The 12 Most Interesting Comics Released in April

filed under: Pop Culture
Image credit: 
James Stokoe/Dark Horse Comics

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

1. ALIENS: DEAD ORBIT #1

By James Stokoe
Dark Horse Comics

Timed to coincide with “Alien Day” on April 26th (the date was chosen because 4/26 matches LV-426, the name of the moon on which the film Aliens takes place), this highly anticipated new mini-series is James Stokoe’s next foray into popular movie monster territory. Previously, the visionary artist produced two astounding Godzilla books that showed off his attention to finely detailed destruction. Expect that same level of stylish intricacy being applied to H.R. Giger-designed spaceship technology and oozy Xenomorph anatomy. The first issue sets things up with your typical Aliens premise—a lone engineer is  trapped on a spaceship with a Xenomorph—and lets Stokoe just run with it in his own way.

2. BATMAN #21

By Tom King, Jason Fabok, Jay Leisten, and Brad Anderson
DC Comics 

When DC kicked off their line-restarting publishing event last summer with a one-shot comic called DC Rebirth, they dropped lots of hints that they were planning on bringing the characters of Alan Moore’s Watchmen comic into DC continuity. There were allusions to Dr. Manhattan’s Martian palace and Batman even unearthed the iconic smiley face button from a wall inside the Batcave. Yet, almost a year later, DC has not done much to follow up on these teases. Now, in a four-part story called “The Button” that will run in two issues of Batman and two issues of The Flash, those two hero detectives will team up to solve the mystery of this smiley face button while DC will risk the ire of Watchmen fans who are likely still steaming from the 2012 decision go against Moore’s wishes and make the Before Watchmen prequel books.

3. COLLECTING STICKS

By Joe Decie
Jonathan Cape Books

Collecting Sticks is a camping story for those who aren’t all that comfortable with outdoorsy activities. In it, Joe Decie describes what “glamping” (glamorous camping) is like with his wife and son: a drive to the woods to stay in a rented cabin that’s furnished with beds and within walking distance of a grocery store. They wrestle with building a fire, sketch the scenery, argue about the lameness of Jango Fett, and, of course, collect sticks and other found objects (that can be sold on eBay later). Decie portrays himself as a bit of a nebbish, but he and his family are perfectly happy with their version of camping and their endearingly sarcastic-but-loving dynamic is infectious.

4. CATSTRONAUTS: MISSION MOON / CATSTRONAUTS: RACE TO MARS

By Drew Brockington
Little, Brown Books

Dogs have had their turn in space, so why not see what cats can do? Drew Brockington has debuted his first two graphic novels at once, and they mark the beginning of a delightful—and even educational—series set in a world populated by felines and starring an intrepid band of cat astronauts. Book one, Mission Moon, starts off with an energy crisis on Earth that requires the CatStronauts to install a solar power plant on the moon before the last bit of energy runs out. In book two, Race to Mars, they’re called upon again to compete against other countries to be the first cats to land on Mars. Like little cat versions of Matt Damon in The Martian, they must use some technical know-how and real science to complete their missions and get themselves out of some jams. Young readers will get a kick out of the cute cat jokes, but will also learn some simple facts about aeronautics along the way.

5. X-MEN: GOLD #1 / X-MEN: BLUE #1

By Marc Guggenheim, Ardian Syaf/By Cullen Bunn and Jorge Molina
Marvel Comics

Marvel’s X-Men franchise has been in an oddly diminished place for the past few years. Star players like Wolverine and Cyclops are dead, and mutants, in general, have seemed of secondary importance compared to Marvel Cinematic Universe-driven titles like The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy and even The Inhumans (the X-Men film franchise is controlled not by Marvel, but by Fox). Now, in an effort to harken back to an era of peak popularity, Marvel is returning to the informal Blue/Gold team structure that was used to differentiate the two main X-books during the 1990s, although with different rosters for each team. X-Men: Gold will be led by Kitty Pryde, who is fresh off a stint in space with the Guardians, and will consist of Old Man Logan (the inspiration for the new Logan film), Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Rachel Grey. X-Men: Blue will have the original teenage X-Men—Jean Grey, Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, and Beast—who have been transported through time to find themselves stuck in the present.

This relaunch was saddled with some unintended controversy when online readers of X-Men: Gold #1 pointed out that the artist, Ardian Syaf, had hidden some anti-Christian and anti-Jewish messages in that issue’s artwork. Marvel has since released an apology, fired Syaf from the book, and even pulled the issue from Comixology’s digital storefront, promising that future printings of the book will feature revised artwork.

6. IMAGINE WANTING ONLY THIS

By Kristen Radtke
Pantheon Books

While in college, the path of Kristen Radtke’s life was influenced by two events: the death of her uncle from a congenital heart disease that she herself may share, and the discovery of some photos in a rundown building that would spark a years-long fascination with ruined places. Radtke’s first graphic novel is part travel memoir/part environmental journal/part philosophical exploration of the places that human beings leave behind. She explores coal mines, deserted American cities, an Icelandic town buried in volcanic ash, and even imagines a future New York City flooded by climate catastrophe. Her photorealistic illustrations give this book a documentary-like feel; her essay-like writing and her own presence throughout the story add a personal and emotional element.

7. NAMELESS CITY VOL. 2: THE STONE HEART

By Faith Erin Hicks
First Second

The middle volume of Faith Erin Hicks’s Nameless City trilogy comes on the heels of an announcement that the books will be adapted into a 12-episode animated series. This volume picks up where the last book left off, and continues to build on the friendship between Kaidu, the son of the leader of the invading Dao army, and Rat, the native orphan of the beleaguered Nameless City. That friendship becomes strained when Kaidu is made privy to a secret that could help his father bring order to the City, but at the cost of betraying the culture of its people. Hicks’s beautiful artwork is full of intricately drawn vistas and manga-style action, giving this story of political intrigue a snappy, addictive pace. 

8. THE INTERVIEW

By Manuele Fior
Fantagraphics


Manuele Fior’s 5,000 km Per Second, the winner of the prestigious Grand Prize at the 2010 Angoulême International Comics Festival, was released in English last year by Fantagraphics to wide critical acclaim. This year, we get to read his 2014 follow-up, The Interview, which takes 5,000 km’s knack for depicting brooding relationship drama and adds a tinge of existential sci-fi dread. Set in Italy in 2048, it follows a psychologist trying to hold his marriage together when he has a close encounter with a UFO, followed by an even closer encounter with a young female patient from a free love commune. This is a gorgeous and moody book that uses science fiction to explore the way the nature of relationships changes from generation to generation.

