Join THE MIDNIGHT, one of the world’s top synthwave bands, comprised of Tyler Lyle and Tim McEwan, on an electrifying and original sci-fi adventure inspired by the poetic storytelling and the neon-soaked aesthetics of their music. Jason has spent his life running from his problems, but now he and his childhood sweetheart are on the precipice of parenthood, and he’s struggling with the loss of his adolescence. Then he re-discovers his favorite old video game, THE MIDNIGHT, a nostalgic 1980s fantasy adventure about a helmeted hero who travels to a cyberpunk world to save the people from eternal darkness. Seeking to repair his broken game, Jason ends up at a mysterious arcade in an abandoned 1980s mall, where he plays the old arcade game of The Midnight and suddenly he’s transported to… …a post-apocalyptic Neverland in the year 2085. A world of perpetual night where time stands still. A final bastion of humanity in a glistening futuristic city. And a shocking reveal – they know him as the hero who once vanquished the shadow monsters, and they believe he’s returned to his true reality to do it again. More surprising, his wife is here, but only with a memory of Jason as this world’s hero. As this lost boy tries to embrace his new hero powers, with the help of his true love and her cyberpunk warriors, he must face the responsibility of protecting an entire world from danger and discover which world he truly belongs to. For The Midnight fans and newcomers, created by rising comics writer, Zack Kaplan (Break Out, Mindset), artist Stephen Thompson (Star Trek: Year Five-Book 1, Star Trek: Year Five-Book 2), artist Jahnoy Lindsay (Superboy: Man of Tomorrow) and The Midnight, follow your dreams to a visually stunning cyberpunk metropolis, find love in the darkness, defeat shadow monsters and explore what happens when we hide in our fantasies. Are we escaping life’s monsters or simply escaping ourselves? The answers lie in the Midnight Graphic Novel.
ORDER NOW FOR AN OCTOBER 1, 2024, SHIP DATE >> RELATED: Comics Collections | Science Fiction YA The movie was a dud... but that doesn't mean they isn't some life still left in the Borderlands... at least in graphic novel form. If you've played Borderlands 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, or Borderlands 3, you're probably familiar with Tiny Tina, the emotionally unstable and morally ambiguous fourteen-year-old who loves to make things go BOOM! When not blowing shit up, Tina also enjoys a lively game of Bunkers and Badasses, Pandora's equivalent to Dungeons & Dragons. In this hilarious graphic novel set in the Borderlands universe, Tiny Tina is running a new game of Bunkers & Badasses with friends Frette, Valentine, and Hammerlock playing as Skrrmish the Bogbarian, Crasher the Stabbomancer, and Blasteen the Deadshot! With Tina calling the shots in her wild, colorful world, the three heroes set off to hunt a bounty on the giant Hilly the Kid!
PREORDER FOR A FEBRUARY 25, 2025, SHIP DATE >> I got my first taste of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman in the late 1970s when Sandy Frank Entertainment imported the Japanese anime to the U.S. in a version known as Battle of the Planets (BOTP). The show, along with Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, was a staple of my childhood science fiction diet.
While Sandy Frank sapped the original 1972 anime of its edge, BOTP worked well for American audiences and was a huge overnight success. As an eleven-year old, I was fascinated by the show even though the storylines seemed choppy, confusing or contradictory. What I didn't know at the time was that the eighty-five BOTP episodes were cobbled together from 105 Gatchaman episodes... and nothing ran in the order in which it was created. Since Gatchaman was a serial, with interlocking storylines and recurring characters, there were tremendous gaps in continuity when it became BOTP. To gloss over these plot holes, Sandy Frank inserted some crudely animated segments with a robotic character called 7-Zark-7, who looked a little like R2-D2's inbred cousin. 7-Zark-7 provided both connecting exposition and comedic relief as the original anime was very serious and sometimes downright grim. To be fair, I don't know that the original show would've have been shown in the U.S. in the late 70s without these alterations. For example, the second episode of Gatchaman, entitled "Demonic Aircraft Carrier," was retooled into a BOTP episode called "Rescue the Astronauts." The story starts with an Apollo-era space module splashing down in the ocean. It is quickly captured by Galactor (in BOTP, these are the evil minions of the truly evil Zoltar from the planet Spectra) and taken to an underwater base. The Galactor commander is after the "Earth Compact System," which contains the locations of valuable natural resources including uranium. Uranium and nuclear power are a recurring theme in Gatchaman as they are in lots of Japanese science fiction. No one suffered more than the Japanese at the dawn of the nuclear age, and the atom is dually-represented as a source of unlimited energy and horrible destruction. This also underscores Gatchaman's emphasis on serious