Comic Books

Ever since the ever popular The Walking Dead television show, and the completely insane prices that the comics are going for, I wondered how long it would take Image to jump on the variant edition covers for the series. Well, in my opinion, they picked a good place to try it out.

For the 100th issue of The Walking Dead that hits shelves in July it will have a whopping nine different covers for the centennial issue.

Charlie Adlard will be providing the regular cover, a wrap around and a special chromium cover.  In addition to the series artist these high profile names will be contributing to the mix: Todd McFarlane, Sean Phillips, Marc Silvestri, Bryan Hitch, Frank Quitely and Ryan Ottley.

Quite the assortment of artists that will bring something really cool to a special issue.  Inside, you can check out a preview of Charlie Adlard's wrap around cover but be warned, potential spoilers for the comic series lie ahead.  You'll get the joke when you see the cover.

From the imagination of horror director Greg Mclean (Wolf Creek, Rogue) comes Dark Axis: Secret Battles of WWII, a four-part comic book series published by San Diego based Ape Entertainment and Diezel Punk.  Digital editions will now be released via the COMICS+ App at iTunes. 

After the release of DARK AXIS #1 on April 10th – editions 2, 3 & 4 will be released every two weeks and cost 99 cents each.

Issue two will hit April 24th, three arrives May 8th and the final issue strikes May 22nd.

Mclean describes Dark Axis as "an action adventure mash up of Saving Private Ryan meets Evil Dead 2. Featuring secret Nazi weapons, terrifying monsters and futuristic machines that reveal the history of a sprawling, evil conspiracy that almost changed the course of the war.  The result is an alternate World War II history, as you've never seen it before.”

The Fringe is a place where non-horror genre films can get some play on Shock.  These films might be sci-fi, fantasy or action - and certainly contain some horror elements - but will likely be light on scares, or, straight-up "horror."  Still, they might be of interest to you.

Filmmakers Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, along with producer Alexander Rodnyansky, have announced that production will commence on the highly anticipated sequel to 2005’s Sin City, entitled Sin City: A Dame To Kill For.

The film will be produced by AR Films and Quick Draw Productions, financed through AR Films U.S and released domestically by Dimension Films.

“The first question I am always asked is “When will you make another Sin City?” said Rodriquez.  “I have wanted to re-team with Frank Miller and return to the world he created since the day we wrapped the original, but have felt a duty to the fans to wait until we had something truly exceptional that would meet and exceed what have become epic expectations.  A Dame To Kill For will certainly be worth the wait.” 

I was worried when I pitched the idea of The Graveyard Shelf that I would run out of things to talk about.  Even with my second entry, it was something I was afraid of, but thankfully I was wrong.  It's been a busy week here at Shock in the comics division.  

I've read and written about quite a few books that you'll be hearing about soon.  I've conducted interviews with several notable writers in the comic field - the first of which is up now with Selwyn Hinds of Vertigo's Dominique Lavaeu: Voodoo Child.  He's put out a great comic and was a joy to talk to.  

Today, I've got a handful of single issues to talk about below if you'll let me. Please let me.

One of the new Vertigo books that hit last month was Dominique Laveau: Voodoo Child.

Set in the post-Katrina New Orleans, it's setting itself up to be an epic full of wonder, thrills, and monsters that we've never seen before in comics.

Like the other Vertigo titles, it was one of my favorite single issue comics of March. I reached out to the writer Selwyn Seyfu Hinds and he graciously accepted to do an interview with us.

A common conversation in nerd circles is the always interesting “What would YOU do in the zombie apocalypse?" Until now there has never been a story that focuses in on that story from the “nerd” perspective, but with the newly released Fanboys vs. Zombies we finally get a glimpse into what that world is like. Unfortunately, it is about as properly representative of nerd culture as The Big Bang Theory.

The comic details the “What if...” scenrario that the title says, and what better place for the setting of such an event that the San Diego Comic-Con? On paper, it sounds like it has potential to be one of the coolest forays into the geek lifestyle that one could think of. Though this is only the first issue, I can only help but think that the execution could have been better. While I can appreciate the story for what it is, it just didn't do it for me like I hoped. This is a great premise and could have been “the next big thing," but I feel like it fell short of that.

