Independent Propaganda

(Courtesy of Moonstone)

Title: TEMPLAR #1

Story: Jeff Limke——–Art: Pere Pere

Colors: Andy Belanger——–Cover: Timothy Lantz

32pgs, color, $3.99

Twilight Crusade is a battle of Heaven vs Hell right here on our Earth, where the READERS will decide who wins!

Each Twilight Crusade title can be enjoyed separately. One title will ship per week.

In the war between Heaven and Hell, all that stands between humanity and Armegeddon are the shock troops Knights Templar.

If that means preemptive strikes with some collateral damage, then so be it. Sleeping with the enemy? No problem.

Betrayal may be just around the corner, but there will be no Apocalypse on their watch.

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Title: GABRIEL #1

Story: Paul D. Storrie

Art: Walter Figueroa , Chad Hunt

Colors: Andy Belanger

Cover: Timothy Lantz

32pgs, color, $3.99

Twilight Crusade is a battle of Heaven vs Hell right here on our Earth, where the READERS will decide who wins!

Each Twilight Crusade title can be enjoyed separately. One title will ship per week.

In the War between Heaven & Hell, one soldier has been on the front lines of the battleground since the very Beginning.

But now the ultimate angel of destruction has grown weary of her never-ending tour of duty & the world it’s waged on.

After millennia of killing, Gabriel has begun to realize that even an eternal warrior needs more out of life than dealing death.

By (Star Trek Aliens/Gotham Girls) Paul D. Storrie!

Title: WOLF

Story: Grant Sauve

Art: Andy Belanger

Cover: Timothy Lantz

32pgs, color, $3.99

Twilight Crusade is a battle of Heaven vs Hell right here on our Earth, where the READERS will decide who wins!

Each Twilight Crusade title can be enjoyed separately. One title will ship per week.

Heaven’s first rebel. Our world’s first curse. Trapped for a millennia within the skin of humanity, that fallen angel, WOLF,

has vowed vengeance on the god who created his perfect cage. Now, after long last, he can taste the blood of revenge, and it is sweet.

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Title: SUCCUBUS #1

Story: Joe Gentile

Art: Silvestre Szilagyi

Colors: Andy Belanger

Cover: Timothy Lantz

32pgs, color, $3.99

Twilight Crusade is a battle of Heaven vs Hell right here on our Earth, where the READERS will decide who wins!

Each Twilight Crusade title can be enjoyed separately. One title will ship per week.

She can’t control her urges.

She extracts pieces of men’s souls while they sleep.

She tried to switch sides during the fall, but that only resulted in her punishment…her banishment.

She just wants to go home…to heaven…but no one seems to remember who she is.

By Joe (Kolchak) Gentile and Silvestre (The Phantom) Szilagyi!

Ringwraiths: The Ghosts of Christmas Never

COMING SOON!

There really wasn’t much evidence that Santa ever visited Middle-earth, so while the Lord of the Rings Twilight Ringwraith Animated Maquette may remind you of a twisted Ghost of Christmas Future, he’s really just a corrupt king of men who has been slowly distorted and destroyed by a false promise of power. Which (we assume) is probably even more depressing. This Ringwraith sure does look awesome with his pointed crown and rocky display base. Just don’t let him stab you– it didn’t help Frodo and it’s not likely to make your day any better, either.

Lord of the Rings Twilight Ringwraith Animated Maquette

Item Number: GE10778

Coming Soon!
Estimated Arrival: July 2008

Price: $89.99

(Courtesy of Dark Horse)

Fright Fans Scream for City of Others

Steve Niles, acclaimed creator of 30 Days of Night, and legendary horror-hero Bernie Wrightson, pull out all the stops in City of Others—an unscrupulous hit-man, a vampire gang with a bizarre leader, an underground mafia of monsters, AND a marauding hoard of mind-controlled zombies? Perhaps this is a feat that could only be attempted by the strongest talents—and critics agree—City of Others is a hit! The story unfolded in four issues over the course of 2007, and now it is collected in its entirety for discerning horror fiends to add to their home libraries.

Stosh Bludowski is a killer, born with the capacity for no apparent human emotion other than rage. Killing comes easy for Blud, and he makes a good living doing what’s easy—until the day he meets two jobs in an alley who just won’t die, and a grotesque mystery unfolds right in front of him. Soon, the remorseless killer is confronted by a reality he could never imagine, and he will be invited to make a decision once and for all . . . is he human, or is he Other?


