By Zack Quaintance — I knew when they got Benjamin Percy to write X-Force that this comic would be the dark heart of the new X-Books. Now that X-Force #1 has arrived, I’ve seen just how dark things in this series are about to get. See, Percy’s time in comics is maybe not an accurate reflection of his writerly interest, with the bulk of his work in the medium coming on the DC title, Green Arrow.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — There were so many great comics in June that I cheated in the shoutouts section—where I limit myself to ten picks—by lumping several books together. I tried, really, but I just enjoyed this month’s comics way too much to put myself through some kind of self-imposed Sophie’s Choice.
In fact, there are so many comics this month I’ll cut my usual preamble short and get right to them. Tragic! I know. But worry not! This website is roughly 75 percent rambling (see Analysis or Reviews), so you can easily get a rambling fix elsewhere.
Ready? Let’s do this!
Immortal Hulk #1 was one of many fantastic debut comics in June 2018.
There were A TON of great debut comics, all of which you can read about in our Best Debut Comics of June 2018, including books like Immortal Hulk, The Weatherman, and The Unexpected.
Against all odds, I liked The Batman Wedding Preludes. They seemed like a blatant cash grab (which, they were…), but Tim Seeley and crew still told nice character-driven stories with them.
Since Benjamin Percy and Chris Mooneyham took over, Nightwing has rocketed up my list of best DC books. In fact, I even wrote a piece called Why Nightwing’s New Run is Working: A Five-Panel Explainer.
Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen’s existential sci-fi epic Descender is ending after 30-plus issues, but as it does, the creators are using deep familiarity between readers and the book’s well-developed characters to hit truly moving emotional beats, all amid a high-action finale.
Flash #49 continued Flash War with consequential stakes for its lead—Barry Allen—and for his once-forgotten former protege, red-headed Wally West. This is the first story in years to use this much of the Flash family, and we love it.
New Super-Man, one of the best comics of DC's Rebirth era, came to an end this month after 24 issues.
A pair of our favorites ended in June: New Super-Man and the Justice League of China and Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles. That’s bad news. The good news, however, is both series had wonderful conclusions that reminded us of why we loved them.
I became a nightmare. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have them...Bryan Hill hooked us with those opening lines of his five-issue run on Detective Comics. What followed was fantastic, too. We’re total marks for stories like this that question the state of modern fandom. Plus, Cassandra Cain!
A pair of new books hit their strides in June: Crude and Skyward, both of which are on #3. These books are very different, but they are unquestionably two of Image’s best new comics of 2018.
Another month, another pair of top-notch comics from the Warren Ellis-masterminded re-imagining of WildStorm. Simply put, Wild Storm #14 and Wildstorm: Michael Cray #8 were June’s two best comics that not enough fans talked about.
Last but not least, there’s ol’ reliable Valiant, who despite recent ownership changes continues producing awesome comics, with highlights including Harbinger Wars 2 #2 and Quantum and Woody! #7 (also, checkout our friends WMQ Comics preview of Harbinger Wars 2 #3!).
Marcos Martin's work on Spider-Man has been described by better websites than this one as "ultra-modern nostalgia."
5. Amazing Spider-Man #801 by Dan Slott & Marcos Martin
Amazing Spider-Man #801 was the final issue of Dan Slott’s epic, decade-long run on Marvel’s flagship title. Slott has said he conceptualized this issue long ago and got Marcos Martin (who has essentially left superhero comics for creator-owned work via Panel Syndicate) to draw it, and it’s a good thing he did.
Slott’s plotting is sweet and poignant, examining how Peter Parker’s With great power comes great responsibility ethos changes lives. It’s a nice capper to a run with more highs than lows. What really makes #801 shine, however, is Martin’s art, which harkens back to the less-muscular Spider-Man as drawn by the character’s creator Steve Ditko, while giving the hero and the world a relatable, modern look. This comic, simply put, is a blissful pleasure to look at and a wonderful palette cleanser between Spider-Man eras.
4. Venom #3 by Donny Cates & Ryan Stegman
Donny Cates only has one mode: #@$%ING INTENSE, which is something I’d come to suspect via his creator-owned work throughout 2017 before having my theory verified recently by Death of the Inhumans #1. His work on Venom has been a slightly slower burn, by Cates standards, which still makes it one of the most recklessly intense books on the stands (seriously, do comic shops have stands? is racks a better word? gah!)
