Mike Mignola’s Hellboy universe might be the most common place for readers to notice something different is being done with the sequencing of the imagery that makes up the comics they’re reading.  A large part of what makes Mignola’s stories so wonderful is the way they behave like typical examples of action-adventure comics until they suddenly refuse to do so any longer, and parachute off into far weirder and more interesting realms.  The same thing can be said for the way Mignola (and the numerous notable artists who’ve followed in his stylistic wake on the property) puts his pages together.  If any post-Jack Kirby artist can be said to have created a truly unique and formally innovative style of constructing action comics, Mignola’s undoubtedly a strong candidate for the top of the list.  And as far as the influence that style has had on the form, he’s peerless.

Appropriate enough, then, that Mignola’s art, no matter how outre it gets (which is considerably), always trails deep roots back to the basics of the grammar laid down by Kirby.  He knows his fundamentals, and he practices them with no shortage of skill or attention to detail.  It’s no accident that the first panel on the page above is an establishing shot — and not just that, but one that gives us the scene from its protagonist’s point of view just so we can situate ourselves that much easier.  Nor that we don’t see anything backgrounded by flat color in one panel unless we’ve seen it against a setting beforehand.  Nor that the balance of black space and color across the page, not to mention in every individual panel, is so evenly judged that it seems like Mignola must lay his inked pages across a scale as he finishes them.  As with every great cartoonist, clarity of content is Mignola’s primary goal, and here things are crystal.

Mignola is similarly deft at hitting his Kirbyist “point of impact” action beats, even on a page with content as restrained as a man watching a bird.  The back and forth between the two is impossible to miss even though the two never appear in the same panel, and Mignola succeeds in creating plenty of tension with a single line of dialogue and some sharp framing.  The simple one-two of Hellboy with his back to us and then turning combined with that of the bird singing and then silent builds up a rhythm as compelling as it is easy to read.  Notice how the camera subtly cuts in on Hellboy, the bird, and the flowers that act as a background motif for the page as things ramp up and the flat-colored backgrounds focus pull our attentions from landscape to character toward the end.

Speaking of those flowers, though, it’s what this page does in addition to its sterling storytelling that really makes it worthy of notice.  It’s the same thing anyone who’s read an issue of Mignola’s comics has seen dozens of times: panels of background imagery with no direct connection to the plot at hand dropped in to punctuate the action beats, in what feels close to open defiance of the usual faster/louder mode of comics about fighting.  The most obvious effect of this is a massive injection of atmosphere: suddenly a basic establishing-shot-into-action transition is alive with the rustle and hum of nature, with a landscape that goes from cool green to suspenseful yellow via portentious black, adding a symphonic level of harmony to a simple content phrase.  And those flowers!  Beautiful drawings in their own right, Mignola’s creamy lilies manage to lend even a gothic horror story starring the Beast of the Apocalypse a headspinning element of psychedelia.

Mignola’s tendency to pull visual elements beside the action’s main players into his page layouts is a maximalistic urge; one that strikes a deeply pleasurable contrast with his drawing’s concerted minimalism, which at times goes so close to the bone with its use of stark blacks and resolutely scrawled, scratchy lines that it verges on abstraction.  It’s action artwork that fully picks up on an element rarely noticed and sorely missed in genre comics: beauty.  As committed as Mignola is to making comics about awesome creatures punching each other (and make no mistake, that commitment runs deep), he’s just as drunk on the surfaces of the things he draws, and his pages go from rock-solid to sublime and back again, incorporating a dizzying attention to details that no other artist would bother with.  It’s the action storytelling we all know and love plus, introduced to something entirely its artist’s own but just as powerful and iconic as anything that’s come before.  When all the good violent comics look like this in a few decades, we’ll look back at Mignola and know the reason why.

The Amazing Transformations of Jimmy Olsen

Hello and welcome to What Are You Reading? This week’s special guest is Simon Monk, an artist whose “Secret Identity” paintings we featured here on Robot 6 not too long ago. Monk is actually selling limited edition prints of his paintings on his website now, so go check them out.

To see what Simon and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below.

*****

Michael May

Habibi

I finally finished Habibi (it wouldn’t have taken me so long if I wasn’t reading four other books at the same time. #WhenWillILearn?). As others have noted, it sticks with you long after you finish it. The sheer amount of time that I spent with Dodola and Zam means that I can’t just put them away and move on now that I’ve finished the story. Especially not after everything I watched them go through. It’s a manipulative book, and my natural reaction to noticing I’m being manipulated is to resist it, but Craig Thompson pushes through my defenses with the overbearing weight (in emotional terms as well as page volume) of his book. That sounds like a bad thing when I write it, but I suppose the important part is that it works. I felt strongly for these two characters and became invested in seeing how they turned out, even though I could see what Thompson was doing to make me feel that way.

