Preview: Image Comics Summer 2020

While things have been slowing down or canceled due to current conditions, it’s always good news when our favorite industries are able to continue or get back into the swing things. This summer Image has announced several new titles that will be available via retailers and online platforms. These titles include: ‘A Man Among Ye’, ‘Bliss’, ‘Chu’, ‘OUTER DARKNESS/CHEW TRADE’, ‘Big Girls’, and ‘Savage Dragon’ #250.

1.      Set during the waning days of piracy and the best pirates were women, writer Stephanie Phillips (Butcher of Paris, Descendent) and artist Craig Cermak (Red Team, Voltron) bring to life the tale of Anne Bonny and Mary Read as they hoist the skull and crossbones, draw cutlasses, and seek a treasure that will make them legends. In an era when sailing with women was thought to be bad luck, Anne and Mary might just be the only people capable of saving the pirate way of life. Writer Stephanie Phillips and artist Craig Cermak invite readers aboard a high-seas adventure in a swashbuckling new series from Top Cow—A Man Among Ye—hitting comic shops this May.

“I've always wanted the chance to work with Craig, and I think this was the perfect opportunity. Craig's linework and storytelling are just phenomenal”. I hope that readers really have fun with the story. This is an adventure with a lot of heart, and we look forward to sharing that journey with readers.” -Phillips

A Man Among Ye #1 is available at comic book shops since Wednesday, May 13 and

will also be available for purchase across many digital platforms, including the official Image Comics iOS app, Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, comiXology, and Google Play.

2.      Award winning playwright and bestselling comics writer Sean Lewis (Coyotes, Thumbs) reteams with fan favorite Coyotes artist Caitlin Yarsky for a dark urban fantasy maxi-series titled Bliss. It will consist of two story arcs and launch from Image Comics this June.  

In this upcoming series, there's a drug called Bliss wiping away memories in Feral City. A good-hearted young man—overwhelmed by a deathly sick child and distraught wife—makes a deal to become the personal hitman to three gods, killing those in their way and sending memories down the river of Oblivion in exchange for his family’s well-being. 

“I grew up seeing people getting addicted to things: drugs, success, sex... it always seemed to be about forgetting deeper pain. I spent some of my life trying to forget my dad through these means, now that I'm a dad it made me wonder: how could that cycle break? And what happens to all these memories we push away? What if the Goddess Lethe was real? What if she is who we answered to?” -Lewis

Yarsky added: “As time passes and we become more burdened with memories of our past mistakes and misfortunes, we often turn to self destructive coping mechanisms. Anything to turn off the din of guilt and regret. But in the process of trying to drown it all out, we create monsters that eat away at us until there is nothing left. To me, Bliss is about what happens when we pull ourselves out of the wreckage. It’s about finding redemption through self-actualization and love.”

Best described as Breaking Bad meets Neil Gaiman's American Gods, Bliss is the perfect new addiction for fans of Gaiman’s Sandman and Dan Watters and Dani’s Coffin Bound.

Bliss #1 will be available at comic book shops on Wednesday, June 24. 

3.      Fans of the New York Times bestselling, multiple Eisner Award winning, beloved humor/crime comic Chew by John Layman and Rob Guillory will be served an all-new spinoff series from Layman, and with art by Dan Boultwood, in the forthcoming Chu from Image Comics. For fans hungry for more, Skybound’s popular Outer Darkness/Chew crossover will be collected into trade paperback and available in July.

New spinoff series Chu promises to be a delectable cat-and-mouse story and will stand on its own for new readers, but delight longtime fans of the Chew universe. Chew’s Tony Chu is a cibopath who is able to get psychic impressions from what he eats while Chu’s Saffron Chu is a cibopars who is able to learn secrets from whomever she eats with. Tony is a cop. Saffron is a criminal. They are brother and sister, and they are on a collision course. Fans won’t want to miss out on this felonious new food noir about cops, crooks, cooks, and clairvoyants.

