Who is the Arkham Knight? A Look at Detective Comics Newest Villain

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By Alex Batts — A familiar foe recently joined Batman’s rogues gallery in the comics: The Arkham Knight. This character was first introduced to the broader Batman mythos in the final chapter of Rocksteady Studios’ Batman: Arkham video game franchise via the 2015 release of Batman: Arkham Knight. Though many fans immediately deduced the characters not-so-secret identity well before the game’s official release, the character design and Arkham Knight mantle was excellent, making it something worth introducing to the main Batman continuity….

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Top Comics to Buy for June 26, 2019: Ascender, Eve Stranger, War of the Realms, and more

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By Zack Quaintance — I know I keep talking about this, but I just cannot get entirely caught up on comics after our three-week move across the country. I am, however, making progress! In fact, I think I’m down to only 90 comics left to read, 90 comics that came out between May 29 and this coming Wednesday, mind you. And you know what? I’ve been (as usual) reading some really…

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Comic of the Week: Hellboy and the BPRD - The Beast of Vargu is a new beginning

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By d. emerson eddy — Hellboy and the BPRD: The Beast of Vargu is kind of a new beginning for the title. It does not follow the previous yearly format, and it is not the expected “#26 in a series”, as it essentially becomes the new heart of the Hellboy universe since BPRD itself has now finished. And it does so with the creative team responsible for some of my personal favorite Hellboy stories in the Wild Hunt Arthurian trilogy and The Midnight Circus. It's an interesting and welcome choice to start off this new era with a one-shot tale from Mike Mignola, Duncan Fegredo, Dave Stewart, and Clem Robins, offering an easily accessible tale for new…

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ADVANCED REVIEW: Resonant #1 features effective character work and the promise of horrors to come

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By Jarred A. Luján — Resonant is a new series from Vault Comics, written by David Andry and drawn by Alejandro Aragon. The concept of Resonant is that in the Waves, the story taking place a decade after the first one, all of humanity’s worst impulses are engaged at the same time. Andry’s talked pretty extensively about how inspired by the Call of the Void the story is, so I won’t get too bogged down in that, but the premise alone is a fairly interesting intro to horror.

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The Saga Re-Read: Saga #44 is a story of miscarriage, abortion, and a pro-life posse

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By Zack Quaintance —  And like so many things on the site this week, today the Saga Re-Read is making its (triumphant?) return. It’s been a nice break, in the sense that now we just might have an announcement about the book’s return before this whole thing is over, although I still think the smart money is on it coming back in November, following the release of that super-mega-first-half-of-Saga hardcover.

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GET HYPED: Greg Rucka and Mike Perkins’ Lois Lane

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By Taylor Pechter — Lois Lane #1 by writer Greg Rucka and artist Mike Perkins is dropping in a couple short weeks (July 3!), and I could not be more excited. Not only is this the first solo series she has had since the Silver Age—granted, this one is in a more limited capacity being only a twelve-issue maxiseries compared to an ongoing—but this new book is being written by Greg Rucka. I have sung Rucka’s praises many a time on this site, whether for his work on mainstream projects like Wonder Woman or Checkmate, or for his indie projects like Lazarus or Queen and Country.

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REVIEW: Superman Year One is a little too familiar

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By Jarred A. Luján — Back in 2016, I was sitting on the main theater floor of the Dallas Fan Expo. The chairs were awful, but I sat there, mouth agape, for about an hour staring at Frank Miller as he took questions from fans. Frank Miller is probably one of my favorite writers of all time, and I’d certainly consider him nothing less than a legend in the medium. He was with Brian Azzarello the time I saw him, which was right around the time DKIII was releasing. I remember most of that Q&A pretty well, but there is a distinct moment I have been telling comic friends about for three years: a fan asked Frank why he hated Superman, a question he’s probably gotten a thousand times since Dark Knight Returns came out all those years ago….

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REVIEW: Batman #73 has giant implications for Tom King’s run

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By Alex Batts — “The Fall and The Fallen” story arc continues in this week’s issue of Batman, and while at first glance it might not seem like that much is going on, the developments seem likely to have gigantic implications for the final chapters of writer Tom King’s run on the title. Batman #72 saw Batman beaten and broken (again) at the hands of Bane, while his father Thomas stood idle, brooding. This issue picks up with the Wayne duo in the desert, Bruce unconscious and being secured to the back of a horse, while Thomas nonchalantly sings the classic….

