The Legacy of Jane Foster, a Mortal Worthy of Gods

It all started with a whisper, though not a careless one, all the way back in 2014. Jason Aaron stripped Thor Odinson of the mighty Mjolnir with the simple sentence, “Gorr was right.” Three words that came with a hell of a lot of consequences. Not only could the blonde god we all know and love not lift the mystical hammer, but he lost his namesake. According to some, this was an affront to their devoted fandom. Others thought that maybe it was fine. “Things that happen in events don’t last that long,” we told ourselves. How wrong we were. Not only did Odinson lose his name, but he also lost an arm! May the uncalled-for torture of our favorite Asgardian never end? What is it that angered Jason Aaron so much about this character he had been writing?

To be fair, asking these questions is missing the point of the story. This story isn’t about the Odinson. It’s about a simple mortal. A strong woman named Jane Foster, the former love interest of the Asgardian god whose namesake she took, was deemed worthy by Mjolnir and she wielded the hammer as an uncannily adept goddess of thunder. The hammer soared for Jane in ways it had never done before, and even Odinson was in awe. It did so because Jane formed a different type of relationship with the hammer. In the past, Thor had simply used the hammer as a weapon or a tool. He undoubtedly had respect for it, but Jane viewed Mjolnir as much more.  Maybe that’s because it called to her when Odinson was no longer worthy. She heard Mjolnir’s voice in her head and was compelled to lift it and be transformed into the Mighty Thor.

The question that we should be asking though is why Mjolnir called out to Jane. Why of all the other Asgardians, or characters who’ve proven their worthiness in the past, was a woman in the midst of her own battle with cancer chosen to wield all that power?

That question is the strength of this entire run on The Mighty Thor. Issue after issue Jane proved why she deserved to be Thor. In reality, Mjolnir decided to call to Jane because Jason Aaron thought it was a unique idea. Then he gave that idea life, and boom we got one of the best runs on a Thor book we ever could have asked for. We should be grateful, and yet parts of the internet are still sour to the idea. If you feel that this shifting in the balance of Thor stories only happened because of an editorial push for diversity in comics, I won’t flat out disagree with you. It is probably a germ of where this idea came from. It certainly isn’t the reason this story happened, but it probably helped it come to publication. The point of the entire Mighty Thor storyline isn’t that Thor became a woman. The point is that Thor became a mortal who didn’t aspire to be a god.

Let that sink in for a moment and digest it. The new Goddess of Thunder didn’t want to be a god. Jane didn’t even let the gods use their magical healing abilities to defeat her own battle with cancer.  That alone is a testament to how strongly rooted in her own humanity Jane is. I’m not sure anyone facing a life-ending illness would pass up a chance to live the rest of their normal lifespan – let alone taste immortality and walk away. And yet, Jane did, leaving behind an actual sense of loss in her fellow characters and the readers who’ve been following her adventures. Although, this moment of her passing is not an unexpected one – Jane debuted as Thor already on the tough end of her battle with a terminal disease – because the last arc of her adventures has been titled The Death of Jane Foster for months now. We’ve been preparing ourselves for this, but it still hurts.

So, let’s get back to why Jane is undeniably worthy of the title she assumed. Due to his nasty little machinations, Malekith unleashed a war that literally consumed all of the realms. All the while as the realms were caught in this inescapable carnage, Odin turned his one good eye away from the whole situation. The leader of the gods refused to come off his throne and help those who would call out for his help the most. Jane saw this and plunged herself into fighting for those who couldn’t, even as each transformation advanced her aggressive cancer’s damage to her mortal body. Jane literally gave herself to save complete strangers when the gods couldn’t be bothered to help. Well most of the gods, Volstagg did his best to help and we got the incredible War Thor out of the process. His story was both heart wrenching and exhilarating to read. I’m only sad it ended so quickly when Volstagg fell to the indomitable Mangog.

The seemingly unstoppable creature with the strength of a billion billion beings – and a design that borders on ludicrous – was awakened by the war of the realms. Mangog is apparently the universe’s answer to the gods. He is their reckoning and judgement made into a single powerful being.  So, as he set about on his quest to reach Asgardia and purge the universe of all of Odin’s ilk, he destroyed the ultimate version of Mjolnir, crumbled the Bifrost bridge, laid waste to the Asgardians, and sent Asgardia itself on a collision course with the sun. Then he engaged both Odinson and Odin in a brutal confrontation.

Jane, having given up wielding Mjolnir to focus on her own health, had promised to leave all things Thor aside – it was determined that if she transformed into Thor one more time her mortal body would perish – realized that Thor was needed and lifted Mjolnir one last time. She knowingly gave her all to come to the rescue of Odin even when his unwillingness to act set about the events he was currently suffering. Jane then of course found a way to defeat Mangog, at the cost of her own life and apparently even that of Mjolnir’s. Thus, giving up any chance she had at continuing to live.

It is important to note that as Jane fought the self-proclaimed judgement of the gods, she gave the ultimate judgement to Odinson. In the midst of her mortal battle she proclaimed, “We need gods we can believe in! Tell them that! Tell all of Asgard! Tell them it’s time to earn the gift they’ve been given!” Effectively, in her last few moments, Jane laid the ground work for Odinson to believe in not only himself, but the rest of his fellow gods, again. Odinson may have to lift a new hammer, but he will be able to do so as Thor with a fresh realization on what it means to be a god. A final gift given to him by a mighty mortal.

Brandon Evans is a freelance writer and comic book lover from St. Louis, MO. He is currently working to find his way into the comic book industry. You can find him on Twitter as @writingbrandon

Why Lois Lane is My Favorite Character in Comics

For a few years, I've been under the impression that Superman was my favorite character in comics, ever since I went from feeling like an unlucky underdog (a la Spider-man) to an adult who wanted to use his position in the world to make a difference. Upon closer examination of these feelings, however, I recently realized it wasn't Superman I was relating to, no, it was actually Lois Lane.

In retrospect, I now believe Lois has been my favorite for some time; it just took a jarring threat for me to realize it.

This threat came in DC’s June solicitations. Soon, Brian Michael Bendis will take over the Superman line. Bendis has been (arguably) Marvel’s defining writer for two decades, and so him writing Superman is a huge deal and a source of much speculation. Recent Superman books have had Clark settled down with a family, with his wife Lois and son Jon, and a prevailing fear among many fans is that Bendis will undo all of the domestic happiness.

And the solicitations played right into that. Just look:

THE MAN OF STEEL #1

• Written by BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS • Art by IVAN REIS and JOE PRADO
• A new era begins for Superman as a threat from his earliest origins reemerges to destroy the Last Son of Krypton. As Superman struggles to come to grips with what has happened to his wife and son, he must also face a new threat that’s determined to burn down Metropolis!

Read that again: As Superman struggles to come to grips with what has happened to his wife and son…

Awful. Now, smart money says nobody would tip such a major plot point in a preview, and this is simply a means of playing with our anxieties (for better or worse), but I was still shook, so shook I began to deeply contemplate what Lois Lane means to me. And the answer is an awful lot.

The reason why comes down to three main points...

Lois Lane is Human

Superman’s appeal is that of the idealized man, a pinnacle of “the American way,” but that’s not quite right. Superman is alien, and try as we might, we’ll never have his power. Lois, however, is one of us, and her best characterizations embrace this without making her meek or powerless. In fact, Lois done well is one of the most talented figures in comics, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who does as much good with her pen as others do with freak abilities.

Lois’ power comes from hard work, fearlessness, and deep desire to make a difference. Who would I like to emulate? Superman, sure, but that’s impossible. The better answer is Lois. She isn't perfect—she’s a bit reckless at times, her dad is a cog in the military industrial machine, for years she was blind to Clark’s identity (I blame the writers), and she’s always falling off buildings (ditto)—but Lois still contributes to society in meaningful ways, both through writing and, more recently, through pushing Clark to be a better guy.

Lois is what we can be at our best, more than Superman, by virtue of her humanity.

Lois has a Rich History Rooted in Reality

Lois Lane has been around from the start, appearing in 1938’s Action Comics #1, but even before that the character was accruing a rich and compelling history. See, Lois Lane is based on a real reporter named Nellie Bly (RIP).

And Bly’s story is amazing. Like Lois Lane, Bly was a fearless reporter, and she worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, racking up some incredible journalistic accomplishments, including:

• Earning her job by writing an impassioned response to a newspaper column suggesting women were only good for having kids and keeping house.
• As a foreign correspondent in Mexico, writing about a dictator imprisoning protesters so effectively that he forced her to flee the country. She was 21.
• Going undercover to investigate brutality and neglect in the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, later writing a book that sparked outrage and forced reform.
• Traveling alone around the world in 72 days, beating a fictional record set by Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg (she also stopped in France to meet Verne en route).
• Eventually becoming a powerful industrialist who patented a stackable garbage can.

It's a credit to Superman's creators that way back in 1938 they had the good sense to form a character that was his equal, and, given the archaic social mores of the time, to also make this character a woman. The invention of Superman and Batman are impressive, of course, given their originality and lasting legacies, and Superman in particular was a response to societal ills, but creating Lois Lane was downright bold, and her having an actual historical basis in a figure as important as Nellie Bly endears Lois to me even further.

My Wife is a Reporter

Speaking of ways Lois endears herself to me, I should note my wife is a reporter for one of the biggest newspapers in the country, The Los Angeles Times, and that like Lois, she’s been fearless with her work from a young age. In high school, my wife reported on the disappearances of local women in the dangerous Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez. You can’t see my face right now (obviously) but I’m beaming.

Anyway, indulge me as I draw similarities between my marriage and Lois and Clark's.

• Lois is a fearless and successful reporter; while Clark is a sometimes above average writer who could be better if not for his life as a comic book hero.
• My wife is a fearless and successful reporter; while I am a sometimes above average writer (I said indulge me!) who could be better if not for my life reading about comic book heroes.

Joking aside, we have a connection, one that makes stories about Superman's family life deeply meaningful to me.

And now Lois and Clark's marriage in the Superman books seems to be at risk. I’ve loved recent Superman, in which Lois and Clark work together to handle all the challenges that come at them, be they cosmic or domestic. All of us who have grown up and coupled can surely relate, and robust sales numbers suggest I’m far from alone here.

This recent version of Lois has had agency, participating in action sequences in extreme locales like Apokolips all while continuing to work at the Daily Planet. She’s as human and hardworking and determined to improve the world as ever.

In closing, I should note that I know this piece is a bit solipsistic and many readers have personal connections to Lois, especially young girls who didn’t have the luxury of viscerally identifying with Superman. I’m also aware many of my impressions of Lois come from the best-written versions of her, and that her depiction has at times oscillated wildly between empowered and distressed.

I get that, but I’d still like to close on an optimistic note. Bendis’ recent work at Marvel has largely been respectful in its treatment of female characters. Just look at Invincible Iron Man. Bendis has shifted the focus of that book to characters like Mary Jane Watson, Tony’s long-lost biological mother, and a young Chicago super genius named Riri Williams. Here’s hoping he writes Lois Lane the same way, the way she deserves.

Zack Quaintance is a career journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

Cover of Superman #45 by Patrick Gleason

Top Comics of February 2018

Better late than never, right? It may be closer to April than February, but here we are with our list of favorite comics from that month. Hey, we haven’t missed one since we launched way back in September, and we’re not about to start now!

Okay then, on to the comics…

Shout Outs

Let’s start with the books that didn’t quite make the Top 5 but sure got close...Black Panther #170 was another excellent installment in Ta-Nehisi Coates run, made especially noteworthy by a transcript in the back of a conversation between Coates and Ryan Coogler, director of the Black Panther film...the Doom Patrol/JLA crossover books were an imaginative highlight of February, with Mother Panic/Batman standing out. This one featured Batman as a preacher holding forth for a congregation of pint-sized Robins armed with shotguns...Eternal was so good I gave it to my wife to read and she loved it as much (if not more) than I did...Joshua Williamson’s Flash has been fantastic throughout, but Grodd being portrayed as one of the most terrifying and powerful villains in the DCU (which he is) really impressed me. I suspect Flash will make a leap to the Top 5 proper soon, with how the current story seems to involve the vast range of the Flash mythos...finally, let's talk about Saga #49’s cover. Fiona Staples’ covers are always impressive, but this one was just so timely and topical. I mean, look!

This cover makes sense within Saga, of course, but even if it didn’t, it’d still be compelling, conveying that we (society) are falling deeper into a media that just reflects everything back at us while “We’re All Completely Fuc—” crawls across a ticker on bottom. Brilliant.  

Top 5 Comics of February 2018

5. Black Monday Murders #8: This issue was not a dense read, as the rest of the book has been, but rather an action-packed one, surprisingly so. It hums along with developments and revelations, playing with power structures and systemic control, as this series has done from the start, while also refusing to sacrifice any of the power of its ideas in favor of accessibility. In other words, it’s definitely written by Jonathan Hickman.

Most importantly, though, Black Monday Murders #8 features a surprise, one that shows us our hard-boiled every man protagonist is just as flawed as the seemingly villainous elite he investigates. Within all of Hickman’s intricate world-building, this simple human fallibility turns out to be the most compelling quality within an excellent comic. Be forewarned, though, Black Monday Murders #9 is yet to be solicited, and given Jonathan Hickman’s working pace, it could be some time before it drops.

