July 8th! Don’t forget!

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Starting this off with a truly incredible call out — please follow Abigail if you don’t already — she’s awesome:

And this incredible Dike Ruan sketch on one of the rare ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN #1 sketch variants:

Been a while since I poked around for Absolute Wonder Woman fanart (etc) takes — and as usual the artist community does not disappoint. So much great stuff out there. Here were some favs:

By Emmanuel Gervasoni (who also wrote some lovely words about the character):

I know this one has a very non-Absolute Diana nose, but I gotta say, I love it. Like, I know we all love the nose and it’s now literally iconic (which is…incredible), but there’s something very adorable and charming (and sort of animation-y) about this take to me and I love it:

This one by Kyrie Escala should just BE a cover. Gorgeous:

Look at this cutie with her giant arms. <3 By ANT.

Very cool by Ricardo Lopez Ortiz:

Gorgeous piece by Insta user strangeontherange:

Hardcore Diana by Alessandro Micelli:

Really incredible blank sketch variant art by Katya Sinyukhina:

From DanielPaezArt:

ALSO! Some of us had been lamenting this gorgeous Yasmine Putri cover, which had been solicited for an earlier issue variant (16 I think?) and then disappeared — but it’s been re-solicited as a variant for ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN #23, which IS actually more fitting for the interior content I’d say — so that’s fun. Anyway, if, like me, you had been hoping this would eventually see print — keep an eye out for it in August on #23!

Jeff, never wanting to be left out, has been getting some incredible attention by Erica D’urso — thanks to friend of the Substack Michael Manikus for bringing these to my attention! This drawing is spectacular but my favorite thing about it is the idea…well okay, perfect idea AND perfect execution:

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What? I didn’t cry! And don’t put in the newspaper that I cried!

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Okay. Lots to cover for all those Jeffs, and Dianas! Unfortunately…while I pulled a bunch of stuff to show you from both BUFFY #1 and ANGEL #1, my editor waved me off of it for licensor reasons. I think things will loosen up once we’re started in earnest, but not gonna lie, a bit frustrating at the moment.

Gonna go roughly in order of release. First up a couple looks at ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN #21 (TOMORROW). Art by Dillon Snook, colors by Jordie Bellaire:

My favorite page from the issue, without text:

JEFF THE LAND SHARK: SUPERSTAR #1 (July 8th). Art by Tokitokoro, colors by Jim Campbell. You can also check out some unlettered (and out of sequence) pages here.

Some artists hear you want to include the six-armed Spiral in the story and start looking for the door, others lean all the way in and draw you this gorgeous Spiral! Toki is the best!

Remember a few sections ago where I was like “Kawaii Wolvie” is lowkey my fav. Yes, yes he is. Just look at him:

But later in July we get back to SERIOUS BUSINESS and a small peek at ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN #22 (out in July) wrapping up our two-part arc “Friends & Neighbors” — this is a favorite pair of panels of mine from that issue, again by Dillon Snook:

And here, ONE PEEK at ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN #23 (August) and Hayden Sherman’s return for the “Heretic” arc:

Okay, that feels like more than enough for several weeks of backlog! I’ll be back on Friday, very briefly, once I’ve loaded the new issues and trades to the web store and expect another more “normal-sized” post including a discount code for the store as we try to get back on track here. Thanks as always for being so patient.

<3 - Kelly