I also read Howard Lovecraft and the Ice Kingdom. A friend of mine wrote the sequel, so I wanted to catch up on this before I check out his. There’s probably a way to turn HP Lovecraft’s C’thulhu mythos into an all-ages comic, but this wasn’t it. The tone is uneven, zipping back and forth wildly between disturbing horror and children’s cartoon. Ice Kingdom wants us to take its threats seriously (and is at its best when presenting disturbing monsters and their effects on young Lovecraft’s now-insane father), but it’s hard to do that when the boy adopts C’thulhu himself as a pet and insists on calling him Spot. On the other hand, I also could have bought into a fun lark through a tame version of C’thulhu’s world without the references to human sacrifices and child-eating elder gods. Ice Kingdom tries to have it both ways and doesn’t work.

Tom Bondurant

This week I caught up with one book about which I’d been morbidly curious, and another about which I just learned but knew I had to have.

Justice

The first was Justice, the 12-issue bimonthly miniseries from plotter/finisher Alex Ross, scripter Jim Krueger, and penciller Dougie Braithwaite. I read the first issue when it came out (back in 2006); and despite a somewhat compelling end-of-the-world teaser, it never quite grabbed me. Still, at worst I figured it would satisfy whatever desire I might have to see Ross’s take on the ’70s DC of my youth. First I waited for DC to collect the whole thing in one book, and then I waited a while longer for an acceptable discount. And it’s not a bad story, as far as semi-gritty evocations of “Challenge of the Super Friends” go — it’s just that whatever good story there is, is buried under Ross’s watercolor sentimentality. The plot involves Luthor, Brainiac, and a Legion-of-Doom-ish array of super villains turning to the good side (or are they?) in order to cast the Justice League as an insensitive pantheon who’d rather keep humanity down than solve the world’s problems. Much of the book involves the villains incapacitating our heroes and their friends and allies, including an extended subplot about Brainiac’s experiments on Aquaman. (Apparently, if you ever thought “Super Friends” needed more surgical torture, this book is for you.) Because the cast expands geometrically as the book goes on, it all gets busier and busier; and between double-page layouts which don’t initially read that way and finishes which literally blur away critical distinctions, Justice can be hard to read. There are also some sequences which just don’t pass the smell test, like Solomon Grundy (apparently, since it’s off-panel) taking out both Robin and Kid Flash. However, Green Lantern’s “imprisonment” pays off, despite looking at first like an indulgent foreshadowing of “Emerald Twilight,” and there are a few other odds and ends which make me want to give it another chance. Nevertheless, there’s a lot of fan service here for those in the know, like extended homages to the ’60s “Batman” show and gratuitous attempts to “prove” that Plastic Man is eternally superior to Elongated Man. To paraphrase another cartoon from my youth, of all the Alex Ross books in the world, this one may be the Alex Rossiest.

The second book was Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson’s adaptation of Alien for Heavy Metal, a graphic novel called Alien: The Illustrated Story (lettered by John Workman and I suppose colored by Simonson). At 61 pages, it tracks the movie pretty faithfully, but it neither adds to nor subtracts from the movie’s essential beats. Instead, it translates them almost effortlessly to the printed page, capturing everything from the sterile opening sequence to the eerie ancient spacecraft and the xenomorph’s brutality. Simonson also does a great job with likenesses, which seems trivial but really helps with something like this. Perhaps because of the format, or even the painted color palette, this comes across as entirely separate from Simonson’s other licensed work on Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars. This adaptation boils Alien down to its visceral horror-story core, and makes it something which could easily have appeared in a sci-fi anthology like Heavy Metal.

Oh, and I read Winter Soldier #1 (by Ed Brubaker and Butch Guice), which was as good as I was expecting from the team responsible for making Bucky’s revival both believable and sustainable. And yes, that means I was (once again) totally wrong about the predictive value of any similarities its promotional materials may or may not have had to a certain Stephen J. Cannell/Lorenzo Lamas syndicated TV series, and I am not just saying that because a guy named “Bonderant” (one letter off, but still) gets the crap kicked out of him halfway through the issue. In short, I’m on board for issue #2, okay? Okay?!?? (Sheesh!)

Tim O’Shea

Finally read the final issue of the Alpha Flight miniseries/ongoing/nope, miniseries. It’s a shame to see a creative team firing on all cylinders (as Greg Pak/Fred Van Lente and Dale Eaglesham were on this project) and for the sales not to follow in response. The writing team’s approach toward Puck is one aspect I will miss the most.

Fatale #1

This week two colorists really floored me with their work. First up is Dave Stewart bringing an outstanding cinematic sheen to the second issue of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ Fatale series (Image). Sidenote: I am bewildered at the thin paper stock that Image is using for the covers of this series. But that is a minor complaint. It does not take away from the overall unique noir look to the series. I say unique in that Stewart is using a diverse (and sometimes vibrant) color palette that surprisingly works in the noir setting (which is typically rather dark by nature).

