Top Cow

[Tayne Japal]

Top Cow is giving away 50 comics for free if anyone has been hesitant to try some of their series.


http://www.bleedingcool.com/2016/03/...nstorekickoff/

[juan678]

IXTH GENERATION 8
http://www.comicbookresources.com/co...ge-comics-2016
AProdite IX Deux ex machina Velocity ........... Chairwoman What if?

[Tayne Japal]

Some preview art for Symmetry #5. I've really been enjoying this series.

[ireactions]

This was intended as a blog post and possibly a to-be-expanded outline for an ebook, so I apologize or the length. It's a retrospective on WITCHBLADE and THE DARKNESS.

When reading long running comics, you often get the bleak sense that what goes up will inevitably come crashing down. I was recently re-reading every issue of WITCHBLADE and THE DARKNESS.

It was quite a shock to see how terrible they were for many prolonged periods of time -- and how both titles eventually found writers who were absolutely perfect for them, transforming both titles into superb comic books with dynamic lead characters and brilliant explorations of their core concepts. It was also rather sad to see how these writers who personified WITCHBLADE and THE DARKNESS eventually moved on and their departures basically killed the comics. First, WITCHBLADE:

The David Wohl/Christina Z./Michael Turner era: WITCHBLADE started out badly. The concept was excellent: New York homicide detective Sara Pezzini gets a mystical gauntlet that's an invincible weapon with a mind of its own. But writers David Wohl and Christina Z. wrote slow, tedious tales where our tough NYC cop was more bystander than protagonist.

Fetish Comics: They didn't delve into the mysteries of where the Witchblade came from or what its powers were, they didn't tell stories of Sara learning how to use it. They just wrote fetish scenes with Sara in a metal bikini or long-haired, taciturn assassin Ian Nottingham poses dramatically and Sara is inexplicably attracted to this unrepentant murderer for hire.

Turner's art, while striking and beautiful in its character designs and linework, had no sense of place or space (sparse backgrounds), no emotional depth (body language and facial expressions were weak) and he couldn't seem to meet a monthly schedule, so there were constant fill-in artists.

Typists Supreme and Extraordinaire: There was also a tedious, juvenile, self-important and visually illiterate tone to the scripts; Wohl and Z. would spend more time describing character traits in captions than showing them through action and dialogue, scholarly and professorial dialogue from villains would drop oddly into casual banter and without Turner's art, none of the characters would stand out. Jake McCarthy was a non-entity, Joe Siry's relationship with Sara was barely explored and Ian Nottingham was unfathomable except as a fetish object.

Superstar Mark Millar once described a certain brand of comic book writer -- the typist: someone who had an administrative role in comics (managers and editors) that they would use maneuver themselves into writing work without having any passion for their material and with nothing to say through their words or characters. Given Wohl's editorial position at Top Cow, he and Z. were in a position to tell any stories in any style -- and their output during this period of creative freedom is a damning indictment of their skills.

The Christina Z./Randy Green era: Aside from Randy Green's art lacking Michael Turner's polish, I found the Z. and Green era to be near-indistinguishable from the previous one. Green's art had all of Turner incoherent storytelling, but without Turner's attractive designs and compositions, the flaws were impossible to ignore.

Like the previous 25 issues, Z's run from #25 - #39 were full of incomprehensible plots and subplots written to support fetish moments like Ian Nottingham being tended to by a young lady whom Nottingham later had sex with before he killed her. Sara's character and the concept of the Witchblade remained largely unexplored.

Garth Ennis and The Darkness: And then, on the other end, with have THE DARKNESS, a title which actually started out really well. Nobody would ever consider Ennis to be a typist-class comic writer. There is probably no such thing as a bad Garth Ennis comic; Ennis is a hilariously caustic and crude writer who gifted Jackie Estacado and the Darkness with Ennis' twisted sense of humour. Right from the start, Ennis set up how Estacado was an okay guy in the terrible circumstances of the NYC criminal underworld, but the Darkness would now personify the best and worst (mostly worst) of him.

Ennis set up Jackie's world perfectly with the vicious mobsters, the Darkness cultists, and Jackie somewhere in the middle. Ennis delightfully characterized Jackie as an adrenaline junkie and hedonist who contemplates suicide after discovering that he can no longer have sex now that his Darkness powers have emerged.

Fill-Ins and Scripters: Unfortunately, Ennis didn't stick with the title, leaving after the opening arc and contributing only a few scripts and plots from time to time, developed by other writers. Ennis would later admit that he created THE DARKNESS when he was exhausted, burnt out and running short of ideas for comics, but he encouraged any subsequent DARKNESS writers to make the series their own.

