All throughout April, we’re crowdsourcing a coronavirus comics reading list. Each weekday for a month, we’ll post a new recommendation from someone in the comics industry to help folks get through the quarantine. It’ll be a crowdsourced list of recommended reading from writers, artists, letterers, editors, comics journalists, publicists, and more…all paired with a local shop that’s currently selling the books via mail order.

Today’s selection comes from writer Aubrey Sitterson…enjoy!

American Flagg by Howard Chaykin & Ken Bruzenak

When people talk about the big boundary-pushing genre comics work of the 1980s, they always mention Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, but American Flagg – which began publication three years before those works – has had even further reaching impact on the medium and beyond, seeing as techniques that writer/artist Howard Chaykin pioneered (the use of television screens as panels, for instance) were later famously used in those other epochal comics. Thing is, since the Flagg was published by First Comics and not kept consistently in print, its legacy has suffered somewhat, and that's a shame, as it's more topical and prescient than ever. Chaykin used the action adventure genre to envision a unique future, one where companies and corporations control everything, with the population consumed by an overwhelming sense of ennui and cynicism.

I told you it was topical, didn't I? It's the type of thing that feels instantly familiar because of how many bits and pieces have been lifted from it over the subsequent decades, but due to the clarity of Chaykin's vision and the stunning design work done hand-in-hand with letterer Ken Bruzenak, it still reads like an utterly unique lightning bolt to the brain. It's like finally witnessing a beloved piece of artwork in person after having only ever seen it in books and on screens. -Aubrey Sitterson

Aubrey Sitterson is the writer of No One Left to Fight and The Comic Book Story of Professional Wrestling. You can find him on Twitter here.

American Flagg
Writer/Artist: Howard Chaykin
Colorist: Lynn Varley
Letterer: Ken Bruzenak
Publisher: First Comics
In 2031, chaos is the new world order. Worldwide nuclear and chemical conflict, environmental disasters and nationalism have driven the United States government ― and the corporations that own it ― to the relative safety of the planet Mars. The government and its parent companies, now renamed the PLEX, run things in absentia from the red planet. The only real law on Earth is enforced by the Plexus Rangers. Reuben Flagg was the star of a television series dramatizing the fictional adventures of one such Plexus Ranger. When Flagg was replaced by a hologram, he was drafted into the Plexus Rangers and assigned to protect the city of Chicago. Along with Raul, the smartest talking cat alive, and Luther Ironheart, the stupidest robot ever, and surrounded by a bevy of the most beautiful women of the 21st century, Flagg faces an uphill battle protecting and defending the American way of life...or rather, what's left of it.

Buy Comics Here: Amazing Fantasy, which has three locations in Illinois, is currently shipping comics. You can check them out here!

Click here for the full coronavirus reading list!