I was trying to think of a way to start off this review and couldn't really think of anything except that I would consider Ragemoor an “old school” horror comic. To which I thought, what does that even mean? So, I started to ponder what it means for something to be “old school”. Does it mean something that harbors the same tropes and story beats as older horror stories? Does it mean a story that takes place in an “old” setting, so it doesn't function as a present day counter part would? What about a story that is a knockoff or a re-imagining of an older story? If I were to harbor a guess, I would say it could be all of them.

As my mini-rant does suggest, Ragemoor has an old school sensibility and style to it. It is also the product of long time collaborators Jan Strnad and Richard Corben. It's obvious just from reading this that the years of work that they've done together is both obvious and that they've hashed out a quality style of working together.

Following the news that restored versions of Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava’s blood-curdling zombie horror classics Demons and Demons 2 will be released on Blu-ray, DVD and Steelbook on April 30th in the UK, Arrow Video is pleased to premiere extracts from the specially commissioned Demons 3 comic book.

For horror fans, it’s what they have been waiting for since 1986...  Written by Stefan Hutchinson and Barry Keating, with artwork by Jeff Zornow and Peter Fielding, Demons 3 is an original sequel to the first two Demons films, presented as a 2-book comic, which will come housed in the Blu-ray and DVD editions of Demons and Demons 2.

You'll find a preview after the jump.

Welcome to The Graveyard Shelf, Shock's newest weekly feature! The idea behind this came from when I was thinking about the reviews we do for comics over here and how I wasn't happy that we seldom did a review for a series after its inaugural issue. So, in this new column you can expect more compact reviews for the other issues of comics that got a full length review for their first issue. But don't worry, we'll still be rolling out full length reviews for any new number 1s, any milestone issues and graphic novels.

I remember covering the announcement of Image's new mini-series Rebel Blood just a few months ago. I was pretty psyched about the comic for a few reasons: I like the title a lot, the art seemed nuts, the premise sounded interesting, and that cover....come on. After finally getting a chance to pick up and read the comic, my thoughts of what it was going to be weren't entirely met, but at the same time I was still really interested in the direction they took this.

Rebel Blood is a clever book, telling the story of Chuck Neville as he fights through the zombie outbreak to get to his family.

This book jumps around a lot, so it is by no means accustomed to linear storytelling. Often, the main character plays out various scenarios, which are depicted in his head, and how each of them could go horribly wrong. This is an interesting device for the story, it not only speaks volumes about Neville as a person and his though process, but it allows artist Riley Rossmo to stretch his zombified legs for the proverbial “What if” scenarios.

The question of vampire versus zombies is a regular debate among genre fans. I have no preference for a victor in the situation either way.  As long as I get to see the fray, I'm fine with whatever the outcome is. While this is an often talked about topic among the horror community, it is seldom put into practice within the horror craft.

Vertigo, however, has now launched their fourth new series this month with precisely that kind of story for us readers.

The New Deadwardians is a peculiar book. It has a lot of melding of genres within its panels - be it mystery, family drama, horror or action.  There's a lot to chew on here. And while we may only get a little bit of a vampire/zombie feud in this first issue, it would appear that we're being built up to a boiling point of the conflict between the two dead parties.

In conjunction with the release of Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden’s latest collaboration earlier this week, and Mignola’s appearance at this weekend’s World Horror Convention, Dark Horse is pleased to announce a limited-edition hardcover release of Joe Golem and the Drowning City.

After a séance gone horribly wrong, strange men wearing gas masks and rubber suits abduct the aging psychic Orlov the Conjuror, sending his young assistant Molly McHugh racing through the canals of a submerged Manhattan. As Molly flees her captors through a sunken city full of scavengers, her one hope comes in the form of two strange men: Simon Church, a Victorian-era detective kept alive by clockwork gears and magic, and his assistant, Joe, whose mysterious past is hinted at in dreams of stone and witches.

I love my job here at Shock. I love getting to see movies and read comics for free and then writing about how awesome or terrible they are, I'm really lucky in that regard. I'm not the first one to tell you this, and you might have already figured this out for yourself, but there's a lot of repetition in the horror genre. I can't even remember how many zombie and vampire comic books I've written about over the past few months, and not to mention how many I'm reading that I don't write about. In that regard, it is always nice to get a genre book that is different, and in this case I do mean different.

Dominique Laveau Voodoo Child is one of the most original and cool comics I've read in some time. It, of course, is about the life of Dominique Laveau a descendent of the infamous New Orleans Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau (if you couldn't make the connection), and the very bizarre adventure she's about to have in New Orleans a mere 4 months after Hurricane Katrina. The book is written by Selwyn Seyfu Hinds with pencils by Deny's Cowan.

