By Keigen Rea — Buy this comic. Your shop might be sold out, in which case, buy it digitally. Or have it shipped to you. You want to read this issue, even if you plan to trade wait. This is the start of something special, and it feels like it has the makings of being a Saga-level hit. Buy it!
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — There’s just something about post apocalyptic settings that lend themselves to tales of family. We’ve seen it often, in everything from Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Price-winning novel The Road to Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 cinematic meditation on childless society, Children of Men. When the world as we know it ends, our thoughts and feelings turn to the core of our humanity — family. The creators of the forthcoming one-shot comic Mother - A Post Apocalyptic Tale understand this well, putting the titular bond at the heart of their poignant and emotional new story.
Read MoreBy Gabe Gonzalez — A dark, gothic terror spread throughout 29 pages, this book is tailor-made for me and this issue continues to establish this series as one of the best of 2020. I didn’t know how much I would love a comic based off of a pre-established property that I really had no knowledge of, but this has proven to be well-worth my attention. The creative team has crafted something incredibly special, which seems poised to just keep getting better. The idea of mixing familial dynamics of trust and sisterhood with a story of gothic backgrounds and a boatload of lore is fantastic. It’s also exciting to ponder the many directions this story could go and how exactly the personalities of Cecily and Ali fit into the larger world of Vampire The Masquerade.
Read MoreBy Bruno Savill De Jong — During the Cold War, Berlin was a microcosm of a divided Europe. Nestled within the Communist controlled East Germany, the capital city of Berlin was itself divided up by the Berlin Wall, separated into Western and Eastern sections. This small pocket in the Iron Curtain meant East Berlin was an intensely monitored area by the Stasi, secret police who watched and interrogated its citizens to keep them from ‘deviation’. Strange Skies over East Berlin follows Agent Herring, an ex-CIA American undercover in the Stasi, who is helping certain desperate citizens to flee to the West.
Read MoreBy Larry Jorash — Many of us harbor fears of feeling helplessness. It’s a fear manifests as we experience stories, worrying that saviors like daylight, armor, or a stake to the heart just won’t save the day this time. It’s a fear of a terrifying inevitability, and it’s a theme we tap into deeply in Something is Killing the Children #10.
Read MoreBy Larry Jorash — Just when we thought the world was done with new high fantasy space operas, Tim-21 returned — a brought a new genre with him. Descender — the Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen hard sci-fi story — has been back for 12 issues now, taking familiar touches from the previous book and lacing them with high fantasy. All the while this extraordinary universe is still embracing and welcoming us in with wildly brilliant covers by Nguyen; and fabulous water-colored brushstrokes that trail between pages.
Read MoreBy Keigen Rea — Bang! #3 isn’t a book I expected to think much of, but I’m surprised by how fun it is, yet it misses the mark with the main character’s portrayal. Largely, this is a fun gender-swapped Knight Rider homage. A car talks. Bad guys get beaten up. It’s very fun, which would be good enough to read, but it’s elevated by the craft on display.
Read MoreBy Jacob Cordas — Kentucky has a unique position in the imagination of America. It was the original frontier, the first manifest destiny. It became a haven for mining only to become the home of some of the most violent labor wars in the country. Now, it’s shambling on from that legacy as the hills have run dry and nothing has come along to save them.
Read MoreBy Gabe Gonzalez — If I were to describe this premiere issue of the new sci-fi comic, We Only Find Them When They’re Dead, I would do it with one word…fascinating. When it was first announced, I was enthralled with the beautiful artwork by Simone Di Meo as well as Mariasara Miotti’s vibrant colors that exploded off the page. I was also drawn in by what looked like wholly-original concepts, coursing with excitement. And it was all coupled with yet another high-concept Al Ewing story. After Ewing’s Rocket Raccoon series and his landmark run of Immortal Hulk, I firmly believe the man can turn any established property or original IP into pure gold. And now he’s coming up with concepts of his own.
Read MoreBy Benjamin Morin — Coffin Bound remains a wonderful anomaly in the comics landscape. It sets itself apart with a unique artstyle and narrative tone that mixes grindhouse action with thoughtful philosophy. This kind of book hits a weird intersection of my interests as it takes a genre known for its mindless depravity and injects it with probing ontological concepts. Coffin Bound will just as soon thrill you as it will make you question your own existence.
