[BALTIMORE COMIC CON:] TOP COW PANEL

September 27, 2008 on 9:26 pm | In Baltimore Comic-Con | No Comments

Publisher Filip Sablik introduced the panelists Nelson Blake II, Ron Marz—announced at Baltimore now exclusive at Top Cow for three years—and Rob Levin.

“I love working with these guys,” said Marz of his exclusive contract. “Playing in this universe is a lot more freeing than one of the big two superhero universes where things are lot more controlled. It just seemed to make sense to make it a permanent arrangement.”

The panel kicked off with the “Ron Marz corner of the Universe.” They started with talking about Dragon Prince—a new series by Marz and Lee Moder—and showed some preview pages of issue #2. They also showed a variant cover by Mike Oeming and a Baltimore Comic-Con variant by David Finch.
“It’s a little bit different for me and little bit different from Top Cow in that it’s an all ages book,” said Marz. “This is literally an all ages book in that if you’re 40 years old and you’ve been reading Marvel all your life, this is a book you can pick up and get in to. And if you’re 10 years old this is a book you can get in to.”

Sablik then moved onto Broken Trinity, which Sablik said is their big summer event.
“Yes it is fall, and we’re sorry,” laughed Sablik. “We think that ultimately it’s going to be worth the wait.”
A preview of the one-shot Broken Trinity: Angelus, with art by Brian Stelfreeze, was shown.
“We’re also introducing these two new fire and ice based characters, which will play a major role down the line.”
Blake draws the final one-shot of the event, Broken Trinity: Witchblade, which serves as the aftermath of the event.
“The issue has a lot of cool moments for the characters,” said Blake. “So, if you’re a fan of those characters it’s definitely something you’d want to grab.”

A six-part storyline, “War of the Witchblades,” follows in the Witchblade series after Broken Trinity and kicks off with issue #135.
“So far it’s been a sort of friendly arrangement,” said Marz of the two Witchblade bearers. “It may not stay that way.”

Things then shifted to the recently announced Dinicartoons line of comics by writer Paul Dini—which include the character Ida Red, Jingle Belle and Polly Green.
Sablik also talked about the announcement of a second Madame Mirage series and “at least one more new series that he will be developing” for Top Cow.

Previews of the upcoming Cyblade series, one of the winners of the first Pilot Season, were shown alongside the variants by artist Kenneth Rocafort, who Sablik called “crazy good.”
The also showed slides of Velocity, the other Pilot Season 2007 winner, which will be written by Joe Casey and drawn by Chris Cross. Sablik said the team plans to “out Flash the Flash.”

Previews of Darkness followed. Sablik explained that Phil Hester included a letter in the back of issue #5 that apologized for the lateness of the issue. Sablik said that current artist Michael Broussard plans on taking a break during issues #7-#9 and Broken Trinity: Darkness artist Jorge Lucas will fill-in.

Sablik announced that starting with issue #7, Darkness goes into dual numbering. The new numbering system includes the issues of the previous two volumes of the series. By issue #11 of the current series, the official numbering because #75, signifying 75 issues of Darkness. The issues features art by a number of various artists—including Marc Silvestri—and features Jackie Estacado taking a look into the future and seeing exactly where the Darkness entity will take him.