Venom #3 had all the hallmarks I’ve now come to expect from Cates’ best issues: a little terror, a lot of grandiose plotting, confident and clever guiding narration, and a steady expanding of character mythos and status quo. That’s all in here, of course, but what I found most compelling here was the terror of the villain, which all but cows Venom (who, we are reminded by a few panels of trauma via Miles Morales, is a terrifying villain in his own right). Ryan Stegman’s artwork is also a perfect fit for the otherworldly and upsetting rainy ambience in this issue. Basically, I can’t believe I’m saying this but a comic about Venom (Venom!) is one of my favorite books right now, and I can’t wait to see where this is all heading.
Jeff Lemire's Black Hammer is a rare superhero deconstruction steeped in homage and fantastic mystery.
3. Black Hammer Age of Doom #3 by Jeff Lemire & Dean Ormston
What Jeff Lemire is doing with Black Hammer and its auxiliary books is one of the most exciting things in comics. It feels like superhero deconstructions 2.0 have finally arrived. Since the 1-2 combo of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns in the ‘80s, grim and gritty realism has ruled as the most popular way to take an analytical lens to superheroes. This book is far from sunny, but what Lemire seems to be doing is superhero deconstruction via a mystery of anachronism and nostalgia, while paying gleeful homage to his favorite comics and creators.
This issue continues to push the unraveling of the plot that contains all these ideas while also sending our protagonist through a set of Ormston artwork that nods to such a cool range of comics, I couldn’t help but smile like an idiot as I read. Oh, and the story also incorporated capital B Big ideas about why stories matter so much. This book is getting closer to being one I send to non-comics readers in trade, kind of like Saga, speaking of which...
2. Saga #53 by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples
I knew we were in for it when the preview text for this issue read simply: uh oh. And man, did it go down in Saga #53. This was possibly the single most action-heavy episode of the best ongoing series in comics, both in terms of the sequences on the page and the lasting impact for its characters.
I’m not in the business of giving plot details away, but this issue felt to me like the penultimate episode of a good season of Game of Thrones, wherein a number of shocking moments of consequence take place to reshape and redirect the story. Brian K. Vaughan paces the action expertly, and Fiona Staples work is, as always, an absolute joy to behold, with the final panel in particular etching itself into my brain, possibly forever.
1. Marvel 2-in-1 Annual #1 by Chip Zdarsky & Declan Shalvey
Marvel 2-in-1 is one of the best superhero comics right now, and at its core are some of the oldest relationships in the Marvel Universe.
Marvel 2-in-1 seemed odd when it launched. It was part of Marvel’s Legacy publishing line, which returned many titles to original numbering. It’s name nodded to the original Marvel 2-in-1 book from 1974 that ran for a decade, teaming The Thing with different Marvel heroes. This new book, however, was a story about The Thing and his former Fantastic Four teammate The Human Torch, making it seem like a stopgap before the publisher launched a new Fantastic Four title proper.
What has emerged is one of Marvel’s best comics right now, and issues like the Marvel 2-and-1 Annual are why. At the heart of Marvel 2-in-1 are the oldest relationships in the Marvel Universe, specifically those between Thing, Torch, Doctor Doom (trying to be better), and the absent Richards family. This annual looks at the dynamic between Doom and Richards in a way that (no spoilers) creates tension and has readers begging for Victor to please, please, please do what’s right. It’s an incredible bit of storytelling for this surprising and excellent title. It’s almost a shame the full team is returning, presumably shaking up the magic found in this book.
Zack Quaintance is a journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.
A few years ago, I went to a writer’s conference in Portland, Oregon run by the literary magazine Tin House. It was great, both personally and creatively. I made writer friends who I’m still in touch with to this day, I learned too much to recount, and I met some of my favorite writers, including Green Arrow scribe Benjamin Percy, who was yet to start writing comics way back then.
Each night at Tin House, after we’d finished our morning workshops, lessons, and craft lectures, we all went down to an outdoor amphitheater along a river to listen to the accomplished writers read, and one of those evening readings featured Percy.
I remember so clearly how at the podium he told everyone in a gruff voice that he’d grown up obsessed with werewolves and that now, as an adult, he’d written a novel about them, a grisly epoch with shades of commentary on terrorism called Red Moon (which is a great read, btw). Then he read the first harrowing chapter.