9. THE REALIST: PLUG AND PLAY

By Asaf Hanuka
Boom! Studios


Asaf Hanuka is well known for his collaborations with his twin brother, Tomer (their most recent graphic novel being 2015’s The Divine). But in his native Israel, Asaf is best known as the creator of The Realist comic strip, which has been running in the Israeli business magazine Calcalist since 2010. Boom! Studios is releasing the second collection of Hanuka’s strips which are short (sometimes even one-page), full-color observations about parenthood, achieving work/life balance, and the geo-political world around him. He has a comedian’s knack for pointing out the little, relatable moments we all share in life and his drawings burst with such creativity that you’ll chuckle with appreciation if you aren’t already chuckling with fellow parental commiseration.

10. BLACK PANTHER AND THE CREW #1

By Ta-Nehisi Coates, Yona Harvey and Butch Guice
Marvel Comics

Ta-Nehisi Coates takes his Black Panther series from the African kingdom of Wakanda to the streets of Harlem and turns it into a team book comprised of prominent black superheroes like Luke Cage, Storm, Misty Knight, relative newcomer Manifold, and, of course Black Panther himself. Marvel Comics fans may recognize the name “The Crew” from Christopher Priest’s short-lived 2003 series of the same name, about an all-black team of heroes. Coates has nodded to Priest as a comic book influence before—particularly his run on Black Panther in the late 1990s. Outside of comics, Coates is a famed writer on race relations and the black experience and will no doubt be addressing such issues in this new series, which begins with the Crew looking to solve the murder of a Harlem activist. Coates is joined by co-writer Yona Harvey (who worked with him on the Black Panther spin-off series World of Wakanda) as well as veteran artist Butch Guice.

11. SPENCER & LOCKE #1

By David Pepose, Jorge Santiago, and Jasen Smith
Action Lab Entertainment 

Calvin & Hobbes fans might just love this gritty crime drama about Detective Locke and his imaginary partner/stuffed panther Spencer (though I can also imagine some will revolt at seeing even analogs of Bill Watterson’s precocious young boy, his imaginary tiger, and their supporting cast depicted in such a bleak and adult way). Writer David Pepose, artist Jorge Santiago, and colorist Jasen Smith get a lot right as they age up this Calvin stand-in into a tough, slightly unhinged cop who has to revisit his past to solve the murder of his childhood friend Sophie Jenkins. 

12. WITCHLIGHT

By Jessi Zabarsky
Czap Books

The debut book from new publisher Czap Books (a company funded through a successful Kickstarter last year) is a beautifully illustrated, LBQT-friendly adventure by Jessi Zabarsky that originally ran as a Tumblr webcomic. Witchlight is about two women—innocent, naive Sanja and dark, adventurous Lelek—who are thrown together on a journey across a magical land. The two get to know each other and learn about themselves and the idea of growing close to another person in this sweet, manga-inspired fantasy.


April 21, 2017 – 8:00pm

The 10 Most Interesting Comics of February

Image credit: 
Emil Ferris/Fantagraphics

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.


February 22, 2017 – 8:00am

The 30 Most Interesting Comics of 2016

It’s that time again to round up the comics I consider the best and most interesting of the year. Please feel free to agree, disagree, and recommend others in the comments below. 

30. 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank

By Matthew Rosenberg and Tyler Boss
Black Mask Studios

In an end of the year list, I don’t usually include comics that are only a couple of issues into their run—but it only took one issue of this comic to make an impression on me and on many other readers, it seems, who took a chance on it. 4 Kids is one of two books on this list that fit the mold of “comics that will appeal to Stranger Things fans” even though it chooses to play with crime fiction instead of supernatural clichés. Rosenberg’s smart and funny dialogue reads like a Quentin Tarantino film starring a group of nerdy, D&D-playing kids who end up trying to pull off a bank heist while Boss’ quaint cartooning style and complex page layouts are evocative of a Wes Anderson film.

29. On a Sunbeam

By Tillie Walden
Onasunbeam.com

This September, 20-year-old Tillie Walden won the coveted Promising New Talent Ignatz award at the Small Press Expo for one of two graphic novels she released last year. Right after receiving the award, she began self-publishing a new webcomic called On a Sunbeam and within a few months had posted over 300 pages. It is a sci-fi comic that is split into two separate narratives, both about a girl named Mia, but showing her at different stages of her life: one as she begins a job restoring old buildings in space and the other as a teenager in boarding school (which is also in space). Walden draws beautiful architecture and is adept at conveying the melodramatic emotions of young love, two things her new comic gives her plenty of chances to do.

28. What Is Obscenity?

By Rokudenashiko; edited by Anne Ishii and Graham Kolbeins
Koyama Press

Megumi Igarashi (a.k.a. Rokudenashiko) was arrested and found guilty by a Japanese court for distributing obscene material when she shared a digital file online that could be used to make a 3-D printing of her vagina. This manga telling of her experience in jail is funny, engaging, and eye-opening.

27. The Nib

Edited by Matt Bors
Thenib.com

Obviously, 2016 will be remembered as the most insane election year ever, but thankfully The Nib returned from hiatus in time to see it out. Originally part of Medium.com, the progressive collective of editorial, non-fiction and journalism comics curated by Matt Bors found a new home and returned with a bang to cover and comment on the election. Some highlights include KC Green taking his “This is Fine” dog back from its fate as an overused meme, Ruben Bolling’s Calvin & Hobbes parody “Donald & John,” Sarah Glidden’s reporting on the Jill Stein campaign, and some very good non-election comics like Sarah Winifred Searle’s comic about body types and how they’re represented in media.

26. Tetris: The Games People Play

By Box Brown
First Second

Box Brown has developed a niche for making non-fiction graphic novels about 1980s pop culture starting with his 2014 biography of Andre the Giant and his latest is about of the most addictive video game ever made. It is a surprisingly complicated tale of corporate wrongdoing, creator rights issues and communism that shows how the idea came from a software engineer in Moscow who originally shared it as freeware. Once it got past the Iron Curtain it went viral and corporations like Nintendo began double-crossing each other to get the rights to it. Brown rewinds all the way back to the dawn of man to illustrate our natural fascination with creating art and playing games and shows how that fascination would eventually evolve into a multi-billion dollar industry.

25. Spider-Woman #5

By Dennis Hopeless and Javier Rodriguez
Marvel Comics

Superhero comics are usually not where you’d look for thoughtful and realistic portrayals of parenting, and Spider-Woman, a comic whose recent claim to fame was a questionable cover that caused a media backlash, may seem especially unexpected. Dennis Hopeless and Javier Rodriguez are way beyond that controversy, though. With the book’s recent re-launch, Jessica Drew is a pregnant superhero (who refuses to tell anyone the identity of the father) and in the fifth issue, it hit a high point: the baby has been born and Jessica is now adjusting to being a single, working mom. This issue is something really special, full of knowing laughs and heartwarmingly real moments that any new parent will recognize, and Jessica’s embrace of being a single mom by choice is especially unique and refreshing.

