By Jarred A. Luján — Berserker Unbound is the new Jeff Lemire and Mike Deodato Jr. book from Dark Horse Comics. I kinda feel like this has flown a little under the radar, but that’s about to change—this first issue is awesome.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — I absolutely loved House of X #1 last week, giving it a perfect 10 out of 10 score and describing it as ‘a landmark comic.’ Keep that in mind as I tell you now that this week’s companion comic, Powers of X #1, makes House of X #1 look safe by comparison. I don’t mean this as praise or criticism. In a story as dense and assured as the big one being told now in the X-Men comics by Jonathan Hickman, good or bad doesn’t quite factor in. It’s all good, it’s all fascinating and ambitious. Still, Powers of X #1 is the almost-objectively more experimental and less predictable of the two books.
Read MoreBy Nick Couture — Christopher Sebela is coming off of a great year. With 2018 books like Crowded — a fast-paced hilarious romp through the near future that’s filled with murder apps and really cute dogs — and Cold War — a kinetic futuristic action tale and art showpiece for superstar artist Hayden Sherman — Sebela is a must-read creator in 2019. Test #2 follows up a phenomenal debut issue, with more dense world building and a couple answered questions.
Read MoreBy Alex Batts — A few months back I wrote a piece talking about my hype for Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jonathon Glapion, and FCO Plascencia’s then-unreleased Batman: Last Knight on Earth. We're now two issues in, and the series has exceeded my high expectations. Snyder has said often in interviews that advice Grant Morrison gave him about Batman has stuck with him: give his Batman a beginning and an end. If Zero Year was the beginning, Last Knight on Earth is the end, and this outstanding creative team is pulling no punches for its conclusion.
Read MoreBy Jarred A. Luján — She Said Destroy, a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid comic by writer Joe Corallo and artist Liana Kangas is back with its third issue this week. This has been one of my favorite titles on my pull list since its debut, so I’m going to preface my review with simply telling you how excited I was for this book.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — I am nothing if not a sucker for a strong opening page, an opening page that orients you as a reader, that tells you in a broad sense what this story is about, that draws you in with artwork and prose and maybe even a bit of timeliness, that leads right up to a killer page turn a big reveal that speeds you off through the plot like hitting a turbo boost in Mario Kart. While I’m uncool and have no idea if I nailed that last reference, what I do know is that The Mall #1 has an absolutely killer opening page. The exact type of opening page I’m looking for when I dive into any new #1 comic, especially a creator-owned book like this one with a wholly new (and very interesting concept).
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — Last July at San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski announced the company was bringing back its beloved Uncanny X-Men title. The news was vague, with just a glimpse of a familiar Uncanny X-Men logo on a projector screen (eliciting ravenous howls). Cebulski, however, was announcing more than just a comic revival. To me, what happened in that room was an announcement that after roughly a decade-plus of corporate isolation, the company was bringing the X-Men back into the creative fold.
Read MoreBy Alex Batts — Detective Comics #1008 sees the return of artist Doug Mahnke, accompanied by inker Jamie Mendoza and colorist Dave Baron. This isn’t the only return seen in the issue though, because for the first time in a while The Joker makes his way back to Gotham. This time with a devious plan to terrorize pedestrians at the local amusement park (named Bolland Park after Brian Bolland, artist of The Killing Joke, which has its own iconic amusement park scenes).
Read MoreBy Alex Batts - The end begins. With the release of Batman #75 this week , the final story arc of Tom King’s Batman epic gets underway. City of Bane is the beginning of the end for the journey the Caped Crusader has been on since issue #1 back in 2016 at the start of DC Rebirth. Though this won’t be the final story King tells with the Dark Knight (see Batman/Catwoman, a 12-issue maxi series launching in January 2020) it is the bombastic finale to his run on the main title. King is joined by longtime creative partners Tony S. Daniel and Tomeu Morey on main art duties, with Mitch Gerads contributing a brilliantly illustrated 8-page epilogue/prologue of sorts following the main cliffhanger ending. Rounding out the team is consistent Bat-letterer Clayton Cowles.