I like a good story with an epic scope behind it. Sometimes it can be intimidating though - but whenever I see something that I think possesses a huge magnitude worth of story just starting out I feel like I should jump on it and be there from the beginning.

This is the exact feeling I had while reading the press release for Ancient Dreams: The Hand of Fate by JP Roth. I get the feeling this book will make a big splash in the comic world.

“In Ancient Dreams: The Hand of Fate I created a lushly illustrated universe where the creatures of myth, such as warlocks, vampires, witches and gods, are rendered in a steam punk style that blends ancient legends with futuristic innovations," says JP Roth.

Just as the first issue of the author's new ongoing comic book series, "Saga," hits stores, The Hollywood Reporter brings word that the film adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan's most popular series Y: The Last Man, is on the verge of hiring two new screenwriters.

Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia are said to be the men for the job and are negotiating to come aboard the New Line project, which has gone through its fair share of stops and starts over the years.

Created by Vaughan and artist Pia Guerra, Y: The Last Man ran for 60 issues beginning in 2002. It tells the story of Yorick Brown, a 20-something who (along with his capuchin monkey, Ampersand) somehow survives a catastrophic event that kills off every living creature with a Y chromosome. 

I think we can all agree that aliens have been castrated. Instead of the destructive and vile creatures that they're capable of being like in The Thing, Predator, Alien, or Mars Attacks!, it seems like year after year we have “nice guy” alien movies like Paul or Planet 51. Sure, there have been some good ones that stand out - District 9 and Super 8 come to mind. But nothing has been quite on the scale of Independence Day with an alien force that is fully capable of destroying the earth. While we may only see the aliens in the first issue of Saucer Country for maybe four panels, you can tell they mean business.

There are a few things in the comic world that are guaranteed to make a comic fan squeal with excitement. One of them of course is the phrase “New Vertigo series."  

Saucer Country is one of four new Vertigo titles rolling out his month, and it does not disappoint.

ComiXology - the world’s largest digital comics platform available on iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire and the Web with over 50 million comic and graphic novel downloads to date - will be exhibiting for the first time this year at WonderCon ’12, at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California from March 16th-18th.

The first 5,000 WonderCon ’12 attendees to come by comiXology’s booth (#107) will receive a limited edition promotional postcard imprinted with a unique download code redeemable for The Walking Dead Vol. 1 exclusively on comiXology.com. In partnership with The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman’s Skybound, comiXology is making sure attendees of WonderCon ’12 get a “taste” of the first graphic novel — regularly $8.99 for 140 pages —that the hit The Walking Dead TV show is based on.

Eagle One Media is proud to announce comic book industry veterans David A. Rodriguez ("Starkweather") and Dheeraj Verma ("Nightmare on Elm Street," "Escape of the Living Dead") will team up to create and craft a comic book tale based on Eagle One Media's upcoming Spanish language horror feature film release Zombie Dawn.

The Rodriguez/Verma comic book Zombie Dawn: Safehouse will feature a prequel story that ties-in to the events of the action-packed film and will be bilingual in English and Spanish. 

If you remember my review for Baltimore: The Plague Ships you'll remember how much I loved it.  Well, good news for me and anyone else that loves the character/series, he's coming back!

Christopher Golden stopped by Comic Book Resources to tell them all about the new series entitled Baltimore: Dr. Leskovar's Remedy.  As can be expected the story revolves around Lord Henry Baltimore in his quest to kill the vampire that destroyed his family but he will find an unexpected adversary in Dr. Leskovar.

There is no shortage of zombie comics in the world.  Even over at Image there is  no stopping their flagship title The Walking Dead.  In 2008-2009 they released a mini-series written by Clark Castillo and Mel Smith with arr by Alex Nino called Dead Ahead.

The comic tells the story of a boat of survivors stranded out at sea, who find a luxury cruise liner drifting out in the water.  Well, they were pleased to announce at the inaugural Image Expo that the sequel to their book is in the works.

“We’ve got the first nine pages in the first draft,” said Smith talking to Bleeding Cool. “So [Nino] is working on it right now. I’d say by Comic-Con we’ll have stuff to show and it’ll come out through Image again.”