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REVIEW: Gideon Falls #14 plays on small details from throughout the series

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By Jarred A. Luján — If you’ve been following along with my reviews, I’ve enthusiastically written about Gideon Falls for several issues now. Each time I sit down to write a new review, I genuinely worry that I’m going to end up repeating myself each time because…well, because this book continues to be so damn good.  

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Best Comics of 2019 (So Far): Cap, Lazarus, Wonder Comics, and more!

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By Various — The year is nearly half over, which is the timing that we’re using as a justification for doing a Best Comics of 2019 (So Far) list. But also, these type of lists are a lot of fun. There are just so many good comics these days, and it’s a blast to lay them all out, pick favorites, and dive into what makes them so good.

Also, moving forward we’re going to be incorporating our crack team of contributors into even more features than we’ve done in the past. This is one of the first. Here we have favorites picked not only by the editor (me), but by great writers like Ander Lilly, Toren Chenault, Allison Senecal, d. emerson eddy, Taylor Pechter, Jarred A. Luján, and more!

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Top Comics to Buy for June 19, 2019: Monstress, Guardians of the Galaxy, and more!

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By Zack Quaintance — Phew, well well well, we’re back! I spent the past three weeks and change relocating from Sacramento, Calif. To Washington, D.C….which is obviously a pretty massive move. In between, my wife and I did a mammoth 12-day road trip, where we stopped off and saw as many friends and as many national parks along the way as possible (check out some of it on the site’s Instagram feed!).

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Comic of the Week: Event Leviathan #1, a gateway to an intriguing superhero espionage story

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By d. emerson eddy — The “Leviathan” crossover has been building at DC Comics for a while now, starting with the “Leviathan Rising” storyline in Action Comics and then coming to a head two weeks ago in the Superman: Leviathan Rising Special. We've seen the intelligence community in the DC Universe shaken to its core, with entire organizations obliterated, seemingly, by Leviathan. Even that organization itself has seen a kind of upheaval, as Talia al Ghul no longer seems to be its head, and a new unknown character calling himself (or herself, who knows?) “Leviathan” has taken over the reins. To what end no one knows yet.

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Comic of the Week: Thumbs is a brilliant level up by the creators of The Few

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By d. emerson eddy — These days it feels like practically everyone is a gamer. Whether it's on a console, PC, or mobile device , we all seem to be playing something. Even businesses have apparently been working in a gamification process for workplace activities, if reports on Amazon practices are to be believed. Indeed, the widespread popularity and acceptance of gaming seems to have permeated Western culture, with all eyes turned to coverage of announcement conventions like E3 and what feels like every kid on the planet playing games like Fortnite, Overwatch, Team Fortress 2, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, and old stalwarts like Call of Duty and Battlefield.

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The Saga Re-Read: Saga #43 is an accessible encapsulation of what this book is all about

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By Zack Quaintance — So, this is an interesting issue, in that it was discounted to $.25 and aimed at attracting new readers to a long running title. I like these sort of things and comics like this. I came up reading books that were 400-some issues into their numbering and still working hard to summarize what had been going on lately on the off chance it was even just one reader’s first issue. This harkens back to that just a tad.

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Comic of the Week: Road of Bones #1

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By d. emerson eddy — The Kolyma Highway was a project started in 1932, utilizing criminals (ones having committed what we'd generally consider an actual crime and others who were essentially railroaded through to fill labour quotas) to build a road in the Far East of the USSR. Conditions were reportedly cruel and harsh, hard living in an arctic and sub-arctic region with little when it came to food or shelter, workers collapsing with regularity, giving the highway its name of the Road of Bones. It's this history that Rich Douek, Alex Cormack, and Justin Birch tap into in the first issue of this horror series, Road of Bones.

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The Saga Re-Read: Saga #42 really ups the bleakness

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By Zack Quaintance — One of my favorite things in monthly comics is when a long-running series has become so comfortable with its characters and plot, that it can start to center entire chapters around theme, rather than knocking things out it has to do to hit big dramatic flourishes. Phew. Anyway, Kurt Busiek is a master of this, but Brian K. Vaughan has some pretty strong chops as well.

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Comics Anatomy: Atmospheric Lettering in Gotham Central

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By Harry Kassen — Hello and welcome back to Comics Anatomy. For this installment, I thought I’d write about one of my all time favorite comics: Gotham Central. Gotham Central is much beloved by comics fans and is a truly amazing comic for a wide variety of reasons. Chief among these reasons is its sense of tone. Like any good crime story, Gotham Central is steeped in atmosphere. From the very beginning it tells you that it’s a story about police first, and Batman second.

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