Sadly, one of those other writers was typist David Wohl, whose lack of imagination and artless, craftless writing and total inability or unwillingness to find the heart of his characters has been documented above.

There was another, Malachy Coney, who scripted some of Ennis' later plots and wrote some issues alone and he did a decent pastiche of Ennis' grisly sense of humour. THE DARKNESS was a good comic with Ennis and a good Ennis-imitation with Coney, but Coney's solo run was fairly short and I imagine Coney could have only pastiched Ennis for so long. Ultimately, all Wohl and Coney could do was reiterate Ennis' opening arc of mobsters, the Darkness and the cultists.

A Shortage of Ideas: Ennis had written THE DARKNESS as a series of jokes about an amoral hedonist hitman who becomes invincible at the cost of no longer being able to have sex -- while also puncturing the pomposity of doomsday cults and the supposed nobility of organized crime. He had expended the bulk of these jokes in his opening run and Coney used up the rest. Ennis' ideas, much like Ennis himself during the writing of THE DARKNESS, were exhausted.

Scott Lobdell: Lobdell came aboard THE DARKNESS after writing BATMAN/DARKNESS crossover saw Jackie inspired by Batman to turn against his mobster uncle, Frankie, and hand over evidence to the FBI. It was a solid storyline and it brought Jackie's moral conundrums to a point of resolution -- except Lobdell seemed unable to do much with the aftermath.

Once Jackie had turned against his crime family, the book floundered for direction. Lobdell had Jackie wandering to different places, getting in random adventures, but there was no unifying theme. Lobdell's sense of humour was a good variant on Ennis', but it felt like filler, marking time until Top Cow figured out what to do with our mobster hitman with supernatural powers once he was no longer a hitman.

While Lobdell was a professional and did a professional's job, he was unable to find deeper meaning in THE DARKNESS. He didn't know what to do with Jackie or THE DARKNESS. To be fair, neither did Garth Ennis. In contrast to WITCHBLADE, THE DARKNESS was a competent, enjoyable product; it had wit and charm and excitement so long as David Wohl didn't write it. What it lacked was purpose and vision.

Paul Jenkins (WITCHBLADE): And then Top Cow developed a relationship with the superstar writer of HELLBLAZER, HULK, INHUMANS and PETER PARKER -- a man who had described WITCHBLADE as "utter crap" and confessed he was only induced to write the series because Top Cow agreed to publish his creator-owned material. Jenkins also came aboard THE DARKNESS.

While Jenkins' runs on WITCHBLADE and THE DARKNESS were filled with excellent issues, superb scripting and tremendous insight, he seemed to fade a way from both books in a strikingly short amount of time. On WITCHBLADE, Jenkins immediately tapped into the Witchblade having its own intelligence which would glory in the violence, savagery and death that Sara Pezzini investigated as a police detective. Jenkins crafted strong mysteries for Sara and created tension between Sara's police work and her use of the Witchblade. Keu Cha's artwork was crisp and expressive, as attractive as Turner's but with all the storytelling skills Turner lacked.

Notably, Jenkins' run on WITCHBLADE was, like Wohl and Z.'s run, still about a homicide detective with a mystical weapon. But it was a professional, readable, psychological and compelling series of issues instead of being composed of incoherent and masturbatory nonsense. The only real problem with Jenkins was that he didn't really define Sara Pezzini; while Wohl and Z.'s incompetent, ineffectual heroine was replaced by a capable police detective, Jenkins didn't give Sara a unique voice or a strong perspective.

The Disappearance: Perhaps it's something he would have developed over time -- except his run abruptly ended in mid-issue with #54 -- the second half of which was written by returning writer David Wohl, joined by new artist Francis Manipul. While Manipul was a magnificent artist with sharp storytelling and vivid images, Wohl's return was also the return of Wohl's incoherent, often incomprehensible stories. Everything Jenkins brought to the table was summarily discarded.

The Typist Supreme was back.

Jenkins has never elaborated on his brief run and sudden departure. Wohl said in an interview that Jenkins chose to leave. A perusal of Jenkins' bibliography reveals one creator-owned project with Top Cow -- THE AGENCY -- which lasted six issues. Given Jenkins' caustic opinion of WITCHBLADE and AGENCY's brief run, one might theorize that Jenkins was relieved of his unwelcome obligation to write WITCHBLADE.

