GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Titan by François Vigneault

By Zack Quaintance — Titan, a popular French-Canadian graphic novel by Quebeçois creator François Vigneault, is getting a U.S. release next month from Oni Press. The original book was first published in 2017, following five years of work on the project by Vigneault. With that in mind, it’s striking how timely the themes and ideas in the story feel today, especially as applied to the current tumultuous moment happening (seemingly in slow-motion) within the U.S.

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REVIEW: True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - National Anthem #1

By Larry Jorash — Look alive, Sunshine! Oh, how the music world has missed the wildly creative and intense music of My Chemical Romance and front man Gerard Way. When not working with the band, Way has spent time becoming a major force in the comic book industry. His pen has stretched from the alleyways of Gotham City to the fateful grassy knoll of Dallas, TX, circa 1963. Way consistently deploys a shamelessly bizarre storytelling style aimed at niche ideas and properties. For Way fans picking up his new comic True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - National Anthem #1 today, be sure to have the album Danger Days cranked in your headphones, because the nostalgia is coming.

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REVIEW: Concrete Jungle #1 doesn't quite click...yet

By T.W. Worn — In 1996, Mojo Records released one of the most quintessential albums of my lifetime; Turn the Radio Off by Reel Big Fish. The Ska Punk album that defined a generation as well as set the tone for 3rd and post-3rd wave ska for the next 20 years. The opening track, Sell Out, is a tale about a fast food worker turned music star but slowly starts to realize they didn't get signed to a label to be artists. They got bagged and tagged by a record label to sell an MTV style package of stardom. I bring up this album for two reasons.

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REVIEW: Villainous #1 could stand to be meaner

By Jacob Cordas — We are gonna to need to get mean for a second. We are gonna need to get mean the way that Ionesco got during Rhinoceros, the way that Sam Greenlee and Melvin Clay got during The Spook By The Door and the way that Garth Ennis got during The Boys. We gotta take a moment and talk about the necessity of this meanness.

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REVIEW: The Vain #1 is historical fiction meets vampire heroics

By Zack Quaintance — The Vain #1 is first and foremost a relentlessly stylish comic, drawing on a timeless sense of glamour that lends an over-arching sophistication to this story about vampires, heists, and going to war. Indeed, there is a whiff of the television show Mad Men to this comic, not in the subject matter but in the approach it takes to the styles and values of the times: the characters in this book are not old-fashioned (not even the immortal ones) and neither is there culture. No, they dress as they do and act in a certain way because they are, in fact, quite vain (hey, that’s the title!).

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ADVANCED REVIEW: Pantomime #1 from Mad Cave Studios

By Larry Jorash — Members of society with disabilities are, I think it’s fair to say, often left out of comics. There are some examples in mainstream books, to be sure, including Barbara Gordon for many years as Oracle in DC Comics, as well as Daredevil on Marvel’s rooftops. Now, with the forthcoming book from Mad Cave Studios, Pantomime, we get a pair of new characters in that group — Haley and Max.

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REVIEW: Mtsyry Octobriana 1976 by Jim Rugg

By Ariel Baska — Mtsyry Octobriana 1976 opens with a bang on page one, with an experimental sexual orgy, amid psychedelic color contrasts. Opposite, there appears the figure of a woman, naked but for her leopard print scarf, sniper rifle, and belt of ammo. One character looks out of frame to ask, “Who are you?”

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GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: The Comic Book Story of Basketball

By Zack Quaintance — The NBA Finals will in all likelihood conclude tomorrow, with The Los Angeles Lakers securing a championship at the end of what has been the longest season in the history of the association. It is, on account of this, a season that speaks to the long history of the league and of the game. It is unique in that outside factors made it a scheduling aberration, yet it is traditional in that the playoffs were played in full, and when the dust cleared, the best player in the world was standing atop the heap wearing one of the two winningest uniforms in the history of the NBA — the Lakers purple and gold.

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TRADE REVIEW: The Mueller Report Graphic Novel

By Ariel Baska — Hands up, who read all 448 pages of the Mueller Report when it was released last year? Those of you who did, you feel like re-reading it? No? Well, never fear. Regardless of your relationship to the original (and redacted) tome, this graphic novel is an invaluable resource for navigating this moment in our country’s history, while simultaneously providing an enlightening, gripping, and rather hilarious take that fills in missing pieces you never knew you needed.

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REVIEW: Getting It Together #1 is a direct market rarity, filled with heart

By Keigen Rea — It is genuinely delightful to have a comic that’s being marketed as a slice of life story, especially at Image. That alone makes Getting it Together an interesting and unique comic, and one that’s been on my radar since it was announced. This first issue isn’t one I’m completely head over heels for, but it goes make me confident enough to be on board for this miniseries.