“As a lifelong fan of good horror comics, working with Bernie and Steve on this book has been a fantastic experience,” said series editor Shawna Gore. “While Bernie’s work has been conspicuously absent from comics for quite a while, he’s been honing his legendary skills designing and illustrating for the film industry, and his work has never been more lush, detailed, and fully realized. City of Others is a monumental collaboration between two certified greats, and it’s a story any fan of quality horror will enjoy.”

City of Others will be unleashed on the masses on February 27, 2008 for a retail price of $14.95.

Brodie’s Law #8

Published by Markosia at www.markosia.com and produced by Pulp Theatre Entertainment at www.pulptheatre.com

Written and created by David Bircham and Daley Osiyemi

Art by David Bircham

Some comics are a haven of delights to come back to month after month. The mystery deepens. Pieces start to fall into place. The payoff of sticking around seems to pay in spades. They just keep getting better and better, with back issues being referred to over and over again to solidify what happened. This describes the Markosia comic Brodie’s Law.

I had the fortune to read a previous issue of Brodie’s Law and found myself going awfully slow to figure out all the nuances and minutiae of the developing plot. It was worth it, as I found the read here for #8 went much smoother than the read for #7. And that makes sense if your first issue of a book started with chapter seven. It is kind of like explaining a TV show, like LOST or 24, to somebody who just started watching halfway through the season. It does become worthwhile, especially when the plot is so intricately and delicately layered together that each scene plays upon another. Brodie’s Law is accomplishing just that in its fantastic plot.

Our hero is now back in his own body after his mind transference into other people. Can he save his mind and learn how to use this new power, a power which is beginning to manifest other attributes? Can he figure it all out? Can he trust the people who are helping him? Will the detectives on the trail be able to piece it all together? These are just some of the plot details that are marvelously coming to a head right now in the pages of Brodie’s Law.

Suffice it to say, I like what this comic is doing. It moves along at a splendid pace and reads even better issue after issue. Bircham’s art is something to fall into, with a style all its own. His characters are something else. They seem to portray a ton of emotion in every face. I keep trying to place his style and I keep falling back on a kind of Brian Bolland out of Batman: The Killing Joke. Without the faces in that classic comic, it wouldn’t be as great as it is. That seems to be the power of Bircham’s art.

All I know is that I can’t wait for issue #9.

(This was a review I wrote quite a while ago but somehow it never saw print. My apologies to the guys. Now go and buy their books.)

(Courtesy of Dark Horse)

Back to the Beginning with the BPRD

Comics guru Mike Mignola teams up with rising star Josh Dysart (Swamp Thing, Conan and the Midnight God) for one of the most intriguing and revealing tales in the Hellboy Universe. BPRD: 1946 is the story of the early days of the Bureau and the quest for answers that explain, among other things, the enigmatic Hellboy’s apocalyptic origin.

In the wake of the second world war, Professor Trevor Bruttenholm—occult investigator and guardian of the infant Hellboy—founded the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense to investigate and defuse the remains of the Axis’ sophisticated occult warfare projects and potential Soviet threats. Now, outfitted with a small band of war-weary Allied soldiers, Bruttenholm begins to unravel the mystery of the Nazi Occult Bureau’s greatest and most threatening initiatives: Project Vampir Sturm.


“Hopefully this will be the first of several books showing the evolution of the BPRD from a three- or four-man organization to something more like what it is now,” says Mignola “The focus here is on Bruttenholm, looking into the mystery of Hellboy and dealing with the changing occult world, as the Nazi occult projects fall into the hands of the Russians.”

Rounding out the bill on the latest chapter in the BPRD story is the always on-point, indy artist/colorist team Paul Azaceta and Nick Filardi (Potter’s Field, Grounded) on their third project together.

BPRD: 1946 #1 (of 5) hits the streets on January 9, 2008 with an SRP of $2.99.

Hero-Gram 2007 Wrapup Edition and Trivia Contest!

Greetings New Believers! 2007 has been an amazing year for Hero By Night, seeing the debut of the mini-series in March, the ongoing webcomics and wrapping up the year with a hardcover trade collection and launching a new ongoing series. Not too shabby!

So what’s new? Well I’m hard at work on the new ongoing series which is being published by the fine folks at Platinum Studios Comics, which I hope everyone can ask their local comic shops to carry.

New Site layout…. Well, kinda! I redesigned the header graphic for the site, since when it was intially designed we weren’t planning on having so much content and an ongoing series. There are easy links now to the new fan forum (sign up!), the store, email, and most importantly, the main jumping on points to read HBN online.