The other colorist is someone I’ve raved about before–Bettie Breitweiser. On the first issue of Brubaker’s Winter Soldier, she works wonders with Butch Guice’s amazing art. There is one scene where James Barnes is videoconferencing with Jasper Sitwell. The layers of floating red video screens countered with the cool blue tones of James’ panels are just astounding. One panel had me just sitting there and wondering how Breitweiser did it. I appreciate when art gives me reason to pause. In terms of characters, Black Widow is as much a star of this series as James, which is a welcome approach for my money,

Hulk #48. May I officially beg writer Jeff Parker to keep Machine Man as a member of the Hulk cast? In this issue, Parker has Aaron thank someone, in the heat of battle, when they hand his cut-off arm back to him. Heh.

One question to the readers: The countdown banner to AvX–is anybody else reminded of the Toys R Us Shopping Spree banner (among other banners) in the 1980 Marvel Comics?

Brigid Alverson

The Unwritten

I jumped right in to Mike Carey and Peter Gross’s The Unwritten with the first volume of the collected edition, and I loved it from the start. It’s the story of Tom Taylor whose father used him as the lead character in a Harry Potter-like fantasy series. His father disappeared under mysterious circumstances when Tom was still a child, but his whole past is coming back to haunt him. The creators do a really nice job of weaving the Tommy Taylor stories in with their ongoing plot, and they bring in all sorts of other literary allusions as well. The first volume ends with a side story about Rudyard Kipling that is simply stunning. Unfortunately, as I near the end of the second volume, I’m starting to wonder how tight the plot really is. The stories are becoming episodic, but there are also a lot of questions left unanswered, and I’m not sure the authors know the answers. I certainly hate it when a character in a book refuses to share information with the hero for no good reason, as is happening here. Still, even as a series of episodes, Tom Taylor’s adventures are good fun and full of interesting literary trivia, so I’m in this for the long haul.

I spent some time in the Mignolaverse as well this week, with B.P.R.D.:Being Human and Hellboy: House of the Living Dead. The B.P.R.D. book is a collection of short stories, each focusing on different characters, and it’s actually a good first B.P.R.D. book as it touches on a number of origin stories. The first, and longest, story features Liz Sherman as a sulky teenager dragged along by Professor Trevor Bruttenholm to help out with the exorcism of a house and forest where a witch was hanged during the Salem witch trials. The Salem witch trials are a bit overdone as a topic, but I like the way the story showcases the young Liz in all her awkwardness. In the other stories, an older Liz and Abe Sapien discuss the ethics of killing their enemies, Roger the Homunculus and Hellboy do a little zombie-fighting in the Deep South, and we see the origin story of the Ectoplasmic Man. There’s plenty of horror and action in these stories, but the creators do a good job of mixing in the human side of the characters as well.

Hellboy: House of the Living Dead takes Hellboy south of the border and turns him into a luchador who is compelled to fight a latter-day Frankenstein’s monster. At only 56 pages, this story is short and pretty straightforward, but it’s well done and an interesting take on the Frankenstein story.

Simon Monk

Supergods

I recently read Grant Morrison’s book Supergods in which he sets out clearly his ideas about life, the universe and everything. Although I tend to be more attracted to street-level narratives such as Daredevil and The Spirit, I have always enjoyed Morrison’s work for its exuberance and extremity. Reading Supergods encouraged me to reread some of his classic stuff such as Zenith and Animal Man, but the biggest surprise turned out to be The Invisibles. On its initial publication I gave up on it about half way through its run so I had never read it as a single entity. It was far more coherent and exciting than I remembered it, despite fizzling a bit at the conclusion. I was struck at how Kirbyesque it seemed, thematically it is very Fourth World and the team/family interaction felt like a twisted version of the FF.

I love autobiographical comics such as Eddie Campbell’s Alec, and I recently discovered a self-published gem titled Many Happy Returns by Jan Wheatley. It turns out that Jan is the same age as me and had a very similar upbringing just 10 miles away from my home town. These coincidences gave the two issues published so far an incredible personal resonance for me, adding up to a pretty moving reading experience. Jan Wheatley is definitely a creator whose development I shall enjoy following.

I have a six-year-old son called William, and we tend to read a lot of comics together. I love testing out new stuff on him to see how he responds. Big hits so far include early Fantastic Four (started when he was three!), Bone, Jack Cole Plastic Man, ’50s and ’60s World’s Finest and Chip Kidd’s Bat-Manga book. Perhaps surprisingly the trade collection he can never get enough of is The Amazing Transformations of Jimmy Olsen featuring Elastic Lad, Human Flame-thrower, et al. Some of these crazy silver age tales have been read in bed on a Sunday morning a dozen times or more. He is a big fan of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold cartoon so I tried a few of the ’70s Bob Haney and Jim Aparo issues on him. Not a great response from William but I was surprised at how gritty they were: some of them read like a ‘Kojak’ episode with superheroes added.

