By Zack Quaintance — Fearscape #1 absolutely blew me away when it hit last fall. Armed with a singularly pompous meta-narrative voice, the book was a graphic sequential deconstruction of literary culture. It’s main character was a struggling and dysfunctional writer, who was big on ambitions and seemingly short on work ethic and talent. The plot of the series’ debut seemed to put him a trajectory to collide with….
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — The concept behind Vault Comics’ newest book, Queen of Bad Dreams, grabbed me right away. In the world of this story, dream entities known as figments can emerge from dreamer’s minds, and, when they do, there are inspector judges tasked with catching them and deciding to put them back or let them remain in our world. It’s an interesting concept, obviously. What really appealed to me though was how singular it sounded, an especially impressive thing given that…
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — Vault Comics’ newest series, Queen of Bad Dreams, launches this week. Like the publisher’s other offerings, this one features a thoughtful and complex concept executed with honed storytelling chops and a fearless eye for narrative innovation. In other words, it’s very…
Read MoreBy Toren Chenault — When I started reading Valiant Comics, my first title was XO Manowar by Robert Venditti and Cary Nord, launched in 2013. It follows a Visigoth prince named Aric of Dacia, who is as headstrong and stubborn as a hero can get. But he’s also got a lot of heart. When his people are captured by an alien race, Aric steals a sentient alien suit on their ship, becoming a superhero. Yes, this comic is exactly as cool and crazy as it sounds. Since that issue…
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — One of the things I’ve pushed against since creating this site is recency bias. All of us—fans and critics—have a shared tendency to praise and promote new #1 comics above mid-run installments or even finales. While there is a certain and acute level of brilliance required to create a strong debut, I think we as an industry tend to lose site of just how impressive and also difficult it is to sustain an interesting graphic sequential story for five, 10, or—as is the case with one of our...
Read MoreBy d. emerson eddy — Hellboy celebrated its 25th anniversary just last month. Honouring the plucky little creation of Mike Mignola that began in 1994 featuring a red demon with a funny hand, a pyrokinetic, and a fish guy in a bad disguise searching out frog monsters and a Russian madman. That initial series, Hellboy: Seed of Destruction, planted a figurative seed in the imagination of the world and it would bloom into a multimedia juggernaut. Bearing fruit in the form of Sir Edward Grey: Witchfinder, Lobster Johnson, Abe Sapien, and others, as well as…
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — Here begins Saga’s self-contained The War for Phang event story, which I remember being a tad bit disappointed with at the time. In retrospect, it’s really more on me than it is on the creator’s of this comic. Saga is not and has never been that kind of comic, the one to play up grandiose warfare into some kind of marketable event. Besides, have you seen the rest of…
Read MoreBy Jarred A. Luján — For those unaware, The Boys has returned recently via a new omnibus collection. The story, co-created by writer Garth Ennis and artist Darick Robertson, follows a CIA-backed, physically enhanced outfit as they aim to keep superheroes in check. This is second part of my review of the omnibus, covering issues #7-#14 (you can read all about my bad teenage haircut…
Read MoreBy Alex Batts — Before we dive into the recent arc of Batman that just wrapped yesterday, I’d like to review the basic info to make sure we’re all up to speed. Also, this serves as a SPOILER WARNING. I will be discussing events from Tom King’s Batman run leading up to issue 61 as well as the events of this story arc, issues 61-69. I’ll avoid divulging everything that happens in these issues, mainly because…
Read MoreBy @Kimota1977 — Here’s something I thought I’d never write—I just finished watching Season 1 Episode 8 of the Doom Patrol which introduces Danny the Street—an actual living, queer, sentient street that can teleport anywhere in the world and enjoys cross-dressing.
As a lifelong fan of the Doom Patrol, this new show continues to blow me away by incorporating the strangest elements …
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — To use the parlance of writer Donny Cates’ native Texas, boy howdy did the #$@^ really hit the fan in Guardians of the Galaxy #4. I won’t reveal much more than that, however, just noting that a conflict I thought we were on pace for a few issues down the line, really kicked off in a big way right here in these…
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — This is it, everyone, the six-part largely separate Knightmares story arc has now come to an end. This has been an audacious set of stories, each illustrated by a different artist and designed to explore a different part of Batman’s psyche, revealing as they did that our hero was suffering some form of torture. Remember those old campy and elaborate death traps Batman always got stuck in back in Batman ‘66? Well, this arc has been like that, but the booby trap is Batman’s own…
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — When Mary Shelley Monster Hunter #1 was first announced, I was a little skeptical about the concept. The pitch for it seems to be, what if Mary Shelley didn’t invent the story in her most famous novel at all, what if she had actually lived it? I’m sure the idea came from a place of good intentions, an idea to turn the precocious Shelley into a…
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — Xena Warrior Princess #1 is an exceedingly well-done comic from its start, owning what it is—an adventure comic of the highest order that must also pay homage to a beloved character—and reveling in it. Indeed, in this book the creative team of writer Vita Ayala, artist Olympia Sweetman, colorist Rebecca Nalty, and letterer Ariana Maher tell a concentrated and…
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — It’s one of those rare weeks where the majority of our top picks our superhero books. This doesn’t happen all that often, but we just had to give credit where credit is in this feature for Top Comics to Buy for April 17…
Read MoreBy d. emerson eddy — Since his surprise heel turn in the most recent volume of The Avengers, Namor has been a difficult character to pin down. This has been true of his motivations and actions lately through the stories in that series, as well as in the Defenders: The Best Defense crossover, and here in the new Invaders series, too. His erratic mood swings, as he went back and forth seemingly indiscriminately between hero and villain, were once explained by an “oxygen imbalance” in his blood, but we were told earlier in this series that this isn't the case now. With all that in mind, this issue begins to explain Namor's hidden history and how it might feed into why…
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — There was some big news this week about Saga! Not the big news about when the book is finally coming back, but decent-sized news all the same. My Twitter buddy Christian Holub had the scoop over at Entertainment Weekly, the scoop being that…
Read MoreBy Jarred A. Luján — The Boys, which is Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s series about a CIA-backed team that keeps superheroes in check, is back this year with a new omnibus that collects the first 14 issues of the series (Editor’s note: this review covers the first half of the omnibus, but check back next week for a piece about the rest!). For those not in the know, The Boys is a fairly iconic series co-created by…
Read MoreBy Taylor Pechter — Death is a fact of the universe that most of us fear. We fear it for ourselves or for our loved ones, and at our lowest moments, we maybe even wish it on those we hate, be them real life figures or characters on TV. Death, however, is much different in the comicbook landscape, much less…
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — She Could Fly, a four-issue miniseries that ran last year via Dark Horse Comics’ Berger Books imprint, had a somewhat tidy ending. At least in terms of the emotionality of its story arc. The premise of the book was very very good from the start: a mysterious woman flies through the sky randomly for weeks (like, legit flies), captivating the nation before one day bursting into flames. The series then follows the world’s reaction as filtered through a set of adjacent characters, including a…
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