4. Thanos #16: This comic would be higher if we hadn’t given three Donny Cates books our top spot last month. As we’ve discussed in the past, these lists aim to support some of the best ongoing and sustained work, the stuff truly worthy of being kept on pull lists or purchased later in trade. So then, why are we praising Thanos again instead of giving some play to another deserving book? Simply put, this issue deserved it. It’s that good.

Thanos #16 is mainstream Big 2 adventure at its best. Cates is writing lately like a lifelong comic fan who dreamed of being a major Marvel voice as a kid, worked his fingers off at the keyboard to become one, and—guess what?—achieved it. There’s pure and undistilled joy in his work, nowhere more so than in Thanos. I mean, the first line in this issue is “When he was a younger man, and not yet a cosmic-fueled engine of time-traveling murder, Frank Castle’s wife and children were shot to death before his eyes.” Cates only ups the full-throttle comic book nonsensery from there.   

3. New Super Man and the Justice League of China #20: While DC Rebirth on the whole took a back-to-basics approach, it was not without a few glorious steps into new territory, chief among them Gene Luen Yang’s excellent New Super Man. There’s a lot to like about that book, including the main character’s demonstrable growth, the humor (Bats and Robinbot, LOL), the re-imagined mythos, and the geo-political/cultural backdrop of modern China.

None of those qualities would matter, however, if Yang wasn’t such a compelling writer. This is reductive maybe, but New Super Man is straight up good comics. It’s also highly believable, as believable as a story about super powers can be, anyway, and none of the ways our heroes have come to mirror American counterparts feels gimmicky or forced. This series might wrap up in May, which is of course a bummer, but I feel lucky to have gotten as many issues as we did. Here’s hoping we see Kong Kenan and the crew in other books moving forward!

2. Jessica Jones #17: Brian Michael Bendis’ final scripts are publishing at Marvel as he prepares his first work for DC, and as they do, one of the ironies about Marvel losing its biggest gun (and arguably its signature voice) is that these books have quietly been some of Bendis’ best recent work for the publisher. He’s turned in fantastic runs on Jessica Jones, Spider-Man, Invincible Iron Man, Infamous Iron Man, and Defenders. It’s really been quite impressive.

Jessica Jones #17, however, is the best of Bendis’ farewell tour so far. Defenders was an action-heavy streetlevel romp, and without question an enjoyable read, but given the relatively simplicity of that story, I had the sense a few other writers could have pulled it off just as well. Jessica Jones #17, on the other hand, could only have been written by Bendis. It combined two of his defining strengths—dialogue and philosophy—for an enthralling end to the Purple Man redux story, creating a resolution that spoke to the core of both characters. This story also wouldn't have been the same (or anywhere close to it) without the artwork of longtime Bendis' collaborater Michael Gaydos, whose page layouts were also crucial, as was the pitch-perfect noir color work, too.

1. Detective Comics #975: Detective Comics has been a fixture for me since I was a kid riding my bike to the local comic shop (the now-shuddered Graham Crackers’ comics in Glendale Heights, Illinois—RIP). Basically, I’ve been reading this book for years and can confidently say James Tynion’s Rebirth run is among the best of this book in my lifetime.

This number one spot for #975 is also a nod to the installments that made the plot within possible. If you’ve been reading, you know Tynion has carefully built a story that visits complex corners of Batman’s mythos, including Bruce Wayne’s lingering familial concerns, villain rehabilitation (or the impossibility thereof), legacy, the net good of Batman for Gotham, child soldiers, and the natural extension of Batman’s war on crime, pushed to extreme efficiency here by Tim Drake.

This story—The Trial of Batwoman—is an epilogue for much of this run. I don’t want to give anything away, but this “trial” is rich with various character ticks of the Bat Family, some of which are surprising without straining credibility or defying logic. I loved it, and I can’t wait to see what major story beats Tynion has left to play out as his run draws to a close.

Zack Quaintance is a career journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

The Miracle of Life: A Look at the Ties that Bind in Mister Miracle

It’s difficult to explain what you think is going on in Tom King and Mitch Gerads’ Mister Miracle. You might disagree, but think about it. First, you’d have to be able to convince yourself what exactly you think is going on. Try doing that, and then go back and try again. I bet you’ll create enough doubt, or straight confusion, that you won’t be able to put it together well enough to explain the overall story of the series. 

Now, of course, that isn’t to say that you couldn’t just go back and lay out the plot points as they occurred and then tell somebody what happened page by page. I mean yes, in that regard, you could tell somebody what occurred page by page. But, what is that weird thing that happens in some of the panels where they distort visually? You know, like when an old VCR had trouble with a video cassette – it kills me that some of you won’t get that reference – or when the Blu-Ray skips. Wouldn’t you call that a distortion in the reality of the series? So, go ahead and tell me what you think is happening again. 

Regardless of what is going on in the story – I’m sure we will be able to begin to piece it together soon as the series just hit its halfway mark – there is one theme that is persistent and undeniable. Whatever is going on with Scott Free, family is surely one of the most important aspects of it. You might say that yes, that’s pretty obvious, but let’s look closer at his relationships in this series. 

WARNING: Spoilers are below, so read the issues first!

1.) Highfather: Scott Free’s own biological father is notably absent in this series. He is mentioned in the first issue before being reported dead by Orion – the work of Darkseid, apparently – and sparking the final war with Apokolips, that Scott and Barda find themselves in. Nothing like daddy issues to really get a character moving, am I right?

2.) Darkseid: Scott’s adoptive father, I guess, and ruler of Apokolips. His presence can be felt throughout the entire series. Even though he is only shown in one panel – so far – Darkseid’s reach is far and strong. He is apparently the murderer of Orion, but if you ask him what he’s done he will tell you that Darkseid doesn’t do. Darkseid is. I doubt you’ll forget that powerful moment in the series. 

3.) Granny Goodness: I’m going to say this flat out, Granny is a mind f@*k in this series, so far. When she meets with Scott and Barda, she treats them with a kind and nurturing demeanor that you would expect from a good granny, but it isn’t long before she mentions her past tortures of the pair while simultaneously starving one of their comrades to death; this is all while they eat like a family. She alludes to Scott that he is actually her son and maybe, just maybe, Highfather wasn’t his real father after all. She mentions some prophecy to Scott that also insinuates that Darkseid is his real father just before Barda viciously beats her to death. Too bad she couldn’t spill any more secrets with some of her innards. Scott’s only maternal figure is taken away from him, by his wife. Which seems to fit the natural order of things for the New Gods. 

5.) Orion: Scott’s brother, although not biologically. He is the pinnacle of a dickhead. I mean, he sentences Mister Miracle to execution. He is exactly the type of character that you expect your older step-brother to be. He is harsh, demanding, and abusive. He clearly wants to lead, and briefly does but at dear costs to New Genesis’ war efforts against Apokolips – just ask Forager. He is the force that Scott must answer to for much of the story so far, and yet Scott tolerates and even defends him. His brotherly love and respect for Orion is apparent from issue 1, and his death obviously affects Scott. So much so that when he dies at the end of issue 6, we instantly get a new life in issue 7. Thus, filling the void that Orion has left. 

4.) Big Barda: Scott’s loving wife. Barda knows exactly what Scott needs when he doesn’t himself. She is soft and caring, yet stern and demanding when the time is necessary. She may not know why Scott tried to kill himself, but she certainly doesn’t seem too concerned about getting to the bottom of it either. All Barda seems to be interested in is enjoying every moment she can with Scott, whether that’s as warriors or lovers. If Scott is escaping Death in this series, I think the argument could be made that Barda is his ideal source of Life. 

5.) Jacob: The son of Mister Miracle and Big Barda. He is born at the end of issue 7 and he is just perfect. Well probably, there are some ominous things that are surrounding the new little guy. If you look closely on a heart monitor the omega symbol is present in one of the panels. This monitor was specifically monitoring Jacob’s heart before he was born. Also, Scott had to cut the cord from around Jacob’s neck with The Fahren-Knife – forged from the hide of Darkseid by Desaad – which supposedly burns you from the inside out. At the end of the issue he doesn’t seem to have any ill effects, though he does begin to cry as the chapter comes to a close. Foreshadowing much?

6.) The Female Furies: Oddly, we don’t really get to see the Furies until this point in the series. It’s incredible that they are Darkseid’s honor guard that are sworn to kill his enemies, and yet they show up to support the birth of one of their former member’s child. Their disgraced and treasonous former leader to be exact. While they don’t have a close relationship with Scott, who seems uninterested in their arrival, they do represent a lot for Barda. They are where she came from, who she used to be. The Furies operate as a great foil for her while also conveyingthe strength of the bond of family. 

The theme of Family and its importance in this story can’t be denied. In fact, every time Scott is faced with a problem, he turns to Barda. They even start a family in the middle of a New God war. It’s interesting that it’s as a family man, that Mister Miracle starts to become miraculous again and not just be the same old same old character we’ve seen for years. 

As I wrap up, I’ve noticed a few things to continue to look out for in the series:

• Barda’s eyes keep changing color from brown to blue. Scott even mentions it in issue one and he is right, they do keep changing color at interesting moments.

• The “Darkseid is.” panels seem to show up whenever Scott is making a decision. The most recent and prime example is when he decides to use the Fahren-Knife to cut the cord on Jacob and save his life.

• The Face of God that Scott isn’t supposed to see – or maybe is – keeps popping up. It’s foremost in issue one and is the last thing he sees in issue six.

• A small detail, but Scott is referred to as High Father for the first time in the same issue that his son is born. That’s either important or a very nice touch by Tom King.

Hopefully, these will begin to reveal some more about the story soon. Either way, it’s been a great ride so far, and I look forward to how it continues. 

Brandon Evans is a freelance writer and comic book lover from St. Louis, MO. He is currently working to find his way into the comic book industry. You can find him on Twitter as @writingbrandon

Top 5 Debut Comics of February 2018

Our slate of top-tier debut issues was brimming this month, so let’s go ahead and bypass our usual introduction, just stopping briefly to note that 1. YES! it was another great month for comics, and 2. We are indeed within a new modern golden age for the medium, sales figures be damned (since when is profit a measure of artistic quality anyway?). Onward!

New Beginnings

Brave and the Bold #1 by Liam Sharp: I knew going into this book that Sharp’s artwork would blow my eyes out (it’s sooooo good), but I was not prepared for the poetic turns of phrase in his script, nor was I ready for the excellent Wonder Woman characterization. Overall: Kudos to DC for trusting Sharp to pull double duty. It may have seemed like a risk, but this debut suggests it’s one that will pay off quite well.

Doctor Star and the Kingdom of Lost Tomorrows #1 by Jeff Lemire & Max Fiumara: Speaking of incredible comic book-ing I was wholly unprepared for, let’s talk Doctor Star and the Kingdom of Lost Tomorrows #1. Regular readers know my Best of the Month rankings (which I’ll be posting later this week) take whole runs into account, so debut issues almost never make the jump from this list to that one, but I was extremely tempted by this book. Overall: This book is part of Lemire’s burgeoning Black Hammer mythos (which keeps getting richer with perfect choice after perfect choice), a forlorn and mysterious take on superhero tropes. What’s most remarkable to me about this book is that it’s also an incredible stand-alone read, one with a clear and rewarding arc for its protagonist, filled with growth, hubris, a fall, and an inkling at its end that our hero will become a better person. Bravo!

Sideways #1 by Dan DiDio / Justin Jordan & Kenneth Rocafort; The Terrifics #1 by Jeff Lemire & Ivan Reis: I think it’s fair to describe fandom's attitude toward the New Age of DC Heroes as largely curious and slightly ambivalent (I fall more toward curious), but the publishing initiative justified itself and then some this month with Sideways and The Terrifics. Sideways is an exquisitely drawn (Kenneth Rocafort is an all-time great in the making), and it’s also a modern take on the classic teen superhero origin. I’ve seen comparisons that call this DC’s Spider-Man, but I’d argue Ms. Marvel might be more apt, given how well the writing captures today’s teens. Either way, great stuff, and The Terrifics description basically tells you all you need to know about its quality: it’s a DC take on the Fantastic Four written by Jeff Lemire, you know, the guy putting on a masterclass in alternate superhero mythologies over at Dark Horse with Black Hammer. Overall: Launching as many new books driven by new or obscure characters as this initiative aims to do is risky, but so far the comics have justified it.

X-Men Red #1 by Tom Taylor & Mahmud Asrar: If I had written a proper intro this month, I’d probably have tied it to a theme of surprise!, since so many of these books subverted or exceeded my expectations. Surprise, however, wouldn’t cover my reaction to X-Men: Red, which is far closer to downright freaking shocked. Look, I was the perfect age (third grade) when X-Men: The Animated Series hit, and in many ways that show and the X-characters are responsible for drawing me into comics. I, however, have been less than thrilled with the quality of their books lately, which have sagged as Marvel and Fox have battled over their movie rights. I was an X-cynic, to put it mildly, and now after this book I’m an X-believer, or a Current-believer. This is getting confusing, anyway...Overall: Simply put, the best X-book I’ve read in many years. Tom Taylor is clearly establishing himself as a writer with a baseline of quality that is far higher than the mean, regardless of how flawed a project seems from the outside.