Officer Downe

Hello and welcome to a special birthday bash edition of our weekly “What Are You Reading” feature. Typically the Robot 6 crew talks about what books we’ve read recently, but since it’s our anniversary, we thought we’d invite all our friends and colleagues from Comic Book Resources and Comics Should Be Good! to join in the fun.

To see what everyone has been reading, click below …

*****

Timothy Callahan

Uncanny X-Force #1

Uncanny X-Force #1-19, by Rick Remender, Jerome Opena, Dean White, and others. I’ve been reading — and enjoying — this series since the first issue debuted, but I carved out a couple of hours recently to reread the entire run to see the whole Archangel saga play out as a single story. I wondered if this was, perhaps, the defining run for the character — the way the Brubaker/Fraction Immortal Iron Fist defined Danny Rand, or the way Jason Aaron provided the definitive Ghost Rider. And upon rereading, I have to say “yes.” This first year-and-a-half of Uncanny X-Force is the definitive Angel/Archangel story, and what’s so great about it is that Remender built upon the mythology of the character’s past instead of trying to revert him to some oversimplified version of the original Lee/Kirby creation. Also, this series is just packed with characters and plot points and yet maintains a deep emotional core. Good stuff, all around.

The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner. I’m only about 50 pages into this novel so far, and though I’ve read a decent amount of Faulkner — and plenty of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, the other two Big American Moderns — I’ve never taken the time to read this acclaimed masterpiece. I’ll reserve complete judgment on it until I’ve finished it, of course, but I already know that it lacks a direct through-line like you’d find in my favorite Faulkner book, As I Lay Dying. When I used to teach that novel, we would explore Faulkner’s use of heteroglossia — basically, the multiplicity of narrative voices — and he’s clearly up to the same tricks in The Sound and the Fury. My prejudice against this novel, and the reason why I’ve avoided it for so long, is that I assume it will be more of a portrait of a time and a place than an actual, compelling story. I have always been more of a story guy than a portrait guy, personally, but we will see what treasures this novel holds.

Tom Spurgeon’s Holiday Interview series. Every year, during the Christmas season, Tom treats us to daily interviews with some of the most interesting people in and around the comic book industry. From Kim Thompson to Jeff Parker to Tucker Stone, we get a profile of the current state of comics from all angles, and the interviews go far deeper than the standard online promotional pieces. These are actual conversations with people who have things to say. Every one of them is worth reading, even if you don’t think you’re interested in the topic at first.

Timothy Callahan writes CBR’s When Words Collide column. He also writes about comics for Tor.com and has his own blog.

Chad Nevett

1. A bunch of Joe Casey comics. Anyone who knows me probably isn’t surprised by that statement, but, look at December: Doc Bizarre, the Officer Downe hardcover, new issues of Haunt and Gødland, and the conclusion to Vengeance. All that was missing was a little Butcher Baker… Any month with that much Joe Casey is going to seem a little crazy. Doc Bizarre is some madcap fun, Officer Downe manages to be even more fucked up, and Vengeance ends on such a crazy high note that I think I need to send Mr. Casey a big thank you letter for writing a comic book series so squarely aimed at yours truly. I know I’m not the only one who marked out at Z making a cameo appearance at the end…! I’m still not entirely sure about Haunt (aside from loving Nathan Fox’s art). Casey obviously has some plans, but it’s hard to see where they’re heading. I dug the new issue, though. Ending the year with that small stack of December Joe Casey comics is pretty nice.

The Visible Man

2. The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman. Probably the last book I’ll finish in 2011 (I finished reading it late Friday night) and it was a big leap from his first novel Downtown Owl. I’ve really enjoyed Klosterman’s non-fiction (or semi-fiction, maybe?) work for years. Funny, insightful, and always interesting in his essays on pop culture in all its forms. I tend to blow through his books, because they’re so damn enjoyable. His fiction, on the other hand, hasn’t always grabbed me. Downtown Owl was entertaining and had its moments, but it was definitely something that I read because I like Klosterman’s writing. The Visible Man has me thinking that Klosterman may have some strong fiction chops. It’s a novel framed as a non-fictional account of a therapist and her (failed) treatment of a man who wears a suit that renders him virtually impossible to see by reflecting light in such a way that you see what’s on the other side of him. The protagonist ‘Y____’ reminds me a lot of a character who has stepped out of a Paul Auster book. Forceful and strange with a strong and unique perspective on the world and himself. Some of the ideas discussed are wonderful. The stories he tells of observing people in their homes without detection are rather engaging — to the point where the novel suffers a little when it moves away from those stories. The ending is what it is… it doesn’t live up to the potential the book or Y____ showed, but… entertaining book that made me stop and think from time to time. And has me wondering what Klosterman’s next novel will be like.

