IMAGE EXPO ANNOUNCEMENTS

AD: AFTER DEATH

Written by Scott Snyder, art by Jeff Lemire. Launching in November.

AD: After Death will be set in a near future where death has been cured and one man must come to grips with what comes next.

"AD will be the first long form work that I've illustrated which I haven't also written myself," said Lemire. "I wouldn't do that unless it was with a writer who I admired and trusted as much as I do Scott. I'm in a rare position in that one of the best writers in comics also happens to be one of my best friends. Scott and I have wanted to collaborate on a project for a long time, we've just been waiting for the right story and as soon as Scott told me about AD, I knew this was it. Combining grounded science fiction with a deep sense of humanity, AD is a book that will bring out the best in both of us as storytellers and also push us each into new territories. And I couldn't have a better partner to explore this new world with than Scott Snyder."

Snyder explained that AD: After Death is a story he'd been thinking about for a long time and is infused with many of his personal fears and fantasies regarding mortality. "Getting older, watching your kids grow too fast, some nights it just feels terrifying, how quickly it all goes," said Snyder. "So what if there were no death? What if it was curable? What if you could live many lives, take many paths, and never worry about running out of time? Never worry about saying goodbye to anyone, anything? These are the questions at the center of AD. They're questions Jeff and I have talked about it as fathers and friends and creators, and it's a book I feel we could only do together. Jeff is one of my favorite artists, and favorite people on the planet, and luckily, he's also the perfect person for this book in every way. I'm honored and thrilled he agreed to do it. It's going to be something special, and I can't wait for you all to see it."

BLACK ROAD

Written by Brian Wood, art by Garry Brown. Launching in September.

Set in Viking Age Norway, Black Road follows Magnus The Black, a fixer for the Christian Church who loses a Roman official to bandits on the infamous Black Road. Heading north to fix the problem and complete his contract, he uncovers a secret, something so big it threatens to change the balance of power in all of Europe. But with one foot in the world of the pagans and the other in that of the Church, who can trust where his loyalties lie?

"Black Road is a fast-paced thriller about identity, loyalty, betrayal, and tradecraft set in the early Viking age," said Wood. "Magnus The Black is a great character, a creaky fellow who suffers the boot of daily life but shows his steel where and when it counts. With Northlanders I went strictly historical, but with Black Road I can really let the action and humor rip, and I hope Garry and Lauren and I do a whole series of Magnus The Black thrillers set on that grim road north."

Brown added: "I've been wanting to draw a Viking book since I first read Northlanders. I love that era, and I think the Black Road characters and mythos are a great addition to the genre. I'm excited to get the book out there for people to see."

HEAVEN

Written by James Robinson, art by Philip Tan.

Heaven introduces readers to a distant future where the forces or man and alien combined have used religion to conquer this universe and are now ready, about to invade the next one -- Heaven itself. The "Good War" between man and angel will span galaxies and dimensions, building to a final conflict that threatens to negate all of reality itself. Along the way many players on both sides of the war will be featured; soldiers, spies and politicians all with different goals and agendas even as their two distinct and differing realities explode around them.

"I'm super excited to be undertaking this storyline, combining political satire along with amazing science-fiction worlds and all out space war between mankind's forces and Heaven's winged order," said Robinson. "It's thrilling to work with Philip as we craft this unique and bizarre tableau. I can't wait for you to see all we have planned."

I HATE FAIRYLAND

By Skottie Young and Jean-Francois Beaulieu. Launching in fall.

introducing Gertrude, a snarky, slightly deranged 40-year-old with a battle axe who happens to be trapped in a Shirley Temple-esque body and confined to the technicolor funworld that is Fairyland. I Hate Fairyland is a series full of morbid, dark humor and snark.

"I Hate Fairyland started from me reading countless children's books to my son and wondering ‘how do these kids in these fantasy worlds NOT want to kill every character they come across?' Or characters in kids shows that have to listen to talking maps sing songs consisting of only the word I'M THE MAP over and over and over," explained Young. "And from that, Gertrude was born. I've been driving my friends nuts for years with the different versions of this tale. Jason Howard probably wants to kill me with a giant battle axe for the number of hours I've made him listen to me brainstorm."

In the book, Riddling Slugs, Giants made of Pillows in the Quiltlands, and camping out on Ice Cream Island may seem like fun when you're eight years old. But to Gert, a forty-year-old trapped in a child's body, it just makes her want to take a giant battle axe and chop up anyone or thing that tries to keep her from finding the way home.

ISLAND AND 8HOUSE

By Emma Rios and Brandon Granham. Island is scheduled for June.