Honorable Mentions: Last (and I guess sort of least, within this group anyway) I’d like to mention some of the comics that came closest to qualifying, including Cold War #1 by Christopher Sebela & Hayden Sherman from Aftershock Comics; Cult Classic: Return to Whisper #1 by Eliot Rahal & Felipe Cunha from Vault Comics; Incognegro Renaissance #1 by Mat Johnson & Warren Pleece from Dark Horse Comics' Berger Books; and The Wilds #1 by Vita Ayala & Emily Pearson from Black Mask Comics.

That’s it for this month’s newbies! Make sure to come back later this week for our Top 5 Favorite Comics of February 2018, and, if you’re so inclined, feel free to check out last month’s Top Comics of January 2018. Cheers!

Zack Quaintance is a career journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

Comic Book Shops in Austin, Texas

Everyone loves Austin, Texas. It’s one of the few cities in the Lone Star state that has hilly terrain, water running through it, and (somewhat) ample trees. There’s also barbecue and beer and the Alamo Draft House Movie Theater. Austin is, for better or worse, “the cool part of Texas.” And most importantly for our purposes, Austin is home to several great comic shops, too.

I lived in Austin from 2011 to 2016, and frequented many of the shops in the city, as I am wont to do wherever I’m living. I’m glad to be out of Austin now—it’s grown so fast and traffic is a mess and in a lot of ways the growth is totally out of control—but I do miss the comic shops there.   

Recently, I was back in town for a wedding, and I took a stroll down comic book memory lane, in part to refresh my memory enough to write this guide. I was pleasantly surprised to find that in the 2 years I've been away, the shops are mostly still there and just as fantastic as I remember. Let's take a look!

Austin Books & Comics

This place is the Disneyland of comics. It has everything, from variants to entire sections of obscure indies to rare books on the wall to a veritable army of friendly staffers. In the same little strip mall, it has separate affiliated stores for back issues and games, too. ABC (as hip folks call it) also hosts art shows on some weekends. When I lived in Austin, this was where I took non comics friends to show off the hobby, and it was also where I ended up when my regular shop sold out of titles.

Pros: The fact that a shop as large, cool, and comprehensive as ABC exists in a tourist-heavy town like Austin is great for the industry. I’m certain I wasn’t the only Austinite who brought out-of-towners to browse between barbecue and beers. Like I said, this is comics Disneyland, and only a jaded soul would argue there isn’t at least a little fun to be had at Disney. Oh, and it’s part of the increasingly hard-to-find fabric of the Austin community, having been around since 1977.

Cons: It's tough to pick a downside here, but parking on the weekend is its own circle of hell. Also, it’s a high traffic store, sometimes crowded, and occasionally not an ideal spot to linger.

Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy

Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy is the cleanest and best-lit comic shop I’ve ever seen. There’s a cat that walks around inside, and the whole place smells fantastic. Their selection rivals ABC. The two shops also compete for big name signings. While ABC generally attracts creators who live in town (Donny Cates, Becky Cloonan, etc.), Dragon’s Lair shells out cash to pull big name creators from elsewhere. I remember them having Marjorie Liu a week after she dropped Monstress and Brian Bendis the week of Civil War II, not too shabby.

Pros: At Dragon’s Lair you’ll find tons of books in a clean environment, as well as a ton of games and sizable area within which to play them. Their employees wear uniform shirts and headsets, and they have an entire team of staffers in back doing something on computers.

Cons: I could just copy and paste the pros section. Dragon’s Lair almost feels too polished, and what are all those people in the back doing on computers? It’s similar to ABC in that it has deep roots in the city but feels less personal these days than it probably used to.

Tribe Comics and Games

Tribe, from what I understand, was started years ago by some guys who used to work at Dragon’s Lair, or maybe it was ABC. Whatever the case, they wanted to do their own thing, so they opened Tribe. Although this has since changed, when I lived in Austin Tribe was the only comic shop south of the river (which is technically a lake—Austin is, quite famously, a weird city). There’s a real sense of community at Tribe, in that the staff is small and regulars often linger at the shop, eager to make conversation about their favorite books and the industry. Tribe, however, doesn’t seem to move anywhere close to as many comics as the other outfits in town.  

Pros: More intimate feel than ABC or Dragon’s Lair, and the staff is ready and eager to pontificate at length about comics. It’s also located to some of the more touristy parts of town along Lamar and South Congress, and it’s almost right next door to a Torchy’s Tacos, so you can stop in real quick on an afternoon out or while grabbing a bag of munchies.

Cons: The selection isn’t as extensive as the other shops in town, and they often sold out of the most popular books the day of release, early in the day at that.

Kings Cache Comics

This is a sad section for me to write, because Kings Cache grew from the demise of Capstone Comics, which was my favorite shop in Austin. Capstone was entirely focused on selling comics, rather than games, and it had an active community of buyers and sellers. They kept high value books in a glass case at the register, and it wasn’t uncommon to see first appearances of major Marvel characters, old DC event books, and even newer stuff like the first issue of Saga.

After a dispute with a landlord who wanted to capitalize on Austin’s growth (Austin, it should be noted, is brimming with schemers and cash grabbers these days), Capstone closed its doors (the space where it was located is still vacant, btw), but some regulars got together to open Kings Cache, which is located a bit further up north inside Kings Hobby. It’s starting small, but it's already a chill place where you can linger for however long you like, talking comics.

Pros: All comics and super chill. Plus, King’s Cache offers a discount to regulars who subscribe to a certain number of books, which is something you don’t find at Austin's larger outfits. It also has the old Capstone glass case filled with rare books.

Cons: It’s super tiny, for now. So small, in fact, it took me a few moments once I went into Kings Hobby to figure out where the comics were.

Others

There are also some newer entries in the Austin comic scene, as well as some that have been around a while but are a bit far from the city center. Titan Moon Comics is a great option for those who live in the far far north of town in Cedar Park, while Juniors Comics and Cards is down in the far far south. While out in Round Rock they have Rogues Gallery Comics & Games, although that’s not technically within Austin.

Finally, one of the newer entries to the Austin comics scene is Hops and Heroes Comics, which is actually a non-profit with an emphasis on literacy programs driven by graphic storytelling, a cause near and dear to my own heart. Also, because it’s Austin, I guess the place also sells beer? Or rather, its website says it plans to one day. It's located on Cesar Chavez in a rapidly-changing area surrounded by all manner of hip drinking locales, so that makes sense. There is also beer basically everywhere in Austin, like, seriously. Basically, if you were Austin’s friends you’d be whispering behind Austin’s back about it having a problem. No wonder everyone wants to live there, right?

February 2018 Indie Comics Grab Bag: Beware the Violence

Welcome to our monthly indie comics roundup, wherein I read and discuss books from creators I’ve never read before. In February, I was again surprised by the high quality of the stories I found, much like last month. In fact, I even took to Twitter to fawn over the amount of good work available in the industry today!

Seriously though, there is just so much worth reading. Maybe too much, judging by my massive unread pile and shrinking comics budget. I’ve had this conversation a lot, but there are basically awesome books in all genres. There are even emerging genres within genres, specifically within superhero books, where you can now find straight-up comedy, satire, slice-of-life stories, hard sci-fi, horror, and the list goes on.

I’ve said this before, but if you think modern comics are lagging, just head to your LCS and find a handful of unfamiliar books. Chances are good you’ll find a gem, I know I did with these.

Common Theme

I choose these books essentially at random, with no deliberate effort into finding a connection. So it came as a surprise when a common theme emerged here. All three books were concerned with violence, raising questions like how necessary is violence, what price do we pay for violence, is violence passed down, is violence a necessary threat if we are to enjoy peace?

Like my favorite fiction, these books don’t offer answers to all (or any) of those questions. They simply illustrate them in ways that force readers to consider violence from new perspectives. What readers take away is entirely on them.

Eternal by Ryan Lindsay and Eric Zawadzki

I could say this was the most beautiful book I read this week (month? year?) and that would be true, but it would also be reductive. Eternal is a story that writer Ryan Lindsay intended to be shorter. Yet, it grew into a graphic novel fueled by the artistic muse of Eric Zawadzki. That one or both creators was seized here by a powerful vision is evident from Eternal’s start, as the final product is one as poetic as it is grandiose.

A close-quarters viking battle opens the story and also serves as a framing device. I won’t go into plot (no spoilers) but plot is somewhat immaterial in Eternal. What the book does is create a prevailing aesthetic of wistful tragedy and uses it to inform every gorgeously-rendered panel, be it filled with intricate detail or a wide and forlorn establishing shot.

Eternal plays with the relationship between safety and violence, asking about the necessity of becoming proficient enough with killing that the threat of yourself guarantees safety for those you love, and then asking if this must come at a high price.

Zawadzki’s art operates at an incredible level, making a number of visual choices that result in stunning sequences. I was specifically taken with a page wherein our protagonist decapitates a foe. Four horizontal panels show her approach, while a fifth shows her enemy’s severed head on a pike. We don’t see the separation; our minds show us that. We simply see her intent, slow and deliberate, and then its gruesome result. Powerful choices like this are made throughout, as co-writer Ryan Lindsay backs off, contributing pitch-perfect turns of phrase when needed.

Overall: Few books in February haunted me like Eternal. In an included essay, Lindsay writes, “...I am settling into the happiness of knowing that I’ll never be a part of a better Viking tale than what we have here with our shieldmaidens.” I feel the same way as a reader.

Literary Cousin: If you are taken by poetic viking tales, I urge you to seek out an excellent short story by the prose writer Wells Tower, “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned.” Its setting is nearly identical to Eternal’s, its violence just as grotesque, and its questions similar. Tower, however, uses a matter-of-fact tone to make life around his vikings rote and mundane. It’s an interesting juxtaposition to the epic severity of Eternal.

Cold War by Christopher Sebela and Hayden Sherman

Phew, this book is intense, from its art to its central plot conceit, which kicks in at page three and then comes apart and goes in another direction at the end. This first issue is also predicated on suspense and a twist, one that is probably not what you think.

I know that’s vague, but it’s hard to get into specifics when so much of Cold War is a bait and switch, both for readers and for most characters on the page. It’s the type of first issue that will be heavily dependent on what comes next for exposition. Think Kill Bill Vol. 1 versus Kill Bill Vol. 2. Similarly, Cold War is an intriguing read that moves fast and leaves readers wanting more.

It’s an interesting companion piece to Eternal, and I was grateful to read them back to back, because the theme here is the nature and necessity of violence as well. However, where Eternal took a mournful and distant approach rooted more in imagery than plot, Cold War goes the other way. Its aesthetic is jagged, futuristic, ill-defined; its plot is one that asks how tough are you and what would you do in this situation?

Overall: So much remains unanswered after one issue. I enjoyed every crazy second of this wicked trip, but afterward I wondered a bit if it wasn’t glorifying parts of humanity that ought to be condemned. My inclination is no, it’s just using action to foster intense engagement, but it’s difficult to say for sure. Either way, I’m on board for the next issue.

White Ash by Charlie Stickney and Conor Hughes

Writer Charlie Stickney reached out via Twitter, pitching his book for review as Lord of the Rings meets Romeo and Juliet, but set in modern day rural Pennsylvania. That’s a lot of narrative heft atop an area of the country that went from compartmentalized to consequential during the 2016 presidential election—I was intrigued. And I really enjoyed the first two issues Charlie sent my way.

The concept is engaging enough, borrowing tropes from the aforementioned properties without ever feeling familiar or tired, and the setting does some real heavy lifting here, both in terms of Stickney’s script and Hughes’ artwork. A blue collar gothic aesthetic takes hold under a prevailing umbrella of fantasy, creating fertile grounds for White Ash to play with ideas around socio economic divides.

Of the three books I read this week, White Ash is perhaps least concerned with violence, which is fine, because it’s not that type of book. This is an adventure story, pure and simple, one where anachronistic dialogue bits like “bees knees” or “killer diller” float into scenes unnoticed because why not?  

Overall: Stickney does what any unheralded creator must, quickly showing himself capable of creating an engaging story structure and an interesting plot. He’s got a concept here that can be easily bundled into a summary line to grab new readers, and he delivers twists and turns within that concept that keep the proceedings moving. I’d like to see a deeper exploration of some of our characters moving forward, and if White Ash has a chance to continue, I’m sure we’ll get it.

Zack Quaintance is a career journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

How to Handle Marvel’s Fresh Start: Your Guide to Re-Numbering

Marvel is renumbering its comics again this summer, marking basically the sixth time the publisher has done that in six years. Many comic fans on Twitter have no answer for this, well, aside from flipping out, getting mad, fighting, swearing things have never been this bad, and accusing Marvel, or DC, or both Marvel and DC, of ruining the business (side note, this is actually how comic book Twitter responds to everything).

That’s why today we’ve put together a guide for how to handle Marvel’s Fresh Start, which is the name for its latest re-numbering. You're going to have to learn to cope, friends. Marvel’s leadership literally said three years ago it was going to a seasonal model, which, like TV, would see their books building on past seasons each year while going in fresh theoretically new audience-friendly directions. 

So, let’s face it, Marvel is going to re-number its comics annually every year for the foreseeable future.

Here’s what you should do in response:

1. Tell everyone else on comic book Twitter you don’t like this. Tell them often, and tell them angrily.

2. Tell Marvel that you don’t like this, see above for frequency and tenor with which you should do this.

3. Assume that because 6 - 8 other people agree with you, that the entire industry is crumbling.

4. Assume that the only reason Marvel is doing this is because they hate you.

5. Don’t stop for a second to wonder if a multi-million dollar corporation knows more about business than you do.

6. Forget all of this ever happen for the next 6 - 12 months.

7. React the same way in 6 - 12 months when Marvel announces the start of its next publishing season.

8. Continue to buy (or at least talk about angrily) Marvel comics.

Okay, so that’s all a joke (obviously), but what you should actually do is pretty simple.