The one big NEW thing on the site will be “Hero By Night Universe” which is a database I’m building that will house detailed information about the characters, world and story of Hero By Night, do book mark that and check it out. I’m pretty excited about this feature and how it will progress.

RSS feed- I’ve gotten a lot of e-mails asking if we had an RSS feed for the comic, and YES, we’ve always had one, it was just hidden away under the nav buttons– now you can clearly see the RSS logo to the right of the new header, and if you want to bookmark the RSS direct from this email, here it is: http://www.drunkduck.com/rss/rss.php?cid=7825 – If you’re using Google Reader, please “share” our feed with your friend lists!

MEGA HERO-TRIVIA 5!

It’s been awhile since I’ve held a Hero-Trivia, so let’s make this one a MEGA deal. So here’s the deal… answer the following questions, e-mail them back to me by Friday, January 4, 2008 - winning answers will be be put into a magic hat and 2 winners will be pulled! All of the answers can be found in the Hero By Night Archives.

Winning prize pack: Signed Hero By Night hardcover, Signed Hero By Night ongoing #1, Original Sketchcard AND a bonus surprise for our lucky winners.

Ready for the big 13 questions? Here they are!

1. What type of super rare alloy is Iron Talon’s Mask made from?

2. What is Doctor Nowhere’s real last name?

3. Who had warned Rene Talon not to tamper with the Earth’s natural magnetic wells?

4. What is the slogan for RT’s Deli?

5. Which member of the “Heroes By Night” releases Golden Glove and his crew from the cages on Talon’s Island?

6. What is General Salem’s first name?

7. Why did Dr. Saul Simon become Saul Simian?

8. What was the atomic power cell number onboard the B-25 that crashed in the Monongahela river?

9. Before going into business with his brother, the original Golden Glove, who did David Johnson work for?

10. What was the first and last name of the main bad guy character in the Hero By Night miniseries?

11. On Talon’s Island, first Darrian turned into some kind of vampire monster, then what did he turn into?

12. How many original “Vitalogy Rings” were forged by Rene Talon?

13. Who first told David Day about the Vitalogy Ring and Rene Talon?

All of the answers and more at HeroByNight.com

Have a great new year! Thanks for reading and supporting Hero By Night!

DJ Coffman
http://herobynight.com

BOOM! Studios ends the year with Steve Niles’ GIANT MONSTER TPB as our sole offering this week (12/28/07).

Thanks for a great 2007. Here’s to an even greater 2008.

GIANT MONSTER TPB
Written by Steve Niles
Drawn by Nat Jones
Featuring an illustrated introduction by Bernie Wrightson and Bill Sienkiewcz
SC, 6×9, 128pgs, FC

‘Giant Monster’ is the ultimate giant monster story from the writer-creator of the smash-hit vampire epic 30 DAYS OF NIGHT. The year is 2013. Astronaut Don Maggert’s first space flight swallows him alive in the grip of an intergalactic horror, transforming him into something that throws the entire planet into peril! Featuring oversized Kaiju action and giant monster throw-downs!!

By Matt Butcher

Viper Comics keeps putting out good stuff. I love these little trade paperbacks. Quality pages and good construction that somehow make the comic book more palatable, especially for those kids that love those manga and manhwa books nowadays.

That is the perfect target audience for this book. Kids. I will bring this to my ninth grade English classroom and watch the kids gobble it up like candy. My thirteen-year-old daughter liked it.

Oddly Normal volume 2: Family Reunion is about a girl named, oddly enough, Oddly Normal. She is from the outside world, now living in Fignation. For those older, like me, it is the equivalent of that kid in The Never Ending Story going off to the land of imagination to save it. She also has to save the day. She doesn’t want to, but does anyway. That’s a great message for readers.

Oddly Normal vol. 2 is then highly recommended, especially for those of us older comic readers that want to get the young ‘uns to read comics. It is brilliantly illustrated, better than some stuff you see on Nickelodeon and Disney, which will get the kids to think that they are then reading what they normally watch. Viper then, with great titles like A Bit Haywire and Oddly Normal are then starting to bridge that gap, making comics for specific audiences. And I as an older comic reader still got a kick out of them.

Give this one to your kids, after you get done reading it of course. Then you will be grooming them to read the rest of your collection.

If you haven’t read this, then you don’t read good comics. Get it now.