Top Cow Productions and Image Comics announced today a premiere launch event at Meltdown in Los Angeles for the Pilot Season 2011 voting period. The Pilot Season “Take Control” party invites Los Angeles fans to meet the various creative teams involved in 2011’s Pilot Season competition, get their books signed, and get the details on how they can determine the winning series this year. The event is co-sponsored by Chipotle Mexican Grill, through arrangement with marketing firm Bonfire Agency.

Since 2007, Pilot Season has become the leading fan-driven comic event, allowing creators to compete with brand-new original properties for fan votes. This year, Top Cow released eight unique pilot issues by eight creative teams ranging from established industry pros to up-and-coming talent to screenwriters and even one NFL All Star. With all eight books in stores, voting will begin on Monday, December 5th at topcow.com, where fans can also find additional information on each title.

“Shadow Hunters is the new supernatural comic book that revolves around the lives of 3 teenage girls. As they seek vengeance on the dark demon that wiped out hundreds of lives, they encounter both a vast array of darkness that dwell around them and a shadow army that combats it. This is a new series from Scattered Comics that is written by Jason Dube and drawn by Benjamin Jordan. It is a comic that is recommended for more mature reader with its heavy themes of death, mature subject matters, and violence.”

You’re never too old to have fun at Halloween, so start searching DriveThruComics.com and DriveThruRPG.com for these pumpkins…

Will it be a great Treat – an awesome free product – or will it be a fun Trick, with who-knows-what on the other end?

Participating publishers include White Wolf, Eden Studios, Top Cow Productions, Pelgrane Press, Moonstone Books, 2000 AD, Apex Books and more!

The Iron Empires: eight weary nations, spanning three million light years of the Milky Way Galaxy. They are the withering remains of a human civilization once immeasurably vast. Their dying has not been quiet.

The Vaylen Terror has ravaged humanity down the ages, seizing a thousand worlds in a bloody rush, then pausing for decades of consolidation. During these intervals of calm, the empires rebuild, rearm…and wage war on their neighbors. they almost believe the Vaylen will never return.

Both Iron Empires graphic novels are available for the first time in eBook format exclusively at DriveThruComics.com!

We have a new design essay today from Michael Jasper, author of the In Maps & Legends comic series. In Maps & Legends was the winner of the November 2009 Zuda Comics competition hosted by DC Comics. Today Michael talks about the craft of writing the series and the things he learned along the way.

Want to know what one of the best things that happened to me while I was scripting out the nine issues of In Maps & Legends, the digital comic I wrote with artist Niki Smith?

A lot of great things happened, but the best side-effect of the whole experience is that it made me a much better—and hopefully more effective—writer.

The year is 12,090 A.D., and what little is left of humanity has finally crawled out from the ashes of war and destruction. From the darkness of fallout, mutants and a race of vampires known as the Nobility have spawned. They rule the weak with no remorse. Once bitten by a Nobility, one is cursed to become a member of the undead. Villagers cower in fear, hoping and praying for a savior to rid them of their undying nightmare. All they have to battle this danger is a different kind danger – a Vampire Hunter.

Enter D – a lone, mysterious vampire hunter, sought out by the desperate Doris Lang. Bitten by the vampire lord Count Lee, Doris is destined to her unholy fate… Can D deliver her from her curse and bring her to salvation, or will she forever be part of the unholy dead?

Vampire Hunter D Vol. 1 is now available in eBook format at DriveThruComics.com!

“They thought it was over. They were wrong. Back on the hunt for the maniacal figure known as The Raven, private detective Jack Smith must face a nightmare from his past— but not all is as it seems. A new evil comes to town as he and his dumbstruck partner Alice, a young woman with secrets of her own, get tangled in a web of deception without realizing that the most dangerous truths are the ones they keep from each other. Meanwhile, The Raven paints the town red as the clock starts ticking for a final showdown in this debut issue of DROP DEAD DEAD DANGEROUS, a murder mystery manga by Chad Cabrera and Mike Banting set in the weird, weird west. Who will be left standing… and who will be left in pieces?”

Fans of the artwork found in Hellsing and Priest gather around because this book is right up your alley. This book had its moments where I didn’t quite see what was going on in the action scenes, but there might have been only 2 max. This book is drop dead GORE-Geous plain and simple.

“King Zombie heads across the border and finds himself plunged into a bitter dispute between a former drug cartel and the assassin Raga.”