24. Deathstroke

By Christopher Priest, Carlo Pagulayan, Jason Paz and Jeromy Cox
DC Comics

Veteran writer Christopher Priest stepped away from comics over 10 years ago but never intended to be away that long. After becoming a fan favorite on books like Black Panther in the ‘90s, the African American writer began to continuously turn down offers to write black superheroes, finding that these were the only books he was being considered for. When DC began their “Rebirth” initiative this year, Priest got a call to write a new Deathstroke book which he found intriguing and accepted not only because Deathstroke is white but because he is not a hero.

Priest’s long-awaited return to comics has not disappointed. He uses a broken chronological narrative, morally shaded characters and a dry sense of humor to reintroduce this old Teen Titans villain. DC’s new “Rebirth” comics have been mostly excellent so far but Deathstroke is one of its best.

23. Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq

By Sarah Glidden
Drawn & Quarterly

In 2011, Sarah Glidden traveled to Turkey, Syria, and Iraq with a group of journalist friends to interview refugees in hopes of finding a story to tell. Glidden finds her own unique hook by choosing to document the act of creating journalism, showing us the behind-the-scenes decisions journalists make, the technical process of interviewing and the hopes and fears about how their stories will impact their subjects and the people they are hoping to inform. Comics journalism has become Glidden’s passion (this year she also published a comic about her time spent traveling with the Jill Stein presidential campaign) and at a time when journalism is becoming more important than ever, this is a fascinating look at how you report the truth.

22. The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye

By Sonny Liew
Pantheon

When this book was first released, some reviewers were fooled into thinking it was really a career retrospective of a famous Singaporean cartoonist. In fact, what makes it so astounding is that it is 320 pages of comics, sketches, life drawings, and paintings convincingly created by Sonny Liew to invent a lifetime’s worth of work. Liew (Dr. Fate, The Shadow Hero) uses the fictional life of Charlie Chan Hock Chye to tell the history and evolution of mid-to-late century comics, while mixing in the social and political history of Singapore. Liew’s commentary on political activism led the government to revoke a national grant given to him to make the book yet it has sold through multiple print runs in that country.

21. Monstress

By Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
Image Comics

Set in a steampunk 19th century Asia full of cute animal/children hybrids, talking cats, Lovecraftian monstrosities and a matriarchal society in which women have all the power and men barely factor into the story, Liu and Takeda have done an amazing amount of world-building so far in their new series. Monstress follows a young slave named Maika whose life was torn apart in a great war and she now harbors a destructive and awesome power within her body that makes her a strategic object to be sought after.

Takeda’s gothic, art-deco influenced artwork is absolutely stunning to behold and the epic fantasy that she and Liu are putting together here is complex and brutally violent.

20. Secret Wars

By Jonathan Hickman, Esad Ribic and Paul Renaud
Marvel Comics

The nine-issue mini-series at the heart of an epic event that effectively destroyed the Marvel Universe and upended its entire publishing line for over four months had the most massive scope of any crossover book Marvel has ever published. I’m not even talking about the dozens of tie-in series that supported the main story. Writer Jonathan Hickman spent 44 issues of Avengers and 33 issues of New Avengers concurrently to build up to this story, but it’s even bigger than that. He uses this series to satisfy plot points he planted in nearly every Marvel title he has written over the past seven years. If you’re a fan of the “Hickman-verse,” this was a great end to his long run in the Marvel Universe. For everyone else, Secret Wars works as a beautifully illustrated swan song for the Fantastic Four, who, once this book was complete, would find their own series cancelled for the first time in Marvel history.

19. Rules for Dating My Daughter

By Mike Dawson
Uncivilized Books

Dawson has a wonderfully relatable way of pondering and sometimes agonizing over subjects that progressively minded parents will empathize with: trying to be a feminist dad; the ethics of teaching your kids to eat meat; gun control and school shootings; there’s even one comparing the class values of Charles Dickens with the Disney Jr. show Sofia the First. Dawson has been successful shifting from writing longform narrative comics to putting out shorter, topical non-fiction pieces. His opinions are nuanced and well thought out, and his cartooning, even on pieces that he meant to be quick and loose are creative and expertly drawn.

18. Rosalie Lightning/We All Wish For Deadly Force

By Tom Hart/Leela Corman
St. Martin’s Press/Retrofit Comics

In 2011, Tom Hart and Leela Corman experienced the worst horror a parent could ever face when their 1-year-old daughter Rosalie unexpectedly passed away. Being cartoonists, both utilized their disciplines as a coping mechanism to help make sense of this awful tragedy. Hart worked through his emotions in real time through his webcomic Rosalie Lightning which was collected this year into a hardcover. It is a gutwrenching read, one whose purpose seems so therapeutic it is almost as if it is not meant for others to read. Drawn with so much raw emotion it looks practically scrawled onto the page.

Meanwhile, Corman explored her own grief through a comic called “PTSD: The Wound That Never Heals” that she originally published in Nautilus and was included in her short comics collection We All Wish For Deadly Force. In it she describes the pain of “coming back to life after losing my first child” and delves into the science behind Post Traumatic Stress Disorder while offering hope and inspiration to victims of trauma.

17. Superman: American Alien

By Max Landis with various artists
DC Comics

The best Superman comic since 2005’s All Star Superman once again retells the Man of Steel’s origin (thankfully without any Krypton scenes this time) in a way that manages to be contemporary and edgy yet with the heroic ideals that should always be at the heart of the character. Filmmaker Max Landis teamed with a different big name artist (Joelle Jones, Jae Lee, Nick Dragotta, Jock, Tommy Lee Edwards, Francis Manapul, and Jonathan Case) for each chapter of this mini-series. It begins with Clark Kent as a boy discovering his powers and leads towards Superman’s early days in Metropolis and the revelation to the world that he is an alien. This version of Clark Kent is not the corn-fed innocent we’re used to (he does well with girls and gets into some trouble with his high school friends) but this isn’t an overly cynical attempt to make the character more flawed and gritty for modern audiences. It’s a really enjoyable remix of the mythos with some surprising twists and interesting new relationships between Clark, Lois, and even the other heroes in the DC Universe.