ISLAND, a collaboration spearheaded by Rios and Graham and featuring a murderer's row of the most interesting artists in comics, will be an oversized 72-page monthly magazine, scheduled for June 2015. "The idea is to make longer-form stories in each issue than you get in many anthologies," explained Graham. "The chapters will be 20 to 30 pages each. So it will be like a bundle of several comics in one book."

ISLAND #1 features a story named ID by Emma Rios, the return of Brandon Graham's Multiple Warheads, and Dagger Proof Mummy by Ludroe, along with a series of illustrations by Marian Churchland. The magazine will also have articles that blend prose and comics, fictional fashion, and mechanical designs for things that will never exist.

Emma Rios's ISLAND: ID explores the struggle of three different people who consider a 'body transplant' as a solution to their lives. A sci-fi tale as a vehicle to talk about identity, how to see or be seen, and about how deep serious matters can also become casual and frivolous. Do you like your body? Who does?

Graham will contribute ISLAND: MULTIPLE WARHEADS: GHOST TOWN, wherein Sexica and her werewolf boyfriend, Nikoli, push deeper into the mysteries of the wailing wall and the ancient wizard who hides within its cliffs.

8HOUSE is a shared universe to be built by different teams working in independent miniseries. 8HOUSE begins with two stories, MIRROR by Emma Rios and Hwei Lim and ARCLIGHT by Brandon Graham and Marian Churchland, as well as a slew of others.

Emma Rios's 8HOUSE: MIRROR is set in an isolated colony growing around a landed lab starship. In this safe haven, magicians and scientists of the House of Healers experiment with the satellite's local fauna to create man/animal "hybrids," obtaining insight to utilize in a desperate cosmic war and win political favor. But a growing community of hybrids want nothing to do with war or politics, and especially not with their patronizing human creators; only to live on their own, as they are.

Graham's 8HOUSE: ARCLIGHT will be a four-issue story following a noble woman who believes she is permanently trapped in an alien body. Until she hears of the alien being living in her body has returned, taking over the noble woman's old life.

KAPTARA

Written by Chip Zdarsky, art by Kagan McLeod.

KAPTARA follows Keith Kanga, a young bio-engineer flung across the universe onto a strange planet filled with weird danger. And if he doesn't get home then Earth--the place where YOU live--is DOOMED!

"I like to write stories," said Zdarsky, a man known mostly for art. "And I wanted to create a fantastic world to explore, filled with humor, action, and, you know what? Romance. Yeah, I like kissing. Sorry if that offends you, but I think kissing is pretty important and I hope to give it a shot one day.

"Kaptara is like the Planet of Dr. Moreau meets your childhood action figures. When I was a kid, I didn't just play with my He-Man figures, even though I most strongly identified with He-Man due to his muscles and dislike of shirts. I had Skeletor fighting Bat-Man; Optimus Prime kissing Crystar, Crystal Warrior; Cheetara wondering why my mommy bought me a Sectaur. There was no purity of universes with my playtime and Kaptara reflects that, as we've created an entire planet of action figures to play with."

LUDOCRATS

Written by Kieron Gillen, art by David Lafuente, Jim Rossignol and Ricardo Venancio.

"The Ludocrats is a decade-in-the-making opulent fantastical comedy," Gillen said. "This is a book which has hyperbole as its baseline, and considers the impossible as an aim only fitting for underachievers. It'll change your life. Primarily by letting you own a comic called The Ludocrats, where BARON OTTO VON SUBERTAN and PROFESSOR HADES ZERO-K are the last defenders of a ludicrous aristocracy against the insipid forces of normalisation."

MONSTRESS

Written by Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda.

Readers are transported into the early 1900s, where immense Leviathans roam the Earth, wielding unimaginable powers that many have long desired to exploit. When a teenage girl with a mysterious past forms a tenuous psychic bond with the most dangerous of all the Leviathans, she becomes the target of both human and otherworldly authorities who will stop at nothing to possess her--to control her, and control the Lord of the all the Leviathans. What they don't count on is the courage of the girl herself -- and the fact that she is slowly becoming more than human...

"Monstress is about an outsider, a young woman who belongs nowhere; it is about young women who fight, who tame, who are consumed--and who become monsters in their own right," Liu said. "I wanted to tell a story that encompasses all these things, and more. A story about women, young and old, picking up the pieces after surviving the horrors of war--and finding a home for themselves in a world that has otherwise exploited them. Set in an alternate history to our own, where immense Cloverfield-like monstrosities have conquered half the planet, and spanning the steppes of a shattered Asia, to the destroyed heart of a fallen Europe, Monstress is an epic adventure of frontiers and empires, and the rise of a young woman warrior, whose power may either doom or redeem the planet. It is such a privilege and honor to be working with Sana Takeda again. She's a brilliant artist, a dazzling visual storyteller, and to top it off she has the staggering ability to capture the souls of characters and worlds in all their luminous (and sometimes terrifying) beauty. I've been blown away by what we've created so far, and I know readers will be, too."

