Getting Noxious at Comic Con
Announcing my next Toxic Avenger series
This Wednesday will see the release of Toxic Avenger Comics #10, wrapping up our “Toxie Goes to Washington” story with a cathartic level of violence (see below), which leads directly into some big news…
In October we are launching a new five-issue series titled THE TOXIC AVENGER VS. THE NOXIOUS CRUSADER, pitting our hero against his dark universe counterpart. The art for this series will be handled by Felipe Sobreiro, who drew Toxic Avenger Comics #2 and colors Justice Warriors. Felipe is doing the best work of his career on this book—check out some pages below—while Fred Harpe stays busy on something else.
Originating in the highbrow cinematic experience of Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000), Noxie is Evil Toxie, but we will be taking his origin—and the outcomes—in entirely different directions than the movie. As our editor Tom Peyer told ScreenRant, “Using the dark universe counterpart to play off a hero is a longstanding comic book tradition—and with Toxie vs. Noxie, Matt and Felipe stretch it out, subvert it, and take it to the extreme.”
Oh, and I am on main cover duty. Here is my work for the first issue.
The story involves Toxie’s long-absent father reappearing in his life at the moment he and Yvonne decide to become young parents, with Noxie arriving shortly after under mysterious circumstances. There will be a lot more to talk about down the line as we build to an October release, so for now I will share this bit from the press release:
As Noxie takes over Tromaville, he seems to give people permission to engage in their darker impulses, violence, and conspiracism. Parenting, mutant pregnancy, and themes of social cohesion are the name of the game. TOXIE VS. NOXIE will be in turns gross, funny, and brutal—with an unsettling undercurrent that asks how capable each of us might be of mind-bending violence if the circumstances were just bad enough.
Feast on some of Felipe’s art for issue #1 with colors by Lee Loughridge. You can read the first five pages with lettering (by Rob Steen) over at Screenrant.
Comic Con Schedule
I’ll be attending San Diego Comic Con again this year. Come say what’s up if you are around. This Friday I’ll be on an Ahoy panel at 5pm in Room 28DE alongside Mark Russell and Stuart Moore, all discussing our latest projects.
Then, on Saturday at 5:30pm, I’ll be signing with Neon Ichiban at Booth 2314, doing digital signatures and remarques for my EC Comics from Oni. Someone get my ass drawing the Crypt Keeper, please and thank you.
The swamp is drained
Toxic Avenger Comics #10 drops in comic shops this week, concluding our “Toxie Goes to Washington” arc with what I believe is a record-setting number of sitting presidents killed in a single comic book series. The artist Fred Harper has killed it on this book and I don’t want to spoil who lives, who dies, and who cums (the answers are all inside), so I will only point out that this issue also marks my return to political cartooning. On page 1, I jammed with Fred and created an in-world editorial cartoon about the Karns, the corrupt couple that has wrested control of the Oval Office away from the people in service of an alien plot to destroy the planet.
Toxic Avenger Comics #10 marks the end of this series, with Tox/Nox taking over in October and continuing story threads that were’t burnt to ash in Washington. Fred Harper and I continue to work closely together, however, on things that will be announced down the road. For now, we are just about out of announcements.