16. Becoming Unbecoming

By Una
Arsenal Pulp Press

The author, working under the pseudonym “Una,” grew up in Northern England in the 1970s while the Yorkshire Ripper was on a murdering spree, killing 13 women, most of whom were prostitutes. The amount of time it took for the police to get serious about catching a serial killer that seemed to prey on sexually active women is a symptom of the problem Una delves into in this dark, brave, and creatively ambitious work. As a victim of both sexual violence and “slut-shaming” by peers at an impressionable and damaging young age, it has taken many years for Una to confront her own experiences and to find a way to talk about the violence and emotional trauma that men inflict on women. She originally never intended this book to be read by anyone else but it is brilliant, revealing and brave in a way that just may help other women.

15. Plutona

By Emi Lenox, Jeff Lemire and Jordie Bellaire
Image Comics

A group of kids hanging out in the woods stumble across a dead body that turns out to be Plutona, the world’s greatest superhero. What should they do? Who should they tell? Their disagreement about what to do next will drive a wedge between all of them. Lemire, one of the most prolific creators in comics, provides the script for a story written and drawn by Emi Lenox of the popular webcomic Emitown (Lemire also draws a backup feature about Plutona’s final adventure before her death). This is a haunting series whose strength is derived from Lenox’s clear and bold cartooning style and her perfectly realized characters, all of whom look and feel like real kids.

14. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl

By Ryan North, Erica Henderson and Rico Renzi
Marvel Comics

Marvel’s most unique comic is also one of its most crowd pleasing. Geared towards a teen girl audience that superhero comics rarely aim for and even more rarely succeed with, it stars a female protagonist who looks nothing like comics’ usual hyper-idealized super heroines and is written and drawn with a sense of humor and irreverence that is more often found in webcomics. That’s the world where North and Henderson came from and they bring that fresh, welcome, Tumblr-friendly approach to the more mainstream Marvel. This year has featured a time travel story with Doctor Doom, a choose-your-own-adventure issue and even an original graphic novel in which Squirrel Girl’s evil doppleganger takes on every hero in the Marvel Universe.

13. Nod Away

By Joshua Cotter
Fantagraphics

In the near future of Nod Away, the internet has been replaced by a telepathically streamed “innernet”; the public becomes outraged when is revealed that the network was powered by the brain of a little girl. Dr. Melody McCabe is assigned to an international space station with the task of developing a new source while somewhere on a desolate alien landscape, a bearded and disheveled man awakens and begins a journey. Cotter’s first book since 2010’s experimental Driven by Lemons, the first in a multi-part series, fuses technical sci-fi, humor, strong character development and psychedelic explorations of the nature of consciousness in a captivating way.

12. Panther

By Brecht Evens
Drawn & Quarterly

What looks on the surface to be a whimsical and colorful children’s book about a young girl and a talking panther who visits her bedroom, reveals a dark underside that will slowly get under your skin as it goes along. Young Christine is mourning the death of her cat when she receives a visit from the charming panther but it is the reader, not Christine, who begins to pick up on his unspeakable ulterior motives. The Cat in the Hat quality that Belgian artist Brecht Evens invokes belies and unsettling chaotic chill that you won’t be able to shake once you’re done reading.

11. The Creepy Case Files of Margo Maloo

By Drew Weing
First Second

One of the best webcomics of the past few years is now available in a print format ideal for reading with your kids. Tough but diminutive Margo Maloo is a monster mediator in Echo City who helps ease grievances when the local monsters lose their cool with the humans that are gentrifying their neighborhood. When Charles and his parents move to the city to restore a rundown tenement apartment, one of those monsters ends up in Charles’ closet, leading him to require Margo’s services. Kids will love Weing’s wonderful, cross-hatched monsters and Margo’s no-nonsense expertise in handling them.

10. The Flintstones

By Mark Russell, Steve Pugh and Chris Chuckry
DC Comics

Yes, I’m serious. A Flintstones comic is in the top 10. When DC Comics took on the Hanna-Barbera license, no one expected much from the comics they’d produce, especially when they seemed to be aiming for a gritty, modern spin on these classic kids cartoons. However, Russell, just off his critically acclaimed reboot of Prez the Teenage President is a breakout star who, with Pugh, a superhero artist with a style you would think wouldn’t fit the material here, took everyone off guard with this smart and darkly funny socio-political satire. So far the series has tackled subjects like marriage equality, religion, PTSD, consumerism and elections in smart and surprising ways while reintroducing all the fan-favorite characters like Dino and the Great Gazoo.

9. Black Hammer

By Jeff Lemire, Dean Ormston and Dave Stewart
Dark Horse Comics

What happens to superheroes after they’ve been retconned out of existence? The heroes of Black Hammer end up trapped in a quiet rural town in a parallel universe after a “Crisis”-like multiversal event and are forced to live for over a decade under a maddening and stifling guise of normalcy. Abraham Slam, Golden Gail, Colonel Weird, Madame Dragonfly, and Barbalien are stand-ins for a variety of recognizable comic book character types from the Golden Age through the Modern Age. Their prickly relationships with each other as they’ve devolved from heroic super team to bitter, dysfunctional family adds some dark humor to an ominous story about being trapped.

Lemire has been producing outstanding work for both Marvel and Valiant Comics this year but his creator-owned comics are even better, and this book in particular, with Ormston and Stewarts’ creepy, understated visuals is one of his best yet.

8. Sheriff of Babylon

By Tom King and Mitch Gerads
DC Vertigo

Tom King draws on his experience as a CIA officer stationed in Iraq to tell this story of an American contractor who finds himself siding with an Iraqi policeman and a former exile turned crime lord to solve the murder of an Iraqi police cadet. Set in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam, it is rich with authenticity and gravitas thanks not only to King’s expertise, but to the realism of Mitch Gerads’ artwork. Unbelievably, this is just one of the multiple excellent books King has been responsible for this year and, as part of DC Vertigo’s new wave of titles, it is bringing a renewed significance to the imprint.

7. Spidey Zine

By Hannah Blumenreich
Self-published

In today’s Marvel Comics, Peter Parker is in his 30s and is the CEO of his own research company. He’s no longer what most people picture when they think of their ideal version of Spider-man. In Hannah Blumenreich’s fan comics though (which she posts to Tumblr and compiles some of them into a PDF zine you can download for any price you choose), Peter Parker is still in high school. He falls behind in his school work, gets beat by girls in basketball, always has time for people in need, loves his Aunt May and if you give him a chance he’ll chew your ear off about Gilmore Girls or some other TV show for hours. This is just about the most perfect Spider-man you can ask for and it’s just hard to believe that Marvel hasn’t hired Blumenreich yet.