[ireactions]

David Wohl Again: And now we were right back where we started, albeit with a more capable artist. Psychological exploration through character action was replaced with narrative captions lecturing the reader about the character. Peculiar murder mysteries were replaced by baffling, perpetually incomplete subplots that would never be resolved.

Death Pool: Perhaps the most damning indictment of Wohl and Top Cow editorial was Death Pool -- Wohl's closing story arc in which Top Cow declared that a character would be killed off and encouraged fans to vote on the victim. In doing so, Wohl and Top Cow made it clear how little they respected basic narrative craft or characterization when they'd be willing to execute a character not because the story called for it, but because it was decreed through the sheer randomness of a contest.

Some fill-in issues from writers Ian Edington and Troy Hickman made it clear that WITCHBLADE could be at least a decent criminal procedural comic with supernatural overtones if only Top Cow would hire a real writer.

Paul Jenkins and Dale Keown: In contrast to WITCHBLADE, Jenkins seemed to immediately find a voice for Jackie Estacado in THE DARKNESS -- he was a somewhat moral man in a murderous criminal profession who engages in a vengeful one-man war on the mob only to find himself enslaved, not only to criminals, but to the Darkness. Jenkins kept Jackie as an unrepentant murderer while insisting that his victims were always vile and indicating that it might be Jackie's fate to become no different from those he killed for money and power.

In far more serious stories than Ennis, Coney or Lobdell had attempted, Jenkins explored how the Darkness could merge with the darkness in Jackie's heart and the bleakness of his life as he finds himself pulled back into criminality where even his victories felt like defeats. Jenkins restored Jackie's criminal life, but made the Darkness a dark, psychological representation of Jackie's inner demons and his crime family. He had found the next chapter to Garth Ennis' twisted action comedy, albeit rejecting most of the comedy.

The Second Disappearance: But then, after about a year, Jenkins faded from THE DARKNESS as he had on WITCHBLADE. Once again, it's unclear why Jenkins vanished from a title to which he'd brought great publicity and skill -- or why the hell David Wohl had to come in after Jenkins left. Despite a strong set of issues from Ron Marz as well,THE DARKNESS seemed to go on an unplanned hiatus with a a one-shot or a crossover mini-series here and there.

Ron Marz: And then everything changed. Ron Marz was hired to write WITCHBLADE and his work from #80 - #150 is a true golden age where the title was finally acclaimed for its writing as well as its art. Marz began his story with Pezzini in a coma, using obvious narrative devices like an all-knowing Curator and his shop of magical artifacts to give new supporting character Detective Patrick Gleason a crash course in #1 - #79.

Identity: When Sara awoke from her coma, Marz began to redefine Sara, giving her an inner life, a series of emotional hurdles, some complex relationships and transformed Sara from being a body to a person. Wohl and Z. had lazily failed to give Sara a strong supporting cast; Marz explored how Sara was an isolationist who avoided social contact and how her infatuation with Nottingham had left her alone. Marz presented replaced Wohl's objectified, fetishistic portrayal Sara's sexuality by giving Sara a sex life.

The self-importance of the series was effectively punctured in a scene where Gleason asked Sara to use the Witchblade to retrieve a stuck can of soda from an unyielding vending machine. Marz also went ahead and gave the Witchblade an origin, something Wohl and Z. had inexplicably failed to ever even hint at.

Vision: Like Jenkins, Marz presented a version of WITCHBLADE that was still about a homicide detective with a mystical gauntlet investigating strange crimes, but with a skill and craft that eluded Wohl and Z. Marz's scripts created a deadly, frightening atmosphere in Sara's cases. All her monsters all represented some aspect of human nature from a child's sense of fight or flight to civilization having created a disposable culture.

But unlike Jenkins, Marz was able to turn Sara into a full-fledged, multi-layered character who was the perfect protagonist to carry the Witchblade, delving into paranormal crime with an investigator's structured, analytical perspective and using the Witchblade in various ways -- brute force, telepathy, flight, transmutation -- making it constantly exciting to see what the Witchblade would do next.

WITCHBLADE went from sub-literate masturbatory material to becoming an eerie supernatural criminal procedural fuelled with an earnest sexuality and a forceful sense of feminism. WITCHBLADE became one of the finest comics on the stands.

Phil Hester and THE DARKNESS: Hester came aboard THE DARKNESS with a bang, revealing Jackie to be far from his life in a crime family and now running a small country and engaged in the drug trade. While Hester built on Jenkins' use of the Darkness as a representation of Jackie's inner demons, Hester dove directly into the flaws of the Jackie Estacado character, eschewing Jenkins' view that Jackie was a fairly decent person in a corrupt and bloody profession.