This was eye-opening for me. To that point, I’d never seen a capital-A Author let their childhood fascinations bleed (werewolf pun, eh? okay, I’ll stop but you have to give me some time to be a better person) into the serious adult work of literature, certainly not so directly. It was refreshing and freeing and incredibly inspirational to see a writer I admired and respected do this, and it’s a lesson I’ve kept with me as I've given myself permission to re-indulge my lifelong love of comics.
It’s a lesson I’ve also been thinking a lot about in the past 24 hours since news broke that Percy’s last installment of Green Arrow would come in March. I've been on board since the start, since the New 52, and Percy’s run, quite simply, has been among the all-time best on the character, with each arc acting as a chapter in a rich novel, upping the stakes as it heads toward a climax. I can’t call it THE best ever yet because I haven't seen the end, but my guess is that it lands in the conversation.
I also think Green Arrow has been foundational to Rebirth’s success, arguably the book fans and critics point to most when praising the way the initiative rehabilitated characters and brought back core elements. Percy assures us another killer team is taking over after the April-May two-issue fill-in arc, and he’s cryptically hinted he’ll be on a new DC book soon, saying he’s headed to “the zip code where a dark sensibility like mine belongs,” which is totally Gotham, right? Right. So, we have that to look forward to.
Today though, following 24 hours of mourning a Green Arrow book I’ve loved for the past 3 years, I want to celebrate Benjamin Percy’s time on Green Arrow, and I also want to throw out a wild prediction for who takes over the book next, before ending with a literary reading list for comic book fans who also enjoy literary fiction.
Let's do it!!
The Voice
One of my favorite things about Benjamin Percy’s Green Arrow is the staccato captions of its narration. Nowhere else in these comics is it more evident that Percy is a writer with vast experience in prose. His captions in Ollie’s voice are generally short, sometimes funny, sometimes beautiful, and always pitch perfect for what’s about to unfold, so subtle you might read through them without giving a second thought to the utter precision of the language guiding you. It’s a beautiful thing.
The Setting
Readers of Percy’s novels and short stories likely recognized the geographic fit right off. Percy is seemingly as fascinated with the Pacific Northwest as he is with werewolves, which says a lot. Few heroes in comics are as associated with a real world city (one that isn’t New York, anyway) as Green Arrow is with Seattle, and Percy just gets Seattle, the glimmering side of it as well as the rainy melancholia that lies beneath. This understanding of the setting really came through in his work on this book, especially in the recent Rise of Star City arc *SPOILER* that turned it into a post-capitalist hellscape known (perfectly!) as Star City (what a statement).
The Art
Right from the start, Percy worked with fantastic artists on this book, including the incredibly consistent and underrated Patrick Zircher during the New 52, plus guest pencils by the downright sinister Szymon Kudranski, whose work I've long admired. Then, in Rebirth Percy was joined by one of the best 1-2 punches of the entire line: Juan Ferreyra and Otto Schmidt, whose styles are as distinct as they are varied, yet somehow seemed to sync up around the stories. I'm excited to see the work they go on to do, hopefully with even bigger marquee books at DC, but I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t hurt to think I won’t get to regularly see Ferreyra's action work or Schmidt's all-time best depictions of Black Canary.
The Goatee
An alternate title for this section could be “The Love of the Character,” but I think that love is best summed up by The Goatee. Oliver Queen’s unabashed return to his trademark facial hair at the start of Rebirth was played for laughs in Percy’s script, but there was also serious truth behind it: somewhere along the way the essence of the character had been lost and Percy was hellbent on finding and restoring it, starting with the goatee and following close behind with the return of Ollie’s relationship with Black Canary, which Percy depicted better than any Green Arrow in quite some time (to be fair no other writer has even written the Canary-Arrow relationship in quite some time because in New 52 it never existed).
The Growth
Like Ta-Nehisi Coates in Marvel’s Black Panther, Benjamin Percy in Green Arrow was a writer you could see growing with his proficiency in the comics medium on the page. There were early missteps in the New 52 Green Arrow, to be sure, which is why I think this ended up being the Rebirth book that enjoyed the most successful resurgence. You could practically see Percy learning as he went, maturing into the skilled comic book writer many of us are sad to see moving on now.
I threw this out on Twitter after hearing the Percy news, but I'd like to once again call my shot: the next permanent Green Arrow writer will be Brian Michael Bendis. I had this hunch back when the Bendis news broke. Green Arrow is the exact sort of street level character Bendis has always written to great success at Marvel. He’s also a hero with a definite sense of humor who can alternate between gritty and witty. Plus Jessica Jones, who is arguably Bendis’ most famous creation, owes some of her look and attitude to Black Canary, now doesn’t she?