Just ask yourself, do you read and enjoy any of Marvel’s comics now? If you said yes, go ahead and continue reading those Marvel comics. At the moment, it looks as if many of Marvel’s top books will continue with little changed, or at least with the same writers (see Black Panther and Thor). Also, if you like the sound of some of Marvel’s new creative teams--as I do with Avengers, Venom, and the rumors about Captain America--go ahead and hop on those books, too.

If you said no, and you are not currently reading any Marvel comics, or if you don’t like the sound of the new creative teams, either carry on or go ahead and stop reading those comics and instead read something else. There are some great Image and indie books around these days, or so we've heard. 

This is all not to say that there aren’t legit questions about this seasonal method Marvel is forcing upon the industry. Change is scary like that, and there is a sizable number of fans, as well as retailers, who are quite vocal about how they don’t like this (over and over). But, again, that’s how change works. So, buy the stories you like and don’t buy stories that you don’t like, which is just what comic fans have done for decades; the market will naturally sort out whether Marvel's model is viable.

What you shouldn’t do, however, is continue to read Marvel comics, forget that this seasonal model is here to say, and then react with frustration and outrage, as if doing so could change anything. Or, if you're not reading Marvel comics, continue to throw a ton of negativity into the ether to be heard by the fans who do enjoy them, like some kind of super dick-ish molotov cocktail of dickery. Anyway if you did that, you’d be behaving the exact same way and expecting different results, which is, my friends, the definition of insanity.

How Ryan Coogler Made Black Panther Standout From Other Marvel Movies

I’m not here to review Black Panther. The movie is a critical and commercial success, and I can’t think of anything in it that could have been done better. What I am here to do is talk about why this movie works. Let’s get right to it.

The Villain

Killmonger is Marvel’s best villain, although Loki is in the conversation (if you’d still consider him a villain). One problem with Marvel’s movies has been that the stakes feel low. We know our main character will emerge mostly fine, hell, we’ve seen the previews for the next film.

We knew this going into Black Panther, but with Killmonger, director Ryan Coogler created a villain so compelling that the tension became about the villain’s fate. Killmonger was a bad guy, an extremist who shot his own girlfriend in the head without hesitation to get what he wanted, but we knew what happened to make him that way and, from a certain perspective, we sympathized with his motives. Plus, Michael B. Jordan played him to perfection.

The Director

Ryan Coogler has quickly become the best director of blockbuster movies within established commercial franchises. Exhibit 1: Creed. Exhibit 2: Black Panther. I knew Coogler was talented when I saw his tragic 2013 indie drama Fruitvale Station, but I didn’t know he could make Rocky and Marvel movies that stood with the best cinema has to offer.

I saw Black Panther Thursday and tried to see it again Sunday, but all the shows in Sacramento were sold out. So, I re-watched Creed instead, and I realized Coogler has a toolbox of techniques he draws from to make his work stand out within a big money studio series.

Here they are:

1. He tells the audience what his movie is about, from start to finish, in the first five minutes: this is a literary technique, one best done in To Kill a Mockingbird, within which the start of a story foreshadows its plot. He did it in Creed with Adonis fighting impossible odds because of his father, and he did it in Black Panther with the story of Wakanda’s wealth followed by a cut to impoverished Oakland where a king ignores others’ plight in favor of isolationism. It’s tone setting at its best.

2. He makes the audience uncomfortable: the fights in Creed are ugly, there’s a lot of talk of boxers struggling to wipe their asses, etc. In Black Panther, Coogler dives into the idea that powerful civilizations (America specifically) have long been built by subjugated lower classes while future generations ignore their culpability. Basically, he makes you think while you're watching yet another CGI slugfest.

3. He makes films that standalone: Black Panther and Creed can both be enjoyed if you’ve never seen another Marvel or Rocky movie (though both are better if you have), because rather than use established worlds as crutches, Coogler’s movies put character drama at the center.

4. He casts even bit parts with super talented (often underused) actors: there are almost too many examples to count, but see Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett and Sterling K. Brown in Black Panther, and see Wood Harris in Creed.

His Perspective

I saw Kendrick Lamar in concert at a small venue on his Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City tour (yes, I’m bragging and also I should have put music on that list above, damn), and between songs, Kendrick talked about how he’d brought his music mainstream rather than trying to make music he thought the mainstream would like. Coogler does the same thing with his movies.

He’s brought the perspective he grew up with as a black male from Richmond, Calif. to two franchises traditionally dominated by white directors, writers, and actors. The expert storytelling is why this movie succeeds, of course, but it’s still important to note that in 2018 audiences are anxious for new stories from different perspectives and Coogler has consistently delivered that. Here’s hoping the success of Black Panther results in a Lando film over at Star Wars or a John Stewart Green Lantern film at DC (provided, of course, they’re done as well as Coogler did this one).

So, there. Oddly, this blog took longer to write than any other piece on this website (even though it’s one of the shortest) because writing about film is not something I enjoy or ever do. I doubt I’ll do it again, frankly, but I had a lot to say about this one. Besides, any excuse to talk, read, or think more about Black Panther, this week right?

Is the New Age of DC Heroes Good?

This site is not a destination for news. We update twice a week, generally with content that is more analytical than informative. Yet, in January when DC launched its 8-book publishing initiative New Age of DC Heroes, a dozen readers on Twitter asked me what the deal was with these books, specifically if they were any good.

There was anticipation, doubt, and curiosity, and it was all understandable. These books follow a roughly 18-month-long period during which DC deliberately avoided large-scale new book rollouts. Now, all of a sudden, they’re doing eight. I responded:

I admire DC for trying new things, but 8 books at once seems like too much, especially when none star a bankable character (you could say Plastic Man but I’d say that’s stretching, then I’d laugh at my pun until everyone got uncomfortable). My guess is the art will be incredible, but, overall, I’ll be surprised if most of this line lasts 20 issues.

Three of the books have now dropped, and, the thing is, I’m still hearing questions, although not as many. Some fans are reading the damn things (good!) and others have moved on to asking about Scott Snyder’s Justice League or Brian Michael Bendis’ Superman.

For those still curious, however, today I have some brief impressions of the three live titles, plus updates on my thinking about the five that are yet to come.

The Known Knowns

Damage by Robert Venditti & Tony S. Daniel: One of the conceits of New Age of Heroes is some books are basic Marvel ripoffs, this character the most. Damage is The Hulk, if Banner had been a foot soldier rather than a scientist, a military pawn rather than architect of his own trauma. The first issue was a Hulk story, albeit one that hinted at deeper exploration of the modern military industrial complex. The art was good and the story did enough to get me to read #2.
Next issue: 02/21/2018

Silencer by John Romita Jr. & Dan Abnett: I wasn’t expecting much here because I’ve never found stories about vigilantes with guns compelling, due to lack of escapism and excess of uncomfortable reality. I know they can cautionary, but they also walk a line between glorifying the behavior they examine. It’s especially too much right now given the power the NRA wields in Congress. I don’t want to spoil anything, but this book is actually a far cry from that brutal brand of vigilante justice, although part of me wonders if it’ll get a bit closer as the first arc progresses.
Next issue: 02/28/2018

Sideways by Kenneth Rocafort & Dan DiDio/Justin Jordan: Sideways is my favorite so far, although I should note I’m a sucker for Kenneth Rocafort art and teenage superhero origin stories. Still, this one is especially well-done. As many have pointed out, Sideways has Spider-Man vibes, but that’s fine. Youth culture has changed dramatically since the last Spider-Man origin overhaul was done in the Ultimate books by Bendis, so there’s ample ground to explore, and I’m game to explore it through visuals as lush as these.
Next issue: 03/14/2018

The (So Far) Unknown Knowns

Terrifics by Ivan Reis and Jeff Lemire: This book is a blatant DC take on the Fantastic Four, swapping Reed Richards for Plastic Man, The Human Torch for Mister Terrific, and so on. It’s also written by Jeff Lemire and drawn by Ivan Reis. This is, to be clear, my most anticipated book of the line, so much so I openly insist you all read it. All of you.
First issue: 2/28/2018

Curse of Brimstone by Philip Tan & Justin Jordan: The title of this book put me off at the start, because it sounds like a Hardy Boys novel. The description, however, is intriguing. It’s about a man making a deal with the devil to save his struggling small town. If this plot goes into the withering Midwest, the opioid crisis, the brain drain challenges plaguing smalltown America, it could be really good, or at least relevant.
First issue: 04/04/2018

Immortal Men by Jim Lee & James Tynion IV: Jim Lee, one of the industry’s best and tardiest artists, is drawing three issues of this book, the first of which has been delayed...and delayed...and then delayed. I think the debut will come out, eventually, but I have no idea whether two more Jim Lee issues will ever drop at this rate.
First issue: 04/11/2018

New Challengers by Andy Kubert & Scott Snyder: This book is an update of Challengers of the Unknown, one of Jack Kirby’s many creations. Embarrassingly, I have zero familiarity with it. However, it doesn’t seem like I’ll need any, as the previews make clear this is about new characters. Challengers Mountain was mentioned in Carter’s journal during the Metal event, so this is also poised to have a direct Metal connection. Overall, I’m a Scott Snyder fan, plus the character designs from Andy Kubert are intriguing. If Snyder really lets his psyche roam, we could be in for some fantastic adventures.
First issue: TBD

The Unexpected by Ryan Sook & Steve Orlando: When this book was announced, Steve Orlando (a MASSIVELY underrated writer) described it as Seven Samurai meets The Dark Tower. Okay, cool! And from what I understand, some characters have already been introduced, during Metal or via connections to more prominent stories. That said, it seems any of them will be notable enough to pull in readers. What may do that, however, is Orlando writing another team books with a disparate group struggling to cooperate. See Justice League of America to observe how skilled he is at that.  
First issue: TBD

New Age of DC Heroes Overall

Maybe I’ll lose any cred I had as a discerning comic book reader, but I think this line is kind of cool. The books are $2.99 and there are no variant covers, which allays (a bit) my suspicions of  cash grabs and gimmickry. I’ve also genuinely liked two of the three books so far, and the next one coming is from Jeff Lemire, easily one of my favorite writers.

And really, what should DC be doing instead? More alternate takes on Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman? More books with new lenses through which to see obscure characters? We’re getting enough of both those things. DC is confident and exciting right now, more than it has been in many years. Good for them for looking in new directions, even if they lead to failure.

Whether these books last hinges on sales, but sales never tell whole stories of success and failure. Upcoming solicits show an effort to integrate these characters with existing DC properties. The cynical view sees this as desperation to move more books. My sunny optimist view, however, is that it’s actually commitment to the concepts long-term, regardless of whether they sell. They say you should always end your writing with a cliche (right?), so...I guess in the end, only time will tell…

Back Matter

I’ve been burned out on X-Men and had zero interest in X-Men Red, until some smart readers told me this one was different. Now, I’m adding my voice to that chorus. Even if you’ve become X-Hausted, this first issue is worth a read. It hems closer to the central metaphor than any X-Story in years, rightly picking Jean as true caretaker of Xavier’s legacy. Plus, there’s a twist!...The literary writer Mat Johnson is one of my favorite accounts on Twitter. He’s witty, sharp with his politics, and prolific. Incognegro Renaissance is one of the smartest and most subtle comics this year, understated in a way that is often difficult for the medium. Johnson takes risk with nuance and they all land...Finally, Milk Wars has been great. The first round of Young Animal valued aesthetic oddity over deep meaning AND accessibility. I prefer my odd visuals with one or the other, otherwise it feels like showing off, kind of like Terrence Malick’s lesser movies. This event, though, is odd, accessible and might have some deeper meaning, too. Plus, it’s worth reading for the story line in part 2, within which Batman is a preacher and his congregation is a bunch of mini Robins with big shotguns.

Best Comics to Buy Your Significant Other

Valentine’s Day falls on Wednesday this year, which, of course is also new comic book day. So I figure, what better time to discuss something I suspect all comic fans think about from time to time: how do I get the person I love to also love my hobby?

I know I think about this. In fact, last year I bought my wife a trade in hopes she’d start to read comics. And guess what? I had some success! I went with the first trade of Snotgirl, which I’ve described as Clueless for the Instagram generation with a sinister twist.

Now, my wife is a reporter at one of the three biggest newspapers in the United States, and she spends quite a bit of time contemplating personal branding, audience trust of media personalities, and just generally how one presents themselves online. She’s also quite stylish and moderately obsessed with Instagram fashion models who wear her type of clothes.

I suspected she’d appreciate Bryan Lee O’Malley’s scripts and thematic interest, and she did! What surprised me, though, was she also absolutely LOVED Leslie Hung’s art. Now, I’m a fan myself, but it never occurred to me someone who’d never read an entire comic book would be drawn more to art than to text.

While my wife didn’t run down to our local shop and start her own pull list (she’s content trade-waiting for Snotgirl) she did gain a new appreciation for the medium and for my hobby, which, aside from her and my day job, takes up most of my time. Ultimately, this understanding brought us closer together, making us stronger as a couple. Aren’t comics wonderful?

I hope you find a book from my suggested list that will wow your loved one, too. Oh, and happy Valentine’s!

