The Guild, Volume 2
Written by Felicia Day, Jeff Lewis, Sean Becker, Kim Evey, Sandeep Parikh
Pencils by Darick Robertson, Kristian Donaldson, Ron Chan, Becky Cloonan, Tim Seeley
Inks by Ron Chan, Becky Cloonan
Colors by Dave Stewart
Covers by Georges Jeanty
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: June 27, 2012
Cover Price: $14.99

The Guild: Volume 2 collects the one-shot comic released for each member of the Knights of Good: Vork, Tink, Bladezz, Clara, and Zaboo. Each comic delves into the characters’ lives away from The Game and sheds a little more light on their personalities and motivations. These stories are not exactly earth-shattering revelations, but they’re brief, fun, focused explorations into the characters that fans love. Watching at least the first season of The Guild web series is a prerequisite to reading this collection. However, if you have not yet read the first volume of The Guild, fear not, this volume completely stands on its own.

Fans of The Guild undoubtedly have their favorite Knights of Good characters. Mine is the leader of the Knights of Good, Vork. He’s obsessively cheap and orderly. He’s also incredibly literal; my favorite scene in this chapter is the very beginning where he reveals why he plays the game the way he does. In this comic, we discover that Vork takes care of his retiree grandfather. While Vork follows rules to the letter, his loose cannon grandfather aligns somewhere around Chaotic Good””possibly Evil. In this play on opposites, Vork must reconcile his differences with his grandfather and learn to compromise with his inferiors””er, guildmates.

King Conan: The Scarlet Citadel
Written by Timothy Truman
Art by Tomas Giorello
Colors by Jose Villarubia
Letters by Richard Starkings and Comicraft’s Jimmy Betancourt
Chapter-Break Art by Darick Robertson with colorists Dave Stewart and Richard Clark
Cover by Gerald Parel
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: February 28, 2012
Cover Price: $14.99

By Crom, finally a tale worthy of a king! King Conan: The Scarlet Citadel is a compilation of the four-issue mini-series of the same name. This is a story from Conan’s later years retold in glorious fashion. And for the first time we hear the tale directly from the Cimmerian himself.

We start the story with Conan relaxing on his throne as the King of Aquilonia. A young scribe, Pramis, is tasked with chronicling the exploits of the famous monarch for the kingdom’s libraries. Once convinced to share some of his history, Conan settles in to tell the story of his capture by the evil sorcerer, Tsotha-Lanti. Imprisoned beneath the Scarlet Citadel, the captured barbarian is quick to realize that he is not meant to survive his stay in the dungeon.

Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson‘s The Boys comic put out by Dynamite, which is scheduled for a big screen release in 2011, might have a director. While it was originally reported by Collider that Samuel Bayer wanted to adapt the comic, they are now reporting that they have two sources that say that Adam McKay is in talks with Sony Pictures about directing the film.

Will this be a good move considering McKay’s previous work? Anchorman and the upcoming The Other Guys being a completely different style of film it will definitely make an interesting experiment. The Boys will definitely be a departure for him, but McKay has made it known that he has wanted to get his hands on a comic book movie for quite a while now. It is also immensely intriguing that McKay would choose such a polarizing comic book to start with. The Boys is more of a deconstruction of superheroes than a normal comics story.