I bow down to you Mark Bloodworth. I have seen artists do styles like this, I have seen artists make it work within their own books, but I have never seen this style work so well. Mark was not afraid to show you anything in this book. From his character designs, to the way he laid out a page, there was nothing I could have wanted more from this book visually. The consistency was perfect, but the over the top work came from the way panels transitioned into each other and, of course, the depiction of the undead. Mark your work on Deadworld, whether old or new, is beyond what I need and I can not ask for more. You have achieved visual perfection on this book.

The title ‘comic nerd’ has always escaped me. They are cool, they are nifty, and their storylines are quite often entertaining with the added bonus of some truly interesting artwork. Yet something has always kept me from diving into the pool of comics, and I’m not sure what that is since I enjoy reading them. Calebros, was no different. It was a delight from beginning to end and reminded me why Clan Nosferatu always ranked high on my list of favorites.

Calebros is part of a series of comics that were produced several years ago that followed the so the uninitiated reader should be warned that jumping into the story arc with this work will leave one rather confused. One the few flaws I caught was the lack of an introduction. Some background information for the new reader would have been greatly appreciated and it would also have helped spark my own memory in regards to White Wolf’s now dormant story arc.

The 1974 television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker never got rave reviews from critics. Only twenty episodes of the show exist, plus two TV movie/pilot episodes: The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night Strangler (1973). The special effects, even by the standards of the day, were cheesy and unremarkable, though the stories themselves were interesting and provided a wide variety of paranormal beasties from folklore the world over instead of rehashing zombies or vampires week after week. Unfortunately, the TV movies proved vastly more popular than the TV series they generated.

It should come as no surprise that a graphic novel treatment of Kolchak might spring into being as well, and at that before the reboot of the series. Enter Moonstone Books with their long-running Kolchak series, and lo, Kolchak has been brought back from the dead, like many of the creepy entities he faced as a reporter with a nose for the paranormal.

“Stricken with grief from the death of his girlfriend, Sith, Guy Salvatore struggles to make sense of his world. He’s plagued with hallucinations of monsters that torment him with outrageous requests. Enter Satan: a strange, old man who implores Guy to call upon his latent power to break through his world’s plane to rescue Sith, who he claims is floating aimlessly in and out of dimensional planes known as the “Dream Worlds.” But is Satan to be trusted?”

The only thing I knew about this book before diving into it was how GORE-Geous is was going to be. I will admit though that what took it a notch above most is that Chandra took the time to create every element on every page.

For those of you who love Vampire: the Masquerade as much as I do, you’re probably aware that its hitting a twenty year anniversary milestone this year. My old favorites like Gangrels and Toreadors were already on my mind — then I started re-reading Dork Tower.

And I groaned. A lot. Then smiled… Then secretly wished I, too, was headed to The Grand Masquerade.

Before I get to my experience reading Clanbook Perky, here’s the information on the sale:

All Dork Storm Press comics are twenty-five percent off through Friday, July 15th.

ANYA SOBCZEK (SUB-CHECK) is a snarling science major with an arm full of Darwin tattoos. Her brother OWEN is a sensitive young thing in a coven of teenage occultists. The Sobczek sibs have always been brutally competitive, but now that Owen’s blood has started BUBBLING with ancient tentacled abominations, their rivalry’s about to enter a vast new dimension of cosmic terror…

In 2010 Artists DREW RAUSCH and AARON ALEXOVICH hurled their infectious horror/comedy hybrid ELDRITCH! into blazing combat in DC Comics’ final Zuda webcomic competition. After several centuries it emerged, dazed and confused, with the word WINNER indelibly etched on its forehead.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to announce a fun comic caption contest for Skullkickers, an action fantasy comic drawn by Jim Zubkavich that debuted with image comics last fall. We will be giving away a signed copy of the first hardcover collected trade dubbed Skullkickers: 1000 Opas and a Dead Body with an introduction by Robin D. Laws. For those of you who follow Jim’s work, you may recall his artistic and writing style from the popular series of Exalted comics, which are availalbe from UDON.

Skullkickers follows the action adventures of two iconic heroes. One of them is an unruly dwarf with red hair named Shorty; the other a warrior with a little more common sense named Baldy. Up until Issue Number 7 that is…

“It’s the not-so-typical story of girl meets wolf as told by David Gruba (writer) and Rene Castellano (artist). See what happens when the mother-in-law comes to visit and when the Wolfman goes out on his late night jaunts. This all ages book will appeal to kids, married couples and joke book enthusiasts.”