Comics to Buy Your Significant Other

This list is in alphabetical order, and, if you’ll notice, there’s no Batman, Superman, Spider-Man. In other words, it eschews the mainstays of comics. It’s not that I don’t love those characters (ahem, what’s the name of this site), or that I think it’s impossible to use stories like The Long Halloween or All-Star Superman or Ultimate Spider-Man to show the brilliance of comics. I just think they are a bit too highly stigmatized and obvious to be illustrative of the medium’s nuances. Simply put, if your significant other was going to get hooked based on one of these three, chances are it would have already happened, as they’ve likely known their core stories since they were a kid.

It should go without saying that I LOVE every book on this list, by the way.

Hawkeye by Matt Fraction & David Aja
This is a story about humanity more than anything else, about a guy who has a job and an apartment and plenty of flaws and bad habits, but still wants to do right anyway. Oh yeah, and he also happens to be an Avenger but in this story that’s secondary.
For: The significant other who loves PBR, black-rimmed glasses, and acting like comics aren’t hip enough for their time (this is all a nice way of saying buy this book if you’re dating a hipster).

Monstress by Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda
I met Marjorie Liu at a comic book store in Austin soon after this book launched, and I remember her saying this series grew from a vision she had of a young woman that was absolutely furious. Monstress is a great choice because it starts with a first issue that’s among the best debuts in recent memory, and while yes, the fury that inspired it does cool down, Lie and Takeda replace it with some of the best world-building in any medium.
For: The significant other who likes Final Fantasy, anime, Kill Bill, Empire Strikes Back, revenge, or any story the puts strong female protagonists and antagonists alike front and center.

Saga by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples
This is my favorite comic book, to be blunt, and its title is as simple and effective as its plot. Two lovers from species that have been at war with each other for generations fall in love and have a child. This is the story of their family.
For: The significant other who loves both Shakespeare and Star Wars, or maybe even just Star Wars and Game of Thrones.

Sandman by Neil Gaiman & Various
Sandman is steeped in dark mythology that spans history and our modern day, ultimately creating an effect that delves deep into the human mind.
For: The significant other who majored in philosophy and also likes to meditate (or to expand their mind in less wholesome ways).

Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky
Awwwwwww, yeah.
For: Oh, don’t act like you don’t know what this one would be for, you dirty dog (this book is more about relationships than it is about a couple getting raunchy, although it is also about a couple getting raunchy).

Snotgirl by Bryan Lee O’Malley & Leslie Hung
Lottie Person is an Instagram model with a large fan following, secretly severe allergies, and a pension for putting too much stock in appearances as well as for brushing up against the macabre.
For: The significant other who loved Clueless, takes pictures until they get the perfect shot for the ‘Gram, and is content to re-watch Scott Pilgrim over and over and over again.

Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis & Darick Robertson
Billed as a cyberpunk transhumanist comic book (uh yeah, okay, let’s just go ahead pretending that’s a perfectly normal way to bill something) Transmetropolitan has a central protagonist named Spider Jerusalem, who is a renegade gonzo journalist in the future, navigating a dystopian world suffering from corruption and U.S. presidents who abuse their powers.  
For: The significant other who shudders when politics come up and is still hurt and reeling from the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Warning, this is risky title to start with due to its density, probably best left to fans of political dramas and deep sci-fi.

Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
A superhero deconstruction that doubles as a cautionary tale about mutually assured destruction, common threats, and the Cold War. It’s a great fit for the more literary set, requiring only a cursory knowledge of superheros to be appreciated.
For: The significant other who reads The New Yorker and is always bugging you to read their short stories.

X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills by Chris Claremont & Brent Anderson
This original graphic novel does the difficult work of encapsulating the X-Men with minimal need to know the characters’ long and convoluted back stories. The X-Men have one of the best central metaphors of any ongoing property in fiction, and this story makes it accessible.
For: The ‘90s kid who loved the animated series, or for anyone concerned with the equality inherent to the characters’ central metaphor.

The Ultimates by Mark Millar & Bryan Hitch
I recently re-read The Ultimates for years and was struck by how blatantly this story was a blueprint for the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it. This didn’t come as a surprise, as so many folks in media love to point this out, but it was still fascinating to go back and read it now that we’re a bajillion movies in.
For: The significant other who loves Marvel movies but has always seen the comic books as too geeky or ridiculous to bother to read.

Zack Quaintance is a career journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

Comic Book Shops in Sacramento, CA

Oblivion Comics and Coffee in Sacramento, Calif.

Big Brother comics in Sacramento, Calif.

I moved to Sacramento almost two years ago, driving from where I lived in Austin, Texas to Denver to a friend’s wedding in Wyoming, over the Sierra Nevadas into town. My car—a Hyundai Elantra then—was packed with boxes, including three long ones of comics in the trunk and a short one in the backseat with my valuable issues.

I didn’t want to be in Sacramento. I knew nothing about the city and my family was in the Midwest, but I was willing to try because I’d always loved California and my significant other got a great job there and found a beautiful upstairs apartment in an old Victorian downtown, about nine blocks from a comic book store, which was downright walkable.

I got to Sacramento on a Tuesday. The next morning, #NCBD, I walked to that shop and found what looked like a moving crew loading arcade games, boxes, and shelves into a U-Haul. Turns out as I was finishing my drive, a fire swept through the store and closed it, temporarily.

So, I did what any serious collector would: spent the weeks while they relocated (nearby, thankfully, 7 blocks now!) trying other comic book shops in Sacramento, a process from which I learned Sacramento is a city that supports small business, a place where people either don’t know about or don’t like shopping online, a place with a thriving comic book ecosystem.

People also don’t post great user reviews there (they’re all either furious or glowing, which probably makes them typical). So, in the unlikely event any of you find yourselves in town, I’d like to share what I learned about comic book shops in Sacramento with you today! Also, if you ever visit, say hi. We’ll grab a whatever-Sacramento-is-known-for (I still don’t know) and talk comics.

Comic Book Shops in Sacramento, CA: Empire’s Comics Vault

Empire’s is like a clubhouse. There’s always a movie or TV show on in there, a few regulars hanging on the couches, and the owner’s adorable pugs running around, doing everything from guarding the door, to chasing each other, to playing with visiting dogs that belong to shoppers. When I first moved to town and didn’t have a new job yet, I drove out to Empire’s most Wednesdays. I however, haven’t been in some time because it’s far from both my house and office. It’s a shame, too, because of all the shop’s in town, Empire’s is the one most dedicated to the medium. You can just tell the owner loves comic books and loves selling them.

Pros: Of all the shops in town, this one has the most knowledgeable and engaged owner. Ben Schwartz sets up online chats for his regulars with big name creators like Rick Remender and Brian Michael Bendis; he does a video stream on Facebook of his favorite books each Wednesday; and he regularly organizes group trips to see new comic book movies at Studio City Grill, the nicest theater in the Sacramento area. This shop also does a great job stocking books. With the possible exception of A-1 Roseville, Empire’s is basically the only place in town you can find copies of Valiant books or Giant Days on the rack. Plus, it hosts book clubs, a weekly night for writers, semi-regular live model events for artists, stand-up comedy, and art shows. Schwartz also opens his store up regularly to Good Morning Sacramento segments, and he runs Empire’s Comics Vault Press, which produces books by local writers and artists.

Cons: The location is an issue, at least for me. Empire’s is in a stripmall along a piece of Fulton Ave. that isn’t near much else of note and certainly isn't walkable from downtown. If it wasn’t for this, I’d be far more likely to be a regular at Empire’s. But c’est la vie. Also, the shop is so good to its regulars, that it gives anyone with a pulllist first come, first serve access to its massive Free Comic Book Day activities. If you don’t have a pulllist with them, however, you’re liable to wait hours just to get into the shop.

Comic Book Shops in Sacramento, CA: Big Brother Comics

I buy the majority of my books at Big Brother, which is the shop near my house that burned down right before I got to town. As I mentioned, its new location is even closer to my house, and, as the guys there will attest, it’s much cooler than the old spot. Anyway, if Empire’s is like a living room, Big Brother is like Sacramento’s Gen-X comic book basement, with little nooks and crannies lined with the owner Kenny Russell’s collection of vintage Star Wars toys.

This store may not have the selection of comics Empire’s does, but it more than compensates with its games section, which is always evolving. It’s located in Midtown, a walkable neighborhood of restaurants, art galleries, bars and a weekend farmer’s market. This is one of those shops that has superseded the geekiness comics have long been known for to become a cool place to hang out, whether you’re just picking up your weekly books (they offer a great and uncomplicated discount to members) or chilling in the back to play games at the many tables.

Pros: You’ll feel cool by extension for shopping at this store, due to everything from the location, to the guys bantering behind the counter, to the laid back vibe, to the dim track-lighting mounted on the ceiling. Kenny is also the most generous owner in town when it comes to discounting books, and even if you don’t always agree with him, he’s often making a strong and enthusiastic point about something.

Cons: The selection is strong, and they’re great about ordering whatever you ask for, but they don’t stock rows of back issues or a wall of rare books like many of the other shops in town. Also, as cool as Midtown is, parking near Big Brother can be a bit rough. But that’s part of the fun of living and shopping in a city! Anyway, what do I care? I can walk or bike there. Nerds.

Comic Book Shops in Sacramento, CA: A-1 Comics

Of all the stores in town, A-1 Comics is the most traditional, probably because it’s been around the longest. A-1, which is owned by former San Francisco 49er (seriously, he played one season with them in 1981 at tight end) Brian Peets, has been in business for 27 years, and it’s where you’ll find what is easily the largest collection of rare and vintage books in town.  

A-1 has also grown into a chain that now has three locations: Roseville, Folsom and a part of Sacramento that may as well be suburban Carmichael or Citrus Heights, it’s so far from the urban core. I stop into A-1 Folsom every Wednesday during my lunch, because the office for my day job is in that area and it’s a quick way to get some books to read in Subway, where I enjoy a sandwich and a quick hit of deep melancholy (I’d go somewhere else but Subway is also close, and it’s only $9 for a semi-healthy turkey on wheat, what do you want from me?).

Pros: If you’re a serious collector looking for old and rare books, this is the best shop for you. Their wall books are unmatched by Empire’s, which has a few, and Big Brother, which doesn’t bother with all that. A-1 also have a massive store-wide sale what seems like every other weekend. So, if you’re eyeing something expensive, you can usually just wait a week or two and get it at a discount. They also do a great job of spreading comics to parts of the Sacramento area where there aren’t any shops, as you can see from their locations in Roseville and Folsom. Like Empire and Big Brother, A-1 also has a discount for subscribers, although it’s not as generous as Big Brother. I should also note that A-1 is the rare shop in Sacramento that buys used comics, which is a whole lot of hassle they don’t have to put up with (even if I had an off-putting experience with their buyer at the Sacramento shop, although I should note the guy in Roseville was great).

Cons: The disadvantage of being a chain is that it’s hard to get a feeling for the staff, and so experiences vary by location. I used to like the manager at Folsom. He was a friendly guy who read his fair share of comics and was good at chatting about them, but a few weeks ago they let him go and now I don’t have any feel for who I’m buying from. That’s a bummer. And while Roseville and Sacramento have a decent to good number of titles on the shelves, the Folsom shop doesn’t stock enough new titles. I was just in there on a Wednesday and they didn’t even have the newest Walking Dead. Just saying…

Comic Book Shops in Sacramento, CA: Oblivion and the Rest

Finally, Oblivion Comics and Coffee, from which you can see the capital downtown bears a mention, if for nothing else than its cool concept. It sells coffee AND comics! There are some newer shops in town, but I’m hesitant to mention them before I see if they’re built to last, and we recently lost a couple shops as well. Pour one out for Metropolis Comix which was down by Elk Grove and was a pretty cool shop. Pour less out for Broadway Cards and Comics, which got a write up by Bleeding Cool and a couple other sites, but locally had become known for its odd and intense focus on selling Yu-gi-oh cards.

How to Write Comic Books: Tips From the Pros Part 3

I’m not a football fan. It’s slow and choppy, too many plays get called back, plus, you know, guys are out there literally killing themselves. I prefer basketball, but this post isn’t really about sports. It’s about Super Bowl-winning quarterback Nick Foles, specifically how his journey should inspire writers.

Imagine for a second Nick Foles is one of us: a writer. On Sunday, he won the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, or for comics, an Eisner. That’s great, good for him, but what I find interesting is his journey.

Consider:

• After Foles was released from the Rams in 2015, he considered retirement at age 26.
• In 2016, his old coach, Andy Reid, signed him as a backup; he played in 3 games and threw less than 100 passes.
• In 2017, it took a serious injury to someone else for him to get him on the field, and when he got there, fans and analysts largely thought he’d fail.
• On Sunday he helped win Philadelphia its first Super Bowl.

Foles, essentially, learned from struggles, ignored doubters, did his thing, and excelled. Football, of course, is far different than writing comics (duh) but sports are nothing if not useful metaphors for struggle, and Foles’ path is an epic example for writers who have had to live at home, work day jobs, spend hours honing the craft, tune out doubters, contemplate quitting to preserve sanity, and try for years to break out (if we ever break out at all).

It’s all good to keep in mind at the keyboard.

