Check out the previews for Dark Horse Comics' December 29 releases!

Hellboy: The Sleeping and the Dead #1 Preview

Read more...

Tags comic book previews, Dark Horse Comics, Hellboy: The Sleeping and the Dead #1, Kull: The Hate Witch #2

It feels strange to be reading new Dr. Solar stories in 2010—not that I read a lot of new Dr. Solar stories when they were being published at the late lamented Valiant, and later, Acclaim Comics. When I was younger, there seemed to be something so tragically uncool, so terribly serious about the adventures of the nuclear man with the New Wave visor. Instead, I gravitated towards ShadowMan and The Eternal Warrior, with their largely more street-level adventures. I don’t know if the stories have gotten better (possibly) or if I’ve changed as a reader (hopefully), but I really found something enthralling about this latest incarnation of Dr. Solar who, in this issue, has math fights with kaiju-sized deities.

For those not in the know: Dr. Solar is physicist Phil Seleski, destroyed and reformed by nuclear sabotage and reformed as a being able to manipulate energy. Now he’s able to fly, generate powerful blasts, and, most interestingly, control the very nature of things by targeting the basic elements of their mathematics. Consider him a Dr. Manhattan still in possession of his humanity. Read more...

Tags Dark Horse, Dr. Solar, Jim Shooter, Phil Seleski, Roger Robinson

Check out previews of the titles hitting from Dark Horse Comics this week!

The Guild: Vork (One-Shot) #1 Preview

Read more...

Tags Felicia Day, Robert E. Howard's Savage Sword, Star Wars: Invasion - Rescues, The Guild Season Four, The Guild: Vork, Usagi Yojimbo

Everybody has heard of Conan the Barbarian, right? But how many people have heard of Kull the Conqueror? Both from the mind of Robert E. Howard -- with Kull created first! Well you can catch up with Kull via Dark Horse's excellent collected editions program (as well as the new mini-series "Kull: the Hate Witch"). MTV Geek chatted with Patrick Thorpe, the editor of the Savage Sword of Kull Volume One trade paperback, about why we should care about Kull and his Marvel Magazine adventures from the 1970s-90s!

MTV Geek: Despite being the star of a movie in 1997, Robert E. Howard’s Kull has seemed to take a backseat to his other creation Conan in terms of public awareness of “barbarian” heroes. We need to rectify that situation. Tell us about Kull -- what makes him stand out?

Patrick Thorpe: I love this question, because, on the surface, Kull and Conan seem extremely similar, but they are very different characters. Most people don't know that Kull was actually created first. "The Shadow Kingdom," a Kull story that most people credit as being the first "sword and sorcery" story, was published in Weird Tales in 1929. That story paved the way for Conan and created an entire genre. It was one of the most important stories that Robert E. Howard ever published. Read more...

Tags comic book interviews, Conan the Barbarian, Interviews, Kull

By Alex Zalben

This Wednesday, Dark Horse releases online sensation Axe Cop in trade paperback form, and we at MTV Geek couldn’t be more excited. If you’ve never read Axe Cop (handily available at axecop.com), you’ve been missing out on one of the most original and hilarious comics of… Well, ever. Here’s ten reasons you need to correct your mistake, and pick up Axe Cop Volume 1 this week:

1. It’s Written By a 5 Year Old: Seriously. Axe Cop was created by 5-year-old Malachai Nicolle, when his 29-year-old comic book artist/writer brother Ethan was home for Christmas. Malachai was “playing Axe Cop,” Ethan decided to write down the story verbatim, and illustrate it, and history was born. To this day, every bit of Axe Cop is written by Malachai (or at least, dictated and sorted out into comprehensible form by Ethan).

2. It’s About An Axe Cop: In case you couldn’t guess from the title, the comic is about a cop who chops things with his axe. He teams up with a super smart baby with a unicorn horn named Uni-Baby, and other heroes and villains, like Leaf Man, Baby Man, Flute Cop and more. The whole thing makes a bizarre kind of sense, the sort of logic you can only get from hearing a five-year-old tell a story. Read more...