world issues such as dwindling natural resources, protecting the environment, loss, war, violence, and tyranny. In BOTP, almost all of these themes are either gone or heavily diluted. For this particular episode, Sandy Frank's people altered the plot into a simple rescue mission where the astronauts have been abducted because they have telemetry about Zoltar's hidden bases. But there's a problem with the Gatchaman source material... The astronauts don't survive. In fact, their bodies are displayed before Ken (renamed Mark in BOTP), who thinks they are still alive and surrenders in order to secure their release. Once Ken is in custody, the Galactor thugs let the bodies fall to the floor. "Even corpses are useful sometimes," the Galactor Commander chuckles. Ken recoils and mutters, "How awful..." You said it, Ken. But then again, later in this same episode, you savagely beat the Commander until his tells you the location of Earth Compact System... So, you know, don't be a total hypocrite. Can you imagine any of that running on a children's show in America in 1978? Because BOTP had to be kid-friendly, the astronauts also had to survive. The dialogue is reworked. We never see any dead bodies. We never see an actual rescue but Mark later informs the team that the astronauts are recovering in sick bay. Now the Science Ninja Team is back in comic book form from Mad Cave Studios. Gatchaman was reintroduced to American audiences during Free Comic Book Day this past May with an ongoing core series, a series of one-shots focusing on solo missions, and a miniseries focusing on villains. Learn more about this series here. OTHER GATCHAMAN GOODS: Funko Pops: Ken Washio | Joe Asakura | Jun Frank Herbert's Dune was originally published six decades ago, but this timeless science fiction series continues to enthrall and amaze new fans. This epic science-fiction masterpiece is set in the far future amidst a sprawling feudal interstellar society. It tells the story of Paul Atreides as he and his family accept control of the desert planet Arrakis only to be brutally betrayed and drawn into an interstellar war.
Now the story is being transformed into a graphic novel series, with the third book, The Prophet, released in July 2024. Dune: Graphic Novel: Book 1 Dune: Graphic Novel: Book 2, Muad'dib Dune: Graphic Novel: Book 3, The Prophet RELATED: Science Fiction YA The story of a nameless father and son trying to survive with their humanity intact in a postapocalyptic wasteland where Earth's natural resources have been diminished, and some survivors are left to raise others for meat, The Road is one of Cormac McCarthy's bleakest and most prescient novels. See below for info on the novel. This first official graphic novel adaptation of McCarthy's work is illustrated by acclaimed French cartoonist Manu Larcenet, who ably transforms the world depicted by McCarthy's spare and brutal prose into stark ink drawings that add an additional layer to this haunting tale of family love and human perseverance. Cormac McCarthy personally approved the making of this book before his death, and the adaptation bears the approval of the McCarthy estate. PREORDER THE GRAPHIC NOVEL FOR A SEPTEMBER 17, 2024, RELEASE >>
I just got through watching the entire Mad Max movie series for about the fifth time... so I guess I'm in the mood for crazy vehicles packed with weapons and driven by lunatics hauling ass across a desert landscape! Fortunately, Convoy by Kevan Stevens and Jef is a very satisfying way to scratch that post-apocalyptic itch. It’s 2074, and the Earth is an abused ruin, a landscape of desolation thanks to mankind’s inability to live in moderation. Pockets of makeshift civilization are spread out like islands in a sea of wasted misery, a distance that only the craziest and most desperate madmen dare to traverse. Alex and Fonzie are two such individuals, and they are about to take the contract of their lives leading a convoy of misfits and mercenaries on a mission to deliver a cargo of precious medicine across the desolate plain. They’ll face lawless hordes and competing agents, and their fleet will winnow before they reach their destination, but none of those opponents will be prepared for Alex and her wily ways…
Buckle up for an explosive tale of hard-boiled anti-heroes riding the razor’s edge between Death and Destiny… A pulse-pounding one-two punch full of criminal behavior and karmic justice from two of the most genre-pushing comic creators: Kevan Stevens and Jef! PURCHASE RELATED: Comics Collections | Dystopian YA | Science Fiction YA Earthdivers is a graphic novel series written by Stephen Graham Jones that takes a horrific, dark-fantasy look at some alternate realities on the North American continent. The Butterfly Effect wrecks havoc on time and space when five Indigenous outcasts discover of a time portal in a hidden cave and set out to fix the past to save the future. Storylines cover a plot to kill Christopher Columbus, to battling vicious Ice Age mega-fauna, to hijacking the United States Declaration of Independence. RELATED: Comics Collections | Fantasy YA | Science Fiction YA |
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