Now then, let’s get to part three of our series on writing advice. You’ll find parts 1 and 2 below:

• How to Write Comic Books Part 1

• How to Write Comic Books Part 2

How to Write Comic Books: (Almost) Kill Your Darlings

I used to live in Austin, Texas, home to the Michener Center, one of the most prestigious creative writing MFA programs in the country. While there, I saw Michener faculty members speak several times.

One thing that stuck with me was one of the professors referencing the classic Looney Tunes’ short “Duck Amuck,” a clip about Daffy Duck being tormented by the pencils and brushes of an unseen animator. The professor said that as a writer you are the animator and characters are Daffy: a compelling story derives from the obstacles you put in their paths.

Matthew Rosenberg, a rising star at Marvel who most-recently penned the critically-acclaimed Phoenix Resurrection, certainly agrees. Rosenberg recently laid out similar thoughts in a thread on Twitter, highlights below:

It is our job to make people feel and care about these characters. To make you relate and empathize with them. Often times that means bad things have to happen.

Tragedy doesn't come from a disdain for the protagonist, it comes from a love of the protagonist. But in superhero comics it goes a step further. We love these heroes because they overcome, because they show us strength.

And they can't show us those strengths without being tested. It's from these tests that they become the characters we love. It's these tests that show us why we love them. (Editor’s note: DING DING DING! This!)

So when you read your comics and see that Spider-Man is suffering, Thor is at her breaking point, or that the X-Men have it bad, please know that we do this because we know they will come out the other side stronger. That's the point.

Well said.

How to Write Comic Books: Write Like a Mother$#@%!$

One common problem of aspiring writers (the most common excuse I make myself) is not having time or energy to write. We contemplate quitting jobs, going back to school, moving home with our parents...all just to make an honest run at writing.

We have the desire, we just can’t seem to get words on the page, for whatever reason. This is also the subject of a famous column of writing advice: Write Like a Mother$#@%!$ by Cheryl Strayed (who wrote Wild, which was also a movie starring Laura Dern and Reese Witherspoon). In it, Strayed tells a frustrated writer that the path to success lies in staying humble, doing the work, and writing like a mother$#@%! (Strayed uses more inspiring language, of course).

Last month, another rising comics pro at Marvel, Jim Zub, who is currently team-writing the exciting Avengers weekly mega team-up No Surrender, gave aspiring comics creators similar advice, also in a Twitter thread. Zub wrote in response to a guy in his 40s who’d asked him if he should cash out his 401K to quit his job and use the threat of financial ruination to motivate himself to become a full-time comic writer.

Some highlights:

First off, yeah...How to even respond to that.
Part of me just wants to type "NO" and send it, but that would be crass and awkward.

On top of that, is fearing future financial disaster the motivation you need to create stories you claim you've wanted to do for the past 30 years?
I don't know you, but I'm not buying that.

The romanticized ideal of the inspired artist sacrificing everything as they cast themselves off a cliff waiting for destiny to kick in and save them is Hollywood-esque Survivor's Fallacy Bullshit.
Look at the corpses on the rocks below. Chances are that's you.

On the one hand, I'm sort of thankful this guy is asking me, someone who _still_ teaches at a college full-time while I write 3+ comics per month because I don't want to financially hook myself when it comes to creative endeavours.

When it comes to crazy comic dream sacrifice plays, I'm about as pragmatic as you can get. If I was a superhero, my name would probably be Schedule Guy. Asking me if you should expose your financial underbelly for the Arts is not going to go far.

"If only I had time-"
Make time. Set an alarm and wake up an hour early or an hour before bed. Write.
Make it 2 hours on Saturdays. That's 8 hours per week.

"If only I could dedicate myself-"
You can and it doesn't have to be with the shadow of financial ruin looming over you.

"I've always wanted to-"
Cool. Do it. Make a thing. Finish it.
Learn from it. Do it again. Keep doing it.

Isn’t that great? I know it struck a chord with me. Zub even cleaned it up and put it on his blog, which I’ve bookmarked for ready consumption when I don’t feel like making myself write. I suggest you do the same.

How to Write Comic Books: Listen to the Pros

Finally, I’m obviously not the first to try to learn from pros. In fact, Patrick Zircher, an underrated artist who’s been doing outstanding work as of late at DC, compiled a quick list of the best tips from industry legends, a list he was kind enough to Tweet:

Advice & pep that has stuck with me:

Don't draw each eyelash
- Stan Lee

Think
- Steve Ditko

Go get 'em, kid
- Jack Kirby

No matter how good or bad you are, if you can't tell a story you won't last
- John Romita Sr

Strip it down & draw the hell out of what's left
- Alex Toth

With that, I’m off to print this out, laminate it, and permanently affix it on my writing desk. What you do with this advice now is up to you!

Zack Quaintance is a career journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

Top Comics of January 2018

Going back to an office or wherever you happen to work is never fun after the holidays, but this January wasn’t as bad as usual, mostly on account of all the great comics that came out. So many great comics, in fact, we struggled to fit them all on our list.

This is why, as you're about to see, we found creative ways to include extra books. Plus, we figured if you didn’t want to read about more comics, you wouldn’t be on a website called Batman’s Bookcase, right?

Enough explaining, though. Let’s get to the top comics of January 2018!

New Beginnings

A new feature! Our rankings heavily account for longevity, rewarding creative teams for the entirety of stories as well as for the quality of a given month’s issue, but everyone loves new #1s and so we've decided to highlight those too. 

Behold! We’ve chosen our first firsts.

Abbott #1 by Saladin Ahmed / Sami Kivela: This debut does everything well, from setting (hardboiled 1970s Detroit) to protagonist (equally hardboiled journalist-cum-ghosthunter) to art (wow!). The supernatural dread reminds me of Ahmed’s excellent fantasy novel The Throne of the Crescent Moon, and this book is also set in his native Detroit. Both of these things seem to make this story all the more personal. Overall: Signs point to a hit that matches (if not exceeds) what Ahmed has accomplished with his great and surprising run on Marvel’s Black Bolt.

Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #1 by Mark Russell / Mike Feehan: There’s something deeply appropriate about Mark Russell taking The Flintstones, a repurposed corporate property, and telling stories about post-capitalist society, about everything from the military industrial complex to theology to gentrification. I expected more of this from Snagglepuss, just reoriented toward art and discrimination. Issue #1, however, builds on Flintstones while taking a subtler approach to commentary. It’s also relentlessly stylish, thanks to Mike Feehan. Overall: Can’t believe I’m typing this, but the spiritual successor to Mad Men is a comic about Snagglepuss, and I love it.

Shout Outs

Another new feature! A section for books that didn’t quite make the Top 5 but were close, starting with Captain America #697, a nigh-perfect Marvel story and another fantastic entry in this young, back-to-basics run from Mark Waid and Chris Samnee, one of comics’ best teams.

Last week, we celebrated the end of an all-time great Green Arrow run, but maybe that celebration was premature, as the book won’t officially end until April. Good thing, because with issues as funny and gorgeous as Green Arrow #36, we want to savor every moment.

News broke that Christopher Priest’s Justice League and Steve Orlando’s Justice League of America would end in April, replaced by Scott Snyder’s mega event, No Justice. This is exciting, but also sad because the current Justice League line is telling its best stories in years. Orlando’s character dynamics are intricate and compelling, while Priest is putting a fascinating real-world spin on the League. The good news? We'll still get six more issues of both books.

Superman #39, meanwhile, was a sweet and inspiring story right from the heart of the character. One of the best standalone issues of a run that has had many great standalone issues.

Finally, Sean Murphy’s ongoing Joker-centric epic Batman White Knight has been our favorite non-continuity in as long as we can remember. Murphy clearly has a real creative vision here, one that is taking him to corners of the character’s mythos that have never before been explored.

Top 5 (ish) Comics of January 2018

5. Monstress #13 by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

Monstress has been one of my favorite books since it started in 2015, and, despite a nearly eight-month hiatus, this issue immediately reminded me of why. It’s just so good. Around the time this book started, I read an interview in which Marjorie Liu discussed the difficulty of world-building for an entirely original concept such as this one.

The effort she’s put into this really shows, resulting in a world that is among the best in comics. It feels like an edgier, politically-charged setting for a classic Final Fantasy, rendered more exquisitely than those pixelated realms by Sana Takeda, one of the most underrated artists in comics. Monstress #13 is largely a table-setting issue, but that doesn’t make it less worthy. This, quite simply, is a book that should be on everyone’s pull list, and I foresee it climbing higher on our charts in future months as the new arc continues.

4. Southern Bastards #19 by Jason Aaron and Jason Latour

I almost didn’t put Southern Bastards #19 on this list, even though the book was as tense and bastardly as always. I almost skipped it because #20 seems to be the issue to bring a major climax, possibly even a turning point for the book, much the way the end of the first arc did way back when. I just couldn’t resist, though; this issue was too good.

It was delayed, as always, yet the plot felt as if Jasons Aaron and Latour had a new creative momentum, so much so I think we may see the next issue in March (an optimistic timeline for this book). Southern Bastards is rife with political commentary about smalltown cronyism, corruption, and the dark side of sports, which is all compelling, but moreover the script and art here is just on a higher level. 

3. Walking Dead #175 by Robert Kirkman / Charlie Adlard

This was the first issue that felt like it had real stakes in a while, definitely since *SPOILER* Andrea’s death, maybe even since before The Whisper War. And when it was finished, Walking Dead #175 brought us yet another new status quo, one Kirkman planted the seeds for sometime back.

The last page here was a literal tear jerker for me, bringing a major revelation for a long-time character who, like all long-time characters in this book, has been through so much. My only complaint is the new character, Princess, feels too forced, to the point the script emphasizes her eccentricity by having her say aloud, “I’m kind of weird.” It’s all good, though. Subtly isn’t what’s for sale here; good-old fashioned survivalist apocalypse is.

2. Mister Miracle #6 by Tom King / Mitch Gerads

Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads is getting progressively harder to write about, because A. it’s been on our lists four times now, and B. it’s a complex and building masterpiece. Previously, I’ve gushed about King and Gerads’ other modern classic, The Sheriff of Babylon, and I’ve talked about how the beauty of this story, as in Kings’ other work, is how it uses superheroes as a lens pointed back on us, forcing evaluation of our own lives.

This time around, I’ll just note that Mister Miracle #6 has some of the trappings of mundanity that made King’s work on The Vision so special, but there’s also a deeper, meta layer here playing with dual ideas: the first being that as an escape artist and comic book character, Scott Free is a showman, a celebrity, and the second being that the nature of wanting to escape, be it a traumatic childhood or a literal hell planet, is one born of stress or depression, and it doesn't go away once you're out. The true beauty of the story will eventually be in how those notions intersect.

T-1. Doctor Strange #384 - Redneck #9 - Thanos #15 by Donny Cates / Various

Donny Cates is a man on fire. Not literally, at least I hope not, but in terms of his writing. I’d been a fan of Cates’ Paybacks, which he wrote with writing partner Eliot Rahal, but hadn’t realized his massive potential until he burst back onto my radar a year ago this month with God Country,  Image’s best new book last year.

He’s now Marvel exclusive, and the publisher looks mighty wise for it. This month emphasized that. Cates' other Image book, Redneck, is putting its characters through awful travails at breakneck speed while also doing a great job of simultaneously unspooling their secrets. And his Doctor Strange is a tour-de-force of humor, action, and ideas built upon the excellent Jason Aaron run that preceded it.

The best Cates book this January, however, was Thanos #15. Controversy about Jim Starlin aside, because it wasn’t Cates’ fault at all, Thanos is the best Marvel book going. Cates writes with a joyous and dark sensibility that reminds me of the Coen brothers' movie Blood Simple, and it fits perfectly with big bad Thanos. Geoff Shaw, who has teamed with Cates on much of his best work, seems to be having just as much fun, rendering young Thanos’ smugness and older Thanos’ condescending wisdom exquisitely, especially during the flame sword scene. This book ends on a cliffhanger involving one of my favorite characters, and I’m dying...DYING...for the next issue.

Zack Quaintance is a career journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

Indie-ana Jones and the Exploration of New Series

This year, one of my New Year’s Resolutions is to read and review more comics by creators who I don’t already know. I’ve set some guidelines: no Big 2 books, no books I’d have read anyway, and at least one webcomic or book handed to me directly by its creator.

I'm doing this for two reasons: 1. I want to read more stories, and 2. as an aspiring writer myself, I want to read work from creators who aren’t quite as far along in their crafts as the superstar talents I read every Wednesday.

I’m coming into this with no expectations. It would, however, be dishonest of me to say I’m not expecting to read a bad book sometimes. That’s a problem for a different day, though! The first batch of indie titles I read were all great. I chose a diverse set of comics, some of which I’d heard of, some I’d had recommended to me, and one that was emailed to me by a writer I randomly found on Twitter. I can honestly say I found high quality throughout!

Now, I’m not really one to do full-on critical reviews with number rankings or stars, or whatever, but I would like to share some thoughts about what I read. I think it’s important for developing writers to articulate these type of thoughts. It helps us see craft clearer and to find our own voices. Also, who knows, maybe I can inspire YOU to read some new books by rising creators. All of these are worthy.

Let’s do it!

Witchblade #1 by Caitlin Kittredge / Roberta Ingranata

I started with Witchblade #1, which was maybe not as “indie” as I’d have liked but felt off the radar enough to be true to the spirit of my mission.