I’m calling it: BENDIS.
Comics and literature have always been linked for me. In high school, I got heavily into them both, reading as many comics each Wednesday as my part-time job allowed while going to the public library to discover work from Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem and Chuck Palahniuk. As I got older and went to college, my interest in comics waned (gah! I’m a cliche!), but nonetheless I found myself drawn to literary writers who loved or dabbled in the medium. If some or any of this sounds familiar (heck, even if it doesn’t), then you may enjoy some of the following books, none of which have pictures.
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz: All of us are Oscar sometimes.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon: Especially recommend for those who love the Golden Age of Comics.
Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem: Growing up with comics and adversity.
The Broken Earth Novels by N.K. Jensen: Modern classics.
Loving Day by Mat Johnson: This book has two characters who buy a big stack of new comics every Wednesday, possibly making it the most well-known book in literary fiction to have this.
The Changeling by Victor LaValle: LaValle wrote an excellent series for Boom! last year. Also, this was my favorite novel of 2017.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: Don’t read this when you’re home sick like did, but read it literally any other time, it’s that good.
The Hannish Cycle Novels by Ursula K. Le Guin: Start with Rocannon’s World, which would make a brilliant comic book adaptation, but end with Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed, a pair of masterpieces.
Red Moon by Benjamin Percy: You know this guy.
Voodoo Heart by Scott Snyder: You really know this guy.
Zack Quaintance is a career journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.
Although the stories and good work of DC Rebirth are likely to continue, today’s release of Damage #1—the first book of DC’s fresher initiative, New Age of DC Heroes—marks a next phase for the publisher, similar to how the New 52 segued into DC You.
There are plenty of questions about this new phase, including whether the books will last, whether the superstar artists will stay past the early issues, and whether the publisher is forgetting that Rebirth succeeded by paring down and simplifying its line. These discussions are likely to continue long into the coming weeks and months, but, in our opinion, what they boil down to is whether DC is risking throwing away what worked in Rebirth for the sake of newer books.
With that in mind, we think it’s important to look at what worked best in Rebirth. The New 52 was unwieldy and inconsistent, and by the end of its run it sold poorly and failed to generate even passing interest in some of the greatest characters in comics.
Part of why DC Rebirth became such a critical and commercial success was that it took a long view and went back to basics, rehabilitating the universe and the publisher. Our list today looks at which characters and books benefited most from this. You won’t find Batman or Justice League, or any of the handful of other books that were doing just fine at the end of the New 52. No, what we’re discussing is which heroes and titles went from dysfunctional and forgotten, to books we now look forward to each Wednesday.
Superman is a great place to start. I was enjoying some of the work being done with the character toward at the end of New 52 by creators like Greg Pak and Gene Luen Yang (whose excellent New Super Man would be on this list if it wasn’t entirely new), but a problem was that Superman had undergone too major of a reimagining at the start of the New 52. Basically, of all the characters in the DC Universe, it was easiest to think of New 52 Superman as something entirely separate from the character we’d known.
Perhaps most frustrating was the loss of his romance with Lois, foundational as it was to the mythology for so many fans, both in comics and the mainstream. Considering this alone, it’s no surprise to me that bringing back the pre-Flashpoint Superman, as well as his family, has been foundational for Rebirth. That move sums up the initiative’s back-to-basics approach, as well as its deliberate decisions to preserve old continuity that had seemingly been lost (ahem, like red-headed Wally West).
Lastly, while I know others have consistently cited differences in quality between Superman and Action Comics, I haven’t seen that. I think Superman opened stronger, and that Gleason and Tomasi are a great team, but Action has also done some interesting things under one of the best Superman writers of all time, Dan Jurgens. I don’t separate them much in my head, not the way I do Batman (solo book) and Detective Comics (team book), even though I know Superman generally focuses on Clark and his family. Don’t @ me, I like it all!
Super Sons being next gives us a natural transition, because half of this two-hero team didn’t even exist at the start of the New 52 (that half being the current iteration of Superboy, Jonathan Kent). To be blunt, I love all things Super Sons. This book takes the classic Batman-Superman dynamic and boils it down into volatile and childish pre-teen form (is Damian 13 now? hey! stop being a stickler, you’re losing sight of what matters). It does a great job with humor and the heart strings, and Jorge Jiménez’s art here is among the best in superhero books right now, if not THE best.