6. Patience

By Dan Clowes
Fantagraphics

Clowes’s first new graphic novel in five years combines his penchant for disaffected outsider protagonists with nostalgia for 1950s genre comics. Jack and Patience are young, just married and about to become parents when an intruder takes the life of Jack’s wife and his unborn baby. Thirty years later, Jack has the opportunity to travel back in time and stop this from happening but does his artless tinkering with Patience’s past only make things worse? Full of causal loops, trippy time travel and unabashed misanthropy, this is about as Clowesian as Clowes gets, a fun yet disturbing read.

5. Hilda and the Stone Forest

By Luke Pearson
Nobrow Press

The Hilda series of children’s graphic novels will likely get the mainstream recognition it deserves in 2018 when it becomes an animated show on Netflix. In the meantime, the fifth book in this consistently fantastic series about a precocious young girl with a healthy curiosity and empathy for the variety of creatures that populate her small village focuses on Hilda’s relationship with her single mom as the two get lost together in the troll-infested Stone Forest. Hilda’s relationship with her mom has always been the heart of this series but in this volume we see how her mom is always trying to navigate between being a friend and being a mother, a balance that most moms can probably relate to. Pearson is skilled at capturing wonderful little character moments and employing hilarious visual gags. Hilda is one of the greatest characters out there for adventurous young girls to read.

4. Paper Girls

By Brian K. Vaughn and Cliff Chiang
Image Comics

Before there was Stranger Things (and really just a few months before), there was Paper Girls, a nostalgia-driven throwback to the 1980s that trades Stranger’s boys on bicycles and horror film tropes for girls on bicycles and sci-fi tropes. Set in 1988, a group of 12-year old paper delivery girls find themselves caught up in an adventure involving time travel, aliens, monsters and the end of the world. Vaughn (Saga, Y: The Last Man) is a master at game-changing plot twists and knowing pop culture references. For Chiang, a longtime DC Comics artist, this is his first creator-owned series, and his sense of drama and characterization makes this read like one of those classic Spielbergian kids’ adventure films it is giving a nod to.

3. Ghosts

By Raina Telgemeier
Scholastic

The most popular graphic novelist of the 21st century took some chances with her highly anticipated new book. Moving away from the memoir format of the now-classic Smile and Sisters that made her a staple on the NY Times Bestseller list, Telgemeier dips into supernatural fiction with a more diverse cast of characters. Ghosts is still focused on family and particularly sibling relationships but also looks to deal with a tough subject for any all-ages book to cover: death.

When Maya and Cat’s parents move them to Northern California where the sea air will hopefully be beneficial for Maya who is suffering from cystic fibrosis. In their new town, they learn about Día de los Muertos and come face to face with the actual spirits which causes Cat to have to acknowledge her sister’s own mortality. It’s a risky book and Telgemeier is at the point in her career where she’s ready to push to new levels and bring her loyal audience along for the ride.

2. Vision

By Tom King, Gabriel Hernandez Walta and Jordie Bellaire
Marvel Comics

Tom King has had an astounding year. He has two books on this list and also became the writer for DC’s bestselling comic Batman. The 12-issue Vision mini-series is his best work yet and expands on a successful formula Marvel first landed on with 2012’s Hawekeye—a glimpse at what passes for a normal life when a superhero is off-duty. For the synthezoid Avenger, achieving a “normal” life for himself requires building a wife, two teenage children and a dog and establishing residence in the suburbs. When his wife, Virginia, murders a super villain who threatens the safety of their home, maintaining the sanctity of their domestic life gets harder and harder.

The brilliance of this book is how it uses so many familiar tropes (the often-absent and unaware father, the hyper-protective mother, the quietly rebellious daughter and the eager to please son) but coldly performed by the analytical Vision family. Even as they calculate their every move in an effort to fit in and play their parts, they inevitably succumb to the same pain and tragedy that any “normal” family would. This is a star-making book for Gabriel Hernandez Walta as well who, with Jordie Bellaire, brings a gorgeous and somber realism to King’s almost philosophical and heartbreaking script.

1. March: Book Three

By Rep. John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell
Top Shelf Comics

Each volume of Rep. John Lewis’ graphic novel memoir about his experience as a leader of the Civil Rights Movement released over the past three years has landed with increasing cultural relevance. The third and final volume came out during a bitter election year noteworthy for Black Lives Matter protests, the rise of white nationalism, and numerous incidents of unarmed black men being shot by police. Book Three begins with a shocking scene set inside the 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 just before a bomb kills four young black girls. It retells horrific incidents of nonviolent protests being met with brutal violence and builds towards the triumph of the march from Selma to Montgomery that would lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Lewis’s gripping and informative life story will be taught in history classes for years to come but it also should be noted that the way Powell depicts these events with intense drama that never sacrifices historic accuracy is so perfectly achieved that it will probably be taught in art classes as well.


December 8, 2016 – 8:00am

The 12 Most Interesting Comics of November

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

1. A.D.: AFTER DEATH BOOK ONE

By Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire
Image Comics

Most wouldn’t expect formal comics experimentation to come from the writers of Batman and the X-Men, but, to be fair, Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire are two of the most celebrated creators in comics and both have had a lot of success outside of their work for Marvel and DC. In this three-part prestige format series, they are collaborating to tell a story about a future in which death has been cured. Jonah Cooke, the story’s protagonist, has been alive for centuries and in this first chapter, reflects on his life and his culpability in an event that changed the world.

The format of this book is not entirely a comic; it’s a combination of sequential art, prose, and illustrations. Lemire, who lately has been writing for other artists, provides the art in his discernibly loose, outsider art style while Snyder handles the considerable sections of prose with a novelist’s skill. The result is an ominous and contemplative read about memory and mortality.

2. MUHAMMAD ALI

By Sybille Titeux and Amazing Ameziane
Dark Horse Comics

Some biography subjects were born to be in comics and the brash, super-heroic figure of the boxing world known as Muhammad Ali is one of them. He famously appeared in a comic with Superman back in 1978, but in this 2015 French graphic novel, being released for the first time in English, he gets a 128-page bio-comic all his own. Ali’s life—from his youth as Cassius Clay through his storied boxing career, his conversion to Islam, and his rise as an early hero of the civil rights movement to his final battle with Parkinson’s disease—is all covered here. Titeux gives many of the biographical events some proper historical context by providing some details of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, and the conflict in Vietnam. Ameziane’s photo-realistic artwork depicts these events with accuracy and an appropriate sense of drama equal to Ali’s legend.

3. SUPER POWERS #1

By Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani
DC Comics

Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani are responsible for some of the most popular all-ages comics and their work for DC, like Tiny Titans, is just about the best option you can find out there for early reader superhero comics. Their newest series, Super Powers, stars some of the biggest heroes in the DC Universe and begins with a story in which Batman has gone missing, leaving Superman and Wonder Woman to not only find their friend, but to also fill in for him in Gotham City while he’s gone.