“After more than 60 issues of Chew, it was never a matter of “if” I would return to the world Rob Guillory and I created, but when. I needed a break after the book ended, but it wasn’t too long after that I started missing the characters and the world, and had the itch to return. It was something I approached cautiously because, while Chew was a complete story, I wanted to return to it in such a way it would be new and say something different, and it took a while to find the right angle. Outer Darkness/Chew was a step in that direction, as well as coda, a flower on the grave that was the story of Tony Chu. Chu is a different take on the Chu family and the Chew-universe, and in many ways it is a mirror, the flip side. I’m confident readers of Chew will enjoy it, but it’s also something totally new, the story of Saffron Chu, not Tony Chu. She was completely absent from Chew, and this first story arc will tell the story of why that is.” -Layman

The highly anticipated Outer Darkness/Chew #1 crossover has sold out at the distributer level and Image/Skybound has fast-tracked a second printing (helping?) to combat the fandom hungry pains. Tony Chu is a modern-day cop who gets psychic impressions from what he eats. Joshua Rigg is a 28th-century starship captain who flies through an outer space filled with demons, monsters, and ghosts. Sounds like a perfect recipe for a comic book crossover, don’t it? Join the fun with Outer Darkness/Chew #1.

Chu #1 will be available at comic book shops on Wednesday, June 17 & available for purchase across many digital platforms, including the official Image Comics iOS app, Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, comiXology, and Google Play.

Outer Darkness/Chew will be available in trade paperback on Wednesday, July 15 and at bookstores on Tuesday, July 21. It can be pre-ordered at your local comic book shops on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, IndieBound, and Indigo. 

4.      "Big Girls is next-level science fiction energy from one of the great powerhouses of American comics." —Warren Ellis

Critically acclaimed artist Jason Howard (Trees) takes full creative control as the writer and artist of the forthcoming action series Big Girls. This new ongoing comic book series will launch from Image Comics in August.

When men become giant monsters hellbent on destroying the world, only girls can stop them…Big Girls! Meet Ember, she writes poetry, loves to read, and she’s a 300-foot-tall full-time monster killer! She and the other Big Girls are all that stand in the way of our world’s complete annihilation! Featuring the fast-paced action—similar to such films as John Wick and series like Paper Girls—and the bigger than life characters of Godzilla and Pacific Rim, this series is set to be a Summer hit readers won’t want to miss.

In an exclusive scoop on the Big Girls announcement with The Hollywood Reporter, Howard said of the series: “[this is] the perfect comic for both the dynamic sci-fi I like to draw and for my writer side to examine questions of power, inequality and the complexity of growing up."

Big Girls #1 will be available at comic book shops on Wednesday, August 12.

5.      Legendary artists Walt Simonson (Thor), Frank Cho (Liberty Meadows), and Ryan Ottley (Invincible) join Rob Liefeld (Deadpool) and Skottie Young (Middlewest, I Hate Fairyland) in contributing to the eye-popping covers of the milestone Savage Dragon #250 issue by Image Comics partner and CFO Erik Larsen. This record breaking issue is set to release from Image Comics in July.

For 28 years, Erik Larsen has chronicled the lives and times of the Dragon and his extended family in one of comics’ only series set in real time. This monumental oversized milestone issue is a sweeping culmination that sets the stage for the next phase of comics’ most uncompromising series with its most shocking story yet!

Forces have conspired against Malcolm Dragon and his family, but is this a turning point or…THE END?! Find out as Savage Dragon becomes the second original Image title to reach its 250th issue and begins the countdown to #300.

Savage Dragon #250 will be available at comic book shops on Wednesday, July 15.

Savage Dragon #250 cover A by Erik Larsen 

Savage Dragon #250 cover B by Frank Cho 

Savage Dragon #250 cover C by Rob Liefeld 

Savage Dragon #250 cover D by Walt Simonson

Savage Dragon #250 cover E by Skottie Young

Savage Dragon #250 cover F Blank Sketch variant 

Savage Dragon #250 cover G drawn by Erik Larsen, inked by Ryan Ottley

Savage Dragon #250 will also be available for purchase across many digital platforms, including the official Image Comics iOS app, Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, comiXology, and Google Play.