Plus, Top Cow has done solid work lately, Roberta Ingranata’s art looked stellar and clean, and I’d never read Caitlin Kittredge’s writing but knew she’d done urban fantasy-noir novels, which seemed BEYOND perfect for the writer of a fresher and less booby version of Witchblade.

What I found was a #1 with as much potential as any in recent memory. Ingranata’s art is versatile and crisp, able to oscillate from hard-boiled to ghostly between panels, and Kittredge’s script is engaging, using the spirit of the original Witchblade to create a fantastical modern mystery, one that is high on the creep factor and also has a strong female lead.

I’ll admit I dabbled in Witchblade in the ‘90s (what do you want from me? I was a teenage boy) and I enjoyed the occult mythology, as well as the gore, and, fine, also the boobs, but as a grown-up reader who now breaths far less from my mouth, I greatly appreciated how thoughtful this book felt. It has a layered and intricate feeling that I love to discover in young comics. 

Verdict: Witchblade has gone from gratuitous flesh to intriguingly fleshed out in its latest iteration, breathing new life into the franchise. A must-read book for fans of occult mysteries.

Vault Comics Grabbag

I first became aware of Vault Comics because of a roiling wave of praise for Natasha Alterici’s Heathen (which is a-maze-ing, btw). I got that book in trade, read it, and immediately started thinking of Vault as one of the coolest indie publishers around. I vowed to check out more of their books.

Then I procrastinated (because I’m me), until this month, when I tracked down the first two issues of a trio of Vault series: Alien Bounty Hunter, Spiritus, and Zojaqan. The hype around Vault is very real. Here are some rapid fire descriptions of the books I read, all of which I enjoyed.

Alien Bounty Hunter by Adrian Wassel / David M. Booher & Nick Robles: Intricate world-building meets a charismatic lead character, who we follow into a compelling and shadowy sci-fi world. Who is this book for? Comic readers, obviously, but specifically for fans of the X-Files who always wished Agent Mulder would crack more jokes, have more humanity, and kick a few more asses.

Spiritus by Tim Daniel & Michael Kennedy: A high-minded look at the intersections of violence, corporate exploitation of the individual, and technology, with imaginative art that conveys a sense of robotic and existential dread. This book has shades of The Fugitive (including one deliberate homage early on), just with a complex post-cyborg take that seemingly has a lot to say about where society may be headed.

Zojaqan by Colin Kelly / Jackson Lanzing & Nathan Gooden: Just wow. The art in Zojaqan is so gorgeous and unique, depicting a fantasy realm interwoven with visions of our own world. The writing team of Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing (who are doing issues of Green Arrow and Nightwing for DC soon) provide a gorgeous and abstract script that reads like a fevered dream, complete with character development and glimpses of modern tragedies from our own times. This was my favorite of all that I read this week, a literary comic with questions about grief and theology, and a total joy for fans of surrealist art.

Start Again #1 by Jamie Me / Toni Doya

I found Start Again, quite honestly, at random on Twitter, which I think is part of why it surprised me the most.

I’d never heard of Jamie Me (writer) or his collaborators, Toni Doya (artist) and Sean Callahan (colorist), which is exactly the point of this series! Their work, however, was engaging from the start. The dialogue and narration kept us moving, and the pencils were impressive and stylish, doing some great work to convey character emotions through facial expressions, always a heavy lift in comics.

What I liked most about Start Again, though, was its ambition. It essentially sets out to tackle society’s unhealthy relationship with celebrity while also telling a superhero story AND a romantic drama. It's a lot of plot to juggle, and it gets unweildly at times, but it’s to Jamie Me’s credit that he largely navigates his ideas with coherence and then absolutely nails the ending, leaving us with an intriguing cliffhanger that will bring me back for a second issue.

Verdict: Jamie Me clearly loves comics and has big ideas about where he wants to take this story, and he does a great job translating that into a promising first issue rich with big ideas.

NOTE: I was also going to include some of the Lion Forge Catalyst Prime books but thought better of it because the intent of this series is to motivate me to read books I would have otherwise missed, and I’ve been reading Catalyst Prime from the start (and you should be too!). So, I disqualified it.

Anyway, that does it for the first month of Indie-ana Jones (sorry about that name!). Check back to the site during the last week of February for the next installment!

Zack Quaintance is a career journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

How to Write Comics: Tips From the Pros Part 2

In writing, the simplest truth is that if you don’t sit down to write, the work won’t get done, regardless of your talent. This sounds obvious (I can just feel your eye rolls), but being disciplined and making time to write is the advice I've heard accomplished writers give the most.

Yet, for me it’s a struggle, because there’s always Twitter and my stacks of unread comics and the simple pleasures of just staring wistfully into space. Making time to write every day is kind of like getting eight hours of sleep: I know how important it is, but wasting time on my phone is just sooooo much easier.

To combat distraction, however, I try to think of my daily writing time (ideally an hour before work each morning and another hour at night after dinner) as a foundation. In that, I could know all there is to know about building fancy walls and windows, but the whole thing will fall over if I don’t have a solid base.

That metaphor is a bit jumbled (self editing is also very important, clearly), but there’s truth in it somewhere. Basically, I think you can know characters and three-act structure and scripting and suspense, but if you don’t put your time in, all your other knowledge will go to waste.

This series, however, is not about my own fairly obvious musings! (Although, I do tack some onto each section.) No, it’s about the advice I compile from comic book writers and editors and other creative people. Before we get to that good stuff, though, I’d like to note that last week’s How to Write Comics: Tips from the Pros Part 1 is and will continue to be up on the site. And, as always, if you want to share your own tips, thoughts, or just some pictures of small dogs looking like cranky humans, please reach out to batmansbookcase@gmail.com.

Happy writing and creating, friends, much love to you this week with all your creative endeavors!

The Importance of Writing When You Don’t Feel Like It

Eric Heisserrer is the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter responsible for Arrival as well as for the best Valiant book of 2017, Secret Weapons. He may have a difficult to spell last name that I had to triple check, but he also knows the importance of getting yourself to the keyboard at times when you don’t feel inspired to write. Here's a bit from his Twitter:

I have written more than 400 script pages in the last three months and, while it has been awful, there were a dozen brilliant discoveries in that mess. Writing when I don't want to write often bears fruit.

I LOVE this. I'm one who makes this excuse: “I don’t have any ideas right now, so I’ll just skip today and go hard tomorrow.” Sound familiar? I bet it does. Well, Heisserrer’s Tweet exposes this as a lazy cop out. It’s important, of course, to write when you’re burning with inspiration, but it’s equally as important to force yourself back to your pages when you don’t feel like it. You never know what you'll find until you open your word doc and arrive (sorry, Mr. Heisserrer! I have a lot of growing to do still, clearly).

How to Write Comics: Scripting

Greg Pak, who you may know from the super-underrated Totally Awesome Hulk or the increasingly popular Mech Cadet Yu, gave me a gift this week. While I was putting together this piece, he laid down a Twitter thread about comic book writing so exquisite, I nearly wept. This thread got much run, but I'm going to rehash it here in case you missed it, as well as for posterity. Buckle in, because it's a long one. You might even call it hulking (what is wrong with me?):

How I write a comic book script:

1. Outline the whole thing.
2. Break the outline down into pages.
   A. Break pages down into panels, then add dialogue.
   B. Hammer out some dialogue, then break down into panels.
3. Write from the beginning, but if I get stuck, skip around and write the easier scenes first.
4. Go back and write the harder scenes, which are easier now that I've done the rest.
   A. If I'm really stuck on a scene/beat, call up my editor and talk it out. Editors are awesome. Sometimes they just nod and say "uh huh" and let me blab until I work it out. Sometimes they ask just the right questions. These calls ALWAYS help.
5. Rewrite the easier scenes now that I've written the harder scenes and know my story better.
6. Go through and edit everything multiple times.
7. Turn it in when I run out of time.
8. Enjoy that fourteen minutes of calm you get after turning in a script.
9. Work on revisions.
10. Figure out what it's REALLY all about and make the subtle dialogue tweaks that bring out that deeper theme/emotional thread.

Also worth noting re: 1: If my outline is really working, it nails the big plot beats as well as the big emotional turning points & thematic brushstrokes. All the essential things that make the story work & matter. A great outline means the scripting goes MUCH more smoothly.

Hardest parts of writing a script:

• The outline.
• The beginning (particularly working in exposition seamlessly in a serial story).
• The ending/cliffhanger.
• Pages 14-16 or so. Those beats before the climax (p.s. it's all hard, sorry.).

There's an interesting mechanical aspect to writing a script, sometimes. Where you come up against page count limits, for example, and realize that helps you make decisions that work. For example, every once in a while, I'll have a 3-page scene that's hard to crack. So I'll write everything that precedes & follows it. And suddenly I discover that there's only a page left for the tricky scene -- and that's all it needed. Or maybe I don't really need it at all.

Two general notes to myself that always seems to work is give your characters quiet moments that dramatize character, especially early in the script/story, and give the big emotional beats time to play out. Let it breathe when it needs to breathe.

There's a lot of unspoken panic, particularly in superhero comics, to blow something up pretty quickly. Understandable. Gotta grab people's attention in 5-page previews. BUT action without emotional drama falls flat. Gotta take the time to build character and emotional drive.

Other ongoing activities essential to the writing process:
A. Drink a glass of water.
B. Get enough sleep and food.
C. Acknowledge that whatever you're writing this very instant isn't perfect, but you're gonna revise it and make it better and "perfection" is an illusion anyway.

Also worth noting: Everyone has a different process! This is just what works for me, right now, for the most part, most of the time. Figure out what works for you and do that.

This is helpful in a couple ways. Not only has he given us so much invaluable practical advice, but he's also given us encouraging glimpses into his own occasional frustrations and struggles. I'm yet to be paid for a script, and I find it incredibly comforting that someone as experienced and good at what he does as Pak has similar troubles as I do.

How to Write Comic Books: Gail Simone Section

One of my favorite comic book writers on Twitter is Gail Simone, who is not only really good at what she does, but is also incredibly generous with advice. I featured her last week, I'm featuring her again here, and, WARNING, I'll probably feature her again next week. For today, she weighed in on the value of finishing small projects when you're just starting out:

First, get something completed. It is a rare person new to comics who can make a full OGN happen. Start smaller. A smaller story has fewer places to hide, and thus is better practice, anyway.

Every item you COMPLETE will change you for the better, I promise. If you finish a ten page story, you will have learned a metric ton of information about what NOT to do next time. But it only works if you FINISH things.

Now, I have a bit of experience writing short stories, with a handful of publications at journals that even many folks in the literary world haven't heard of, so I'm by no means an expert, but one of the obstacles that tripped me up when I started was that I obsessed over my BIG ideas, thinking I could and should be able to execute them now. I wish I'd known the value of baby-steps, as well as the value of being patient with one's art. No writing time is ever wasted, of course, but I would have certainly done things a bit differently. 

Motivation from Lin-Manuel Miranda

Our final comic writing tip this week comes from outside the medium, from Lin-Manuel Miranda, the lyricist, composer and playwright behind Broadway mega hit Hamilton. Really though, this one is an inspirational missive for any creative, one that shows the broad ways (at what point is this a cry for help?) and time investment one must make for success. On New Year’s Eve 2017, Miranda Tweeted:

What I was doing on New Years Eve 2011. The work is hard but it is worth it. Don’t give up.

With a screen cap of another Tweet of his from back then...

It’s very hard to write battle raps between Jefferson and Hamilton when you’re nowhere near as smart as the people for whom you are writing. The hamster in the hamster wheel that runs my fevered brain needs a drink.

I find this incredibly inspirational. Roughly five years after this Tweet, Miranda's hard work bore fruit in the form of the most successful Broadway musical penned in most of our lifetimes. He was clearly struggling when he wrote the first one, but he forced himself onward, kept working, kept running with that hamster wheel in his fevered brain. Pretty awesome.

Anyway, do you hear that? It’s the keyboards of the world calling us to give them some love. Best of luck, friends. I hope the ideas flow, but, more importantly, I hope you stick to your writing schedule. The brilliant work inside you depends on it!

Zack Quaintance is a career journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

The Best Long-Running Image Books (We Take for Granted)

Something shiny and new is almost always more attractive than something reliable you can depend on. This is a concept so worn out it’s become a cliche, ending hundreds of TV marriages and sparking many a mid-life crises.

But as with most cliches, there’s truth to it, especially in our beloved world of comics. As we’re all aware, the path to big profit in the comics industry has long been paved with new #1 issues, and, really, this cliche is a big part of why.

Comics and capitalism are inextricably tangled; it’s part of what makes comics such an American art form. We all love the idea that a #1 we buy for $3.99 could net a few hundred bucks later. Also, it’s just so much easier to understand a story when you read it from its start.

Reasons aside, fans buy more #1 issues and reviewers tend to write about #1s more as well. Meanwhile, there are amazing books in their 30s, or 50s, or even their 170s that we’re barely acknowledging. We know these books will be good, every damned month. They’re on our pull lists and we’ve maybe even bought them to reread in trade, and yet it’s the new #1s that drive us crazy.

Not me, man. I want to give older books some love, specifically those at Image, before the spring comes and the publisher launches another wave of new creator-owned work, work like Steve Orlando and Garry Brown’s Crude, Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici’s Oblivion Song, Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino’s Gideon Falls (read our advanced review), and David F. Walker and Sanford Greene’s Bitter Root (read why we’re excited).

