Alien Isolation announced by SEGA

Alien Isolation was announced during the week from SEGA being produced by Creative Assembly. This looks to be the Alien game fans of the franchises have been after, especially after the epic fale of Colonial Marines. From the trailer it certainly looks to go back to the roots of the original film and also pays homage to the original story and characters of the film with the star character controlled by the player being Ripley's daughter, Amanda. This looks like a good game but with my track record I certainly won't be looking to buy this, these sort of horror/thriller games don't really interest me, basically I'm a woose. Its the story that got me through The Last of Us.

Image Expo 2014! Another exciting year for the publisher and creator owned titles!

Last year we had the announcement of Black Science by Remender and Scalera and Southern Bastards from Jason Aaron and Jason Latour among other exciting titles announced by the publisher. This years expo has seen the beginning of 2014 truly show Image Comic's intent to continue to publish the best creator owned titles on your comic store shelves.

The highlights for me were the announcement of The Wicked & The Divine from tried and tested collaboration of Kieren Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, who recently finished the fan favourite Young Avengers run. The title will follow the lives of Gods born to Earth who die within 2 years it will also be set in 2014. The idea behind the title sounds interesting and anything that contains Gods and Mythology tends to gain my interest. They also announced that Phonogram 3 will still be coming out for the end of 2014. Having finally read Phonogram over the weekend I loved the series it had me dusting off the songs of bands I use to listen to, it shames me to announce it would appear I went through an emo phase.

The other title to really get my attention is the long rumoured Low from Remender and Tochinni, set in a future earth where the land has been ravaged by radiation humans now live underwater behind protective force fields from the radiation. The story centralises around the return of a satellite searching for planets habitable by humans, problem being the satellite landed on the surface and now a team has to be put together to attempt to retrieve it. Some preview art has been released and Tochinni's art looks wonderful. Remender is known for writing great Sci-Fi epics from Fear Agent, his most recent Captain America arc and of course his recent Black Science.

These were not the only exciting titles to be announced there is an extensive list of creators. Joe Keatinge will be teaming up with Leila del Duca on Shutter, Brandon Graham announces a new shared universe in "8House" based in 8 magical factions along with the likes of Churchland and Rios on art. Joshua Williamson and Mike Henderson from Monkeybrain Comics title Masks & Mobsters will be producing there new horror title Nailbiter. Fraction will be producing Ody-C alongside British artist Christian Ward and also announced the return of Casanova to Image and a new volume with Gabriel Ba. Nick Spencer announces three new titles, "Great Beyond" with Morgan Jeske, "Paradigms" with Butch Guice and "Cerulean" with Frazer Irving. Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham team up again after there run on Batman Inc to produce "Nameless". Bill Williingham and Barry Kitson team up for "Restoration" with a magical theme.  Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips continue to team up together  after the likes of Fatale, Criminal and Incognito to launch there new creator owned title "The Fade Out". Finally the most surprising announcement of the expo was the arrival of a new creator owned title to come from Jock and Scott Snyder called "Wytches" this will be a horror comic taking Snyder back to his roots and obviously anyone into comics knows that Jock produces some great art work.

With all these impending titles from Image it looks to be an even bigger year than last! I'll certainly be picking up The Wicked & The Divine and most probably Low, and possibly several of the others depending on my monthly budget. The one thing to definitely take from this is that with All-New Marvel NOW!, the upcoming DC weekly titles, Dark Horse declaring this to be the year of the horse and now Image announcing all these great titles this is going to be yet another great year for the industry!

All-New Marvel NOW! continues into April 2014.

Two new titles were announced during the week coming in April 2014. Kaare Andrews will be wirintg and illustrating a new Iron Fist title in April titles Iron Fist: The Living Weapon. The last work I read by Kaare Andrews was Spider-Man Reign, which was aptly described by one of the staff at my local comic store as Dark Knight Returns for Spider-Man. I really enjoyed Spider-Man Reign and from the preview art for this new Iron Fist title it sure looks like it will be a beautiful looking book.