4. WHO KILLED KURT COBAIN?

By Nicolas Otero
IDW Publishing

For Gen Xers, Kurt Cobain’s death by apparent suicide in 1994 was a “where were you when…” moment that is forever burned into their memories. Over 20 years later, the mystique around his death has sparked conspiracy theories and a number of books including the French novel Le Roman de Boddah by Héloïse Guay de Bellissen, which focuses on Cobain’s suicide note and its reference to his imaginary childhood friend “Boddah.” French artist Nicolas Otero has adapted that book into a graphic novel that captures the feeling of the ‘90s—both the grunge aesthetic and even the page layout-driven style of the comics from that decade—while depicting a dramatized version of the real events of Cobain’s life. We see Nirvana’s sudden rises to success, Cobain’s passionate relationship with Courtney Love, his struggle with heroin addiction. and his early death, all told from the point of view of Boddah.

5. ETHER #1

By Matt Kindt and David Rubin
Dark Horse Comics 

Writer Matt Kindt isn’t a fan of the supernatural genre, so the protagonist of his new book is himself a skeptic who prefers science over magic. However, Boone Dias is a scientist-adventurer who is often brought from our world to a magical dimension called the Ether to solve a murder. In a world where seemingly anything can happen, the inhabitants of that world lean on Dias to find explanations for the unexplainable. Kindt is one of the smartest genre writers in comics right now and he’s paired with astounding new talent David Rubin (The Rise of Aurora West), whose richly colored art is like an hallucinatory children’s book that you’ll want to spend some time admiring.

6. BLACK PANTHER: WORLD OF WAKANDA #1

By Ta-Nehisi Coates, Roxane Gay, Yona Harvey, Afua Richardson, and Alitha Martinez
Marvel Comics

After his cinematic debut in Captain America: Civil War, an upcoming solo film, and a new comic series written by acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, Black Panther has now become a high-profile character in the Marvel Universe—enough to warrant a spinoff series focusing on his supporting characters. The Dora Milage is the King of Wakanda’s elite all-female guard, made famous during Christopher Priest’s iconic run on the Black Panther series in the 1990s. Two of the members, Ayo and Aneka, have been a major part of Coates’s run and will now be the focus of this book. 

Neither of the big two comics publishers have been a model for hiring diverse creators—especially when it comes to African American women—but this particular book boasts an interesting creative team of women of color, led by professor and op-ed writer Roxanne Gay who readers of Bitch Planet will know from her essays in that comic. She is joined by artist Alitha E. Martinez, while a 10-page backup story co-written by Coates and poet Yona Harvey features art by Afua Richardson, who made a splash this past year drawing the politically charged Image series Genius.

7. MAYDAY #1

By Alex DeCampi, Tony Parker, and Blond
Image Comics

This is the first issue of a proposed trilogy of mini-series that mix Cold War espionage with unexpected elements like ‘70s drug culture, Alice Cooper, and Krautrock. The series will follow a pair of CIA agents through different exploits in the 1970s. The first issue begins with the murder of a Soviet general while he is in the act of defecting to the United States. Rather than a John le Carré-style of complex spy maneuvering, it quickly veers into the unexpectedly violent and weird vibe of a Coen brothers film when the two Russian assassins hook up with a bunch of hippies and fall victim to some LSD-laced vodka.

DeCampi employs a number of neat writing tricks here, including a clever way of showing how someone trying to understand another language may miss every few words as they’re trying to keep up with a conversation. She also manages to integrate a ‘70s era soundtrack into the story, along with a recommended playlist at the end and some notes about the musical choices.

8. SUGAR & SPIKE VOL. 1

By Keith Giffen, Bilquis Evely, and Ivan Plascencia
DC Comics

Sugar Plumm and Spike Wilson are private investigators for superheroes. When someone like Alfred the butler needs someone to track down a stash of embarrassing zebra and rainbow-colored Batsuits that has been stolen or Green Lantern needs to investigate whether an alien flower on display in a museum is the same sentient being he used to wear on his lapel for a time back in the ‘80s, they turn to Sugar and Spike for help. This series, which ran in the recent Legends of Tomorrow anthology and is now collected on its own in a trade paperback edition, is representative of DC Comics’s new, brighter outlook on its properties; one that embraces the silliness of the past and lets their superheroes be superheroes (Sugar and Spike themselves are meant to be grown-up versions of a couple of toddler characters that ran in a strip of the same name back in the 1950s). It’s a clever yet ridiculous concept that is played for laughs and works well, thanks to the physical comedy and character acting by artist Bilquis Evely. Amidst all the broad comedy, there are also subtle hints at a complicated but affectionate relationship between the two protagonists that leaves you wanting to know more.

9. SUNNY VOL. 6

By Taiyo Matsumoto
Viz Media

The final volume of Taiyo Matsumoto’s award-winning manga series reaches English-speaking audiences this month (it came out in Japan last year). The poignant, slice-of-life series about a group of foster children who only find solace and escape when sitting in an abandoned yellow car they’ve named “Sunny” is considered a masterwork by many. This series has been nominated for numerous awards and won the Shogakukan Manga Award this year, one of Japan’s highest honors for manga.

10. THE PLUNGE

By Emi Gennis
Kilgore Books & Comics

In 1901, Annie Edson Taylor was the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel. And she did it at the age of 63. Emi Gennis tells her story in this beautiful new black-and-white comic, released through brand-new publisher Kilgore Books & Comics. Taylor’s life story is both an uplifting example of can-do feminism and an anti-climactic tragedy, as she would eventually die poor and alone, gaining nothing from her death-defying feat. Gennis’s crisply inked cartooning style has an appropriately old-timey feel and her depiction of the horrific ride down the falls is captivating and surreal.

11. LEGEND

By Samuel Sattin and Chris Koehler
Z2 Comics

After humans have been wiped out by a biological terror attack, dogs and cats are left to rebuild the world in their absence. But there is something else out there—a mysterious creature called the Endark—that has killed Ransom, the leader of the dogs, requiring an English Pointer named Legend to step up and take his place. Chris Koehler is an accomplished editorial illustrator who has worked for publications such as The Atlantic and Variety. His style exhibits a high level of photorealism and a designer’s sense of minimal color. He manages to translate that style to his first piece of sequential comics without losing any of his technical polish. This collaboration with novelist Samuel Sattin, also a comics newbie, should please most domestic animal adventure fans of stories like The Incredible Journey or We3.

