By Zack Quaintance — I don’t know how I got this in my head, but I was under the impression that Afterlift — a new digital-exclusive release from ComiXology Originals — was a horror comic. This is most certainly owing to my own inability to parse the marketing material. Anyway, this comic is something so much more than just rideshare driver has a scary night.
Read MoreBy Jarred A. Luján — No One Left to Fight was one of the breakout books of 2019. I was fortunate enough to review a couple of the single issues (#3 here, #5 here) for the site during its run, but I was excited about eventually reading it in trade format. I wanted to see what held up when it’s read so closely together, and what new things I could pick up.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — It’s an interesting thing to review a two-decades-old comic in 2020 that envisioned the future...and got a good many things right. But that’s where I found myself this weekend with Paul Pope’s remastered 100 Percent, which is essentially a collection of five comics that were released in 2002 and 2003 by the classic-yet-now-defunct DC Comics imprint, Vertigo. The book has now been remastered and released by Image Comics, hitting shops in early March before the virus outbreak. And these comics are set in a sci-fi, cyberpunk future that Pope actually created with his work a few years prior to that even, via 1999’s Heavy Liquid.
Read MoreThe Phantom Twin is about a pair of conjoined twins around the turn of the 19th Century. The first act of the book is essentially spent getting to know the pair of them as they navigate their world of appearing in old-timey circus freak shows, for lack of a better word to describe it.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — The Black Ghost, Hard Revolution Vol. 1 is a new digital-only series from ComiXology Originals, which is the publishing platform for the Amazon-owned digital comics platform that is a clear number one in the space, at least in terms of platforms for accessing major North American direct market comics. I suspect that, like many readers, the ComiXology Originals books were something I’d been hearing about for a while…
Read MoreBy Toren Chenault — The Black Hammer Universe is filled with superheroes. When it debuted in 2016, it was clear from solicits that writer Jeff Lemire and artist Dean Ormston wanted to change superhero comics with Black Hammer. And that’s exactly what they did. I worked at a comic book shop for most of 2018 and part of 2019. The first Black Hammer trade was one of the books I sold the most. I would pitch it to comic readers and say “Imagine if Watchmen expanded into a full-blown universe. But was a bit more modern.” And that would work most of the time. But to be honest, most of the sales came from people who had never heard of the title or read any of Lemire’s other work.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — If you’ve ever engaged in serious Beatles fandom (and even if you haven’t but just like a good crazy theory), chances are you’re aware of the Paul is Dead theory. Essentially, this idea posits that during the 1960s, Paul McCartney died in a car accident, and he was replaced by a look-a-like so as not to disrupt the Beatles absurd fame and profitability. The label and whoever else was in on it, and the other Beatles knew but were unable to really tell anyone, so they peppered (heh) clues to the Paul is Dead theory in their songs.
Read MoreBy Hussein Wasiti — Declan Shalvey has slowly morphed into a jack-of-all-trades over the course of the past couple of years. He’s done everything from draw interiors, providing covers and variant covers, as well as writing his own comics. Savage Town, his first foray into writing for the OGN format, was an interesting story but something about the cultural uniqueness of the comic held it back from being an accessible, evergreen crime story. His second OGN, Bog Bodies with artist Gavin Fullerton, colorist Rebecca Nalty, and letterer Clayton Cowles, is instantly more accessible, more human, and provides a tragic tale of redemption set against the moonlit backdrop of rural Ireland.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — In Gene Luen Yang’s new graphic novel, Dragon Hoops (out now from publisher First Second), the writer/cartoonist makes two of the book’s foundational ideas clear from the start, from the first page and the very first panel. Said first panel features Yang’s likeness talking directly to the reader, telling them I’ve hated sports ever since I was a little kid. Especially basketball, and then we cut to young Yang trying to catch a pass and getting a handful of jammed fingers.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — We are in the midst of a U.S. election cycle where the status quo is a looming figure in all discussions, at least as it applies to the Democratic Primary. Early in the political process, candidates staked out positions on healthcare that essentially became bellwethers for their willingness to topple established systems, and off we went. As is so often the case, our politics were reflecting the fascinations of the electorate, an electorate that like many populations across the globe is largely finding itself on the wrong end of rapidly widening resource and income inequality gaps.
Read MoreBy Danielle L. — For Trade Rating this week, I’ll be delving into the Magical Girl genre with the comic Zodiac Starforce: By the Power of Astra. Created by writer Kevin Panetta and artist Paulina Ganucheau (doing double duty as both artist and colorist), Zodiac Starforce, much like its main inspiration Sailor Moon, is the story of a group of teenage girls chosen by a celestial entity to fight evil with magical powers. Much of the plot in this particular story, however, takes place long after the team has defeated said evil, which is known as Cimmeria. Action is all well and good, but most importantly, one of the central themes of this story is accepting life as it comes, rather than fighting reality and denying yourself necessary feelings such as grieving.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — Nib #5 Animals is a tough book to review. While there is a unified theme — animals — it is a broad one, and it enables a wide variety of work from the roughly three dozen creators involved. This inherently makes it difficult to discuss the quality of the individual pieces, but I can describe the holistic reading experience I had with the entirety of the anthology, and I can — enthusiastically — note that that reading experience was quite good, adding that journalism done via this medium is so rare that whenever I come across some of this quality, it tends to linger with me for days (and days...and days).
Read MoreBy Danielle L. — Last month as part of Trade Rating, I wrote about the 2017 Kristen Gudsnuk comic, Henchgirl. Today I’ve decided to change things up a bit, and so I’m going to be writing about manga. Specifically, the manga I’ve chosen to discuss today is Roadqueen: Eternal Roadtrip to Love, which is both written and illustrated by Mira Onga Chua.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — It is one of my deeply-held beliefs that the vast majority of serious music geeks have an origin story with David Bowie. That is, we remember how we first got into Bowie’s music — really got into it, going from casually aware to full-on obsessed, or at least technically appreciative on some meaningful level — and that many of us can trace our subsequent thoughts and interactions with music to that day. I know I certainly can.
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