3. Banner by Brian Azzarello and Richard Corben, and Filthy Rich by Brian Azzarello and Victor Santos. A couple of Azzarello books that I’ve been meaning to get for a while. I read Banner years ago on Marvel’s website and it’s both very like and very unlike Azzarello’s other writing. The language games are there in spots, but his dialogue is very sparse — he really steps back and lets Corben run the show to a degree. Filthy Rich had its moments, but is so rooted in being ‘pulp’ that it doesn’t do much more than work within the confines of the genre. It’s a fun little exercise. Santos’s art is wildly inconsistent — but, when he’s on, he does a mean Frank Miller impression.

Chad Nevett talks about comics in several different places around the web — at his personal blog GraphiContent, at Comics Should Be Good! and as a reviewer for Comic Book Resources. He also writes about wrestling for 411mania.

Bill Reed

These days I’ve found myself reading more and more webcomics, and as someone who still hasn’t figured out how an RSS feed works, that involves me remembering to read a strip on a specific schedule, and then clicking or typing myself over to the designated webspace from which the particular comic springs forth. I would totally pay real dollars for the following:

Al’Rashad, from Christopher Bird and Davinder Brar, which goes up weekly at Mightygodking, a clever, funny, and superbly drawn fantasy adventure comic that features pirate action, bizarre bazaars and the wiliest mop-haired street orphan since Flim-Flam from The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo.

Bearmageddon

Bearmageddon, artist Ethan Nicolle’s other, non-Axe-Cop webcomic, which has been slowly building its way to the titular Grizzly apocalypse, and has just recently leaped into the Kodiak carnage we’ve been waiting for, with well-meaning hippies versus nature’s hungry killing machines. Nicolle’s gorgeous cartooning and Noah Maas and company’s vibrant colors give the series the most beautiful mayhem since, well, Axe Cop.

Bucko, by Jeff Parker and Erika Moen, a freewheeling (actually, fixed-gear) epic for our times, populated by hipsters, cyclists, Juggalos, and fartmongers, the strip turns Portland into a magical, madcap fantasy land filled with delightful, deranged characters, the true Oz of the Northwest. Moen’s lines have been getting sparer and more confident, the art style becoming more refined, like the evolution of a newspaper comic strip, only at hyperspeed.

Lady Sabre & the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether by Greg Rucka and Rick Burchett, a beautifully realized space pirate cowboy adventure serial that opens with a tremendous swordfight on a space zeppelin before segueing into Sam Elliot kicking ass. I shouldn’t have to say any more, but I will: it’s the best artwork of Burchett’s career, and the included script with each new installment provides a great insight into the collaborative process, specifically in terms of how artwork interprets and diverges from the narrative skeleton.

Bill Reed contributes regularly to Comics Should Be Good! and has his own personal blog.

Ryan K Lindsay

11.22.63

11.22.63: I’m a massive Stephen King fan. Always have been and always will be. Most of his recent fare hasn’t been anything compared to his late 70’s stuff (but what is?) though his short stories continue to thrill and I enjoyed Under The Dome right up until the cop out ending. I am, however, thoroughly enjoying 11.22.63.

There might not be any subtext to this book but you must cast that aside and revel in the fact King is one of the premiere storytellers when it comes to sinking you right into the narrative. There are some King tics that’ll stand out (constantly naming songs to set the tone and you’ll hear his unmistakable voice coming through some of these characters) but the swell of this tale is captivating. King turns a phrase well but mostly he just wants to tell an enjoyable tale and he really is.

There has been more than one occasion in this book where I have stopped because the events have floored me. That’s the sign of a good book to be read. Oh, and this is my first novel read on the iPad and I’m completely digging the way it goes. I have no issue with it at all.

The Cape: This is the sort of comic that makes me excessively proud to be a comic fan. Just by tangentially knowing this product through purchasing, reading, enjoying and reviewing this book, my life is better and I’ve spread the love out into the world. This book started with the acorn of an idea from a Joe Hill short story, and now Jason Ciaramella and Zach Howard have grown it into a mighty tree with a canopy of rich ideas and a nasty lead character at the peak.

If you haven’t picked up The Cape then you need to do it. If you have any member of your family who digs on subversive fare then buy this for them. The level of amazing this comic goes to will win you over completely. Comics need to try this hard more often.

The Mighty Thor Omnibus

Simonson’s Everything: I listened to Walt Simonson on Word Balloon, and it’s put me in a spin. I’ve owned the SIMONSOMNIBUS (The Mighty Thor Omnibus) for half a year and my New Year’s Resolution is to burn through it all. I might even annotate my thoughts. I also found some Simonson Fantastic Four issues on ComiXology for only $1.99 so I snapped those up. And I’ve also pulled down my old Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown issues for another spin through.