Super Sons pulls double duty, appealing to what I’ve long seen as the two sides of the comic fan coin: kids looking for escape, and adults looking for escape from the pressures of having kids, or, in my personal case, preparing to have kids. With this book, you get all the teen hijinx, and you get characters you grew up with, Batman and Superman, in the background learning to be dads. This is a really special book, and I’m far from the first to say this, but I hope Brian Michael Bendis taking over writing duties on Superman soon does not disturb this title.
Green Arrow is an odd book when discussed in the context of Rebirth, as it kept the same writer from the New 52 and still seemed to undergo a significant increase in quality. My theory is that Benjamin Percy, a fantastic novelist and short story writer (who I actually was lucky enough to meet at a writer’s workshop several years ago and can attest that he’s also a nice guy), took over Green Arrow so late into the New 52 run, that Rebirth was practically on the horizon, about 18 months away, thus limiting what Percy was able to do at that time with the title. Also, when Percy came onto Green Arrow, the book was in a weird place, having been forced into a closer approximation of the CW show Arrow, which, love it or hate it, is a far cry from the Oliver Queen of the comics. My suspicion is that he wanted to go straight back to basics all along, but was told to save his ideas.
He’s said in interviews that he wanted to bring back Ollie’s relationship with Black Canary and was told to wait, which corroborates my theory. In the early days of Rebirth, Green Arrow was described by many as the biggest surprise, but I think if you read Percy’s very first (and best) New 52 arc, you see all the qualities that have made the new book such a success, ie the cultural commentary, the distinct sense of place, the top-notch villainy. The only thing that seems to have changed in Rebirth is the guidance and backing from editorial, which kudos to DC for recognizing what it had and not dumping Percy off the book just to stir up some hype.
The Green Lantern concept is almost tailor-made for today’s comic market, particularly the idea that holders of the ring are members of an ancient intergalactic police force, which allows DC to bring in new Lanterns without a major deal being made about honoring legacy or whatever. That concept, however, wasn’t being used effectively enough toward the end of New 52, with the Green Lantern corner of the universe being dominated almost exclusively by Hal Jordan.
Both of the Lantern books in Rebirth are among my absolute favorites in the line, and they take arguably the biggest risks in concept. Baz and Cruz as rookie Green Lanterns is certainly a new one, while Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps. Feels so grandiose and liberated, so creatively untethered that it at times reads like it was written by a bunch of comic fans sitting around saying, dude you know what would be awesome? And I mean that as a huge compliment. Both Sam Humphries and Robert Venditti have done awesome work with the Lanterns, and Tim Seeley’s stuff after trading Nightwing to Humphries for Green Lanterns has been promising as well, particularly his early characterizations of Simon and Jessica, the latter of whom has quickly become one of my favorite Lanterns.
Deathstroke by Christopher Priest is one of those books that has been so good it’s hard for me to write about without sound like—excuse my language—a kiss ass. After a convoluted start (which paid off for careful readers, I can attest to that after revisiting it for this piece), Priest has elevated this book to a rare place for superhero fiction. Deathstroke feels at once accessible and complex, rooted in the new continuity of the character as well as his past with the Teen Titans while at the same time also pushing forward with fantastic new ideas, like Defiance.
I read an interview where Priest, who was essentially out of monthly comics when he got the call for Rebirth, said that for a long time he used to get calls from DC or Marvel asking him to write a character, one that was always a person of color, and he would refuse them. Priest told CBR that somehow overtime he’d gone from being a writer to being just a black writer. When DC called to ask him to right Deathstorke, he had to double check and ask them if the character was black. When they said no, he said keep talking.
And for us fans, it’s a great thing they did. Priest, who’d been out of monthly comics for almost a decade, is now writing Justice League, arguably DC’s biggest book behind Batman. This anecdote about Priest, and the incredible stories that have grown from it, is really encouraging as this new initiative moves forward. It suggests DC is determined to recognize and reward good work, and to also hold onto its talent. The rise of Priest’s stock within the company in lieu of one of the best solo Deathstroke stories of all-time shows that the publisher seems to have learned from some of its past snafus with talent, as well as from some of its stumbles with managing its books, and that it is now hyper aware of what it has to learn from past mistakes. It is indeed a new age at DC.