ECCC 2018: Discover Yours With Boom Studios Panel Talks Current And New Titles
by Gary Catig
Boom Studios has a wide variety of comic books throughout their different imprints. At their panel at Emerald City Comic Con on Saturday, they had a full house of creators to discuss some of their current titles and even had a few surprise announcements.
Newcomer, Lisa Dubois, is the artist for Rugrats. She would describe her series as a charming story about babies who use their imagination to navigate the adult world. People can watch how she learned to draw and how her style evolved throughout each issue. Since it’s her first series, she had to do a lot of learning on the fly.
Josh Trujillo and Cara McGee spoke of their title, Dodge City. The series is a sports comedy where kids gain confidence by working together. McGee was happy that she was creating comics she wanted when she was a younger age. While starting in the industry, Trujillo was told to hide his sexuality and to change his last name as both might affect his ability to gain work. Due to this experience, he was very proud to have an ensemble and diverse cast for Dodge City.
Royden Lepp likes a good mystery so he purposely describes his creator owned work, Rust, vaguely when asked. Though he does say it involves family, loss, and giant robot battles. It is a very personal story to Lepp and he feels it reads different from other books.
Ryan Ferrier discussed two of his titles from Boom. As the writer of Rocko’s Modern Life he considers it a coming of age story after the coming of age story, but the characters never actually grow up. He also expressed his excitement for what’s coming in his other series, Kong on the Planet of the Apes. The upcoming issues will tie into the movies and bridge the gap between the first and second film.
Grass Kings, written by Matt Kindt, is about people who want to live off the grid to build their own society and live by their own rules. Unfortunately, the next town over doesn’t like that and have a conflict with them. There is also a murder mystery involved.
Sean Rubin created a hybrid of comics and picture books with his Bolivar. It is a love letter to New York City and is an all-ages adventure.
Kyle Higgins is the writer of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. He shed some light on the upcoming Shattered Grid event, the first for the series. The story explores an alternate dimension where Tommy was still a bad guy and became the villain Lord Drakkon. He eventually conquered his world and is out to kill all the Power Rangers, regardless of time or dimension. He enjoys how this event will serve as a platform for other creators in the Power Rangers line to feed into the narrative.
Talk of the Power Rangers lead to one of the announcements to the panel. There will be a 25th Anniversary Special that will be released in June to mark 25 years since the TV show premiered. Some contributors to the comic are Magdalene Visaggio, Joe Quinones, Sina Grace, and Marcus To. The cover will be drawn by Steve Morris and have variants by Quinones and Rahzzah.
The second announcement was about their new title, Regular Show: 25 Years Later written by Christopher Hastings and illustrated by Anna Johnstone.
The final announcement of the panel was related to the next arc in the popular WWE series. After following the Shield and the Women’s Evolution, wrestlers Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn will have a new arc entitled Fight Forever. The story will pick up with issue #18 coming out in June and will see the duo fighting the injustices of the Smackdown higher ups. It will be written by Dennis Hopeless with art by Serg Acuña.
