Month: February 2017

Each month, we round up the most interesting comics, graphic novels, webcomics, digital comics and comic-related Kickstarters that we recommend you check out.

1. The Wild Storm #1

By Warren Ellis, Jon Davis-Hunt and Ivan Plascencia
DC Comics

Twenty years ago, Warren Ellis began writing Stormwatch for superstar artist Jim Lee’s new company, Wildstorm. That title would lead directly into The Authority, a comic that would influence the storytelling style of superhero comics from that point forward and made Wildstorm (by then owned by DC Comics) one of the most important publishing imprints of the early 21st century. Things change quickly in comics, though, and by 2010, DC shut down Wildstorm, folding some of its characters like Grifter and Midnighter into the newly rebooted DCU.

Now, DC has recruited Ellis to curate a new line of Wildstorm comics beginning with a 24-issue series called The Wild Storm, written by Ellis himself along with artist Jon Davis-Hunt. Some classic characters and concepts like The Engineer, Jenny Sparks, Wetworks, and the HALO Corp. will get rebooted and some new ideas will be introduced, all with Ellis’s familiar penchant for political paranoia, tough female leads and cutting edge technology.

2. My Favorite Thing is Monsters

By Emil Ferris
Fantagraphics

Flipping through this 300-plus page graphic novel, you can understand why it might have taken its author 15 years to create. Made to look like the notebook diary of a 10-year-old girl, each page is filled with elaborately rendered drawings done in ball point pen on lined paper. But Ferris’s early process on her debut book was dramatically disrupted when she contracted the West Nile Virus, becoming paralyzed from the waist down and losing the use of her right hand. This did not deter the 40-year-old single mom from re-focusing her life on making art and finishing her book. If that wasn’t enough, Ferris faced one more obstacle when the shipment of final printed copies of the book was detained by the Panamanian government after the shipping company went bankrupt, delaying the release of this book by four months.

The first of two volumes, My Favorite Thing is Monsters is a fictional memoir about a young girl in 1960s Chicago who is trying to solve the murder of her upstairs neighbor, a Holocaust survivor. Ferris pulls in elements of horror films and pulp magazines as well as an aesthetic of 1960s underground comix to tell a challenging story about history, family, outsiderism, adolescence, and murder.

3. Wonder Woman Rebirth Vol. 1: The Lies

By Greg Rucka, Liam Sharp and Laura Martin
DC Comics

The first volumes of DC’s Rebirth-branded trade paperbacks are hitting bookstores six months after the relaunch of all of DC’s ongoing titles. Wonder Woman has been one of the best of these Rebirth comics, spearheaded by fan-favorite writer Greg Rucka, who returned to the character with the mission of fixing some continuity discrepancies that arose during DC’s last reboot. Published biweekly, the comic has an interesting publishing schedule because it jumps between two ongoing stories every other issue: the first, a “Year One” tale of Diana’s first encounter with Steve Trevor and the world outside her Amazonian home, and the other, a present day adventure with Trevor, Etta Candy, and Barbara “Cheetah” Minerva in which Diana journeys back home to rediscover her past. DC is logically collecting each story separately so Volume One contains just the present day story. Veteran comic creators Liam Sharp and Laura Martin produce breathtakingly detailed work here, full of stunning exotic locales and a visual rendition of Wonder Woman that is beautiful and regal yet also physically solid and intimidating.

4. Pretending is Lying

By Dominique Goblet
New York Review Comics

Goblet’s 2007 graphic novel is being published in English for the first time through the brand new comics division of the venerable New York Review of Books. It is a personal, revealing memoir told with a variety of experimental art styles, jumping between multiple narratives. Each section explores Goblet at a different point in her life from childhood to motherhood. The award-winning artist came out of the Franco-Belgian independent comics scene of the 1990s and was an early contributor for influential publisher Frémok. She crafted the stories that comprise Pretending is Lying over the course of 12 years, and while they are ostensibly about Goblet herself, they are even moreso about her relationships with the three most important people in her life: her father, her boyfriend and her daughter.

5. Black History in its Own Words

By Ron Wimberly
Image Comics

Though really more of a book of illustrations than a comic, this book is a labor of love from an exciting new voice in comics. Wimberly manages to pick thought-provoking quotes from a range of influential African-American voices and work them into a striking portrait of the subject done in his bold, graphic, and energetic style. His choices of subjects are interesting and, in some cases, more contemporary than you might expect for a “black history” project. His subjects include Angela Davis, Spike Lee, James Baldwin, Laverne Cox, George Herriman, Dave Chapelle, Serena Williams, Ice Cube, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and more. Wimberly’s project began at The Nib in 2015 and has since turned into something of an ongoing project with this book debuting some brand new portraits.