Another more obscure reveal this week is the announcement of All-New Doop to come from Peter Milligan and David Lafuente. Doop was a character created and introduced by Peter Milligan during his X-Statix and X-Force run with Mike Allred. I don't know much about this character but the series will be focusing on the character to begin with during the events of Battle of the Atom and Doop's role in the event.I'm not to familiar with David Lafuente's work but from the bits I have seen his style looks like it will compliment the character and the book.

Marvel reveal the future for the Ultimate Universe... It's Ultimate Marvel NOW! and it's All-New!

Cataclysm is still yet to end with the impending doom of the Ultimate universe. However this Friday Marvel took the opportunity to announce the post Cataclysm titles.

First of all there will be the new All-New Ultimates title with a team consisting of Miles Morales (Ultimate Spider-Man), Black Widow (Formerly Spider-Woman), Cloak & Dagger, Kitty Pryde and Bombshell. This new team consists of several Bendis written heroes spinning out of his current Ultimate Comics: Ultimate Spider-Man series along with the addition of Kitty Pryde, who at the moment seems to be the only Ultimate X character to survive. The other exciting revelation of this title will be written by Michel Fiffe, who up until this point has been producing his creator owned COPRA, based on a team of super villains, which is critically acclaimed, I haven't read it myself but I am on the hunt to buy the compendiums, and its exciting to see Marvel allowing new creators onto their Ultimate titles again, the same way Humphries was given an opportunity at the publisher. Fiffe will be joined by Amilca Pinna whose art I am not familiar of at all but I look forward to hunting down some work to see whats its like. My pick list has had a major reduction to save on costs but this team is something that has gotten my attention and I may have to have a look at the first issue.

The second Ultimate title to be announced is Ultimate FF, and it has been made very clear this is for Future Foundation not Fantastic Four, this team consists of Sue Storm, Tony Stark, Machine Man and Sam Wilson this will be written by Fialkov, who already has previous in the Ultimate Universe, alongside Mario Guevara on art. The post Cataclysm team titles for the Ultimate universe are both exciting and I hope, both for the creators on the books and the characters involved that these titles will a success.

Finally Mile Morales will be staying within the Ultimate Universe, well at least thats what appears to be the case, in the newly titled Mile Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man, this will continue to be written by Brian Michael Bendis and the continually impressive David Marquez will continue to illustrate the book! Although no cover has yet been released for the title Marvel's April solicitations are due to come out next week where this should be revealed.

Bendis really seems to be at the helm of the Ultimate universe which he helped to create when it initially began and with his help the universe is still creating exciting titles with exciting creators, this could be the re-invigoration the Ultimate Universe has needed, with its only real successful title of late being his own title Ultimate Comics: Ultimate Spider-Man.

Marvel's 2014 event announced "Original Sin"

Marvel have released a new image related to there upcoming 2014 event called Original Sin. The first appearance of the event will be in Original Sin #0 from the creative team of Mark Waid and Jim Cheung before Jason Aaron and Mike Deodato Jnr take on the reins for the 8 issue series. More details regarding this will be released tomorrow during Marvel's Next Big Thing press conference. The general gist so far for this event is the mysterious death of Uatu, and who else would investigate this other than the original Nick Fury. Fury puts together a team of super heroes to investigate and chase the murderer to ensure Uatu's secrets are not unleashed upon the world. I look forward to more info tomorrow.

For more check out the link below;

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=50118

What I'm looking forward to in 2014!

So what will I be looking forward to this year. Well for an easier post I've split it up into the films, comics and video games I am most looking forward to this year! It looks like another big year for all three.