I’m a big back issue fan, as a kid I loved coming back from the comic shop (an hour train ride to and back) and spreading all my swag out on the bed and spending the day losing myself in old Marvel U history. It’s now nice to have my pick of them in authentic old school issues, a massive omnibus presentation, and crystal clear on my iPad. We do truly live in the future – here’s to 2012.

Ryan K Lindsay is a reviewer for CBR and a podcaster with Kurtis J Wiebe and Jeremy Holt on The Process, where they talk about comic writing. He is planning to have a very big 2012 in all things comics.

Greg McElhatton

Kushiel's Dart

Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey: I still remember when Kushiel’s Dart was published in 2001; I was living in Falls Church and the local Borders had copies of it everywhere. Clocking in around 700 pages, it looked interesting but daunting at the same time. There are nine books in the series now, and I’ve still never gotten around to reading them. Fortunately for me, my book club picked it as the January 2012 book, which means I finally have an excuse to dive in. I’m still in the early pages and it’s slow-moving, but Jacqueline Carey’s prose is comfortable and I’m interested in what I’ve seen so far about this alternate history. Half of the fun is piecing together what’s different when it comes to an alternate history, and this one is no exception.

Embassytown by China Mieville: I’ve put Embassytown temporarily aside so I can finish up Kushiel’s Dart, and already I’m dying to get back to China Mieville’s latest novel. Mieville’s ideas are always wonderfully huge and crazy, and Embassytown is no exception. What starts out as a simple “humans co-existing with aliens on another planet” story has rapidly turned into a mixture of social dynamics and linguistic oddities. Similar to his novel The City & The City (with its two cities that exist side-by-side where the inhabitants have learned to block out the opposite side), it’s hard to describe the joy and wonder of Embassytown without giving away a lot of the wonderful surprises, but if you can make it to the point where you first meet the Ambassadors, you’ll quickly learn just why Embassytown is in a class of its own. If you’ve never read a Mieville book before, Embassytown is a great place to start.

Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes

Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes by Carl Barks: I’m a little mortified to admit that Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes is my first exposure to Carl Barks (after decades of being interested in finally seeing why he’s so revered as a comic creator), but it definitely won’t be my last. Fantagraphics’ first volume of Barks material is a great place to start; a mixture of epic quests, short stories, and gag strips that are all impressively funny and awesome. There’s something wonderfully evil about a strip where a witch is forcing the Duck nephews to cry so that she can turn their tears into a potion to destroy all Christmas trees, only to turn around and have a hilarious transformation sequence to break up the gloom and make you laugh.

A friend once said, “Everything good in the DuckTales cartoon was first done by Carl Barks” and I can see that now. This is one of those rare comics that really is meant for all ages, or for that matter all interests; the only reason it took me a few weeks to finish the book is that halfway through, my non-comics-reading boyfriend started flipping through it and then temporarily claimed it as his own so that he could finish it first. Trust me when I say, that’s high praise indeed.

Greg McElhatton writes reviews for Comic Book Resources and Read About Comics, and he has a cool personal blog as well.

Dave Richards

Beautiful, Naked & Dead and Out There Bad by Josh Stallings: If you’re like me, you love a great crime story regardless of whether it’s published in four color or prose formats and these two prose novels which I recently discovered were some of the best crime stories I read all year. In Beautiful, Naked, & Dead, Stallings’ stellar debut novel, you’re introduced to Moses McGuire; an ex-marine, ex-con, and strip club bouncer as he goes on a quest to avenge a friend’s murder. In the even better follow up novel, Out There Bad, Stallings sends Moses to Mexico for a confrontation with human traffickers. If you love the work of Ed Brubaker, Jason Aaron and Greg Rucka pick these two books up. You won’t regret it.

Batman: Noel

Batman: Noel by Lee Bermejo: I got this as a Christmas present and read it Christmas eve. I don’t think I really need to say a whole lot about Bermejo’s art. It’s beautiful, breathtaking and speaks for itself for the most part. His renderings of Gotham City and the Joker were especially impressive in this. I believe this is Bermejo’s first book as a writer though and he does a pretty great job with it. He tells a fun story that does a nice job working the framework of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol into a Batman story. Bermejo also did a great job with characterization, especially Superman who serves as the Ghost of Christmas Present. All in all this was a fun holiday read and might just become a Christmas Eve tradition for me.

Hellboy: House of the Living Dead by Mike Mignola and Richard Corben: House of the Living Dead is a tale that involves Hellboy, a Frankenstein style monster, a werewolf, a vampire and Mexican Lucha Libre style wrestling. That’s a pretty awesome recipe, and Mignola and Corben cook it up very well for this original graphic novel. In the story it’s 1952, and an alcoholic Hellboy is working as a masked wrestler. Thanks to the machinations of a mysterious foe he has to wrestle a scientist’s monstrous creation to save a young girl. The result is a fun, strange, exciting tale with a lot of heart.