In case you don't know, a lot of the comics put out by Dynamite Entertainment are licensed properties not original creations.  Green Hornet, The Six Million Dollar Man, and the more Shock appropriate, Vampirella, to name a few.

Most of these titles focus in on their monthly books with very little shifts from the primary story line.  Well, Dynamite has decided to put out an all new Vampirella mini series titled Vampirella: The Red Room.

Fans of the character should be excited because the plot sounds like Vampirella has entered the Thunderdome.

There are two writers that are essential to the development of horror both as a mainstream genre and it's place in modern culture:  Stephen King and Richard Matheson.  So, what happens when the former recreates a story by the latter?  Furthermore, what happens when his son, the wonderful Joe Hill, gets in on the action and they turn it into a comic book?  We get the brand new comic from IDW Road Rage.

Two giants of modern horror have taken a pretty famous story by Matheson, Duel, and updated it, how could you not get excited about this?

We know the story:  Big rig trucker chases and runs down innocent motorists on a long stretch of road in the desert.  Where is it different here, you might wonder?  Well, it's about an entire motor cycle gang being chased by the crazed trucker.

Based on both the short story Duel by Matheson and the companion piece Throttle by Stephen King and Joe Hill, we get this pretty solid adaptation by Chris Ryall.

Another year, another chance at trying to capitalize on the horror fan's love for both Army of Darkness and Bruce Campbell!

Like every good Evil Dead fan, I picked up the book.  I'm only vaguely familiar with the other Army of Darkness comics, so I will admit, the "Volume 3" aspect of the new series was a little intimidating.

It seemed simple enough at the start.  Starting off with images that we've come to know being fans of the film series, but then things got weird.  We were introduced to the main character of the comic, Ashley Williams!

But wait!

This is not the Ashley Williams that you think you know.  It is an Ashley Williams that the name is appropriate for, because it is a girl.  She resided at one point in an alternate universe, presumably parallel from the "real one" that the male Ashley also resides in.

"BUT THIS ISN'T WHAT I PAID FOR!? THIS ISN'T MY ARMY OF DARKNESS!!"

Years after being merged with the demon Zarathos in a deal with the Devil, Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) is trying to lose himself in Eastern Europe when he encounters a gypsy named Nadya (Violante Placido) and her young son Danny (Fergus Riordan) being chased by a group of mercenaries led by Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth), who is acting as the right hand man of someone named Rourke (Ciaran Hinds), who just happens to be The Devil who turned Blaze into Ghost Rider in the first place.

To some, this follow-up to 2007's Ghost Rider, one of the pre-Dark Knight pre-Iron Man guard of bad superhero movies, may fall into the "why did they make this?" realm of unwarranted sequels, not that we would ever want to fully throw the two-headed directing team of Neveldine/Taylor under the bus, as they've proven themselves to be quite clever at times, the type of ballsy and daring filmmakers Hollywood desperately needs. 

There's something about stories that combine monsters against a tactical military squad that I've always found appealing.  Perhaps it is the crossing of the horror and action genres within the one story, maybe it's just that I like a few automatic weapons with my scary beasts.  Whatever it is, it's a sub-genre that I'm pretty fond of and it's only made better when the story that is concerned has rich sympathetic characters like B.P.R.D.

One of the characters in B.P.R.D. that we tend to forget about and take for granted is Johann Kraus.  Lucky for him he gets to take center stage in this book, and boy, does he shine.  Johann has never been a character I was particularly fond of, it's not that he's a bad character per se but there was never a moment that I've read that made me feel a connection to his character.  He's always just kind of been there, said a few funny things, and not much else.  But the creative team successfully transformed Kraus into as empathetic a character as possible, and it seems like the best way to have done that was put the life of his fellow teammates in jeopardy.

Some may say Johnny has it all:  A pretty girlfriend, reasonably good looks, and a steady job as a carnival performer.  Johnny is fifty percent of a stupendous stunt bike duo.  Every night, he and his father provide cheap thrills, under the big top, for adoring fans.  Unfortunately, Johnny’s father is very ill.  In his grief stricken state, Johnny does what any rational thinking man would do and sells his soul to the Devil, in exchange for his father’s health.  The Devil, who is a bit of a trickster, grants his end of the bargain, but immediately after doing so, takes Johnny’s father’s life, in a fiery mishap.  Years later, the Devil comes back to collect on his end of the bargain. Johnny Blaze is now a damned soul cursed to ride the earth and collect on the Devil’s deals.  He is the "Ghost Rider."

