Wil Moss here, editor of the new T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS comic. Now, I know there are a lot of great DC titles right now competing for your dollar, so why should you check out next week’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS #1? Lemme give you some reasons…

• It’s got a terrific hook. Would you rather burn out or fade away? That’s the question at the heart of this series. People at the end of their rope are offered a chance to become super-heroes, but the powers they’re offered will end up killing them. The concept’s been explored before, sure, but this series offers a unique take on it, and the concept actually comes from the original T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS comic anyway. Which brings me to my next reason …

• It celebrates the past while living fully in the present. You don’t need to know a thing about the original T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS comic — created in the 1960s by the legendary Wally Wood — to enjoy this new version. This is a new cast and a clean entrance to the concept. But if you’re a fan of the old series, know that this book actually takes place in the same continuity as the original! (And if you’re curious about the classic material, check out the DC COMICS PRESENTS: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS #1 reprint edition next month!)

• It’s written by the ingenious Nick Spencer. You know him from the JIMMY OLSEN co-feature and seemingly about a million other projects (including a no-nonsense run on SUPERGIRL that starts in January!). Now’s your chance to see him flex a completely different set of muscles in this world of espionage, morally gray conflicts, twists, and, of course, superpowers. You’ll be shocked by the stuff Nick has planned for this book!

• It’s drawn by one of the industry’s best-kept secrets, CAFU. As you can see from the art on this page, CAFU is an extremely talented up-and-comer, one who is just as comfortable drawing quiet moments of treachery and duplicity as he is drawing bombastic moments of action and mayhem. Mark my words, this guy’s gonna be a star — get in on the ground floor here!

• It’s got an all-star lineup of cover artists and guest interior artists. #1 sports a cover by Frank Quitely and a variant by Darwyn Cooke (featuring the classic team!), #2 has a cover by Gary Frank and a sequence illustrated by ChrisCross, #3’s got a cover by Chris Sprouse and a sequence by Howard Chaykin, and I’m not even gonna tell you which stellar artist has agreed to close out the first arc with #6, or the name of the amazingly gifted artist who just agreed to do the covers for #7-12 — an editor’s got to have his secrets!

• It’s is the first great comic of 2011. And you get to read it two months early!

Still not sold? Then check out a free 10-page preview available now via the DC Comics App or through Comixology.com and see for yourself what an amazing book this is gonna be!

In the meantime, I’ll go back to trying to memorize what T.H.U.N.D.E.R. stands for …

—W.I.L. MOSS

If you’ve been following us on Twitter or Facebook, you’ve probably noticed that there’s been a huge outpouring of press in reaction to the shocking conclusion of BATMAN AND ROBIN #16. It all started early yesterday, as THE ASSOCIATED PRESS broke the news that (stop reading now if you haven’t picked up the issue) Bruce Wayne had been secretly funding Batman for years, and would expand his funding and launch BATMAN INCORPORATED in an interview with the man behind it all, writer Grant Morrison.

With that, we were off to the races. DC Comics Editor in Chief Bob Harras did a number of interviews, including chats with USA TODAY, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, CNN’s MARQUEE BLOG, TIME TECHLAND, AOL COMICS ALLIANCE, THE L.A. TIMES’ HERO COMPLEX, COMIC BOOK RESOURCES, NEWSARAMA and IO9.

And in case you missed it, WIRED’s Scott Thill had an epic, engaging and all-around interesting interview with Morrison, which is a must-read for fans of the man’s work. Also, the issue’s been getting raves — with glowing reviews at POP MATTERS and IGN to kick things off.

Have you picked up your copy of BATMAN AND ROBIN v2: BATMAN VS. ROBIN yet?

BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL presents a special, extra-sized issue, featuring the return of BATMAN: SON OF THE DEMON artist Jerry Bingham to the world of the Dark Knight, for the first time in 20 years. This time, he’s paired with JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA writer Marc Guggenheim for a tale featuring a younger, more inexperienced Batman.

In “Super-Powers” part 1 of 5, we join Batman as he faces a foe who had once tangled with the Justice League of America, and the odds are not in his favor.

BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #50 hits today.