12. Off Season

By James Sturm
Slate.com

Acclaimed cartoonist and director of the Center for Cartoon Studies James Sturm (The Golem’s Mighty Swing) has been creating a webcomic for Slate that began in September and will continue through the end of the year. It is about 2016, with a focus on the election and now on its aftermath. Set in New England, it follows a down-on-his-luck divorced dad who was a Bernie Sanders supporter raising a daughter who is excited about the prospect of electing the first female president. Sturm draws everyone—including real-life players like Donald Trump—as anthropomorphic dogs, trudging through the same reality we’re all currently living in real time.


November 26, 2016 – 12:00am

The 13 Most Interesting Comics of October

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

1. Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq

By Sarah Glidden
Drawn & Quarterly

In 2010, cartoonist Sarah Glidden traveled to Turkey, Iraq, and Syria with a group of journalist friends and a former U.S. soldier to interview refugees and others impacted by war in the Middle East. Their hope was to find stories that haven’t yet been told and to tell them in a way that will appeal to Western media publications. Meanwhile, as Glidden observes and records their process in cartoon form, she in turn finds her own unique hook for this story: showing how journalism is done and what it means in the 21st century. With this book, and a recent comic she did for The Nib, Glidden has entered into the comics journalism space that is occupied by only a select few right now. This is only her second graphic novel (after 2011’s How To Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less), which is understandable considering the extensive time it must take to research and produce a 300-page book of this size with such exquisitely drawn and painted artwork. It is certainly coming out at a time in our media history when we truly need to better appreciate the work that goes into good journalism.

2. Demon Vol. 1

By Jason Shiga
First Second

Jimmy Yee checks into a motel room, writes a suicide note and hangs himself—only to wake up in bed. After four subsequent attempts that go about the same way, he wakes up in a hospital to find a young woman he’s never met claiming to be his daughter. The mystery only deepens from here in what author Jason Shiga describes as “basically a 3 player chess match that pivots into a series of 7 concentric escape puzzles, briefly turns into a meditation on existence before pivoting back to the chess match which itself is contained in 2 more layers of puzzles.” Shiga crafts his comics with the storytelling precision of a mathematician (he actually was a pure mathematics major in college). Books like the choose-your-own-adventure Meanwhile read like intricate puzzles and Demon, a thrilling, twisted epic about immortality, has been considered his best, winning awards and much acclaim in its original webcomic and self-published iterations. Now being published by First Second, the first of this four-book series is appearing for the first time in most comic shops and bookstores.

3. Superman: American Alien

By Max Landis and others
DC Comics

The best Superman comic since 2005’s All-Star Superman comes from writer and director Max Landis, who offers a new spin on the admittedly over-told origin (thankfully, there are no Krypton scenes here). He gives us a fresh take on the character that manages to be modern, edgy and relatable but still heroic. Landis is joined by an impressive array of artists such as Joelle Jones, Jae Lee, Nick Dragotta, Jock, Tommy Lee Edwards, Francis Manapul and Jonathan Case—each taking a different chapter of the 7-issue mini-series—plus a number of other artists who provide one-page backups and covers. The young Clark Kent presented here is not the typical idealized, corn-fed farm boy we’re used to, but neither is he a cynical, overly flawed anti-hero that modern superhero comics tend to offer up to over-correct the straight edge of classic characters. Landis makes some surprising changes to the Superman mythos and his relationships with some of his supporting characters that make this feel fresh and exciting in a way that is really hard to pull off with a 75 year old character like this.

4. Tetris: The Games People Play

By Box Brown
First Second/MacMillan

After his acclaimed 2014 biography of the wrestler Andre the Giant, Box Brown continues to find his niche in celebrating 1980s pop culture by looking at the rise of video game addiction through the story of the most addictive video game ever made: Tetris. Its history is a surprisingly complex one, full of corporate wrongdoing, creator rights issues and even communism. The idea for the game came from a software engineer in Moscow who shared the game on floppy disks as freeware. Once it got passed outside the walls of the Soviet Union, it quickly went viral and began attracting the attention of video game companies like Nintendo who could recognize a money-making concept when they played one. Brown’s graphic, almost geometric style of drawing is perfectly suited for this subject and its famously shaped play pieces. His style makes a story that is mostly about litigation and intellectual property visually interesting and, at times, even thrilling.

5. Love & Rockets Magazine #1

By Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez
Fantagraphics

Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez’s seminal Love & Rockets began as a monthly comic back in 1982. After rising to a level of eminence in the indie comics world, it began to be repackaged in more bookstore-friendly formats in the early aughts and eventually shifted to an annual, digest-sized format about ten years ago. Now, as it is about to celebrate its 35th year, L&R is returning to its original 32-page, magazine-sized format (slightly bigger than a standard comic book in size and page count) with new issues released on closer to a quarterly basis.

This first issue is a good reintroduction to the characters that the Hernandez brothers have been telling amazingly rich stories about over three decades now and who have all grown and aged nearly along with the series. Jaime opens with a story about his famous duo, Maggie and Hopey, who find themselves aging out of their beloved punk rock scene. Meanwhile, Gilbert gives us a detailed status quo on Fritz, the buxom therapist turned B-movie actress and her many imitators.

6. Such a Lovely Little War: Saigon 1961-63

By Marcelino Truong
Arsenal Pulp Press

As a young child in 1961, Marcelino Truong moved to Saigon from the United States with his Vietnamese father (a diplomat who worked directly with President Diem), his French mother, and his older brother and sister. The erupting conflict between the North and South at that time in history is echoed by the growing tension between Marco’s parents. As members of Saigon’s upper class, they are mostly shielded from the war until aspects of it begin to seep into the city. The fear of being massacred by the Viet Cong and the stress of keeping her young children safe and nurtured in a war-torn foreign city takes its toll on Marco’s mother who (Marco would realize later in life) is suffering from bipolar disorder. Truong’s memoir tells a side of the Vietnam War that Americans rarely see. Interspersed with the family drama is an interesting historical context of the war and the class separation in the country at that time.

7. The Secret Loves of Geek Girls

Edited by Hope Nicholson
Dark Horse Comics

This Hope Nicholson-edited anthology of prose and comics by and for (geeky) women is now famous for its inclusion of original comics written and drawn by novelist Margaret Atwood. Its success as a Kickstarter in 2015 led to Nicholson facilitating Atwood’s foray into writing her first graphic novel this year (Angel Catbird) but it also led to Dark Horse picking up Secret Loves for major distribution. It consists of a veritable who’s who of today’s veteran and up-and-coming female comics creators (Marguerite Bennett, Trina Robbins, Marjorie Lieu, Carla Speed McNeil, Mariko Tamaki, Noelle Stevenson and Kelly Sue DeConnick, who writes the foreword) telling mostly true stories about love, dating, sex, video games, comics and science fiction.

