We read all of AWA Studio's comics: Archangel 8, The Resistance, and more

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By Various — Tomorrow marks the debut of a new publisher on the market...AWA Studios, with AWA standing for artists, writers, and artisans. This publisher is the work of a couple of former Marvel top honchos in Bill Jemas and Axel Alonso, who are serving here as founders and co-chief creative officers. AWA is also armed with a creative guiding council that includes other big names such as J. Michael Straczynski, Reginald Hudlin, Garth Ennis, Gregg Hurwitz, Margaret Stohl and Frank Cho.

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REVIEW: Vagrant Queen A Planet Called Doom #3 mixes high action with great characters

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By Jarred A. Luján — Vagrant Queen: A Planet Called Doom #3 hits the shelves like an Elida right hook this week. Again, a solid hook at the end of issue #2, the revelation that Earth is our time-travelling cult’s ultimate destination, makes it exciting to hop into this week’s issue.

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REVIEW: Artemis and the Assassin #1 is full of great characters and promise

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By Jarred A. Luján — Artemis and the Assassin #1 from Aftershock Comics debuts this week. I became a big Stephanie Phillips fan with Butcher of Paris, so I’ve been following this story pretty closely and watching it get described as a pulpy time travelling spy book was a hook all by itself. I mean, come on, that’s a pretty insane description.

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ADVANCED REVIEW: Ludocrats #1, I don’t know what just happened but I liked it

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By Zack Quaintance — Have you ever wanted a comic that was kind of like Adventure Time but for adults who tell dirty jokes in any and all settings? Well then, do I have some good news for you — Ludocrats #1 has arrived, and you’re going to love it. I don’t want to go into too many details, as this is an advanced review, but this is a book that organically weaves in the following phrases: discoverer of four new species of orgasm, rouse the pelvic weaponry, and steel-plated labia (twice). Although, it’s not a book about sex — that’s just part of it.

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TRADE RATING: The Golden Age by Roxanne Moreil and Cyril Pedrosa

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By 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.

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REVIEW: Stealth #1 has one of the most interesting twists of the year

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By Zack Quaintance — Stealth #1 is one of those comics that’s going to be almost impossible to review without revealing the central twist within this story. But I have (inexplicably) chosen to create and run a website where I review comics (within which I have inexplicably chosen to write about this very hard to write about comic) so I shall do my best.

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REVIEW: Cable #1, a self-aware mutant action comedy with bigger ramifications

By Zack Quaintance — Here it is in the year 2020, and I find myself not only reading a Cable comic but also taking my time out to review it. Cable. A comic about Cable. But such is the strength of this new Dawn of X relaunch, which has me at a point where I’m willing to at least hear the creators out about all of the many new X-Men comics that keep coming our way. I’m especially amenable to this one because writer Gerry Duggan has done such an excellent job injecting personality and intriguing into Marauders, a comic about mutants on a boat that passed on the phrase I just typed has no right to be as good as it is...yet it’s currently among my X-Men favorites.

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REVIEW: Decorum #1 is a fearless and bold multimedia story experiment

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By Zack Quaintance — Decorum #1 is an interesting comic, in that early on it feels more like a multimedia storytelling experience than it does a traditional graphic sequential story. This book is top heavy with the mythos, history, details, and even language of a sci-fi world that is brand new to all readers. As a result, I found myself a bit disoriented through the first two acts or so. I could tell that there were skilled storytellers at work with big ambition, but I couldn’t quite get myself to a solid point where I was sure what they were trying to do here, or, perhaps most importantly, what I should care about within this new complex world they were building.

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TRADE RATING: Zodiac Starforce and the value of acceptance

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By 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.

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ADVANCED REVIEW: Stargazer #1 is a polished and immersive alien abduction comic

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By Zack Quaintance — It’s really staggering sometimes the amount of passion, care, and energy being put into creator-owned comics these days. There is a steady flow of new indie books being made with high levels of craft in the industry right now, to the point it’s gotten hard to predict where the next great comic is coming from. The days of only paying attention to the output of two to four (maaaybe five) publishers are long gone.

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REVIEW: Strange Adventures #1, comics art at its finest on top of hints of familiar Tom King themes

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By Zack Quaintance — I’d like to open this review by discussing this comic’s top-tier artwork, which just blew me away throughout. This book features dual work from two of DC Comics’ best — Mitch Gerads and Evan “Doc” Shaner. The former bringing a photo-realistic, almost understated approach to his intricate linework while the latter is one of the best modern purveyor’s of Silver Age-inspired superhero art, essentially picking up the mantle once held by the all-time great, the late Darwyn Cooke.