NO MERCY

By Alex de Campi, Carla Speed McNeil and Jenn Manley Lee. Launching in the spring.

It was just a trip, before college. Build schools in a Central American village; get to know some of the other freshmen. What could go wrong? After tragedy strikes, these once-privileged American teens must find their way home in a cruel landscape that at best doesn't like them, and at worst actively wants to kill them. No phones. No passports. No mercy.

"This book takes one of my all-time favourite genres -- teen drama -- and lenses it through the relentless eye of someone like Sam Peckinpah," said De Campi. "And Carla Speed McNeil draws the best teenagers on Earth: FACT. We have eight issues of constant reversals, total surprises, and Very Bad Things in store. Also, emoji. Lots and lots of emoji."

PAPER GIRLS

Written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Cliff Chiang.

Paper Girls is the story of four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls who experience something extraordinary one day.

"I'm overjoyed to finally launch a second series for Image, especially because I'm doing it with my old friend Cliff Chiang, who I last collaborated with on a Swamp Thing short story almost 15 years ago," said Vaughan. "Since then, Cliff has evolved into one of the best artists in comics, and I can't wait for people to see what he does with what we hope will be a constantly surprising series."

Chiang added: "I'm so excited the stars have finally aligned for Brian and I to work together again; we've been trying for years. The script is unlike anything I've drawn, and it's such a thrill to create these new characters together."

PHONOGRAM

Written by Kieron Gillen, art by Jamie McKelvie.

A new story arc that explores Emily Aster's origins.

Emily Aster's the hyper-acerbic cover-queen whose one liners are sharper than her fringe; she's been the one people love and love to quote. In this new chapter of the Phonogram series, readers discover how she got that way, and where it got her. She sold half her personality for power. This is what happens when that faustian deal catches up with her, and what that half her personality has been doing all these years.

"We're glad we finally get a chance to drop this. We've promised it forever and now we get to deliver," said Gillen. "That we got to write any Phonogram seems like a miracle. That we get to finish Phonogram seems like the English language needs to be expanded for something more unlikely and more wondrous than 'Miracle.' Phonogram's the reason anyone cares about what McKelvie and I have done. There's a reason for that. Bringing this most obsessional and personal of our pop-occultist books to the audience of 2015 is everything. It's about why we fell in love with art and what it did to us. It's about music, sure, but it's about how the things we love made us who we are. And we get to share it."

PLUTONA

Written by Jeff Lemire, art by Emi Lenox, colors by Jordie Bellaire.

Plutona follows the story of five suburban kids who make a shocking discovery while exploring the woods one day after school... the body of the world's greatest super hero, Polara, laying dead among the mud and grass.

"Plutona will use the superhero genre as the entry point into a dark journey that explores the nature of friendship and good and evil, all through the eyes of five children alone in the woods,"Lemire said.

Lenox added: “The children in Plutona face some really dark situations and will realize that not everything is going to be okay. Don't let the artwork fool you, this is not a children's book. This is the kind of story I've been wanting to create for quite some time and am excited to do so with such talented folks like Jeff and Jordie."

PRETTY DEADLY

Written by Kelly Sue DeConnick, art by Emma Rios.

In this second story arc of Pretty Deadly, the mantle of Death has fallen to a little girl, Sissy, who, along with her tattered band of reapers, is tasked with gathering souls whose time has come, or come and passed. An old woman has a dying request. Her son has been missing for more than a year, gone east, and from there to fight in the trenches overseas. She wants to see the boy one last time before she passes. And so Deathface Ginny is dispatched through clouds of mustard gas to find the young man, but between her and her quarry, atop bitter black mount of twenty hands, sits the Reaper of War himself.

REVENGEANCE

By Darwyn Cooke. Launching in June.

Revengeance is a psychological thriller with darkly humorous overtones. When Joe Malarky is faced with a criminal tragedy, he sets out to make things right on his own. What follows is Joe's odyssey through the underside of the city and the madness that seems to drive his crazy world.

Revengeance takes place in Toronto in the mid-eighties and is part crime story, part psychotronic melodrama, and a wholly fond look back at the author's hometown.

RUN LOVE KILL

By Eric Canete and Jon Tsuei, with by designer and color artist Leonardo Olea and Manu Fernandez providing CGI build models for the covers. Launching in the spring.