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REVIEW: Hollywood Trash #1 features action, quirks, and Pynchon-level conspiracy

By T.W. Worn — You're in line at a Burger King when you look over at the door, distracted from the menu by the sound of it opening. Inside walks a Spuds MacKenzie impersonator. The dog walks up to you, drops a piece of paper it was holding in its mouth at your feet, and trots away. You grab and unfold the sheet of paper to see it read: Copper Tin Inn. Roof. 7PM.

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REVIEW: Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology #1, a fantastic adaptation of mythology

By Benjamin Morin — Ever since I played the latest God of War game I have been obsessed with Norse mythology. For the unfamiliar, the game follows the titular God of War, Kratos, as he battles the pantheon of Norse gods. In between fighting monsters or other gods, there are slow moments where your guide — the decapitated Mimir — tells you the epic stories of the Nordic myths. It is in these quiet moments that Mimir’s tales grasped my imagination with stories I had never heard of before, such as Odin being the lord of the hanged and the blessing of the mead of poets. My exposure to these stories led me to search out a collection of these myths which inevitably brought me to Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology.

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REVIEW: Penultiman #1, '...a sad sack of a Superman'

By Jacob Cordas — You’re a hero but you’re always second best. You’re not shot off to be the shining example of your culture. You’re abandoned. You desperately want to go home. You feel insecure and insincere. The world seems to agree. That is Penultiman. He’s a sad sack of a Superman.

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REVIEW: American Vampire 1976 #1 is a contemplation of cyclical fallibility, plus vampires fight

By Zack Quaintance — This week saw the return of writer Scott Snyder and artist Rafael Albuquerque’s series, American Vampire, via the release of the first issue of a new series, American Vampire 1976 #1. As the title indicates, this book is a continuation of the series — which has sat dormant for a bit — in the year 1976.

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GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Dracula, Motherf**ker

By Ariel Baska — From the first pages of this rather abrasively titled book, the palette of textured blue and gold, with sumptuous fabrics and Gothic-fonted German, immediately let me know I was in for a visual treat. Though from the title, fin-de-siècle Klimt references in a decadent Viennese setting were not what I was expecting.

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TRADE REVIEW: First Knife from Image Comics

By Bruno Savill De Jong — A key moment in First Knife is when the futuristic techno-organic cyborg asks Mari, a high-priestess of the Yanqui tribe who recently rebooted it online, what year it is. She replies, “Year 432, Oh Fallen Star”. Actually, it is the 33rd Century, but following several cataclysm events humanity has reverted to a more primitive state. The post-apocalypse from Mad Max has endured so long ‘civilization’ has re-emerged similar to Conan the Barbarian fantasy, the future becoming the past. Chicago has devolved into clay-brick area of Shikka-Go, overtaken from the Yanqui tribe by the warring Hudsoni slavers.

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ADVANCED REVIEW: The Devil’s Red Bride #1 is gritty, authentic

By Zack Quaintance — I’ve never really thought about this at length, but within comics, the batting average for great samurai stories is very high. Maybe I’m forgetting the bad or mediocre forays into the genre, or maybe those books often don’t get much notoriety, but when I list samurai comics off the top of my head, they tend to range from great to amazing to all-time classic, be it Usagi Yojimbo and Lone Wolf and Cub, or less heralded recent indie books like Samurai Grandpa.

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Moms by Yeong-shin Ma - REVIEW

By Bruno Savill De Jong — Moms opens on a street fight between two middle-aged women. The graphic novel is rarely this dramatic, but after Soyeon and Myeonghui began arguing over text messages, it quickly spills over from the virtual to the physical. Soyeon wonders “How did my life turn out this way?”, and Moms next proceeds to show the build-up to this undignified brawl, the daily struggles that chipped away at these average women until they exploded. It shows Soyeon’s early arranged marriage, their financial strain and her husband’s gambling, up until her current divorced status. In Korean society she has extended her ‘usefulness’, and is seen as toiling away as a cleaner, while her adult son still lives at home.

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TRADE REVIEW: Gunning for Ramirez - Act One

By T.W. WORN — With everything going on in the world recently, nothing has brought me as much badly-needed mirth as Nicolas Petrimaux’s Gunning For Ramirez. This comic was such a joy that I read it twice before I even considered what I would be writing in this review. I then read it a third time to get the following, but hopefully the idea of me reading it three times in a row is enough to convince you to purchase a copy outright.

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