6. Weird Detective

By Fred Van Lente, Guiu Vilanova and Mauricio Wallace
Dark Horse Comics

Comics are rife with homages to the work of horror novelist H.P. Lovecraft, but there’s never been one that is so reverent and irreverent at the same time. Best described as “Law & Order with Cthulu,” this five-part series (released this month in trade paperback form) follows an NYPD detective whose body is inhabited by a tentacle-ridden creature from another world. His uncanny ability to instinctively solve almost any crime paired with his complete and total inability to act normal when interacting with other people is simply explained away by fellow cops as his “being from Canada.” His charade gets more difficult when he gets a new partner who has been charged with investigating him. With a lot of deadpan wit, Van Lente makes otherworldly, unspeakable Lovecraftian horror accessible and often hilarious while still being really unsettling.

7. Angel Catbird Vol. 2

By Margaret Atwood, Johnnie Christmas and Tamra Bonvillain
Dark Horse Comics

Acclaimed novelist and geek culture ally Margaret Atwood is back already with the middle volume of her graphic novel trilogy, which launched last September. This tongue-in-cheek tale of animal-human hybrids gets even more fanciful by introducing some faux-mythological characters in the vein of volume one’s Count Catula like Queen Nefer-kitty and Atheen-owl. This is a light-hearted comedy-adventure with a message that intersperses facts about caring for stray cats with the type of loony storylines you would find in Golden and Silver Age era comic books.

8. Dissolving Classroom

By Junji Ito
Vertical

Junji Ito is one of Japan’s great horror manga creators, known for works like Tomie and Uzumaki. His latest book, making its English language debut this month in the States, is a collection of loosely connected short stories. Ito’s ultra-realistic style is intricate with extra attention paid to grotesque scenes depicting horrific things like melting faces. There is a satirical bent to these stories that explore societal issues surrounding beauty, vanity and more.

9. Lovers in the Garden

By Anya Davidson
Retrofit Comics

Exploitation comics have been a popular trend for the past few years, with a number of comics deriving their lo-fi aesthetic and storytelling style from blaxploitation and grindhouse films as well as underground comics. Davidson’s addition to the genre is part blaxploitation, part feminist crime noir set in 1970s New York. This 64-page graphic novel follows an ensemble of characters including a black female reporter, two Vietnam vets, and a drug dealer who cross paths in a violent and engaging romp full of quirky, Tarantino-like conversations.

10. Spaniel Rage

By Vanessa Davis
Drawn & Quarterly

Originally published in 2003, Spaniel Rage is a collection of daily sketch comics about Davis’s day-to-day life as a single woman in New York City. It’s a little more Curb Your Enthusiasm than Sex in the City though. There’s some dating, but also a lot of self-doubt, awkward encounters with co-workers, honest conversations with friends, and self-deprecating jokes. The comics are all very loosely drawn, full of mistakes and smudges which only add to their honest and approachable charm. Davis has proven to be an influence on a lot of today’s young female cartoonists and this re-release aims to show that the work retains its relevance and influence more than a decade later.

Funko, that massively successful collectibles clearinghouse—you’ve likely seen friends or family members lose their collective minds over their Pops! Vinyl figures—just announced a new addition to its lineup: Their Disney Treasures subscription box service is set to deliver exclusive, Mickey Mouse-approved items directly to your door.

Funko announced the partnership on their website on Monday, promising that an introductory box would have a Pirates Cove theme and come with a Mr. Smee Pop! figure based on Captain Hook’s first mate from the Disney iteration of Peter Pan. The crated loot will join other branded Funko boxes, including offerings from Marvel and DC, and follows a long list of Disney Pops!, including characters from The Lion King, Frozen, and several Pixar films. In keeping with the tradition of subscription item bundles, the box’s contents will be a surprise until your postal carrier drops it off.

The company hasn’t announced a release date or price, but filling out a sign-up sheet will provide notifications when they’re available. If you want to hold off to see what’s included, a multitude of “unboxing” videos will likely show up on YouTube before too long.

There’s a reason some people feel lucky when discovering two yolks inside a single egg. Double yolks are rare—they occur in roughly one of every 1000 eggs. As Sploid reports, a family recently discovered something even more remarkable laid by their hen. They cracked open an egg to find not just a bonus yolk, but an entire bonus egg kept perfectly intact.

The phenomenon, while uncommon, isn’t unheard of. It’s called counter-peristalsis contraction, and it happens when a second egg starts forming before the egg that precedes it exits the hen’s reproductive system. In such cases, the new oocyte (the part of the egg that becomes the yolk) moves through chicken’s oviduct per usual, collecting membranes and albumen (the white part) along the way. If a fully formed egg has been contracted back into the oviduct from the uterus, the whites of the still-forming egg will amass around it.

The result is a Russian-nesting-doll situation at the breakfast table. According to the uploader of the video above, no one was brave enough to eat the egg or the egg-within-the-egg, but it didn’t go to waste: It was used to make hair conditioner the old-fashioned way instead.