Hester noted that Jackie was selfish, childish, unimaginative, violent, reacting instead of acting, consumed with shallow thrills of fighting. While Marz was subdued in rebuking his predecessors, Hester outright condemned Ennis, Coney, Lobdell and Jenkins in his storyline. The Darkness gained separate form from Jackie and declared Jackie to be pathetic, noting how limited Jackie's use of his powers had been, how Jackie had been given infinite power yet done little but become a better criminal.

Where Jenkins had used the Darkness to represent Jackie's fears and demons, Hester used the Darkness to represent Jackie's failures and weaknesses, and THE DARKNESS became the story of a man diseased by the monstrosity of his curse and his character flaws, searching for redemption and freedom.

Paradox: It's strange how THE DARKNESS and WITCHBLADE were both brilliant concepts, yet it took many years and lousy issues before they found writers who not only understood how to capitalize on the series but were willing to remain for long runs. It's also strange that WITCHBLADE could allow most writers to produce at least an adequate cop-with-superpowers story, yet the title languished with substandard writing pre-Marz while THE DARKNESS, a title that spent its pre-Hester run stretching out Garth Ennis' jokes, had consistently stronger writing.

[ireactions]

Finale: Both Marz and Hester decided to close out their runs on WITCHBLADE and THE DARKNESS at the conclusion of the ARTIFACTS crossover. While their departures were sad, they had clearly achieved everything they'd hoped for by the time their last issues saw print. THE DARKNESS had been revitalized; WITCHBLADE had arguably never been vital until Marz. Marz ended his run on WITCHBLADE at #150 and his 80 issues had turned the series into a strong platform for continued supernatural investigations with a terrific heroine. Hester wrote THE DARKNESS #65 - #100 and had reworked the series into an exploration of human frailty, ending his run with Jackie Estacado in full control of the Darkness. New writers were hired; Tim Seeley for WITCHBLADE, David Hine for THE DARKNESS. The future looked bright.

Crash and Burn: THE DARKNESS was cancelled 16 issues after Phil Hester left. WITCHBLADE was cancelled 35 issues after Ron Marz left. While it's pointless to lay blame on any one creative or administrative individual involved, something clearly went wrong.

Losing Touch: With WITCHBLADE, Tim Seeley wrote Sara Pezzini as a private investigator (no longer a police officer) scraping by in Chicago after the Marz run. Seeley had some brilliant concepts (magic users who siphon life from youth, a hipster Antichrist, a former Witchblade wielder who was now an alcoholic).

However, there were certain strengths of the Jenkins and Marz run that Seeley chose to move away from without replacing them with new strengths. Jenkins and Marz created a firm sense of reality to New York City, populating it with plausible people and locations with the Witchblade and other fantasy elements being surrounded by more grounded situations.

Seeley filled Sara Pezzini's new supporting cast and city with supernatural figures and individuals with even the one down to Earth supporting cast member being an antagonist. WITCHBLADE had generally kept a few toes in reality; Seeley took the book completely into fantasy and his fantasy was ultimately very distant and detached from anything resembling human experience. Seeley took stabs at making Sara relatable -- struggling for money, being harrassed by a police officer -- but these elements would disappear from the series for months at a time as Sara visited fairy town or fought and dated wizards.

WITCHBLADE was still a professional, enjoyable product, but it had lost the odd blend of procedural crime and fantasy and failed to create an equally strong platform. Furthermore, while Marz had used the Witchblade and Sara to express themes of feminism, sexuality, montrosity and other aspects of human nature, there seemed to be no deeper meaning to Seeley's work on the title.

Trapped in a Cycle: With THE DARKNESS, we had David Hine. While Hine developed the situation Hester had left behind -- Jackie in full control of the Darkness, Hine very quickly chose a route that eliminated almost every enjoyable aspect of THE DARKNESS under Hester, Jenkins, Coney and Ennis. Hine had Jackie give up the Darkness only for the Darkness to become a doppelganger of Jackie who then took over his life while Jackie was imprisoned in a basement.

Hester had once described the appeal of THE DARKNESS as an amoral character with astonishing powers engaged in horror-fantasy action but with strong psychological underpinnings. Hine's dark fairy tale, while well-crafted and sharply-scripted, removed both the fun action elements (absent since Jackie had cast out the Darkness) and the meaningful psychological elements (again, absent since Jackie had cast out the Darkness). Instead, the book shifted to disturbing sequences of the Darkness clone infiltrating Jackie's life and Jackie's daughter getting involved in mystical intrigue while the lead character languished.