So what are the films I am most looking forward to this year. Well there is the usual comic inspired films like Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: Winter Soldier and Amazing Spider-Man 2. You also have the like of X-Men Days of Future Past which I look forward to seeing how this will work out. My top watch this year though is Guardians of the Galaxy. My surprise pick for the coming year which from the trailers so far I can not wait for and is only a couple of months away which is the The Lego Movie.

Comic wise there is a lot going on this year already, with Marvel's future event being announced this coming Wednesday and DC's next big event to be teased in there Free Comic Book Day 2014 special. As always Free Comic Book Day is one of the highlights of the year as well as DC Marvel certainly have some important teases to make in there issue with a Guardians of the Galaxy highlight and also Spider-Man's up and coming event, the return of Peter Parker? I guess we will know more come the April solicits. Another Marvel title I am looking forward to is the new Moon Knight coming in March from Warren Ellis and Declan Shalvey.

                                       

Video Game wise it will be a big year, with a lot of new Next Gen titles to be released and also more to be announced. I'm holding my breathe for the announcement of Fallout 4, to hear more news on the next gen Mass Effect and finally more on the Game of Thrones title to come from Telltale Games. Also next year should be the year I buy my PS4 along with the coming release of Destiny in September! Will I be tempted into buying Xbox One I'm not sure, I also can't wait to get myself a PS Vita especially if I will be grabbing a PS4. With all these prospective new consoles a new television may be in order and also a new Television cabinet. 2014 has the ability to be an exciting year on all fronts!

Marvel to publish Star Wars comics from 2015

Well it was inevitable really and we all knew it was going to happen it was just a matter of when. Today it was finally announced that the Star Wars franchise we will moving back to Marvel in 2015 after two decades at Dark Horse. I only hope Marvel put some of there top teams on this an don't produce any mediocre sales simply for the dollar. Dark Horse have done an amazing job in producing some of the best extended universe work for the beloved franchise from there Knights of the Old Republic series to Legacy and Dark Times, one of my first comic books was Vaders Quest by Dark Horse. It is exciting to learn that one of my favourite publishers will be taking on some of my all time favourite characters but let's be honest in Dark Horse they have a ver difficult and accomplished act to follow.

                           

Dark Horse founder Mike Richardson responded to the news immediately, sending out this statement about their time with the license.

"All things come to pass. So too, do all licensed deals. I am sad to report that Disney, the new owner of Lucasfilm, has notified us here at Dark Horse of their intention to move the Star Wars publishing license to another of their recent acquisitions, Marvel Comics, beginning in 2015. This will end a partnership that has lasted more than two decades.

"For those who are new to the industry, Dark Horse revolutionized the treatment of comics based on films. After a history of movie properties being poorly handled with little regard for execution and continuity, Dark Horse took a new approach, carefully choosing licenses and approaching them with excitement and creative energy. Our goal was to create sequels and prequels to the films we loved, paying careful attention to quality and detail, essentially treating those films as though they were our own. Star Wars has been the crown jewel of this approach. We began chasing the title as far back as 1989, and with the launch of Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy’s Dark Empire, a new era in comics was born. I’m not ashamed to admit that we were Star Wars geeks, and we have been determined to spare neither effort nor expense in the pursuit of excellence.

"It is ironic that this announcement comes at a time when Dark Horse is experiencing its most successful year ever. For obvious reasons, we have prepared for this eventuality by finding new and exciting projects to place on our schedule for 2015 and beyond. Will they take the place of Star Wars? That’s a tall order, but we will do our best to make that happen. In the meantime, 2014 may be our last year at the helm of the Star Wars comics franchise, but we plan to make it a memorable one. We know that fans of the franchise will expect no less. The Force is with us still."

Well said sir! Since the news broke it has been confirmed that the current high profile titles one from Brian Wood and the other from Gabriel Hardman and Corinna Beckho will end around August. I really enjoyed both these series when they first came out and will most certainly be picking these up in trade format as I had to drop them from my stack.

Thank you Dark Horse for some of the best Star Wars stories I have read in some time!