Best New #1 Comics September 2019: Everything, Harleen, The Plot, King Thor, and more!

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By Zack Quaintance — I have a tendency to say this a lot...but the Best New #1 Comics of September 2019 sure were exciting. There’s just a level of craftmanship involved here that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Take a book like Harleen #1. Nothing about the concept really did much for me, not the main character, nor the premise, nor the fact that it was on DC’s increasingly murky Black Label branding. But writer/artist Stejpan Sejic’s execution and craft elevated it to one of the best new comics in ages.

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5 Things to Watch for at NYCC 2019: Marvel, DC, Saga, and more!

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By Zack Quaintance — If you’re reading this the day it posts (Wednesday, October 2!), chances are I’m currently en route from Washington, DC, to New York City, headed for my first ever New York Comic Con. Yes, I’m going for my first time this year after having spent the bulk of my adult life living out west and actively avoiding cross-country air travel. How times have changed.

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REVIEW: Justice League #33, this run continues to be an epic MUST READ

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By Alex Batts — Justice League has been and continues to be an insanely wild ride. The Justice/Doom War is nearing its climax, and each issue brings massive twists and turns for the fate of the Multiverse as we know it. Writers Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV are joined here by Bruno Redondo and Daniel Sampere on pencils, Redondo and Juan Albarran on inks, Hi-Fi on colors, and Tom Napolitano on letters.

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REVIEW: Batman #80, the Bat-Cat return to Gotham does not disappoint

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By Alex Batts — This week sees the ‘City of Bane’ story arc shift its focus back to Gotham. The last two issues have served as an interlude of sorts that built up and solidified the relationship between Batman and Catwoman. Now, we return to Gotham, and with us, Batman and Catwoman return to their city as well. Tom King is joined by artist John Romita Jr., inker Klaus Janson, colorist Tomeu Morey, and letterer Clayton Cowles for this issue.

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Top Comics to Buy for October 2, 2019: House of X #6, DCeased #5, and more!

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By Zack Quaintance — It’s New York Comic Con week, and so for folks heading to the show (myself included), the new releases might take a bit of a backseat...which isn’t an indictment of quality. It’s not really a statement either way. Timing is a thing that happens, etc. Anyway, the big headliner for me this week in the Top Comics to Buy for October 2 is House of X #6. 

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Drawn From Perspective: ‘Every single line is there for a reason’, praise for Sean Lewis, Hayden Sherman’s THUMBS

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By J. Paul Schiek — There are really three ways to read a comic book. Probably the most prevalent is as a form of entertainment. The second is in the name of didacticism itself, wherein one hopes to gain much the same insight to the human condition that they would get from a classic or even contemporary literary novel. Thirdly, there’s a group who read comics simply to have an experience. It’s not that entertainment and didacticism aren’t experiences in and of themselves, but this third group is looking for something that really absorbs readers, pulling them down to the very surface of the world the story is describing.

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Comic of the Week: The New Mutants - War Children #1, two legendary talents bring their A games

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By d. emerson eddy — Marvel's celebration of its 80th anniversary has been a bit strange. There have been a number of resurrected titles as one shot anthologies along a theme, other specials featuring reunited creative teams from luminary runs, the Avengers: No Road Home arc, etc. Also, both the Invaders and Marvel Comics Presents series could be seen as a celebration of history, and then there was the chronicling of Marvel's history outright in The History of the Marvel Universe, and, of course, the Marvel Comics #1000 special. It's all added up to a very...eclectic year with some interesting material. Without it, however, we never would have seen a reunion of two creators who crafted one of the publisher’s best remembered and most cherished stories in the New Mutant's Demon Bear Saga — Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz.

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TRADE RATING: Die Vol. 1 is a comic about storytelling, blurring lines between fiction and reality

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By Hussein Wasiti — I’m not a tabletop role-playing game fan, and so I was intimidated by Die when its first issue hit shelves late last year. It’s not hard to see why: series writer Kieron Gillen is a fan of RPGs, so much so that the comic was marketed as a love letter to those very games, and that first issue introduced a lot of RPG-like elements that, quite frankly, scared me off. I didn’t read any subsequent issues, but I was happy to see that fans of the series were enjoying something that captured their experiences playing those games.  

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Thirsty Thursdays September 2019: STILL mutants only

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By Allison Senecal — Welcome back to Thirsty Thursdays. Now, you may be wondering...is this still a MUTANTS ONLY affair? Let me just stop you right there — the answer is yes, but now it also involves a sex and resurrection cult. Now that everyone’s property excited, let’s get to this month’s thirstiest panels. 

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The Road to HoX/PoX: A Story of Unity and Trust

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By Jamie Grayson — In the recent 'two-series-that-are-one' combo of House of X and Powers of X, writer Jonathan Hickman and artists Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva tackle many complicated subjects, including alternate futures and pasts, reincarnation through parallel timelines, and the fate of a newformed utopia. But behind all that high-concept, flashy blockbuster business lies one key concept — unity, built upon mutual trust.