Paradox: It's interesting that while Marz and Hester reimagined WITCHBLADE and THE DARKNESS significantly, they were still the same comics they'd been since #1 -- supernatural criminal procedural and action horror -- just with a different skillset behind the keyboard. In contrast, Tim Seeley's WITCHBLADE and David Hine's THE DARKNESS went the route of dark fairy tales, and in a way that alienated their books from the elements that had come before.

It's a difficult trap to escape; stick too closely to the previous template and you're just an imitator, veer too far from what came before and you're mismatched to the title. The sales of THE DARKNESS fell dramatically until Top Cow elected to end the series on a cliffhanger with #116 and do a massive crossover with WITCHBLADE and ARTIFACTS that would also be a series finale. This was to be a three-issue finale mini-series: DARKNESS FALLS.

Darkness Doesn't Fall: Despite WITCHBLADE and THE DARKNESS having stumbled, the two titles were still building tremendous intrigue with ARTIFACTS in marching towards a cataclysmic war between the Witchblade, the Darkness and the cast of ARTIFACTS. The war would break out in DARKNESS FALLS, to be written by David Hine and drawn by Stjepan Sejic. Except Sejic abruptly posted on Facebook that Top Cow had cancelled DARKNESS FALLS due to the low sales of THE DARKNESS' final issues.

The issues of ARTIFACTS and WITCHBLADE continued to indicate a shocking confrontation with the Darkness -- and then both books presented the aftermath of the war -- but the main event was completely missing, glimpsed only in a brief flashback where Sara had killed Jackie Estacado -- an event Top Cow deemed unworthy of full-fledged publication.

This failure to deliver a climax to a year of foreshadowing made Top Cow look unprofessional and absurd. It'd be as thought Marvel published all the tie-ins to AVENGERS VS. X-MEN but failed to print AVENGERS VS. X-MEN itself. The war ended with a whimper, having taken place offscreen.

Ron Marz 2.0: Mercifully, Ron Marz returned to WITCHBLADE during this ridiculous embarrassment and brought with him his flair and skillful storytelling. He quickly set up an effective status quo with Sara as the sheriff of a small town, restoring the criminal procedural element to Sara's stories and giving her a new partner who was a fairly grounded character. It was a good run, but unfortunately interrupted by Top Cow deciding to publish a truncated-to-two-issues of DARKNESS FALLS in the middle of one of Marz's storylines.

Darkness Falls Flat: Despite David Hine scripting this version of DARKNESS FALLS, it was clear that the delay and the shortened length did the story no favours. Published a year after it was meant to see print, this rushed storyline barely featured Jackie Estacado and offered no exploration of his psyche or his state of mind or what it meant to see him killed off at last.

Surely, the full three issues from Hine would have had all the depth and meaning needed to deepen the tale, but at two issues, Hine's script visibly struggles just to explain how Sara gets a weapon that can kill Jackie and destroy the darkness. It was anti-climactic, it was clumsy and it was far too late.

One would wish that THE DARKNESS had been cancelled a little earlier -- such as #100 with Hester's ending.

Silver Lining: Shortly after DARKNESS FALLS, the WITCHBLADE comic was cancelled at #185 and thankfully, Marz presented a strong, effective conclusion that served Sara in all the ways DARKNESS FALLS didn't serve Jackie. In a stunning script, #185 establishes that Sara has had the Witchblade for 20 years -- retroactively declaring the comic to have taken place in real-time even though the actual published issues seemed more like a floating timeline. Sara moved on from the Witchblade and the Witchblade moved on from her -- but as with THE DARKNESS, a stronger ending would have been the ARTIFACTS-era ending.

Cancellation is Always Hard: There are times when one despairs in reading comics to the end of their lifespan -- because the end of a serial fiction intended to continue indefinitely would suggest that something went horribly, horribly wrong that made it unfeasible to keep publishing the series.

In the case of WITCHBLADE and THE DARKNESS, it would appear that a shift in tone and the failure to print a much-hyped and foreshadowed crossover killed them both, in addition to the difficulties of following up on two visionary writers who had arguably brought the titles to their greatest heights and a natural point of closure that would make all subsequent installments seem like unwanted epilogues.

