Brave New World - Morrison & Robertson announce Happy at Image Expo

Confirmation from this weekend's Image Expo that Grant Morrison's long-standing DC exclusive has either already ended or is just about to with the announcement of Happy; a new, seemingly Christmas-themed, creator owned mini from Morrison and Transmetropolitan and The Boys artist Darrick Robertson, due to be published by Image later this year.

A brief interview followed with iFanboy confirming that Morrison has more Image projects in the pipeline, alongside the Dinosaurs versus Aliens graphic novel due to be published by Dynamite/Liquid Comics in the summer. Morrison still has plenty of DC work already underway of course. There's the long-awaited Seaguy Eternal at Vertigo for a start, and the conclusion of his Batman mega-epic with the 12 issue Batman Incorporated volume 2, the first issue of which is due to ship in May. Given the implications of todays announcement though, its difficult to imagine Morrison staying on the still just-okay Action Comics for longer than the originally planned 15 or 16 issues, despite it picking up over the last couple of months (annotations soon, honest guv...).

In other news, thanks to Grant Morrison's Twitter feed there's a sneak peek at some Dinosaurs versus Aliens concept art at Heavy Action, ahead of the Free Comic Book Day preview due in May. And I don't think I ever mentioned this monster - 1536 pages of Invisibles goodness in one gigantic hardcover tome. It's due to ship in the summer so you should have time for one last re-read before the Mayan Apocalypse in December... Or you could get a headstart alongside Radio Free Barbelith, a new Invisibles reading group who flickered into life at the beginning of the year.

Elsewhere on the internet, The Mindless Ones' amypoodle made a welcome return to annocommentate Leviathan Strikes, with Illogical Volume following up with a piece on 'Medicine Soldiers' from Batman Incorporated #7, whilst David Uzumeri, the original Batmannotator, also started catching up after a long break. And with all the Leviathan Strikes annotating going on, it was very good of Chris Burnham to chime in on Twitter and point out all the stuff we'd missed. The annotations here have been updated to include Chris's comments.

And finally, after the endless toil of trawling ebay everyday for hundreds of years, I managed to get a 'used' copy of Verotika #1, the last Grant Morrison comic I needed to "complete" my "collection", though its a safe bet he didn't write it being as it is an adaptation of The Braille Encyclopedia, one of Morrison's racy short stories from the Hot Blood anthologies. There's still tons of reprints, variants, fanzines, interviews, all sorts of stuff really, that I don't have, but as far as 'original' comic books go, that's it now. Thanks to everybody who's helped me get here. Especially the guy who I bought that copy of Skin Two off who now sends me an email listing of... specialist magazines every month.

Just time for the customary begging request, when stuff I'll never own is announced as being given away only to 33rd degree Anti-Masons or some such; A gold variant of Morrison and Morales' Action Comics #1 and a preview of Dinosaurs versus Aliens are both included in the Oscars-esque booty bag handed over to retailers attending Diamond's Retailer Summit on the eve of the C2E2 convention. If anyone should happen to get spare copies, you know where to find me...