Read MoreBy Nick Couture - Writer and Godfather of the Valiant revival, Joshua Dysart, along with Cafu and Kano on art, Andrew Dalhouse on colors, and Dave Sharpe on letters, continue to reach for a crescendo with Life and Death of Toyo Harada #5. It’s an issue that lets the story breath a bit while revealing key moments from Toyo’s past. Over several years of development, Dysart has written a character that fits in perfectly with the likes of Magneto or Vader, and that is no small feat. All that’s missing is an iconic costume, though that black suit is killer.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — Sera and the Royal Stars #1 is one good-looking comic, so much so that I want to start this review by highlighting artist Audrey Mok and colorist Raul Angulo’s vast contributions to this story. This is a fantasy comic, one beholden to certain visuals (cloaks, swords, arrows, boots, horses, etc.) as fantasy comics often are. Within that, however, Mok and Angulo’s work quickly sets a tone for this world, nodding to certain real world cultural touchstones while taking scenes and settings and extending them into fantastical and creative new aesthetic territory. They pull influences, they add their own touches, they bring us to a world at once familiar and intriguing. The visual world-building here is all very done.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — An incredibly reductive (if necessary) summary of the new series from Ahoy Comics, Second Coming, is that it’s a satire about Jesus returning to earth and becoming roommates with Superman (or close enough). This was, perhaps, the elevator pitch, with additions in the room to explain that the book is a look at how modern society—specifically modern Christians—have lost site of Jesus’ original, more subversive teachings about forgiveness, empathy, understanding, peace, etc.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — I probably used the ideal opening line for my headline, so I’ll just re-purpose it again here: Ghosted in L.A. #1—a new comic from BOOM! by Sina Grace, Siobhan Keenan, Cathy Le, and DC Hopkins—is an absolutely great story about youth and love (both romantic and platonic) and Los Angeles...that also happens to have some ghosts in it.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — I’ve always appreciated a good Lois Lane story. Moreover, I’ve long considered Lois Lane my favorite character in comics. I wrote a longer piece about this some time in the past, but both my wife and I are reporters. My wife is also considerably better at being a reporter than I am. As silly as it sounds, reading about Superman (himself a reporter, of course) and his wife, Lois Lane, the world’s greatest reporter, is a big kick for me.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — I’m still processing what The Walking Dead did today and why. Now, normally when I say this, it has to do with a much-loved long-standing character having something grisly and horrible happen to them. That’s certainly not the case here. What happened in The Walking Dead #193 is that the story ended, and it ended with little warning on fanfare.
Read MoreBy Jarred A. Luján — Vault Comics has a new title out this week, Test #1, from writer Christopher Sebela and artist Jen Hickman. I know Hickman mostly for her work on AfterShock’s Moth & Whisper. Sebela, meanwhile, actually writes one of my favorite current ongoings, with the creator-owned book from Image Comics, Crowded. These two teaming up made me excited as soon as I heard about it, but it was really that Test’s concept also involves technology that got me truly fascinated. Sebela has done some sort of funny-while-tragic stuff involving the future of technology over in Crowded, so I was really excited to see him tackle the topic again, perhaps in a different way.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — War of the Realms, for those of you who for some reason read this site but have managed to not hear about it, is Marvel’s big summer event this year. It is a story that has grown over the course of Jason Aaron’s ongoing run on Thor, which at this point is among the all-time best with the character. In it, the dark elf Malekith has conquered nine of the 10 realms, with the lone holdout being Midgard (Earth). This is the story of Malekith and the mighty forces he has rallied, trying to take over…
Read MoreBy Alex Batts — The Arkham Knight story arc in Detective Comics wrapped up a few weeks back, excellently introducing the character to the mainstream comics continuity. With the closing of one arc starts the beginning of another. Detective Comics #1006 is part one of a new arca called “There Will Be Blood,” and it sees Jim Corrigan and macabre The Spectre character in Gotham City for a grizzly murder mystery in which the Vengeance of God seeks out the help of the World’s Greatest Detective.
Read MoreBy Jarred A. Luján — Let me start off by just saying that Magdalene Visaggio is one of my favorite writers. Eternity Girl (a Young Animal comic that featured art by Sonny Liew) absolutely blew me away. I know this is a review for Marilyn Manor, but if you haven’t read that comic, consider going to your shop, slamming your fist on the counter, and demanding a copy of Eternity Girl. I’m fairly certain you’ll be grateful you did.
Read MoreBy 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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