Tags Axe Cop, Dark Horse Comics, Ethan Nicolle, Malachai Nicolle

It’s jarring to see Conan—savage barbarian, scourge of wizards, plunderer, and thief—being mirthful and jolly. But mirthful and jolly he is in this, the first issue of writer Roy Thomas’s take on the character, which starts with Conan… the pirate? Indeed, Conan has a completely loyal pirate crew, a beautiful princess who’s madly in love with him, and all of the plunder he could ask for as the new terror of the high seas. It’s the first issue in a series that will see Conan walking the literal Road of Kings and, I suspect, inform some of the elements that will make the character a king in the future.

It’s a lively remix of the character’s basic elements: a little Errol Flynn and less brooding bruiser. Thomas gives Conan a more direct and fluid manner of speaking that might not necessarily jibe with everyone’s favorite take on the character, but works on its own merits in an “adventures of young Conan” sort of way. That’s not to say that a less dour means a less brutal adventure: the lead and his crew are put into several pretty bloody skirmishes with soldiers and sailors, reminding readers of Conan isn’t someone to be trifled with. But it’s interesting that in this take, Conan is still prone to making mistakes: he’s a thief and not much of a strategist, thinking only as far as the next piece of loot. Read more...

Tags Conan, Conan: Road of Kings, Mike Hawthorne, Roy Thomas

Dark Horse's "Mighty Samson" -- the first issue of which is out this week -- follows the recent reboots of fellow 1960s Gold Key heroes Doctor Solar, Magnus Robot Fighter, and Turok, Son of Stone. Who better to present Samson to a new era than Jim Shooter, the person responsible for reintroducing the other Gold Key characters the first time via Valiant Comics? MTV Geek chatted with comics legend Shooter about Mighty Samson, the Gold Key reboots, and the state of comics today.

MTV Geek: What brought you to the “Mighty Samson” project?

Jim Shooter: Dark Horse Publisher Mike Richardson asked me to redevelop the Dell/Gold Key characters, and build a line around them. Mighty Samson was high on both our lists. Magnus Robot Fighter, Doctor Solar Man of the Atom and Turok Son of Stone I’d worked with before, so it seemed logical to lead off with them. Now it’s Mighty Samson’s turn. Some may say that means he’s fourth choice. To me, he’s batting cleanup.

Geek: Mighty Samson was one of the original Gold Key characters not brought on by Valiant Comics. Was there a particular reason at the time why he was not chosen along with Doctor Solar and the others?

Shooter: I ran out of time. I had plans to re-introduce Mighty Samson, Brothers of the Spear and more —even Little Lulu! But my tenure at VALIANT ended before I could get to it. Read more...

Tags comic book interviews, Dark Horse Comics, Interviews, Jim Shooter, The Mighty Samson

What's Dark Horse Comics have hitting the shelves this week? Click the images for previews.

Conan: Road of Kings #1 Preview

Read more...

Tags Conan: Road of Kings, Metalocalypse: Dethklok, Mighty Samson, Star Wars Legacy: War, The Occultist

“All this because of one woman’s grief,” the amphibious B.P.R.D. leader asks a colleague after they’ve dispatched something horrible in the woods of British Columbia. The answer, according to this precise and finely crafted issue, is "yes" with an even more terrible implication for the cast and the characters of this world: the battle they wage now is no longer simply against the things that go bump in the night but against afflictions of the very spirit. Indeed, as this issue unfolds, it seems that the typically dysfunctional cast seems more poisoned and more—well, afflicted, than normal as they confront more aggressive and outlandish enemies. It seems the end times might be near, and those with the strength to fight might no longer have the spirit to do so.

The first seven pages or so of the book are nearly wordless report on the grief of one woman and the means by which it unleashed hell. Abe’s colleague—and now something of a fugitive—Ben Daimio suspects that this kind of thing will happen more often, and that a militarized responses to the forces of darkness might not be enough. The case at hand, involving a woman whose desire for a child gave birth to monsters, shows the easy, horrible human cost of the conflict. This poor woman became no less a monster than the creature formed in her womb, simply through the perversion of her love and grief. Read more...

Tags

Check out previews of the goodies that Dark Horse has hitting the shelves this month!

B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth #5 Preview

Read more...

Tags B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth, comic book previews, Dark Horse Comics, Let Me In: Crossroads, Star Wars: Knight Errant