Broken Frontier

 During this past weekend’s Emerald City Comicon in Seattle, Top Cow Productions, Inc. proudly announced additional details regarding its major summer event series, Artifacts, at their “Herd It Through the Bo-Vine” panel.  In addition to Ron Marz as the writer of the 13-issue series, announced previously at Comic-Con International in 2009, publisher Filip Sablik also revealed the event will feature three distinct art teams.

Artifacts promises to be Top Cow’s most ambitious art series to date and will weave together story lines from a number of Top Cow titles, including Witchblade, The Darkness, Angelus and Broken Trinity: Pandora’s Box.  It has been known that thirteen mystical Artifacts guide the fate of the Top Cow Universe.  For centuries, it’s been whispered that bringing together all 13 artifacts would bring upon mankind’s destruction.  The series will begin with a mysterious figure who seeks to put Armageddon into motion.

Unique to the mega-series Artifacts will be the fact that the series will be split between three teams, each completing four issues.  Marz will reunite with artist Michael Broussard (The Darkness, Unholy Union), who will pencil Artifacts #1-4.  The remaining two art teams will be announced in the future. Additionally, a special guest artist will complete the ultimate 13th issue of the series. 

”Both Ron and I are incredibly excited to have Michael leading the artistic charge for Artifacts . He’s done an incredible job of the last few years on The Darkness and this is a fantastic opportunity to elevate fan’s awareness of his beautiful work,” commented Top Cow Publisher Filip Sablik. “By having three different art teams working on this massive event series, we hope to avoid some of the problems that have plagued other projects of this scope, such as delays or last minute artistic changes,” Sablik added.

Comic fans can read the 32-page prelude story in the upcoming Free Comic Book Day’s Artifacts First Look issue on May 1.  The story will help new readers get up to speed on the current status of the key players in the Top Cow Universe going into the summer event as well as bring key elements of the story into play.

Currently, in stores is the lead-in series Broken Trinity: Pandora’s Box by the writing team of Rob Levin (The Darkness: Shadows & Flame, The Darkness: Butcher) and Bryan Edward Hill (Broken Trinity: Aftermath) with art from Alessandro Vitti (Secret Warriors).  The limited series centers on Michael Finnegan and Glorianna Silver, the bearers of the Artifacts known as the Glacier Stone and Ember Stone, respectively, who return for a pulse-pounding, world-spanning adventure to gather the 13 artifacts before a fanatic cult does.