So, today we’ll be looking at why these new books are so awesome and sexy and good and so fricking cool and totally worth all your money and mine—gah! Wait a minute, that’s not what we’re doing at all! Damn this attractive newness!!

Ahem. Today we’re looking at our favorite dependable titles, the ones deep in their runs and still going strong. Sure, they’re not as mysterious or full of possibilities as they once were, but these books are part of us. We’ve been through so much together, we’ve grown together, and we care for each other deeply. Or, we would if they the books sentient, instead of flimsy paper.

Anyhoo, let’s get to our look at the best long-running Image books we all take for granted!   

The Walking Dead, Outcast and Invincible

The Walking Dead is the epitome of an excellent long-running book that’s so dependable it gets ignored. Take #175, for example, which *SPOILER* contained an intriguing status quo shift along with a twist for a major character so powerful it made me tear up. This deep in a run, that’s quite an achievement. Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s monthly pace on this book is also torrid, and I can’t even remember the last delay! (We’re in for a long post this week, but we should also note that Kirkman’s Outcast is fantastic and Invincible is headed towards a killer ending.)

Potential to end soon: Low. Kirkman says nothing is eminiment, but he knows how the book will end. The book also sells like gangbusters (hey, 1923 called, they want their hacky adjective back). So, we don’t envision an ending coming before issue #200, which is more than 2 years away right now.

Descender

Descender is a true sci-fi adventure with a varied cast and a plot heavy with well-constructed secrets. Frankly, this is one of the most compelling mystery stories in comics. As I’ve noted in the past, we’re nearly 30 issues in, and I have little idea about this book’s end game, even though I can tell there have been ample clues.The art is also incredibly special. One of the things I enjoy most about Lemire’s titles is he works with artists who fit his stories, and Dustin Nguyen is no exception. Descender’s robots and their relationships with humanity raise questions about the nature of existence, and Nguyen’s lush watercolor pallet steeps these questions with a fitting existential haze.

Potential to end soon: High with an Asterix. Lemire recently teased a “last arc” on Twitter, before quickly noting he didn’t mean the end of Descender. So an “ending” might be coming, but it’s probably won’t be an ENDING.

Saga

Saga is, quite simply, my favorite, and yet, it landed at #8 on my best of 2017 and has only been in my monthly best of list once in the five months I’ve done them. Why? Well, it’s partially because I’m human, and I love me some newness. But also, it’d be boring if every best of list was: Oh, look at that, Saga wins again. Yawn. Anyway, Saga is amazing, and Brian K. Vaughan is basically the writer equivalent of the comic book we take for granted, too, because he’s just so reliable. He’s at a point in his career where his two ongoings, Saga and Paper Girls, brim with ideas, three-dimensional characters, and chingos of plot twists, so much so we all just expect it. Really, it speaks to the number of amazing comics that are around nowadays that we have the luxury of taking a writer as good as Vaughan for granted.

Potential to end soon: Super low. Vaughan says he wants Saga to go forever, which, okay, is probably over-ambitious because while the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak and dies between ages 80 - 100, if we’re lucky. However, I could see another decade of Saga, following the life of its narrator, Hazel, in near-real time. What a glorious thing that would be.

The Wicked + The Divine

I’ve long thought of The Wicked + The Divine as a foundational title for modern Image, one that should be at the forefront of any conversation about the wave of varied and diverse creator-owned work from the publisher. Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie are one of the best teams in comics (shout out to Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips), having also teamed together on Young Avengers at Marvel and multiple Phonogram stories. Wic + Div (as us REALLY hip folks call it) though, is their opus, a stylish and perfectly-executed epic about music fandom and fame and a pantheon of fleeting gods destined to be destroyed.

Potential to end soon: High...Probably. I haven’t gone back to look, but I’m pretty sure Kieron Gillen has said he’s winding this book down about three times now. Thus the PROBABLY. The HIGH, meanwhile, is because after the latest issue, it really does seem like an end game is in motion. The last arc was loaded with action and punctuated by a surprise so shocking it sent me to my back issues to read this book from the start. It all makes sense, and it’s all fantastic.

East of West

East of West reads like a complex alternate history of the U.S., as told by someone from an alternate dimension. I’ve used that last descriptor—as told by someone from an alternate dimension—to describe Jonathan Hickman’s work in the past, and if the early issues of The Black Monday Murders are any indication, I’ll probably be using it again in the future. This book has gotten better with time. I found it convoluted until the creators included a timeline that laid out the political machinations of the involved nations, but from that point on I’ve been riveted. I should also note artist Nick Dragotta is creating phenomenal comics here, both with his line work and the stunning dystopian world he creates on each page.

Potential to End Soon: Hickman. That’s right, my exact prediction for when this ends is Hickman. I mean, can you even predict something as precise as an ending with a writer as dense as Hickman? No. You can’t. So, just greedily take the story as it comes and relish the other worlds he manifests for you.

Other Contenders

Last, I’d just like to note this was a tricky list, because how does one quantify a long-running book? In the end, I went by issue number not by debut, which disqualified Southern Bastards, Monstress, and Sex Criminals, three of my favorites that were a little short (this where an aside about the word short would be in Sex Criminals, btw). I know Descender only has a few issues on Sex Criminals, but for some reason it seems a bit more mature (this is where Sex Criminals would do another funny aside).

Moving forward, there are a host of books at Image with potential to reach “long-running and taken for granted status.” I’d put the aforementioned Southern Bastards, Monstress, and Sex Criminals there, as well as newer titles such as Black Monday Murders, Paper Girls, Redneck, Royal City, Seven to Eternity and Snotgirl. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if Oblivion Song or Gideon Falls ascend to this conversation, and I haven't read past the first issue of either.

In closing, go forth and be nicer to your bosses and significant others and co-workers and families...all those people in your life who may not be new but are sturdy and dependable and loving and vital. Not to be solipsistic, but I think how we treat those who become routine to us says a great deal about our character. Basically, we must bag and board them for proper storage, just with our thanks and affection rather than with cardboard and plastic (good lord, I’ll stop, I’m so so sorry, what the hell was that last metaphor, was I serious?!).

Zack Quaintance is a career journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

Celebrating an All-Time Great Green Arrow Run

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!!

Part 1: The All-Time Great Green Arrow Run

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.

Part II: What’s Next

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.

Part III: More Books Without Pictures

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.

How to Write Comic Books: Tips from the Pros Part 1

In journalism there is a basic piece of advice that goes something like this: It’s okay to not know something, as long as you know what you don’t know.

This is useful for journalists, who have to quickly figure out when they need to verify or look things up. It is, however, also solid advice for those of us in other fields, including aspiring artists who—ding ding ding—want to write comic books.

Take me, for example. I know I have the desire and ambition to write comics, and the discipline to pursue my goals, but I also know that I don’t know enough about the industry or logistics or the skill set one needs to write and, ultimately, sell scripts. Not yet, anyway. I work on getting better every day. As I work, I am also fortunate to have access to many writers (online) who do have this knowledge, most of whom are famous, at least in comic book circles.

So, this is the first of an ongoing series compiling writing tips for aspiring comic creators. Each will feature advice from four writers, as well as thoughts or musings from my own experiences (who am I? nobody, so feel free to ridicule! I’m a writer too, which means I hate myself a little, you know how it goes!).

Oh, and if you happen to be a creator who wants to participate directly, please don’t hesitate to contact batmansbookcase@gmail.com. Help and guidance are always appreciated. We’re all in this art thing together, amiright?

That does it for my intro. Let’s get to it. Happy reading and writing and creating, friends!

How to Write Comic Books: The Importance of Distinct Characters

Shea Fontana (@sheafontana) has written an arc on Wonder Woman, a fill-in issue of Justice League, and she helped shape DC Super Hero Girls. Recently, she started a thoughtful Twitter discussion about effectively writing characters in an ensemble:

When developing an ensemble for a story, make the characters extremely different for maximum use in story. Redundancies in personalities mean that you won't need or utilize characters in story. If you distill each to 4 traits, those traits shouldn't overlap.

It is hard because in real life we tend to be a lot like our friends. But real life doesn't always make great story. Focusing on differences helps more in story than in real life too!

And then, DC Assistant Editor Andrea Shea (@whatthe_shea) joined in to add relevant perspective she gleaned from a master: I always really liked the triangle balances Marv Wolfman described in creating New Teen Titans -- Kory (extreme emotion), Raven (extreme control), Donna (balance); Gar (extreme jester), Cyborg (extreme gravitas), Dick (balance). Wolfman definitely said it better though, haha.

If I remember correctly it was from an interview in the back of one of my old Teen Titans trades, maybe Judas Contract or something. I'll have to see if I can dig it up when I'm home, it's some very cool insight.

My take away is that making characters distinct from each other is foundational to storytelling. Once you have traits, however, push them to extremes. As a short story writer within literary fiction, I too often bog my characters down with realism, making them close reflections of people I know in real life. Real life, however, is dull. What Fontana (and Wolfman via Shea) are saying is forget that, and make characters stand out. It’s more interesting for the reader, and it also gives rise to conflicts.  

How to Write Comic Books: Scripting

Here’s some advice on scripting from G. Willow Wilson (@GWillowWilson), who is the writer on Ms. Marvel, arguably Marvel’s most successful new character in a decade:

1. Put big reveals on page-turns
2. Unless you're a designer, let the artist be the boss of page layout.
3. A page flows better with an odd # of panels (3/5/7), though there are exceptions.
4. Always strive to be the best version of you, not a middling version of someone else

Wilson notes later that you must also limit panels to one action and one emotion, and writers should determine number of panels on a page while artist determines layout.

This is all really helpful to me, because my background is in short story writing. I’ve gotten most of my instruction from writers workshops run by literary magazines. I’m starving for instruction on how to operate within the unique structure of comic books. I also don’t draw (well), which means I don’t grasp the perspective of the penciler. This stuff is key for my writer's journey.

What to do, what NOT to do, and why

Gail Simone is (@GailSimone) a veteran writer who has written Birds of Prey and Batgirl, as well as one of my all-time favorite monster comics, the very-underrated Clean Room. Simone recently reacted to a comic-reading binge with some urgent advice for writers, advice she shared in a staccato Twitter burst, which I’ve transcribed for you fine folks below (okay, I copy and pasted them, but still, I care!):

• First, for the love of god, remember that the reader does not know what is inside your head. That is your only job, to convey your message.
• Pro or newbie, shame on you if you don’t name your characters on panel if we are supposed to recognize them later.
• Over and over, I am reading comics where the main character is not named or even introduced. The story just starts and we are meant to guess.
• This is just aggressively bad storytelling, unless there is some specific reason. If you are writing the Man With No Name, fine. But that’s mostly not the case.
• Second, learn what an establishing shot is, and what it accomplishes. Over and over, I was not told where the characters are.
• An establishing shot establishes not just location, but tone. One lonesome farm in the snowy emptiness can convey pages of dialogue and exposition. Better, too.
• Third, when did we forget that it’s important to know what a character wants? I don’t need a characters D&D stats, I need to know what they NEED. What drives them.
• Over and over, I am seeing stories where a threat arises, attacks the hero, the hero fights back, bang, continued next issue.
• If I read your story and don’t know what the character’s motive is, that’s on the writer.
• Additionally, learn what a reveal is. In almost any story worth a damn, someone’s keeping a secret, regardless of genre. Secrets are storytelling nitro.
• Finally, I am still reading comics where the characters all have a similar speech pattern, a sort of affected one-liner-spouting verbal malaise.
• It’s bad enough if TWO characters are indistinguishable in their speech. If all of them are, start over, you have hit a tree in the road.
• That’s it, just some things to consider. A lot of potentially very interesting comics out there are missing a little lesson in the basics.
• Just think it over, I guarantee you you will be happier with the result.

I can relate all of this to instruction I’ve gotten in the literary world. My most influential writing teacher has been Steve Almond, an exceptional short story writer and essayist, an underrated thinker, and an all-around good dude. I’ve been lucky enough to do two workshops with Steve, and he hammers every story on the same points Simone speaks to: 1. orient the reader, and 2. show the audience what the character wants, quickly. Basically, if a reader is confused, a reader checks out, and a reader will always be confused if they don’t know what a character wants. This is true of comic books just like it is of novels.

Maintaining Discipline and Focus

Lastly, none of the tips above matter if you can’t get yourself to the keyboard. Luckily, Brian Michael Bendis (THE Brian Michael Bendis, creator of Miles Morales and Jessica Jones) regularly takes to his tumblr to offer advice:

Just decide that you are the kind of person that gets a certain amount of pages written a day, and be that person. Remind yourself that there are many writers sitting at their computers right now and they are going to end up living your dream life because they sat down to write and you didn’t. Remind yourself that you may get hit by a bus tomorrow and wouldn’t it have been nice to write something on your last day. Remind yourself how lucky you are that you have the capacity for creativity and freedom to express yourself and what a waste it would be not to.

This is a quote to read before and after each writing session, or to print out and tape to your monitor. Storytelling is a burning instinct a select few of us have, a grand human tradition that has transcends technologies. As Bendis says, we are lucky to have the capacity and freedom to do it. 

With that, I’m off to write...an hour of fiction in the morning and an hour of plotting or a page of scripting before bed. Writing goals, man, writing goals. Good luck with your own.

Zack Quaintance is a career journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

Top DC Rebirth Comic and Character Rebounds

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 / Action Comics

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

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

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.

Green Lanterns / Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps

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

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.