The story follows a wanted woman in hiding named Rain Oshiro. The narrative style will prominently feature two very different but significantly connected moments throughout her life: "The Past"--which will explore her history as an impressionable student, an abiding soldier, and a wanted fugitive; and "The Present"--which will show her as she is now and how she copes with (and runs away from) the decisions made in her past. At its core, the story is an exploration of choices--both good and bad. And now, how her choices have formed her into the person she has and will become. Set against a background of a futuristic world as only artist Canete can imagine, Rain has just 24 hours to escape a barricaded city while trying to evade a military force determined to either capture or kill her.

SAVIOR

Written by Todd McFarlan and Brian Holguin, art by Clayton Crain. Eight issues, launching in April.

A man appears with no background, no memory, and no place to call home. But this much is clear--this individual possesses certain powers, abilities that harken from the Old Testament... Could he possibly be this corrupted world's Savior in the flesh? Or will he be the world's undoing?

"It's an idea I've had for a while: that if you strip away the spandex and trappings of the traditional American superheroes, what's left is the conflict of the individual having to deal with the powers and questioning where is his place in society," said McFarlane. "Does that make him a danger or someone others look to in order to get them through the day? It's asking the question: 'What would happen if any one of us got hit by a bolt of lightning and what if we were gifted with powers we didn't know how to control? What would that mean to us?'"

SONS OF THE DEVIL

Written by Brian Buccellato, art by Toni Infante.

Sons of the Devil is a dark look at a blue collar 25-year-old orphan who learns he is the son of a cult leader. Like True Detective and The Following, Sons of the Devil is an exploration into the dark side of human psychology. It's a grounded take on cults that balances the real world with the supernatural.

"Sons of the Devil is a dark story about cults," Buccellato said. "It's got murder, sacrifice and the sorts of things you would expect from the title. But at its heart, it's a story about family -- and specifically the idea that while you can't choose your biology, you can choose who makes up your own inner circle. Ultimately, you can choose your family."

STARVE

Written by Brian Wood, art by Danijel Zezelj and Dave Stewart.

Starve is set in a world where chefs are practically royalty, and access to them is the ultimate status symbol. Chef Gavin Cruikshank, back from self-imposed exile, finds his little foodie television program "Starve" transformed into a gonzo arena sport where chefs slice and dice rare and endangered species for their super-rich patrons. Since his personal life is as much a shambles as his professional career, Chef Cruikshank works to repair his relationship with his grown daughter while dismantling the monstrosity that Starve has become.

"At this intersection of food culture and social awareness is the famous but battered Chef Gavin Cruikshank, a man out of his time and out of his element who thinks his personal redemption is to be found in the hardcore cooking arenas of Starve," said Wood. "But it's his reintroduction to his now-grown daughter Angie that proves to be the truest test. This has been a project I've wanted to do for years, but only by bringing on Danijel Zezelj and Dave Stewart as collaborators and co-owners has it gelled and made any sense. This book works on multiple levels, as a fast-paced satire of televised cooking shows to a heartfelt examination of creativity, ownership, and parenthood."

TADAIMA

Writer and art by Emi Lenox.

The graphic novel takes readers along on her personal journey back to Japan in a touching and in-depth look at Japanese roots and cultural influences.

Throughout childhood, Emi visited her Grandmother in Japan frequently. But through the years of high school and after, she hadn't been back in nearly twelve years. Sadly, within those twelve years, both her Japanese grandparents passed away. Tadaima is a travelogue documenting a trip back to Japan with her mother for a memorial service to renew the sobota, a wooden grave marker, at her grandparents' tomb in Fukushima. Touching on Japanese spirituality and cultural differences, Tadaima is more than a book about landmarks and foreign cuisine. It's about family.

"Creating autobiographical comics is the same as writing in a journal for me," said Lenox. "There are experiences that I want to remember and I've found drawing them out is much easier for me than writing. This trip to Japan was very meaningful and I wanted to preserve it. What better way is there than making a comic?"

WE STAND ON GUARD

Written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Steve Skroce. Launching in summer.

We Stand on Guard is an action-packed, military thriller set in the 22nd century. The series follows a heroic band of Canadian civilians-turned-freedom fighters who take up arms against a violent invasion of their country by a technologically superior nation: the United States of America.

"I've had some of my best creative experiences collaborating with Canadian artists," said Vaughan. "So I'm particularly excited to finally get to work with the legendary Steve Skroce, who makes his triumphant return to comics with this new mini-series, which Steve and I hope will be the first of many new stories we create together."

" Skroce added: "Great stories not only entertain but make you feel something, hear something, and see something. I've always felt that Brian's work does that. I'm super excited and grateful to be working with him and to be back creating something new for my favorite medium."