Ghost Rider is brought to us by director Mark Steven Johnson who is responsible for such "classics" as Jack Frost (1998).  There is a clear theme in Johnson’s work, of over the top performances and silly scripts.  Johnson first worked on a Marvel screen adaptation with 2003’s Daredevil.  He did such a fantastic job of pissing fans of the comic off that Marvel brought him back to write and direct their 2007 film, Ghost Rider, and do it all over again.  Somewhere, Satan was laughing.  As it turns out, lightning struck twice and Johnson managed to make another forgettable, critically-panned adaptation.  Fans, of course, revolted.  

We can always depend on Heavy Metal magazine to take things to the extreme.

Just announced is the first installment in a three graphic novel series called The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

The premise as you can imagine, is simple enough:

The End is Here:  Welcome to the Apocalypse! Raised by the Order of Solomon, Adam Cahill is one of a rare handful of highly trained warriors bound by bloodline to guard the Seven Holy Seals that contain the End of Days. But ageless forces have conspired towards a prophetic event foretold by numerous cultures and multiple religions, and when that cryptic date arrives, they strike against the order without mercy! The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is a dark, gritty, action – horror story inspired by the biblical tale of Armageddon. In addition to the works of Simon Bisley, the series will feature additional art by the late Stan Winston, Tim Bradstreet, Chad Fidler, and Dave DeVries, and script written by co- writers Mike Kennedy and Sean Jaffe.

Telltale Games and Robert Kirkman, the Eisner Award-winning creator/writer of The Walking Dead, announced that the first episode of Playing Dead, a new online talk show discussing their upcoming game, The Walking Dead, is now live and available to view on the games’ official website, which also debuted today. 

Based on Robert Kirkman’s groundbreaking comic book series, The Walking Dead is an episodic Adventure Horror game series set during the same apocalyptic period witnessed by Sheriff Rick Grimes.  Telling the story of a new group of survivors as they struggle to flee the horror of Atlanta and the surrounding communities consumed by the undead, The Walking Dead offers players the chance to experience the very first days of the apocalypse, meeting people and participating in events that intersect with the story seen in the comic books.

Telltale also released 3 new screenshots from the game, highlighting the game’s distinctive visuals, inspired by the work of The Walking Dead comic book artist Charlie Adlard.

Platinum Studios announced today that the entertainment company will release the werewolf action-horror story Big Badz as a digital graphic novel on Apple's iOS, Android, Nook, Kindle and other standard formats.

Big Badz is just one of the titles in Platinum Studios' international library of thousands of comic book characters which it adapts, produces, and licenses for all forms of media including print, film, online, mobile/wireless, gaming and merchandising.

I never would have thought that a zombie comic would come across my desk that I would look at and then think to myself, “Well, now I have seen pretty much everything.”  That's the exact reaction I had as I looked at the cover page and press release concerning Rob Anderson's Rex, Zombie Killer.

With a story billed as The Walking Dead meets Homeward Bound I was immediately intrigued. Something that I really love as an adult and something I was very fond of as a kid, this could be cool.

I can't remember the last time I read a comic where the main character wasn't a human, or at least humanoid so that note alone makes this a unique comic.  But then add in the fact that the entire cast is talking animals in a zombie infested world and you'll find one of the most unique horror comics in years.

At first I was thinking I wouldn't like this book. The dialogue is written in a very forced manner, to the point that I found myself stopping and re-reading bits to make sure that they make sense.  But as I got further and further along into the story, I found myself wanting to know what happened next, wanting to make sure that all the animals would be okay, and plenty of zombie smashing.

As I got in my car to return home and read my comics that I'd just picked up from the shop, I noticed a surprise inside my bag:  A comic-sized preview of upcoming Vertigo titles!  I love good surprises!  Featured inside were excerpts of titles soon to hit shelves and I couldn't help but feel the need to spread the word.

Marvel comics' Johnny Blaze is returning to the big screen this month when Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance arrives on February 17th.  Being comic book fans here at Shock, we thought now would be a good time to take a look at some other Marvel characters worthy of a cinematic interpretation that aren't exactly "boy scouts."

Inside, you'll find a look at some of the other popular horror-themed Marvel characters we want to see in films and how they could be pulled off on the big screen.

We have three more TV spots for Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance, opening in 2D/3D on February 17th, including the preview that aired during the Super Bowl.