Dave Richards covers all things Marvel for Comic Book Resources.

Greg Hatcher

Kamandi

Well. I’m sort of reading all three of these at the same time, alternating.

1. The new Kamandi omnibus, because it arrived recently and Kamandi is awesome. I could go on and on but Alex Cox really said it all here a couple of years back…

2. The Green Hornet Casefiles. I love the Moonstone prose anthologies and already own a bunch of them– the Avenger, the Phantom, Kolchak, the Domino Lady. But I think the ones featuring the Green Hornet may be my favorites and this is the new one. Full disclosure– editor Win Eckert and I occasionally correspond and he asked permission to use a quote of mine for a cover blurb on the deluxe edition. But I went out and spent my own money on this because I enjoyed the first one so much. New, original prose adventures featuring the Green Hornet and Kato– and it’s clearly MY Hornet and Kato, the Van Williams and Bruce Lee version from the mid-sixties. What with Kevin Smith and Matt Wagner and Seth Rogen and God knows who else doing versions of the Hornet these days, it can get confusing. But this version’s mine. Rocking it old-school.

Rider of the Rifle Rock

3. For Christmas my wife Julie found me Bennett Foster’s Rider of the Rifle Rock, a vintage Western hardcover from 1939. It’s a great story of how young Chet Minor learns how to be a real man again after a riding accident that leaves him crippled. I love old westerns and I’m a sucker for a redemption story. This actually is pretty easy to find–reprinted in hardcover under the “Sagebrush Western” imprint not to long ago–but mine’s the original one. Because my wife is even more awesome than Kamandi.

You can read more from Greg Hatcher every Friday at Comics Should Be Good!

Pól Rua

Infinite Kung-Fu by Kagan McLeod (Top Shelf Publishing): First, read that again… Infinite. Kung. Fu. Roll it around inside your head for a bit. Give it a bit of reverb. Now try saying it out loud, feeling each syllable thunder off your lips. That’s some serious righteousness right there, and a comic book would have to be pretty damn good to live up to a name like that. So, it’s damn lucky that Kagan McLeod has the chops (and the kicks, stomps and strikes) to do just that and exceed it.

Infinite Kung Fu

First of all, he’s good. Crazy good. He has a kinetic, graphitti-inspired art style that leaps, glides and dives across the stage like righteous combat lightning. But, in conjunction with that, he’s also a hell of a storyteller. He effortlessly translates the classic style of 1970′s Hong Kong Kung Fu cinema into comic form, using an incredible degree of craft, draftsmanship and skill to convey all the style, dynamism and impact of martial arts combat into pictures which seem to come alive on the page. And what’s more, he knows his stuff, combining bone-shattering kung fu, Taoist mysticism, bloodthirsty zombies, ruthless villainy and funky blaxploitation-fuelled grooves seamlessly together without the disparate elements clashing with each other. In short, this is an amazingly good comic, and Top Shelf have really put it all together into a gorgeous package.

Moriarty and the Hound of the D’urbevilles by Kim Newman (Titan Books): Kim Newman is one of my favourite writers. He’s an incredibly literate pop culture critic and commentator and an astoundingly skilled storyteller. He uses similar techniques to Phillip Jose Farmer (in his Wold Newton stories) and Alan Moore (in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) in a way that’s playful, frequently funny as hell and always utterly captivating.

In this collection of short stories, we are introduced to Professor James Moriarty, a genius obsessed with the “mathematics of crime,” who has made his life’s work the imposition of pure reason onto the chaotic realm of criminal endeavor. Our point-of-view on this extraordinary criminal is Colonel Sebastian Moran, big game hunter, ex-soldier and rapacious scoundrel, as a kind of anti-Watson. Like many of his other stories, most notably the Anno Dracula series (an alternate world in which Count Dracula became ruler of the world in the late 19th Century) and the Diogenes Club (about an organization of paranormal investigators stretching from Victorian London to
Thatcher’s Britain), Newman liberally sprinkles his stories with obscure and not-so-obscure references to various historical and literary character. These don’t impede the storytelling–each story is an engaging and entertaining work of fiction in its own right–but they provide an additional layer of entertainment, where the stories can also be read as a fascinating literary game.

King City #1

King City by Brandon Graham (Image Comics): If there is any justice in the world, Brandon Graham is one name you will be hearing a lot of in the upcoming years. He is ridiculously talented, and has an undeniable style and energy. Imagine, if you can, a story that combines the freewheeling whimsy and character-driven
storytelling of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim with the streetwise neo-futurism of Ellis and Robertson’s Transmetropolitan or Paul Pope’s Heavy Liquid or THB, and you have the world of King City. It’s a world of costumed spy gangs and giant atomic monsters, alien pornography and Sasquatch inn-keepers, but it’s more than that…

It’s a world where our hero, arriving back in town after a long stretch, dreads seeing his ex-girlfriend as he re-connects with old friends. It’s a world where a young woman worries about her lover, a recently returned war veteran whose only solace for his night terrors is a drug which may be slowly killing him, but it’s more than THAT…

It’s a comic where the creator throws in puzzles and games even, in one place, a board game all of which are actually parts of the story and serve a plot purpose. This is GREAT comics. Playful comics. Fun Comics. All delivered with a charm, verve, wit and skill that deserves wider attention. The trade paperback collection should be out in February which I’m as excited as all get out about.