So here I am. Superboy #1 is out today! It feels like a long time coming. Pier Gallo and I have already been working on the book for the better part of 2010. So let me tell you a bit about what I have planned for Conner Kent and Smallville…

As of typing this I have six full scripts done with a seventh in the outline stage. And, I have the first fifteen issues plotted out. So, this will be a BIG story. A Big story made up of a lot of smaller stories. Most of the run will be only 1 or 2 part arcs that add up to a bigger, badder story I’m weaving in that will culminate around Issue 12 or 13. I don’t want to say too much about it yet, but the first issue has some pretty good clues and teases. It also has THE PHANTOM STRANGER! one of my favorite comic book characters. Seems like an odd fit? Well Smallville really is the ideal American small town. But all small towns have a dark side. And Smallville’s dark side will be slowly creeping to the surface, making Kon-el’s attempts at a “normal life” harder and harder to achieve. What you see in the first two issues will only be the tip of the iceberg. (If you’re interested I suggest picking up THE PHANTOM STRANGER showcase editions…they too will hold clues to coming events!)

Astute readers of my past work will also notice an “homage’ of sorts to Essex County in the first issues opening sequence. It pretty much mirrors the opening pages of Tales From The Farm, with the young character of Lester dreaming of flying away and leaving his troubles behind.

(PS…One more thing. Just a side note…my past work is obviously very Canadian. I’m a proud Canuck, what can I say. But it’s kind of interesting how Canadians have played a big part in Superboy’s life so far. Tom Grummet a fellow Canuck was the Superboy artist through the 90′s. maybe we’ll have to team up for an all Canadian issue?)

One thing I love to do in all my comics is use visual motifs. Re-occurring imagery that slowly reveals a metaphor or draws attention to certain aspects of the plot. I did it a lot in Essex and I do it a lot in Sweet Tooth. But It’s also fun to use these motifs as a way of drawing links, thematic or otherwise between some of my different books. It’s why I made Jepperd a hockey player in Sweet Tooth and had him being followed by crows as he trekked across the post-apocalyptic world. And it’s why I used this opening sequence to Superboy. Kon-el and Lester have a lot in common, and at the same time, they’re very different. Lester used his imagination to escape the small town he was stuck in and the hard realities f his life. He dreamed of being a superhero and flying away to great adventure. Conner is trying to use the normalcy of small town life to escape being a superhero. But he can’t. Like Lester he is who he is, and he’ll have to accept it sooner or later.

Now all this talk about my past work and hoe Essex County led to Superboy is probably a bit misleading. Any of my readers expecting to pick up Superboy and read “Essex County with Capes” will be disappointed. EC was a indie book through and through, both aesthetically and in its pacing and execution. Superboy is not Essex County. It can never be that kind of book. It’s a superhero comic. A DC superhero comic, and it celebrates it. It’s big and fun and full of action. But if I do my job right, all of that action a will mean something. And it will be balanced with real characters…real people living in small town America trying to figure themselves, and their lives out. And finding the answers within each other.

What else can I tell you about the book? Let’s see…There is a great first issue cover by Rafael Albequerque (American Vampire) and great covers to issues 2-5 by the awesome Phil Noto. There are a few new characters like Psionic Lad and The Spawn of Smallville. And of course there’s always KRYPTO! So that’s about it for now. That’s all I got. I hope you like the first issue. If you do, stick around and come back for more. If not, that’s cool too. Thanks for trying it out.

I can’t wait for #2 and #3 and beyond to come out, to share the stories I’ve been cooking up with Pier Gallo and the rest of Superman team up at DC! Thanks for reading.

First off – have you read BATMAN AND ROBIN #16? If not, take a moment, step away from your computer (how often will I tell you to do that, huh?) and head to your local shop. Pick up the issue, read it and come back.

All done?

How about that last scene? Brings new meaning to the term “This Just Happened.”

Alright, let’s roll. Click below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Our spotlight on all things BATMAN AND ROBIN continues and concludes today, with a special peek inside the mind of Grant Morrison, as the writer guides us through the various amazing new characters that first appeared in the second volume of BATMAN AND ROBIN, which hits stands in comic shops tomorrow as a DELUXE EDITION.