Read MoreBy Jacob Cordas — Lonely Receiver #1 is a series that excels in its precision. No word or phrase is wasted. No panel could be replaced. Everything is exactly what it should be. Which makes writing a review about it near impossible. Precision in art is hard to quantify. To stare too long at the skill is to eventually erase the craft it took to make it. And this took so much craft.
Read MoreBy Ariel Baska — This sweet new science fiction series from Action Lab centers on Miranda, a third-eyed dimension-skipping heroine, utterly devoted to her shark-dog Noodles, who apparently can chew through anything. The set-up appears to be a pretty hilariously science fiction version of Oz, with cyclones of swirling vampire mobsters, mecha warrior foes, and vegan allies. I say “appears to be” because while the tone of this series looks to be sweetly comic, judging from the good-natured dialogue and a palette of orange, pink and purple, don’t judge a book by its cover. Or even the first issue.
Read MoreBy Bruno Savill De Jong — Partway through Cruel Summer – a collected storyline from the most recent volume of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ critically-acclaimed Criminal – juvenile delinquent Ricky Lawless harasses some police-officers out of repressed frustration. As Ricky feels, the narration informs us, “this was when Ricky Lawless felt most alive… When he was running from trouble he had caused. Running from consequence… You existed in the breeze and the laughter and the chase. Not knowing if you would make it or not. Yet never feeling more free”.
Read MoreBy Gabe Gonzalez — I’m just saying, the Chew Universe (the Chew-niverse) is the only comic book-verse where you can have bloody dismemberments, flying toupees, a man named Mr. Takoyaki, and an energy drink-powered assassin all in the same book… AND THAT’S JUST IN THE FIRST FIVE PAGES! If you know nothing about the Chu book, a quick rundown goes like this: Saffron Chu is a cibopars which means she can gather psychic information from those around her that she eats with, she also just happens to be criminal and her cibopathic brother Tony is a cop and a sibling cat-and-mouse game might just commence within this five installment humor mini-series containing culinary puns and food-featured fun.
Read MoreBy Larry Jorash — Set nearly one hundred years prior to Bode, Tyler, and Kinsey moving to Lovecraft, we are finally introduced to Chamberlain, Locke’s eldest son John. In a cold open sequence we catch up to the teenager attempting to hop the border into Canada so that he can enlist in the Great War; only to be foiled by Chamberlain and dragged home. Through conversations and long walks across Keyhouse circa 1915 we uncover the curious landscape of this universe’s unique history and culture. For fans of Locke & Key much of this will be fascinating and quite familiar; but we have guests this time around. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman Universe in a subtle move makes it’s debut in a crossover with Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s cult classic Locke & Key.
Read MoreBy Jacob Cordas — Family Tree still can’t seem to figure out how to pay off its narrative mysteries. The previous issue suffered harshly from its over reliance on obfuscating the puzzles at play. Family Tree #8 does nothing to fix that problem outside of not leaning so hard on the convention as the last issue did. This issue thankfully only has one occurrence of a character claiming that everything is about to be explained (spoiler - it isn’t).
Read MoreBy Keigen Rea — Mega Man: Fully Charged #1 is a comic based on a show that I’ve never seen, based on a game that I’ve spent at most 200 seconds playing. It’s not so much that I’m uninterested in Mega Man as a game, or as a character, I’m just more of a Pokémon boy. What is interesting to me is that this is a pretty efficient and good superhero story, if also a bit trope-y.
Read MoreBy Jacob Cordas — There has been a lot of discussion lately about decompression in comics. Stories that used to be told in one page can now take six issues or more to be fully realized. Often left out of this conversation though is the release schedule required of comic books. These longer narratives might as a whole be fantastic but when broken into segments falters heavily. Tom King’s Batman arc “Knightmares” is the pinnacle of this where it works perfectly as a whole but would’ve been excruciating to read bi-monthly.
Read MoreBy Jacob Cordas — In the interim between the releases of Canto and Canto II: The Hollow Men, they released the excellent one shot Canto & The Clockwork Fairies. I was supposed to review that as well but ended up not having time. Working with a few amazing people, I was unionizing my work place. We succeeded as much as we were able to, which, if I’m being frank, wasn’t enough. We fought hard but it only got us so far.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — One of the (many) things I love about rising indie publisher Vault Comics is that their books often defy simple elevator pitches or loglines. Sure, you could call Wasted Space, for example, Star Wars mixed with philosophical contemplation…but that ignores the theological elements, the deep sense of humor, and the many other layers of plot. And almost every Vault book is like that, including this week’s stellar new debut, Shadow Service #1.
Read More