10 Comics Events We Can't Wait For In 2015

With 2014 now officially in the rear-view mirror, it's time to start looking forward to the rest [...]

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With 2014 now officially in the rear-view mirror, it's time to start looking forward to the rest of this year...and of course that means anticipating some of the big comics-related events that are coming up in 2015.

We've already talked some about the movies and TV shows that we're excited about, and surely will do more over the next few days, but for a variety of reasons, there's less we know about coming up in comics.

Still, there are a handful of exciting projects, and as solicitations inch closer and closer to revealing additional details about some of the big ones, it's easier to get more and more excited.

So here are the big comics events we're excited about in 2015.

10. Savage Dragon Legacy

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In their Free Comic Book Day offering, Image isn't going with one of its sexy, new titles; they're distributing Savage Dragon Legacy, a title that will focus on Malcolm's graduation from high school and the start of his next big step in life. 

Malcolm turned 18 off-panel and just recently lost his virginity in rather spectacular fashion in #200, so by May, it makes sense that we'll be due for another big coming-of-age...but whenever one of these things happens, it tends to change the face of one of comics' most underrated books for months to come.

And with very little to go on in terms of what exactly the book contains, Savage Dragon Legacy is a tantalizing promise of something big and cool to come.

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9. James Bond Comes to Dynamite

The world's greatest super-spy is coming to comics, when Ian Fleming's James Bond is adapted as a series from Dynamite Entertainment, the same people currently bringing to life the world of Edgar Rice Burroughs in the John Carter: Warlord of Mars title from writer Ron Marz.

The stories will be canonical, taking place in the early days of Bond's career, which presumably makes them ripe for similarity with the Bond film franchise, which recently had a sort-of soft reboot with Casino Royale, an adaptation of one of the character's earliest adventures.

That should serve it well, with SPECTRE, the follow-up to Skyfall, hitting theaters in 2015 as well.

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8. The Walking Dead: The World Expands Again

Image Comics and Skybound Entertainment's The Walking Dead returns to its twice-monthly publishing schedule for March's 138 and 139, the latter of which features promises of another major leap forward in terms of expanding the world.

While the five-year time jump has been fairly uneventful, a result of Rick and company coming to terms with their new environs in the Safe-Zone, getting to that point was a tumultous, uncertain and bloody affair, culminating with the "All-Out War" between various factions and touched off by the death of one of those closest to Rick Grimes.

This year, then, could very well turn out to be one of the more violent in the book's history.

Along with the possibility that Carl could leave the group, either to join the "expanding" world or as part of The Whisperers, a group of survivors who disguise themselves with walker skin to blend in and not get noticed...

...well, it's a heck of a start to the year.

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7. The End is Fourever

James Robinson has done a stellar job of rebuilding the Fantastic Four after a somewhat disappointing Marvel NOW! relaunch...but it wasn't enough.

The comic, Marvel's longest continuously-published superhero property, will draw to a conclusion in early 2015 with "The End Is Fourever," a storyline where James Robinson will bring it all back home, playing with all the stuff he's established in his run and throwing in some unpredictable elements like Sleepwalker.

This is also, of course, one of the most controversial items on the list. Between the feature film version of Fantastic Four that seemingly nobody is looking forward to and rumors that acrimony between Marvel and Fox have led to the title's cancellation, fans who have been reading the adventures of Marvel's First Family for more than half a century are probably already looking past "The End is Fourever" and toward whatever comes next...but they shouldn't. Robinson will almost certainly deliver.

The story starts with Fantastic Four #642.

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6. Star Wars

There are presumably a lot of people looking forward to the first new issue of Star Wars from Marvel Comics; the debut issue of the series sold over $1 million to direct market retailers, making it the most widely-circulated mainstream American comic book since the '90s.

Last night was the end of an era, as the Dark Horse Star Wars comics stopped being available (except in forthcoming oversized hardcovers from Marvel) and the last vestiges of fans' beloved "Expanded Universe" boiled away into the ether.

This one's coming later in January, so we'll have to wait almost no time at all to get to it...which is good, becuase as you know, 2015 is the year of Star Wars.

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5. Divinity

Part of the Valiant Next initiative, Divinity stands out in the crowd of really cool books planned for this spring because it's the first title Valiant has published since the relaunch that's entirely original, and not either a reboot of a previous Valiant title or, in the case of the Punk Mambo one-shot, a spinoff of one of those titles.

Written by Matt Kindt and featuring art by Trevor Hairsine, just the creative team seemingly guarantees a fascinating reading experience.

