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Sunday is not only Halloween, it's the debut of the Walking Dead TV show, and it looks like we're going to have tons of Walking Dead-related announcements and content this week. To kick things off, comiXology has announced a standalone WALKING DEAD app. And now Image has announced a series of weekly reprints of the monthly comics starting in January and running ALL YEAR. These Walking dead stories are available in multiple formats, and the original releases have been among the best selling non-Top Two comics for a while now. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. PR below.

Image publisher Eric Stephenson doesn't get quoted too much, but maybe he should. Rich Johnston has a very in-depth interview with Stephenson up and its about time. Image is consistently the #3 or 4 comics publishers and in recent months Image has absolutely stolen the mantle of "buzz book" publisher, starting with Chew, but continuing on with Turf, Skullkickers, Morning Glorys and so on. And of course, with the Walking Dead TV show debuting in a few days, they are set to sell even MORE copies of a book that already has 3 million copies in print. As Stephenson mentions, he doesn't often go around tooting his horn, so the inetrview touches on a lot of point seldom publicly spoken of. Kudos to Johnston and Stephenson for putting something substantive up on the internet for a change. Anyone interested in the state of comics publishing and creators rights should read the whole thing, but a few selected tidbits:

No, that’s not a reference to what I felt like the Sunday after fighting my way across last weekend's uber-crowded, nerd sweat fueled NYCC convention floor.  Of...

As you might expect, Image has a huge presence at this year's show with Todd McFarlane, Robert Kirkman, Erik Larsen and Jim Valentino -- just to name partners at the show.

As usual, Top Cow has some cool variant editions, including one of their best-selling ARTIFACTS mini series.

Retailer Atom! Freeman, recently hired as Direct Market Liaison at Top Cow, has already been promoted to Director of Sales and Marketing. Congrats to Freeman!

With the announcement of the closure of WildStorm imprint at DC and the retiring of the WildStorm name, it isn't just another in a long list of comics imprints that have ended over the years. In its 18 year run WildStorm has been a vital part of several revolutions in commercial comics, and changed the game in many ways -- Rob Liefeld's post below gives a succinet run down of some of the highlights.

Founded by Jim Lee as one of the original six Image Studios (along with Marc Sillvestri's Top Cow, Todd McFarlane's McFarlane Productions, Rob Liefeld's Extreme Studios, Jim Valentino's ShadowLine and Erik Larsen's Highbrow Entertainment), WildStorm immediately established itself as one of the most commercial, with huge sellers like WildCATS and Gen 13. A series of developing fan favorite artists, including of course Lee himself, but also J. Scott Campbell, Joe Madureira and Humberto Ramos, kept popularity up, while the creator owned Homage imprint delivered such strong properties as Astro City and Leave it To Chance.

Although known first for their art, by the end of the decade, WildStorm was really becoming known for some of the most daring mainstream writing of the period, with genre-defining work by Warren Ellis and Mark Millar, strong adventure material by Jimmy Palmiotti and Ed Brubaker, as well as daring experiments like Automatic Kafka, a book by Joe Casey and Ashley Wood that people are still figuring out.

And then there was America's Best Comics, an new line of comics written by Alan Moore that would introduce the world to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Tom Strong, Promethea and Top Ten, the superhero police procedural. And our favorite, Jack B. Quick, the boy inventor who solved science's greatest non problems.

Of course, there are dark parts to the legacy as well, all of which will be trotted out and discussed at length, we're sure. But for now, we asked creators and staff for some of their good memories, and this is what they came back with.

Image Comics house Top Cow has confirmed that they are resurrecting their Minotaur Press imprint, which will be a home for "darker, more nuanced stories." A previous version of Minotaur was once home to such books as Obergeist by Tony Harris and Dan Jolley and Felon by Greg Rucka and Matthew Clark. The new version kicks off with Echoes by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Rahsan Ekedal and Last Mortal written by Filip Sablik and John Mahoney with art by Thomas Nachlik. PR below:

Via Image.

Via PR, here's Image's schedule for Baltimore Comic-Con:

ComiXology app for iPads, iPhones and Ipods. IDW has a bunch of storefronts via iVerse, while Dark Horse mostly sells comics through their own standalone apps. New Image comics are selling for $1.99, which is about industry standard. Initial offerings include CHEW, YOUNGBLOOD, and SAVAGE DRAGON. In case you're wondering what to get first, Chris Sims has a good guide to what to download.

Too early for Halloween plans? Not really. The Walking Dead TV show debuts on Halloween at 10 PM ET with a 90-minute opening episode. Based on Robert Kirkman's comics, the show follows the adventures of the survivors of a zombiepocalypse, and stars Andrew Lincoln, Jon Bernthal, Shane Walsh, and Sarah Wayne Callies. A four-and-a-half minute trailer was also released, and we would absolutely set our DVR for this while we were out trick or treating!