The film sees Johnny Blaze, aka Ghost Rider (Nicolas Cage), hiding out in remote Eastern Europe and struggling to repress his curse. Blaze is recruited by a sect to take on the devil (Ciaran Hinds), who wants to take over his mortal son's body on the kid's birthday.

Head inside for the spots, some of which include new footage.

Sometimes I feel like with The Walking Dead there are some character moments, dialogue and general story beats that make it feel lacking. But I will say this about Robert Kirkman, he does know how to get people excited by teasing something.

As you can see in this new image, courtesy of Comic Book Resources, teasing what we can only assume will be the next story arc in the series, it looks like there's going to be another non-zombie threat on the horizon for our heroes. 

The most recent issue, number 93, began a new arc, "A Larger World Part 1," and they're on track to have number 96 serve as the closing chapter of the upcoming Volume 16 trade paperback.  

It seems that zombies are here to stay.  Sure I'm not the first to make this observation, but it seems one can't turn around without seeing a new zombie movie, book, game, comic, t-shirt...the list goes on.  But I'm not complaining, the living dead are always welcome in my house.  Provided there is a good story, or good effects, I'll probably give it a whirl.

One thing that is a crucial element in stories of the undead is the classification of the zombies.  Are they dead?  Undead?  Merely “infected”?  People will argue about what's truly “a zombie,” but these arguments aren't as important as the one we should be having:  Is the story effective? Another essential feature in zombie stories is how the infection initially begins.  Some stories choose not to say what happened, which is fine, and some have the characters speculate on the subject about three or four different ways.  Sometimes you get to see it unfold right in front of you, which is the case for the first issue of Alpha Girl.

Image Comics is bringing us a new type of zombie story tomorrow. It's called Alpha Girl and it sounds absolutely demented.

"It's 1984, and Judith is your typical 17 year old. She chain smokes, cuts class, sells her tampons to perverts, and she just might be the last sane woman left on the planet. When a third-rate cosmetics company creates a pheromone that turns women into crazed man-eaters, the world dives into chaos. "

Now, this sounds unlike anything zombie-related that we've reported on or even heard about in the past decade. I've seen weird zombie comics, even read zombie stories that are gender exclusive, but this sounds Garth Ennis-style nuts. Not only does it seem like we're going to get some absolutely balls to the wall awesome gore it seems like the comic will have a really tongue-in-cheek nature to it and not take itself too seriously.

Nicolas Cage made an appearance on Italian talk show "Che tempo che fa" and brought with him two clips from Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance.

The first clip is an action one and can be viewed at the 8:20 minute mark, while the second one can be found at the 16:20 mark. The second one is unfortunately dubbed in Italian.

Opening in 3D and 2D theaters on February 17, the Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor action adventure co-stars Fergus Riordan, Ciaran Hinds, Violante Placido, Idris Elba and Johnny Whitworth.

I'm a HUGE fan of Eric Powell's The Goon.  Being a fan of monster flicks and a native southerner, I can't help but love every aspect of this comic.  So, of course when the news of a Goon movie hitting the big screen I was ecstatic.

That was almost four years ago.

"Development Hell" is a scary place, so many cool things get stuck there and sometimes never see the light of day. Now it seems like our ill-fated Goon might languish there...or maybe not.

Here in the U.S., Sony, to date, has predominantly released a large batch of screen grabs from the trailer for Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance to the press.  A few on-set publicity pics have been offered as well, but we would prefer to see those over screen grabs.  Overseas, it's another story and Kinopoisk, a Russian film site, has received a batch of never-before-seen images.  We've collected them here for you.

A trio of steaming hot Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance television spots hit the web today, all equipped new footage.  The sequel, opening in 2D/3D on February 17, was directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the duo behind the Crank films.  Nicolas Cage returns as Johnny Blaze, the Ghost Rider.  Ciaran Hinds, Violante Placido, Idris Elba and Johnny Whitworth star.  Head inside for the previews!

Back in the late-'80s/early-'90s, there was a huge boom in comic books.

Not so much the brightly colored capes that most readers are used to, but plenty of other titles hit their peak. I'm talking, of course, about characters like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Cable from the X-men, the Age of Apocalypse - these all have experienced a resurgence on comic shelves. Today, news broke that another '90s property is about to come back to life, Dave Elliot's Monster Massacre.

The monster-themed anthology series originally had such talent on it as Dave Gibbons (Watchmen), James O'Barr (The Crow), Kevin O'Neill (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and Kevin Eastman (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).

