By Zack Quaintance — I remember when the scope of the coronavirus crisis first started coming into focus, someone in the media whom I respect (although not enough to remember their name, apparently), warned that American life was going to change for the foreseeable future. I didn’t really understand what that meant, not really. See, I already work from home. My wife and I do things on the weekend and in the evenings, just like anybody. We see movies, go to dinner with friends, take in sites, go on weekend trips. The list goes on, but none of these things have ever felt all that essential to me.

I’m an introvert and home body these days (less so when I was a bit younger), and if my wife is out of town covering the campaigning (she’s a politics reporter), I’m often just fine to stay on the couch with a novel, only leaving to go out for sustenance. Through my own weeks, I usually only leave for grocery store, comic shop, or the gym where I play pickup basketball. Fast forward to now. I can’t do any of those things (and it feels so much more restrictive than I’d imagined), and not only that, but there are no physical comics coming next week. 

The coronavirus is here folks, and it’s brought with it a series of new normals to America life that would otherwise feel unthinkable if I didn’t know I was doing this in the service of stopping death and an otherwise larger crisis. Phew. Just had to get all that off my chest. I hope you and yours are safe.

Now, on to the comics things I liked and didn’t like this week, as I continue my public fight to maintain some normalcy.

The Uncertainty, Ohhhhhh the Uncertainty!

We don’t know if there are comics in digital format coming next week, or if there will be any new comics at all in any format any time soon. That uncertainty is something I don’t like. I get it though, publishers have so much to juggle right now. Almost all of them are based in cities that are shut down, some of have had their printers shuttered, and others just can’t send product they’ve already commissioned because of Diamond Comics Distribution also shutting down. I get it.

It’s not productive for any of these companies to put out statements telling everyone, we have no idea what we’re going to do and our plan is changing moment to moment. I also know there are far more important parts of life that are uncertain right now than comics, including our health as a society, our economy, and whether I’ll soon see my family again. Still, comics has always been there for me and it’s surreal that I don’t know when it will be again. I remember picking up Amazing Spider-Man #36 by J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita, Jr., not long after 9/11, and the story (with an all-black cover) of Marvel heroes crying at ground zero really helped me process things. I was young, but I also remember going to the comic book store in my hometown on September 12, and that pile of floppies taking me away from all the violence on the news. The fact that we can’t do that now speaks to both how jarring and unprecedented this crisis really is. We’re in uncharted territory, and it’s showing through comics in a really visceral way. America can’t continue Superman’s story right now, and it’s telling.

The Seeds...have been planted (sorry!)

Amid all of the uncertainty (both in comics and in the wider world) came long-awaited good news — artist David Aja announced in a Tweet that he has finished the Ann Nocenti-penned future-looking comic The Seeds. This is a comic on another level of excellence, and the fact that we’re finally going to get the second half of it after more than a year of waiting (and related uncertainty there, too), is a thing I liked a lot this week. No word on exactly when it’s coming back (obviously).

No One’s Rose #1...a fitting end for now

Finally, as a writer I tend to look for little bits of meaning and narrative wherever I can find them, and that said, I like that one of the last new creator-owned titles to launch for the foreseeable future will be No One’s Rose #1 by Emily Horn, Zac Thompson, Alberto Jimenez-Alburquerque, and team. The book, published by Vault Comics, is part of a genre called solar punk, which means stories about the future that envision optimistic outcomes related to our many current environmental concerns. There’s nothing about a pandemic in the book, per se, but the way it puts a rosier (sorry!) shine on the potential future of our world is welcome right now indeed. It’s also just a damn fine comic.

Special Note: even with new comics delivery stopped for the time being, the site rolls on! Check back next week for more content about what we’re reading, crowdsourced comics, and other comics-related news to keep you busy during this isolation.

Read this week’s comic book reviews here!

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