Comic-Con News:  This morning Dynamite Entertainment made three more SDCC announcements that include a new Heroes comic book series written by Cullen Bunn, an expansion of the Dynamite Crime line with a new original series Ex-Con written by true crime specialist Duane Swiercynski, and a new Shadow miniseries, The Shadow: Midnight in Moscow from the legendary Howard Chaykin.
 



Few properties have had a meteoric rise and fall to match the arc of the NBC TV series Heroes, which burst onto the scene with great ratings (and great sales of the original Heroes comic collection based on the show) only to fall apart in its second season, which was effectively crippled by a major writers’ strike.  Now Dynamite is reviving the contemporary world superhero saga with Cullen Bunn, the creator of the excellent western comic The Sixth Gun at Oni, who lately has been plying his trade at Marvel on a variety of titles including Deadpool and Fearless Defenders.
 
Dynamite is also expanding its Dynamite Crime line with Ex-Con, a new ongoing comic book series from Duane Swiercynski, whose hardboiled crime novels like The Wheelman and The Blonde have earned him a strong following among aficionados of crime literature.  Swiercynski is also an accomplished comic book writer with credits that include Bloodshot, Birds of Prey, Iron Fist, and Judge Dredd.  In Ex-Con he tells the story of a con man who is released after five tough years in San Quentin.  Once he is outside he has to pay a debt to a crime boss who saved him from getting stomped to death in the joint, but this task is no day in the park.
 
But perhaps Dynamite’s biggest announcement of the day so far is The Shadow: Midnight in Moscow, the first new Chaykin Shadow saga since he finished The Shadow: Blood & Judgment over 30 years.  Chaykin will both write and draw the series, a cold war saga that tells the secret story behind The Shadow’s disappearance in 1949.  Chaykin’s affinity for The Shadow is well known, and no one does this sort of period crime/adventure comic better.