A Strong Vision: But in some ways, this re-read is also deeply inspiring, because THE DARKNESS and WITCHBLADE were two meandering, confused titles that suddenly gained a voice, a purpose, a direction and became meaningful titles with something worthwhile to say. And all it took was gaining writers who respected what the series could be and appreciated the core concept and had practical, effective methods to explore every ounce of potential within the characters and ideas.

When reading Phil Hester's issues of THE DARKNESS and Ron Marz's issues of WITCHBLADE, it's very clear that every comic needs creators like these. Not necessarily these specific writers, but writers who are deeply engaged with their characters and material and who really have something to say that they can only say with these specific people and situations.

[Dark-Flux]

/\ A very well thought out analysis. And unfortunately I cant disagree with it
Makes me yearn for a return to that golden age of Marz and Hester. The only real saving grace of Top Cow since those two left has been the works of Matt Hawkins on his creator owned stuff and Aphrodite.
But at least we have Switch now!

[Tayne Japal]

I'm quite enjoying the creator owned books Postal, The Tithe, Sunstone, and Symmetry and I hope Top Cow finds success through those. I think they still need to attract one or two more quality writers to launch creator owned books through them. Maybe we'll see Witchblade/Darkness relaunches by 2020.

[ireactions]

While I loved Marz and Hester's work on WITCHBLADE and THE DARKNESS, I do think that once they wanted to leave, they had to leave. Writers who have told the stories they want to tell and don't move on end up writing the ugly hackwork that David Wohl and Christina Z. churned out. It's a tough situation and while the Marz and Hester runs are superb, I got the sense for much of these titles' lifespans that Top Cow editorial didn't really know what to do with them. The pre-and-post Marz and Hester eras show tremendous indecision and a painful lack of vision for both books.

Another weird thing: David Hine wrote a DARKNESS mini series during the Hester run: THE FOUR HORSEMEN. Hine's mini series is a terrific take on the Ennis version of THE DARKNESS: crazy, bizarre supernatural action horror with a creepy sense of humour. But he (understandably) tried to do something different when following Hester.

I recently got around to reading THE DARKNESS: HOPE, a one-shot focused on Jackie Estacado's daughter -- and I have to say, this issue is a very nice series finale for THE DARKNESS. It's either an alternate continuity to the post DARKNESS #116 storyline where Jackie survived the events of DARKNESS FALLS or it takes place after Jackie was inevitably resurrected. Reading it made me feel a bit better about the failure of DARKNESS FALLS to give Jackie a resounding send-off; THE DARKNESS: HOPE contains precisely the right note of ambiguity and insight into Jackie for his final story. I'm glad Top Cow did this.

[juan678]

Nebezial in Twitter
2016, sunstone5 and death vigil2; 2017 ravine vol 3
first arc will be as it is, 7 issues and then after that about 200 page thick graphic novels,(extra big comic) XD
so... once switch first arc is done i'm quitting comics. never liked the format, publishing and soliciting always felt like hassle, instead

[juan678]

Magdalena New Serie by Tiny Howard y Christian Dibari San Diego Top Cow Panel

[juan678]

Tom Judge Judge global


Cyberforce webtoon was announced as was a new book featuring the character Tom Judge (“Rapture”) that will be scripted by Bleeding Cool’s own Dan Wickline. When approached for comment Dan stated that he will be working with “Rom, the artist I did two issue of Artifacts with (#36 and #37) which focused on Tom Judge. She was a winner of one of the Top Cow talent hunts and I am excited to work with her again. I plan on… taking Judge global. The Rapture, his artifact that allows him to shift into the big monstrosity is only one of its powers. There is another that doesn’t get used nearly as much.

[juan678]

Witchblade and Darkness
When asked about well known, but absent, property “The Darkness” Hawkins admitted that both it and the classic Witchblade are being worked on and will return but at this time they were not ready to announce anything. He followed this by stating that there would be further development on this project discussed at the next New York Comic Con.

[Paulie Blade]

Witchblade and Darkness
When asked about well known, but absent, property “The Darkness” Hawkins admitted that both it and the classic Witchblade are being worked on and will return but at this time they were not ready to announce anything. He followed this by stating that there would be further development on this project discussed at the next New York Comic Con.

Okay, I am excited. I was afraid they would be done with those characters for good. I wouldn't mind if they went with Hope as The Darkness and someone comepletely new as Witchblade.

[mrjinjin]

Magdalena New Serie by Tiny Howard y Christian Dibari San Diego Top Cow Panel

I can't wait for this. Any idea when? Also, I think it's a mini series.