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REVIEW: Relics of Youth #1, something new for Vault Comics

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By Jarred A. Luján — Relics of Youth #1, a new title from regularly-awesome publisher Vault Comics, released this week. Relics is sort of an interesting addition to the Vault publishing line, one that has more of a YA feel to it than most of Vault’s other titles. With crazy cool cover art (that Deadly Class variant tho) and my favorite logo on a book ever, Relics of Youth had some solid momentum, even before I cracked the book open. 

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REVIEW: SFSX (Safe Sex) #1 updates familiar dystopian ideas for our modern times

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By Zack Quaintance — Safe Sex took a long time coming….oh my god! That’s not what I meant! Jokes aside (very very bad jokes, at that), this book does have a long and interesting pre-publication history. Written by Tina Horn, and drawn and colored by Mike Dowling (with covers by Tula Lotay and letters by Steve Wands), SFSX (Safe Sex) #1 was originally announced as part of the ill-fated and now-defunct Vertigo Rebirth, which basically both started and fizzled in 2018, before this comic could even be solicited.

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REVIEW: Detective Comics #1012 is a very cool (heh) start to a new arc

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By Alex Batts — Detective Comics #1012 sees the Mr. Freeze story arc finally begin in earnest. This is a story that has been teased and built up in the closing pages of recent Detective Comics issues and has now taken center stage. Regular series writer Peter Tomasi is rejoined by penciler Doug Mahnke, inker Jaime Mendoza, colorist David Baron, and letterer Rob Leigh. While Christian Duce did a great job with the art for the previous arc, it’s a welcome sight to see Doug Mahnke back on a Batman book.

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REVIEW: Tommy Gun Wizards #2 is ‘a true page-turner with intuitive paneling and epic splash pages’

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By Alex Batts — The first issue of Tommy Gun Wizards was all about introducing the world and characters of the series. Tommy Gun Wizards #2, on the other hand, is full-throttle action and escalation. Writer Christian Ward, artist Sami Kivelä, colorist Dee Cunniffe, and letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou return with a new chapter of this genre-bending gangster title set in the Windy City against the backdrop of a prohibition on magic.

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Top Comics to Buy for September 25, 2019: The Plot #1, Powers of X #5, and more

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By Zack Quaintance — This is one of my favorite weeks, wherein the creator-owned books in our Top Comics to Buy for September 25, 2019 outnumber the superhero choices by a wide margin, in this case four to one. What I also appreciate about the selections this week is the diversity in the creator-owned ideas. We have a couple of horror books from Vault, the latest installment in the Brubaker/Phillips noir epic Criminal, and the genre-shattering Tommy Gun Wizards.

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Holy New Creative Team, Batman!

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By Alex Batts — In celebration of Saturday’s Batman Day, DC Comics announced the next creative team for its flagship Batman comic. Writer James Tynion IV, artist Tony S. Daniel, inker Danny Miki, and colorist Tomeu Morey will be stepping on board with Batman #86 in January 2020. We’ve known for a while that a new creative team would be coming, and the Internet has run wild with speculation, but now that we’ve got confirmation, I think it’s time to take a closer look at these creators, specifically focus on prior experience writing Batman stories.

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Comic of the Week: Black Ghost #1 is a compelling, modern story steeped in the spirit of the pulps

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By d. emerson eddy — I'm a sucker for pulp heroes. While the bygone pulp adventures are known for their heights of space and jungle adventures (as well as for having racially insensitive and sometimes worse villains), they also at times dealt with the type of crime that happens right outside our doors in the real world. The Shadow, The Black Bat, The Phantom, and The Spider were just as likely to be embroiled in a war with street thugs and crime bosses as they were intergalactic jewel thieves, and it lent the heroes a certain authenticity. When dealing with ordinary crime, it made a regular guy in a tuxedo, cape, and domino mask feel more like a possibility. More real, of the ordinary person going to extreme lengths to actually do something to clean up their part of the world.

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The Saga Re-Read: Saga #51 is the start of the horror

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By Zack Quaintance — This is the real start of the deep deep troubles that unfold throughout the rest of this arc. This is very much an issue with a surprise at the end. I remember thinking upon my first read that it was time to lose a character, and that I was sad that it had to be someone as charismatic as Doff. If I only knew…

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GET HYPED: Dawn of X and the New X-Line

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By Allison Senecal - So, you have a brave new world. Now what do you do with it? This is the question facing the X-Men at Marvel Comics. This summer, writer Jonathan Hickman and artists Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva with colorist Marte Garcia basically overhauled the X-Men line with the 12-weeks straight mostly alternating mini-series, House of X and Powers of X, easily the biggest thing in superhero comics all year. 

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