But what's it about? Well...it's about the most powerful character in the Valiant Universe.

At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union – determined to win the Space Race at any cost – green lit a dangerously advanced mission. They sent a man farther into the cosmos than anyone has gone before or since. Lost in the stars, he encountered something unknown. Something that…changed him.

Long thought lost and erased from the history books, he has suddenly returned, crash-landing in the Australian Outback. The few that have been able to reach him believe him to be a deity – one who turned the scorched desert into a lush oasis. They say he can bend matter, space, and even time to his will. Earth is about to meet a new god. And he's a communist.

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4. Secret Wars

Marvel's Secret Wars reinvented the business model for the publisher over thirty years ago.

Tied to a toy line of the same name, Secret Wars represented the biggest collection of Marvel Comics characters probably ever to appear in one story at that time, and certainly the widest variety of lead characters.

After Secret Wars, which ran from 1984 to 1985, the publisher would come to increasingly rely on "event" stories to bolster the bottom line, something that would spread to DC as well and continues to be a defining part of the comics economy to this day.

It's arguably no surprise, then, that Secret Wars is being reimagined; after all, many readers will still tell you that there hasn't been a crossover since that captured the same energy, excitement and, hell, just quality of storytelling that Jim Shooter, Mike Zeck and Bob Layton managed.

This will be Marvel's big summer crossover, and presumably will have some kind of marketing ties to Avengers: Age of Ultron and the Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season finale, so it's likely we'll see Secret Wars everywhere. The big question on this one, and the reason it isn't higher on the list, is whether writer Jonathan Hickman can really make something that appeals to all audiences; so far, his Avengers titles have been fairly insular.

Insular, but brilliant. If he can bring the kind of artistry and high-concept cleverness to a big-budget event comic that he brings to smaller projects, Secret Wars 2015 could turn out to be a more memorable experience even than the first one.

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3. Archie Rebooted

Not only is Archie, the highest-numbered monthly comic in the American market, going to restart with a new #1 in 2015, but it will do so guided by the incredible talents of Eisner winners Mark Waid and Fiona Staples.

Ordinarily, a renumbering wouldn't necessarily excite us...but it's probably necessary, since up to now, the main Archie title has been done pretty much in the publisher's recognizable house style. Reimagining the look and feel of Riverdale altogether would have been a jarring change without a reboot, and at least here, it can be anchored to the "new era" of Archie that's come of late, with things like Life With ArchieAfterlife With Archie and more cutting-edge storytelling.

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2. Fight Club 2

It's been 19 years since Fight Club came to bookstores and 16 since the film based on Chuck Palahniuk's novel became a cult hit, the "rules of Fight Club" ascending to a pop cultural meme that still gets laughs now.

When Palahniuk first said that he planned to do a sequel to the book as a graphic novel, those who believed it would ever happen probably assumed that he'd go through a traditional publisher, as many non-comics authors do, foregoing the certainty of promotion in the comics community for the cultural cache of being discussed by "serious" critics outside of the industry. Instead, he went with Dark Horse Comics, one of the most reliably-excellent publishers of licensed properties in the U.S. comics market, and will get help from Matt Fraction and Cameron Stewart.

The end result is likely to be electrifying, and it will also almost certainly bring some non-comics readers into comic shops to pick it up along the way.

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1. Convergence

As much as it sometimes feels self-defeating to get excited about big superhero crossovers, it's just impossible not to sometimes.

What distinguishes Convergence from Secret Wars or the four other mini-events that DC and Marvel are likely to have this year? Well, it's simple: Whether officially or not, this is clearly a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths, the granddaddy of all mega-crossovers, and it's taking advantage of that fact to a spectacular extent.

Convergence will see something that a certain subset of fans has been demanding since the launch of the New 52: the return of the pre-Flashpoint DC Universe, complete with some characters who have been MIA for years.

It will also have some characters, concepts and worlds that haven't been seen for even longer than that, resurrecting worlds destroyed in the original Crisis.

Meanwhile, it's a stand-alone story that will almost certainly have consequences to the wider DC Universe, but because the books are on a publishing hiatus for the two months while Convergence takes place, there will be no need to buy dozens of comics unless you're actually interested in them to know "what's going on" or what is important to the books on your monthly pull list.

On top of all of this? Most of the more than 40 two-issue microseries that compose the event look good. The creative teams are solid, many of the character and world choices are inspired, and even the Elseworlds-y aspect of unrelated worlds crossing over seems like it is being handled pretty thoughtfully in a way that should be fun.

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