Artwork: 4.0 out of 5
You can call it cartoonish, you can call it manga inspired, or you can just call it plain good. This book looks great. I love the character designs, no wait do I love them… yeah I really love them! Look at the cover alone, do you not see the calf? That is just funny! The interiors look the same, except they are in glorious black and white and man… do they POP! Okay hands down, I LOVE the look of the mummy the most. Can we have a book on him please?

I first picked up “Wanted” in a Borders bookstore right before the film adaptation came out. There, I flipped through the first five pages and then, remembering the trailer for the film, promptly put it down, wondering which of these were better summaries of what the comic would have to offer. What I had read seemed amazing, what I had seen on the television… less so. And so I went the next few years without reading the comic or seeing the film adaptation, occasionally catching glimpses of the book’s cover and flipping through those first few pages again, wondering if I should take the plunge.

When I first sat down to read it –to really, finally read it– the first thing I noticed was an introduction by Brian K. Vaughan. The praise of Vaughan, author of comic masterpieces like Y: The Last Man and Pride of Baghdad, would be invaluable to me as a reader.

2K Games, Top Cow Productions, Inc., and the Free Comic Book Day Committee announced today that they have teamed up to produce The Darkness II: Confession, an exclusive comic tie-in for The Darkness II video game, for Free Comic Book Day. The 32-page, full-color comic will be a prequel to 2K Games’ upcoming video game, The Darkness II. Produced by Top Cow’s lead artists and writers in partnership with 2K Games, The Darkness II: Confession will be distributed by Diamond Comic Distributors to thousands of independent comic book stores worldwide on May 7, 2011.

“Top Cow has always supported Free Comic Book Day and this year we’ve created our best offering yet with The Darkness II: Confession, a prequel to the upcoming video game The Darkness II by 2K Games,” said self-proclaimed hardcore gamer and president of Top Cow, Matt Hawkins. “In working closely with 2K Games on the comic, we’ve ensured that everything fits into The Darkness’ canon for long-time and new fans of Jackie Estacado. This free comic is a perfect primer for the game.”

Since its inception in 2002, the Free Comic Book Day event has celebrated the original American comic book art form by supplying thousands of participating independent comic book specialty shops around the world with free comic books for fans.

Relativity Media and graphic novel publisher Archaia Entertainment, LLC have formed a publishing partnership to produce and publish a hardcover graphic novel anthology based upon Relativity’s upcoming epic motion picture Immortals, starring Henry Cavill (Superman: Man of Steel), Luke Evans (Robin Hood), Kellan Lutz (Twillight), Isabel Lucas (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen), Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire), and Mickey Rourke (Iron Man 2).

Archaia will release the Immortals graphic novel in September, serving as a precursor to the 3-D motion picture, which releases worldwide on November 11, 2011. The graphic novel will expand upon the film’s key characters and events through a series of original tales written and illustrated by some of the top names in comics, including David Mack (Kabuki), Ron Marz (Witchblade), Dennis Calero (Dark Tower) and Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night). The graphic novel will be published through Archaia’s Black Label division, a publishing pipeline dedicated to working alongside creative professionals within the entertainment industry eager to launch and expand their brands in the publishing world.

Originally published in 2009, Dusk is a graphic novel written by David Doub that follows the lives of Eve and Ash. Ash is a vampire, and Eve is a human who takes regular drinks of Ash’s blood that he provides to her. Ash seems a very thoughtful and considerate master, very much unlike many of the other vampires we encounter in these stories.

Ash’s blood gives Eve enhanced strength and speed after she consumes it. Eve needs the extra advantage Ash’s blood provides when going up against other vampires – she’s taken on the responsibility of being Ash’s right hand.

“Featuring 7 tales of terror, Virus Comix is proud to present the second issue of its anthology series, bringing together a collection of art styles from around the world into one issue.“

Wow, seven awesome looking stories. The art styles range from realistic to cartoonish, they go from highly detailed to perfectly inked. I can’t say enough on how nice this issue looks. I don’t even want to try and pick a favorite. One thing that most of these stories had in common was that awesome old school horror look. Nicely inked pure black and white panels that just add so much to the story. I want more and I want it now. Lets get these guys doing more books for my viewing pleasure.