WildStorm: The Bleed

Art by Mike Bowden

Half the fun of working on Victorian Undead has been watching all of the coverage the book’s been getting from the zombie blogosphere - it’s really amazing how many blogs there are dedicated solely to the walking dead.

I’m seeing news items pop up from sites like The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse… The Dead Walk…. A World On Fire…  Send More Cops (named after a great gage from Return of the Living Dead)… and BuyZombie.com. Needless to say, my RSS reader has grown in the last couple months. I thought I was a pretty hardcore zombie buff, but I really have to take my hat off to these guys.

And, be sure to check out CBR’s interview with writer Ian Edginton, in case you haven’t already.

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OK, so - I’m pretty excited about the way Authority is going in the next few months. If the Barrionuevo art teases we’ve been posting here weren’t enough to get a WSU fan excited, I don’t know what would be, really.

It’s been a long time since I’ve read a lot of these comics, I’ll admit. Thanks to a bit of digging around the offices, I was finally able to track down the two Authority paperbacks I’d been missing. These next couple weekends will be about kicking back and brushing up on my Authority continuity. Hell, I may start with Ellis’s StormWatch run and go straight through to the Authority from there. (Just looking down the spines, it’s amazing just how many outstanding writers and artists worked on these books over the years.)

Because it’s bound to come up, and I just have to ask: What are everybody’s all-time favorite Authority runs?

We’ve speculated quite a bit here recently, wondering how artists like Al Barrionuevo and Tim Seeley are able to draw so many heroes and villains in a single comic (and often, a single page.)

Another question, however - how does one prepare themselves to WRITE that many characters into a story? There are several fans out there with an encyclopedic knowledge of the WSU (at least a few of you are regulars in our comments section) - but I know at least I’d need to go back and do a LOT of reading just to make sure I’m able to keep everyone straight.

Over at Broken Frontier, upcoming WildCats writer Adam Beechen explains how he was able to prep himself to write a comic story that includes hundreds of the WSU’s characters. Check out his column here.

We all love awesome crowd shots. Judging by your reaction to our WildCats
#19 sneak peek from Tim Seeley, so do you.

You know who else can draw the hell out of a WildStorm group shot? Al Barrionuevo. I mean, look at this - there’s what, 50 characters in there? More? And have I mentioned this guy’ll be drawing the Authority ongoing? (I have, but I like to rub it in.)

From The Authority #18.

Ok, I know it’s not normal to post here on a weekend, but this isn’t any normal old Saturday. What better way to prep for trick or treating than flipping through Trick ‘r Treat (which I borrowed the fun Fiona Staples art from) or one of WildStorm’s other gruesome offerings?

Have a nice weekend, and please, try not to eat all your candy at once.

Art by Philip Bond.

We’ve got a pretty eclectic group of characters hitting the shelves from WildStorm lately - from immortal, machete-wielding serial killers and super-powered teenagers to elves and super soldiers. In the mood to try something a bit more rooted in (our) reality? Chuck Dixon’s gritty WWII alternate history, Storming Paradise, just hit shelves. The book reads great in one volume - chronicling the invasion of Japan at the end of a World War II where the Manhattan Project had never come to be.

Up to this point we’ve been pretty tight-lipped on next month’s Victorian Undead - keeping everyone sated with a few details here, a Simon Coleby or Tony Moore cover there. Now, writer Ian Edginton sits down for an in-depth chat about his Sherlock Holmes vs. Zombies mini-series.

You can check out the interview over at Comic Book Resources!

The long-running horror magazine Fangoria (I read my first issue in 1994 - wow) has published a glowing review of the first four issues of North 40. There’s an overabundance of blurbable quotes in this review alone - check it:

“NORTH 40 is one of the top horror books of 2009.”

“NORTH 40 brings together an intriguing cast of characters one might find in a TWIN PEAKS episode.”

“Williams writes with an unbound passion, dipping into so many tasty sauces at once that it doesn’t bother the reader so much that the overall story itself is crawling along. It’s kind of like watching an episode of LOST”

“It’s real. It’s raw. And it’s intriguing to read.”

“Aaron Williams and Fiona Staples have a hit on their hands”

How’s THAT for praise?