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REVIEW: Spider-Man Noir #1 is a beautiful and perfectly absurd pop culture trip

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By Zack Quaintance — The competition is fierce, but Juan Ferreyra might be the most slept on artist in all of comics, or at least in Big 2 superhero comics. His work in recent years has evolved rapidly through a series of lightly-appreciated projects, including the DC Rebirth Green Arrow run (which is the best treatment that character has gotten in years), the very adult Killmonger mini-series, and, most-recently, Punisher Kill Krew, an action comedy romp that ranks among the most fun I’ve had with this medium in I don’t know how long.

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REVIEW: King of Nowhere #1 is surreal and not what you think (which is good)

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By Zack Quaintance — When I read the first issue of a new series, I do so the first time through without looking at the pitch, premise, or summary. This isn’t the reality that we live in, but my thinking is that the interior of the book should be able to stand alone, or maybe that’s my hope. Often times, I have to go back afterward, checkout the marketing, read the solicit and then come back to the material with a more informed eye — and then I start jotting notes.

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REVIEW: Tomorrow #1, have we forgotten that kids are rarely alright?

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By Zack Quaintance — Tomorrow #1 is the first issue of a new sci-fi horror series that has an old (or least thoroughly explored in modern storytelling) idea at its center — the adults are all dying out. This is a plot device that even has its own entry on TvTropes.org, complete with a list of instances in various media. At the center of the way writer Peter Milligan and artist Jesus Harvas are imagining it, however, are Milligan’s own memories of how terrible children can be to each other, a subject I heard discussed at the NYCC Berger Books panel this year and read about again in the intro to this issue.

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REVIEW: Giant-Size X-Men: Jean Grey and Emma Frost #1 is an homage with slightly mixed results

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By Zack Quaintance — So here were are, roughly six months and change into the newest era of X-Men, led by writer Jonathan Hickman, who penned the status quo upending 12-part series HoX/PoX. Since that concluded in early October, Hickman has written (by my quick count) seven issues of the X-Men main title as well as four issues of New Mutants. Within that, it was announced that he would also be writing another book, Giant-Sized X-Men, which would essentially be a series of one-shots looking specifically at certain mutant characters in the context of the new world that Hickman and his collaborators had created.

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REVIEW: In Vagrant Queen A Planet Called Doom #2, a fresh approach to sci-fi emerges

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By Jarred A. Luján — It’s the return of Vagrant Queen: A Planet Called Doom this week, with the second issue dropping. In our last issue, we met a very angry cyclops man who destroyed a town before kidnapping Elida. The book (clearly) had a great hook, so I’m pretty excited to dive into issue #2.

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REVIEW: Heathen #9, this book is headed toward the end with all its greatness intact

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By Jarred A. Luján — Heathen is back in our lives with the ninth issue of the Viking adventure/romance comic. This is the first issue of the series where writer/artist/Heathen creator Natasha Alterici doesn’t do the art, with Ashley A. Woods joining the book on that front. When we last saw main character Aydis, she had just left her adventure on the sea and was being descended upon by two trolls. Things never seem to slow down!

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ADVANCED REVIEW: No One’s Rose #1 issues a vision that is at once dire and optimisic

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By Zack Quaintance — There is an evolution happening among sci-fi comic books, wherein stories are almost aggressively pushing each other to find unexplored new ground. That sometimes means tone (Wasted Space, for example, has done a wonderful job with this) and at other times that means a novel plot twist (Vagrant Queen I think fits here) or new take on an older concept (Protector comes to mind) or just flat-out amazing intricate art execution (see Little Bird and Tartarus).

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REVIEW: Marvel Voices #1 marks first podcast to comics back to podcast adaptation

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By Zack Quaintance — Marvel Voices #1 is, as the headline suggests, perhaps the first ever instance of a podcast being adapted into a comic and then being adapted back into a podcast. And while I don’t think this is a system that works for every podcast out there, it works quite well for this one, and this owes in large part to the amount of freedom given to the excellent set of comics creators involved with this project.

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REVIEW: Wolverine #1 perfectly fits creators to the character

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By Zack Quaintance — As a writer, I’ve been reading Benjamin Percy’s work for some time, long before I made any sort of move to go from steady reader of comic book trade collections to an active weekly comics blogger. My first exposure to his work came in 2009 or so, when a friend recommended his debut short story collection to me, Refresh, Refresh, which features a blistering title story about the savageness of war...underscored by the deep emotional pain it inflicts upon the communities from which soldiers come. There was a vague interest in technology present as well, plus an ending story that starred a lone man on a motorcycle in the nuclear-weapon scarred Pacific Northwest, fleeing in one memorable scene from a pack of crazed (and maybe mutated?) hounds.

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