Take it away, Grant.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a Bat-heavy week in variant land, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. First up, we have Guillem March’s cover to BATMAN AND ROBIN #17, along with Gene Ha’s variant for the same issue. We’ve also got Andy Clarke’s cover to the first issue of David Finch’s BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT (regular and black and white). Need more? How about Amy Reeder’s BATWOMAN #0 cover, Alex Garner’s GREEN ARROW #6, Dustin Nguyen’s jam-packed JUSTICE LEAGUE: GENERATION LOST #14 and Kevin Maguire’s morbid variant for the same issue? Last, but certainly not least, we have Frank Quitely’s instantly classic TEEN TITANS #89 and WONDER WOMAN #605 variant, also by Garner. Whew. Make with the clicking, folks.

High above the clouds of the Nth City on Hawkworld, Hawkman takes center stage, as he begins an all-out assault to save his beloved.

But back on Earth, who will the White Lantern ring choose as its bearer and, in turn, the protector of the planet? The last page will shock you.

All in an issue’s work from the all-pro team of Geoff Johns, Peter Tomasi, Ardian Syaf, Ivan Reis and Joe Prado.

BRIGHTEST DAY #13 arrives tomorrow.

This Wednesday, Nov.3, my first issue of DC Comic’s new SUPERBOY series launches. In a way the release of Superboy marks a sort of milestone in my career, one I never saw coming. But, when I look back at how I got here, the path seems clear and natural.

It’s been quite a journey for me both creatively and personally over the last 3 or 4 years. Four years ago…2006. I was still working full-time as a line cook at La Hacienda restaurant on Queen Street West in Toronto. I’d work night shifts and then get up early to draw all day before I had to go back in for my next shift.

I’d finished my first long-form comics work, the self-published LOST DOGS about a year and a half earlier and I’d been struggling with what to do next. There were a few aborted projects in there, but none of them really seemed to stick. I can’t remember exactly how the idea for Tales From The Farm came about. But I do recall the original idea for that book was much more sci-fi heavy. It was a full-on genre book about a little kid living on a farm who dressed up as a superhero, and a big ex-hockey player. The two were the sole survivors in a small town after a plague wiped everyone else out (Sweet Tooth fans might find this concept eerily familiar).

But as I worked on that idea, I ended up dropping the overt genre elements and simplified it. It became a love letter to the small town where I grew up and to my own childhood on the farm. Tales From The Farm was meant as a stand-alone work. But it took off and the idea expanded into a series of books that would eventually be the Essex County Trilogy. It became a sweeping multi-generational epic about small town life and family, all filtered through the central metaphor of hockey.

The success of Essex County led to work at Vertigo, thanks to then editor Bob Schreck and the great Karen Berger. I did a book called The Nobody, another rumination on small town life, and then launched my current monthly book SWEET TOOTH, which oddly enough re-purposed some of my original ideas for Tales From The Farm and mashed them up with a bunch of other fun sci-fi and horror ideas I had floating around in my sketchbooks. I finally got to quit my kitchen job and work at comics full time. Life was good. But then it got better…

I never thought I’d ever write mainstream superhero comics. I just thought my style was a bit to personal and idiosyncratic to translate. And I never thought editors at DC or Marvel would be interested. I was wrong. Within a few months of Sweet Tooth’s release I had offers to write superhero books for both Marvel and DC. It’s no secret that I grew up reading superhero comics. Anyone who read Tales From The Farm can pretty clearly see young Lester’s love of comics as a nod to my own childhood obsession. I loved them as a kid and still do now. So the opportunity to take on a superhero book of my own was really exciting, if not a bit unexpected.

DC offered me a chance to write an ATOM story in Adventure comics. I took it, and it was going pretty well. I admit, in hindsight that there was a pretty steep learning curve going from writing and drawing everything myself to trying to filter my “voice” through another artist. But Mahmud Asrar, the Atom art-phenom made the transition in those early chapters go a lot smoother, and eventually I started to get the hang of it.

Then came the chance to write Superboy. At first I wasn’t really interested. I actually didn’t think the character or the book would be a
good fit for me. Sometimes the most obvious things are the hardest to see. But then I took a step back and saw how perfect I was for the book after all. I saw how all of the themes that I loved exploring in Essex County and The Nobody could also be present in Superboy…small town life, community , family…it was all there. Only this time instead of filtering it through the metaphor of hockey, I could filter it through the metaphor of the super hero.

And that’s how I began working on Superboy. Where it would lead me was even more unexpected, but I’ll pick that up tomorrow. I’ll also explain a few homages to Essex County “hidden” within the first couple of issues, and tease some upcoming storylines. See you then!