[h/t Sploid]

If, after an exhausting day of parenting, you’ve ever wondered how people in decades past managed to juggle their jobs, housework, and crying children without things like iPads, microwave ovens, or Amazon Prime, well … it turns out they had a few childcare shortcuts of their own. Here are some of the stranger tricks of the parenting trade that people once used when their kids were acting up. (Or just when they needed to get things done.)

1. BABY CAGES

Invented in the 1920s for the purpose of “airing your baby” in order to “renew and purify the blood,” baby cages came into vogue in 1930s London among apartment-dwelling parents who didn’t have a yard for their kids to play in. The contraption was literally a cage made of wire with a flat base attached to the outside of a window, like an air conditioner or a flower box. Purified blood aside, they may have also caught on when people realized that you could just put your kid in there and go about the rest of your day—all in the name of good parenting.

2. MORPHINE-LACED SYRUP

 
Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup was a favorite babysitter of Victorian mothers, possibly because its primary ingredients were morphine and alcohol. Turns out, if you want your kids to be quiet, morphine works really well. That said, it’s a little unfair to only call out Mrs. Winslow here, because opium was also the secret ingredient in at least 100 other over-the-counter syrups, tonics, and medications of the era, some of which were sold as late as the 1930s.

3. CHILD SAFETY HARNESSES

 
In case you’re not familiar, this is just a harness and leash for your child, like the kind you’d use to walk a dog. Child harnesses saw their heyday in the 1980s, but they go back a lot earlier than many people realize: Although the original patent was filed in 1920, the future Louis XV of France is depicted wearing one in an early 18th-century painting. They’re still used today too, of course, although overall parents try harder to avoid the impression they’re treating their children like pets.

4. COCAINE

 
Like opium, cocaine was used in hundreds of pharmaceutical products in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and it certainly wasn’t confined to adult use. Cocaine toothache drops were aimed at parents, particularly for use with teething babies, and the package included instructions on dosages for kids. Even coca wine (the wine-cocaine beverage popular in the 1800s) was sometimes marketed specifically at children.

5. MUSTARD NIPPLES

In some areas of medieval Europe, when faced with the task of weaning a reluctant child from its mother’s (or wet nurse’s) breast, doctors sometimes advised women to apply mustard to their nipples, for the same reason that nasty-tasting fingernail polish might deter a nail-biter. Bitter aloes—a genus of the aloe plant—was also sometimes used.

6. CAUTIONARY TALES

 
Cultures around the world have cooked up a multitude of tales meant to scare kids into behaving. In the mid-1800s, Germans had Der Struwwelpeter (or Shockheaded Peter), an illustrated children’s book wherein a girl burns herself to death after playing with matches, a boy dies of starvation when he refuses to eat his soup, and a menacing tailor cuts a kid’s thumbs off as punishment for sucking them. Meanwhile, since the 13th century, tales of the giantess Grýla have terrified Icelandic kids into behaving, lest they become her afternoon snack. In Brazil, every kiddo knows about Cuca, the anthropomorphic crocodile lady who will snatch them up if they’re not good. And just about every culture has some kind of boogeyman, including Mètminwi in Haiti (a slender giant with long, thin limbs whose name is a play on the French for “Master of Midnight”) and the namahage in Japan (a demonlike being), to name a few.

Members of Ohio’s Marion Police Department recently went above and beyond the call of duty, brushing up on their elementary school math skills in the process to help a fifth-grader with her homework.

As ABC News reports, 10-year-old Lena Draper was stymied by problems that involved a combination of addition and multiplication, so she sought assistance on the local police department’s Facebook page. The student left a message, along with a few questions that left her scratching her head, including “(8 + 29) x 15.”

The police messaged Draper back, and briefly explained the mathematical order of operations to her (refresher: PEMDAS, which stands for “parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition and subtraction”). “Do the numbers in the parenthesis first so in essence it would be 37 x 15,” they instructed. Draper followed up with a more difficult question—”(90 + 27) + (29 + 15) x 2″—and the officers gave her additional help.

While their hearts were in the right place, their numbers weren’t: Draper ended up getting the second problem wrong, her mother later noted, as her math mentors mistakenly instructed her to solve the addition problems in both parentheses, and to multiply that answer by two. (Instead, she should have added the numbers in the second parentheses, multiplied that answer by two, and then added the result to the numbers in the first parentheses.)

The jury’s still out on how Draper did on her homework overall, but the Marion PD received props for their willingness to assist with community issues big and small. They received the praise with modesty, and in a Facebook statement, explained that they try to give back to the community in whatever way they can. This type of incident is “really just who we are as a Police Department,” the statement noted. “We are deeply connected with our wonderful citizens and they are incredibly supportive of their Police.”

“We really wondered what first made this child think to call upon us for help with homework,” the Marion PD continued. “We don’t mind and it’s not unheard of but still pretty rare. I believe the answer is simple … she was made to believe that we are good people who are worthy of her trust and who will be there for her in a pinch. That kind of thing does not happen by accident.”

You can hear an account of the story in Lena’s own words below, courtesy of Inside Edition.

[h/t ABC News]