As often as it happens in comics, updates are tricky, difficult-to-tame beasts. Any time an old series is dusted off and re-imagined, half the fans are upset that it's not the same as it used to be, and the other half is miffed that it's not new enough. It's difficult for comics to find the balance that pays appropriate respect to what's come before while twisting it and reshaping it for a ...

They say two things you should never discuss in polite conversation are religion and politics. It used to be sex, religion, and politics, but we all have raging porn addictions now, so, realistically, that topic is no longer off limits. But in business, at the dinner table, in barbershops and bars, the maxim holds that the latter two subjects remain taboo: to maintain civil discourse, one ...

Some of the best comics come from the simplest ideas. Those ideas that seem to straddle the line between inventive and obvious so delicately, you want to hit yourself for not thinking of it first. Image's Five Ghosts: The Haunting of Fabian Gray by Frank Barbiere and Chris Mooneyham is built around such an idea. The concept is lip-smackingly good: a dashing adventurer is possessed by the ...

With the 300th and final issue of Vertigo's Hellblazer, out this week, several tumblers shift and lock into place. John Constantine moves to the New 52 on a full-time basis, with a new title beginning in March; the reset button is pushed on his continuity, and the most writer-driven character of the last thirty years is yanked from the comfort and promise of a Mature Readers label and forced to ...

Now available from IDW Publishing and The Library of American Comics is Genius, Illustrated - the middle entry in a three volume project that examines the life and career of the undeniably great and simultaneously vastly unappreciated artist Alex Toth. Written and compiled by Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell, Genius, Illustrated gathers original comics pages, storyboards, animation model ...

On sale this week is a new edition of The Books of Magic, collected in hardcover for the very first time, over twenty years after it first appeared. Written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by four of the most refined artists of the era, it's a book that seems to have been a little forgotten in recent years. But with the heat surrounding Justice League Dark, and Guillermo Del Toro's alleged ...

How many comicbook movies are on your gift list for Christmas or Hanukkah? Does it already include The Dark Knight Rises, The Avengers, and The Amazing Spider-Man? Are you chuffed enough to request the The Dark Knight Trilogy on Blu-Ray, or are you nervously holding your wad for April 2013, when the 10-disc Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One drops like a ton of bricks? When it finally comes ...

Here's something that's never been said before: it's an interesting week for reprints. On Wednesday, Image Comics released new editions of two books which used to have homes with other publishers - a hardcover edition of Rock Bottom, the OGN by Joe Casey and Charlie Adlard that used to be with AiT/PlanetLar, and a deluxe hardcover collection of Scene of the Crime by Ed Brubaker, Michael Lark, ...

The creative team of writer Brian Azzarello and artist Eduardo Risso shouldn't just be well-known by now, it should be feared and respected. After first meeting on Vertigo's Jonny Double miniseries back in 1998, the pair have been regularly collaborating ever since. In 1999 they worked together again on the stylist noir conspiracy thriller 100 Bullets, which clocked-in at one hundred issues and ...

With last week's Captain America #19, writer Ed Brubaker bid farewell to the title after eight explosive years. During his tenure, Brubaker brought Bucky back from the grave, killed Cap, traveled through time to bring him back from the grave, redefined the core concept for an entire generation, and earned the title a place as one of the most popular of its era. But beyond the huge events and ...