Hey everyone! Happy Monday!

We’re two weeks removed from C2E2 and I think I’m finally recovering. As usual, this was an amazing show—my favorite convention every year—filled with tons of awesome experiences, friends, pizza, and announcements.

A big shoutout to everyone who came to our signings, our panel and our meetup (!) at The Staley, shoutout to Massive-Verse friend and Staley owner, Israel Idonije.

But speaking of our panel, we revealed a number of things for the first time on stage. How about we run through a few of them now?

First out of the gate, we’ve got a gorgeous new cover from Marcelo for our next volume of Radiant Black, collecting the current arc. When we all went to India at the end of February, one of the funny things that came up at breakfast was how much Eduardo hated drawing buildings and how much Marcelo loved them. I feel like Marcelo went God mode on this one.

Back in issue 18, Stefano Simeone joined us for a very special issue of Radiant Black. This was the issue that first delved into the origins of Radiant Yellow and featured an unconventional structure—we explored four eras of Wendell George’s life all at once, each era separated by 18 years.

Now, exactly 18 issues later, Stefano is joining us again for what is—again—a special issue of the book.

At the end of the Catalyst War, the Yellow Radiant disappeared. Time is not a straight line.

Superstar artist STEFANO SIMEONE (SUPERMASSIVE, The Last Days of Black Hammer) returns to RADIANT BLACK for THE LONG LIFE OF RADIANT YELLOW!

I can’t tell you much more than that but if you take a look at the main cover, you’ll start to get a sense of who our new Radiant Yellow is. Meet Nance.

And boy does she have a story for you.

Radiant Black: The Audiobook

Wrapping up all things Radiant Black for the moment, we closed his section of the panel with a special sneak peek listen at a sequence from the upcoming audiobook!

I’m including that preview here with the caveat that this is purely just dialogue between Nathan and Mr. Burnett— there’s no SFX, music, narration, mixing etc yet.

That said… both Loren Lester and Rider Strong killed it. Here, give a listen for yourself!

Rogue Sun

With Noxious's true intentions revealed, Dylan and Aurie must choose between their mentors and their morals if they have any chance of saving an unexpected victim in the war for the mantle of Rogue Sun.

We also debuted Stefano’s amazing cover for Rogue Sun #29, wrapping up the arc! How cool is this?

And speaking of Rogue Sun, tonight we’re going live on youtube to take you behind the scenes on issues 25 and 26 as well as a sneak preview of Radiant Black’s upcoming side of the crossover. Here’s a link!

Our last announcement of the panel was… a bit outside the box. But, you’re reading all of that right— this August, the creative team behind Inferno Girl Red, Mat Groom, Erica D’Urso, Igor Monti, Becca Carey and myself, plus Dan Mora (!!), are taking a big swing on a bold new Batman.

Mat and I are co-writing, Erica and Igor are on art, Becca on letters and Dan will is handling character designs, main covers and he’ll be drawing each issue’s backup story.

So how about those character designs?!

This project is a perfect example of art driving story. Immortal Legend Batman started over five years ago when Mat and I first saw Dan’s sketches for Tokusatsu Batman. He’d been posting new pieces every day, interpreting the Bat family though a Kamen Rider and Sentai lens. At a certain point, I messaged Mat and flagged that we should just work with Dan on a pitch—the designs were too cool to not have a story.

I texted Dan, he was into it, we went to work and— in no short time— had a deck submitted to DC.

We started talking to editorial and Black Label about the project, very early exploratory discussions…

…just as DC went through a round of wide layoffs. Everyone we were working with unfortunately lost their jobs and DC pulled back. It was a huge moment in the comics industry and we lost a lot of good people to the turnover, a lot of institutional knowledge.

Last year, nearly five years later, I ran into Matt Levine. Matt had been my associate editor on Power Rangers and now was running the Elseworlds books at DC. What started as lunch turned into a four hour meeting about all sorts of crazy things including this crazy Tokusatsu Batman concept we were all still keen on…

Many centuries from now, humanity becomes a galactic civilization with capital megacities on multiple planets and smaller outposts on dozens more. To conquer the vast distances between solar systems, humanity tapped into dark matter to bend space-time around spacecraft, from hulking colony vessels to one-man mech suits. In accessing this dark power, humanity broke the barrier between their universe and their universe’s shadow. This resulted in the creation of “Shadows”: mindless, soulless apparitions craving nothing but violence and destruction. Due to the actions of these Shadow creatures, newly colonized worlds were brought to the brink of collapse. But three warriors found a way to access the energy that bound their universe to the shadow universe, becoming “immortal legends”: Immortal Legend Batman, Immortal Legend Robin and Immortal Legend Nightwing

This is a six issue series featuring 32 pages of story every issue. It’s a big, bold swing on Batman through a toku, sci-fi and western lens. It’s different, it subverts the mythos, and—I hope—it’s going to be Massively entertaining.

Oh, and as if that weren’t all cool enough, we’re launching issue 1 with this sick as hell 1:25 cover by Matt Taylor.

The Reel World

Last night, I showed my partner Reservoir Dogs for the first time courtesy of Lionsgate Limited’s new Ultra HD steelbook release.

The film—obviously—is amazing, packed with energy and bold choices, and the HDR presentation is done really well. Nice grain retention!

Okay, that’s going to do it for me! Back to the grind! See you tonight!

Stay Radiant!

Kyle