By Zack Quaintance — Journalism and American comic books have been inextricably intertwined since comics first entered the mainstream American consciousness in earnest in the 1930s. There’s a few reasons why. Journalism’s primary medium at the time was print periodicals, just like comics, and as such, there was a lot of cross pollination between the folks who worked it both, which led to plenty of journalism on the pages of comics. This, of course, is most famously manifested in Superman, with the characters of Lois Lane and Clark Kent.

Anyway! The point is that our small press preview today is Action Journalism, a new series from writer Eric Skillman and artist Miklós Felvidéki. I had a chance recently to read the first five issues, and this is an interesting series. The covers are made to look like tabloid newspaper broadsheets, complete with headlines, teaser boxes, and newspaper fonts. Inside, the comic essentially takes old-timey journalism tropes (the sort that have appeared in comics for many years) and translates them into a modern setting…namely SPACE. Skillman writes it all with reckless creative abandon, clearly having a blast as he goes, and Felvidéki is more than up for the challenge, deploying a kinetic manga-style that is engaging in both the newsroom sequences as well as the outer space heroics. It’s fun stuff.

Teaser text for Action Journalism — the first four issues of which are available on comiXology now — can be found below…

Written by Eric Skillman—award-winning Criterion Collection art director and writer of Liar’s Kiss (Top Shelf)—and drawn by exciting new artist Miklós Felvidéki (Spera), ACTION JOURNALISM is an exciting, genre-hopping series about the adventures of crusading journalist Kate Kelly. The series is a light-hearted riff on the “intrepid reporter” archetype—Lois Lane, Tintin, etc. And like those characters, our series has about as much to do with actual journalism as Indiana Jones has to do with archeology. Aliens, mad scientists, sinister military organizations, whimsical fantasy kingdoms and more—and that’s just the first five issues! Fast-paced, self-contained stories, appropriate for all ages, the series is being published weekly on Comixology for the next three weeks—and with luck, more to come!

You can check out some preview pages from Action Journalism #1 below…enjoy!

Action Journalism
Writer: Eric Skillman
Artist: Miklós Felvidéki
Series Launched: April 2020

Check out ACTION JOURNALISM on comiXology!

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.