8. The Fade Out: Deluxe Edition

By Ed Brubaker, Sean Philips and Bettie Breitweiser
Image Comics

One of my picks for best comics of 2015, this 12-issue crime noir set in old, post-War Hollywood is now deservedly collected into an oversized hardcover format which allows for a proper admiration of Philips and Breitweiser’s gorgeous artwork. These creators are modern masters of crime and this book may be their masterpiece, one that doesn’t rely as much on genre trappings—even though the plot hinges on the murder of a Hollywood starlet—as it does on accurately painting its historical setting and depicting the seedy underbelly of late ‘40s Hollywood as corrupt, depraved and even more gritty than the noir films they were creating at the time.

9. Burt’s Way Home

By John Martz
Koyama Press

Burt is a young boy (drawn in this anthropomorphic comic as a little bird) who gets lost in time and space and taken in by a woman (drawn as a dog) named Lydia. Burt is always explaining that his parents were time travelers from another dimension and due to an accident he finds himself separated from them and stranded here with Lydia who is always lovingly watching over him and making sure he wears a hat when he goes outside. Martz’s cartooning style, colored with a simple flat blue tone, is elegantly simple in a way that recalls many classic children’s picture books and the story here is heartwarming in such a beautiful and subtle way.

10. Untitled

By Meghan Lands
Unpublished

Meghan Lands describes this comic as a “rejected anthology submission” and hasn’t even given it a title, but the 80k+ notes on it indicate that it struck a chord with a lot of people when she posted it to Tumblr. In it, she processes memories of her childhood bully and what happens when she decides to look her up on Facebook. It’s a comic that many will find relatable and it shows how bullying can leave lasting marks even into adulthood, something that social media maybe only make worse.

11. Platinum End Vol. 1

By Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata
Viz Media

A troubled teenager named Mirai decides to take his own life, only to be saved by an angel who bestows him with a variety of powers and places him in contention with 12 other chosen mortals to become the new “God.” The competition among the chosen ones soon turns deadly and Mirai begins to question the morality of these so-called angels and the unethical choices he may be forced to make because of them. This is the latest manga from the team behind the incredibly popular Death Note, and it echoes that work in many ways yet strays from it interestingly in others. This first volume collects material that was originally serialized on the web in English earlier this year as it was simultaneously released in Japanese in Jump SQ magazine.

12. Black #1

By Kwanza Osajyefo, Jamal Igle and Khary Randolph
Black Mask Studios

The first issue of Black begins with a scene we’re all too familiar with from today’s current events: a group of African-American teens are confronted by police; things get immediately out of hand and all three teens are gunned down in a hail of bullets. However, one of them, Kareem, wakes up in the back of an ambulance, alive and completely healed of all bullet wounds. It turns out that superpowers exist in this world but only black people can manifest them. Kareem winds up a target of authorities but also of a shadowy organization that wants to recruit him for a coming battle.

After a successful Kickstarter in February, Black has now been picked up by the scrappy new publisher Black Mask Studios to add to its growing library of edgy and progressive new comics. The comics industry seems to be making great strides in diversifying the stories it tells and the characters it tells them with but yet still seems to struggle with giving a spotlight to African-American creators. Osajyefo, Igle, and Randolph are all veterans of the industry who have stepped away from working for “The Big Two” (Marvel and DC) to tell a story they would not have been able to tell there.

13. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe

By Ryan North, Erica Henderson and Rico Renzi
Marvel Comics

Marvel doesn’t put out too many straight-to-graphic-novel publications these days, but if they’re going to do it, this seems like a good choice. The ongoing Unbeatable Squirrel Girl series is a critical darling but is probably not hitting the ideal audience of young female readers that tend to gravitate more towards graphic novels than comics. This new 120 page book by regular creative team Ryan North, Erica Henderson and Rico Renzi jokingly plays on the heroine’s knack for surprisingly winning battles against heavy hitters like Thanos and Galactus by having an evil duplicate of herself take on every hero in the Marvel Universe. Squirrel Girl is unlike any other character Marvel publishes and her book, with its cute art and smart humor, is a breath of fresh air among the overly serious, post-Hollywood Marvel of today.


October 28, 2016 – 4:00am

5 Fun Facts About ‘Tetris’

Image credit: 
Box Brown

If you’ve ever played Tetris, especially when it first came out in the 1980s, you probably remember it as being something that at least temporarily took over your life. The best video games can do that, but something about the simple nature of Tetris made it addictive like no other. Now, in a new graphic novel, Box Brown (whose last graphic novel was a biography of Andre the Giant) tells the story of how Tetris made its way from the mind of a software engineer in the Soviet Union to becoming one of the most popular video games of all time.

Tetris: The Games People Play comes out October 11, but in the meantime, Brown shared with mental_floss things you may not have known about Tetris, illustrated with scenes from his book.

1. TETRIS WAS CREATED BY A SOFTWARE ENGINEER IN MOSCOW.

BOX BROWN: “This is where Alexey Pajitnov was working when he created Tetris. He was employed by the government at the time. One of the things I found so compelling about Alexey was that he had no profit motive to create Tetris.  It’s pure inspiration and execution. Maybe he just did it because it could be done and it should be done. It’s something that can’t really be said about a lot of pieces of art.”

2. IT WAS INSPIRED BY THE A WOODEN PUZZLE GAME CALLED PENTOMINOES.

BOX BROWN: “A version of this game was marketed in the states as ‘Cathedral’ in 1985. I remember playing it at my cousin’s house when I was a kid. It was pretty competitive. The game was designed to look like you were building a little castle but it was really just a Tetris-like puzzle game.”

3. ITS ORIGINAL VERSION WAS ALL TEXT-BASED.

BOX BROWN: “The absolute first version of Tetris was made on a computer with no graphics capabilities. So, Alexey created his vision with text. Two brackets [] made up a block. His first conception of Tetris were these puzzle pieces falling from the sky and landing in a glass. The player had to rearrange them as they fell.”

4. THE NAME TETRIS WAS AN AMALGAMATION.

BOX BROWN: “Most players thought the name Tetris was weird when they first heard it. I guess it’s kind of weird looking back on it. The way the game was marketed in the U.S., it must have sounded like a very stern Russian word to American audiences. It’s so ubiquitous, it’s the perfect name. I wonder if people thought Xerox was a weird word at first?”

5. TETRIS STARTED OUT AS SHAREWARE.

BOX BROWN: “This scene was fun for me because I remember shareware. Before the internet you would save a game on a floppy disc and give it to a friend. It amazed me that the game still went ‘viral’ even though you had to physically meet the person, not to mention spend forever copying the game on the old machines. I have distinct memories of getting Wolfenstein via this method …”

Tetris: The Games People Play will be released October 11.


September 9, 2016 – 2:00pm