Marvel's upcoming Dr. Strange movie is something we're watching closely here because, well, we dig the character and it delves into the supernatural at times.

The last update we received, writers Thomas Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer turned in a draft and that script.  Domain names connected with Dr. Strange were being secured last fall.  The news has not been groundbreaking, but they're definitely baby steps

The latest morsel of news comes via an interview with Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, who served as an advisor on the science behind Thor.  The interview was conducted over at io9 who dropped the following update.

Just before the San Diego Comic-Con last summer, Boom! announced a one-shot called Fanboys vs. Zombies by The Office's Ben Silverman.  That title must have met some success, because the comic book publisher is moving forward on a regular series.  The new edition of Previews yielded a look at the cover and story details; click inside to check it all out.

About a week ago, Steve Niles teased his new upcoming series and now there are more developments.

The title for the series, as we reported earlier, is The Nosferatu Wars.  In an exclusive interview with Comic Book Resources, Niles says the story deals with a vampire couple who meet during the Black Plague - a time that Niles calls, "Heaven on Earth for the undead."  The story focuses on what happens to the couple after they split and continue to look for each other.  Ultimately, the story finds them crossing paths 500 years later and finding each other on opposing sides of a large scale vampire feud.

Blade is enjoying some newfound success in another medium: As a anime series airing on G4.  Before that, the character was at the center of a short-lived television series and before that, a film trilogy.  Many fans wonder if Blade will ever grace the big screen again.  A few years ago, series writer (and director of Blade Trinity) David Goyer said it was a possibility.  Thinking in studio terms, a re-boot is probably in the cards more than a Blade 4.  But who would play the Daywalker?

Radical Entertainment, the creators behind Prototype 2, and Dark Horse Comics have joined forces to create an all-new comic series set in the Prototype universe.   With the game due out April 24 from Activision, fans should keep an eye out for this collaboration launching February 15.

The all-new digital comic series will be broken into three original stories that bridge the gap between the original blockbuster game and the sequel.

The first entry, “The Anchor,” illustrated by Paco Díaz, continues the story of Alex Mercer, the protagonist from the first game, while the second story, "The Survivors," illustrated by Chris Staggs, follows a small group of residents of New York trying to escape the city after it has been transformed into NYZ with the outbreak of the Blacklight virus.  The third and final story, illustrated by Victor Drujiniu, is "The Labyrinth" and provides fans a deeper look into the backstory of Prototype 2’s new protagonist, Sgt. James Heller.  Each comic in the series will be available at Digital.Darkhorse.com every other week beginning February 15.

The Blade anime series made its U.S. debut last week, re-introducing audiences to the Daywalker for the first time since his big screen turn in Blade Trinity and the live-action television series.  Inside, we have a clip from the animated show's second episode which finds Blade getting into trouble with the law.

Blade airs Friday nights at 11pm only G4.  Click here for the channel's series page which is filled with goodies.

Need some more Johnny Blaze in your life right now?  We've got you covered.  With the release of Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance about a month away (it opens in 2D/3D on February 17), Sony has sent us over 30 images from the film.  Some are new photos, others are screen grabs (obviously, they could not photograph, y'know, a guy with his skull actually on fire because he was never on set).

The Hack/Slash feature film has been around the development block, seeing writers come and go.  But there's new movement on the property.  Marcus Nispel is now attached to direct the feature film based on the horror comic book.

Nispel previously helmed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th and Conan the Barbarian.  He's in familiar waters with Hack/Slash, as the story concerns a young girl who travels the country killing slashers with her good pal Vlad.

It's bloody, brutal, sometimes funny...  Perhaps a decent fit for Nispel.

If you read my review for Eerie Archives Volume 9, and you're familiar with the magazine, you should know about it's sister magazine Creepy.  I won't patronize you by repeating what I had to say about Eerie, but a lot of the problems I had with it are the same problems I have here, with Creepy Volume 12.  I can say with certainty, however, that Creepy does have a lot of improvements over Eerie.

I enjoyed the comics within Creepy more so than Eerie. In terms of content, they're more traditional horror tales, in lieu of Eerie's fantasy-esque horror stories. Some of them are written in the more traditional comic styles with not as many word balloons, and every once in a while you'll get a full color section (something the Eerie Archvie didn't offer).

The comics inside are about as predictable as ever though.