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§ VERY NICE ART! Geoff Darrow has drawn a wraparound variant cover for the Hellboy Winter Special, Paste reveals. It’s His first Hellboy cover art in 20 years or so. t’s a Fried Pie variant so look for it at Books-a-millions.

Hellboy Winter Special
Writers:   Mike Mignola, Scott Allie, Chris Roberson
Artists: Paul Grist, Christopher Mitten, Sebastian Fiumara, Dave Stewart, Bill Crabtree
Three weird tales show the world of Hellboy through the years, with Edward Grey appearing for the first time alongside Sarah Jewel, hero of the recent Rise of the Black Flame series in 1890s London. In 1980s New England, Hellboy, Abe Sapien and Liz Sherman set out on a simple search for some missing kids, and encounter a tormented spirit seeking to share its pain. And Paul Grist (Kane, Jack Staff) joins the team for a 1950s Hellboy story providing a glimpse of the next new title to debut in the Mignolaverse.

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§ As you may know Blizzard is the immensely big publisher of such video games as Warcraft, Diablo, Heroes of the Storm, and most recently and most immensely, the multiplayer FPS Overwatch, which has taken the world by storm! They are no stranger to comics, at least for Warcraft, but here’s where things get interesting. There was some confusion recently when an announced Overwatch graphic novel was unannounced, as an official Blizzard rep noted on a forum:

I wanted to let you know that we have decided to cancel the release of the Overwatch: First Strike graphic novel. While we are grateful to the team for the fantastic work they put into it, we’ve ultimately decided to take the story in a different direction.

The original idea for the graphic novel dates back to the early days of the game’s development and came from our desire to tell the story of the founding of Overwatch during the Omnic Crisis. In the years since First Strike’s conception, we have done a lot of development on the universe and its stories. While the core of this story remains, we have changed and expanded upon how we see the events that took place during the first days of Overwatch.

So for now the early adventures of Gabriel Reyes, Jack Morrison, Ana Amari, Reinhardt Wilhelm, Torbjörn Lindholm (and more!) wait for another day. But we know that this is a story that you are excited about, and it’s one we still plan to tell.

While no real reason was given, perhaps it will some day be released as part of Blizzard’s very own just announced publishing arm, to be called…Blizzard Publishing! Although there was no mention of Overwatch in the PR, they will be bringing back a bunch of out of print Blizzard titles, including two Warcraft manga books:

• Warcraft Legends: Volume One, with stories by Richard A. Knaak, Dan Jolley, and Jae-Hwan Kim
• Warcraft Legends: Volume Two, with stories by Richard A. Knaak, Dan Jolley, and Aaron Sparrow

Upcoming projects include reprints of three Warcraft novels, more manga reissues, a World of Warcraft Adult Coloring Book, an Art of Hearthstone® book (which I will buy) and Cinematic Art of StarCraft. Somewhere, someday, Overwatch will sneak in there, I know it.

§ Marvel CCO Joe Quesada is directing a digital Agents of Shield spinoff starring Slingshot. The link will take you to a video which reveals more.

Perhaps this is just his way of making sure that Yo-Yo is treated and portrayed properly in the leading role, but the video shows that Quesada has a passion for directing. Should Slingshot be well-received by its viewers, it will be interesting to see if he finds time to move up to a full episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or makes the transition to Netflix or one of the other Marvel television series in development.

 

§ Wimpy Kid’s Jeff Kinney has been touring the world:

His first visit to Korea is part of the global tour to promote “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down,” the 11th series of the book that was published worldwide on Nov. 1. Since then, he’s gone on tour in Israel, Germany, France, England, the Philippines, India and Canada. The author said visiting Korea — the last leg of the tour — is very “touching” as the first edition of the series was translated and published in Korea in April 2008, only a year after it was published in the U.S.

 

§ Ten best of 2016! This time from Lazygamer.

§ Megan Purdy looks at Leela Corman’s We All Wish for Deadly Force, yet another of Retrofit’s home runs they slugged right out of the newsstand this year.

2 COMMENTS

  1. I liked the free online Overwatch comics (and the animated shorts)!

    Who is distributing the Blizzard trades to bookstores and libraries?

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