Pól Rua is an artist and occasionally contributes to Comics Should Be Good!

Kelly Thompson

Warren Ellis’ Secret Avengers run (Secret Avengers #16 – #20): There’s still one more issue left in Warren Ellis’ wonderful Secret Avengers run, but he has been blowing my mind with these amazing superhero comics. With incredibly smart standalone stories with limited casts that all feel like they tie together even though they don’t depend on one another to make sense Ellis has been creating some of the best superhero comics I’ve read in 2011. It doesn’t hurt that he’s got a rotating cast of amazing artists helping him bring these stories to life. Reading this short run reminds me how great a wonderful 20-page superhero comic can be. I wish comics could do more of this and I will be decidedly sad to see this run end. I’ll be first in line for the trade when released as well – it’ll make for a hell of a strong collection.

Hinges

Hinges by Meredith McClaren: I’m been reading Meredith McClaren (artist for Jen Van Meter’s upcoming Hopeless Savages Volume 4) excellent webcomic Hinges for a while now and I am just constantly blown away by her beautiful haunting work. The mastery of craft in her pages – from the well-developed drawing style, to pitch perfect color choice, to even her stylized execution of word balloons – is just phenomenal. The story of Hinges is frequently text free, relying on McClaren’s strong artistic chops to tell the story – but even without words it’s emotional and haunting. McClaren is a major new talent in comics and I simply can’t wait to see what she does next.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season 9 by Andrew Chambliss and Georges Jeanty: The first arc of Buffy The Vampire Slayer‘s new series has wrapped and I have to say, I’m pretty enchanted with it. The end of Season 8 had me frustrated and confused, but as always with Joss Whedon, he’s managed to bring things back around to a place where I’m re-engaged and highly intrigued by where he wants to take these characters that I adore. The comics have been a funny animal, since they’re able to do things and go places that the television show never could and because of that they have different boundaries and rules, but somehow, thanks to great creators and a strong guiding hand from Whedon, the characters, which are the important part in all of this, remain as fascinating and as emotionally engaging as ever. Steve Morris’ stunning covers aren’t hurting the series any either!

Kelly Thompson writes (and podcasts) for Comics Should Be Good! and reviews comics for CBR. You can also read more from her on her personal site.

Brian Cronin

This week saw the release of two noteworthy Vertigo issues, one an ending and one a beginning.

DMZ

The final issue of DMZ gave a powerful conclusion to Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli’s excellent series. Wood chose to use the “leap forward a bunch of years” approach to a finale, which I am always a fan of. I especially enjoyed how Wood decided to give the focus of the final issue to New York City itself…it was a very satisfying goodbye to the book. Much like the tributes within the comic, the subtly of the farewell worked beautifully.

As we say goodbye to the DMZ, we say hello to yet another fascinating new character in Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque’s American Vampire. One of the most impressive aspects of Snyder’s work in this series has been his ability to quickly develop compelling new characters. This was on fine display in the start of the new American Vampire storyline, where Snyder gave a brilliant take on the 1950′s greaser hood archetype.

Brian Cronin runs our sister blog, Comics Should Be Good! and was part of The Great Curve team way back in the day, before we were ever Robot 6. He’s also the author of Was Superman a Spy?: And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed.

Sonia Harris

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diáz: I initially picked this paperback up because I liked the cover art and the grainy texture of the coating they had used on it. Then when I flipped it open, the quote on the first page is “Of what import are brief, nameless lives… to Galactus??”, which is from the Fantastic Four, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1966. How could I resist? Inside the book chronicles the life of an unattractive geeky boy and his oddly endearing family life. I’m half way through and so far I’m loving the constant references to comic books which I know and love. It gives me another way to understand the environment the author is describing and I am more involved than I might otherwise be. The book is heavily peppered with long footnotes, explaining all of the cultural and historical references the author makes, which gives the book a conversationally tangential air. So far the author has mentioned Gilbert Hernandez’ Love & Rockets characters enough that I am basically imagining this as another “Palomar” story, not so much as a visual reference but as a way to understand the mood and feel behind Diáz’ immigrant story.

JLA Vol. 3, Deluxe Edition by Grant Morrison, Howard Porter and John Dell: Along with Vol 4, this was a thoughtful holiday gift I received after I read the first two volumes of Morrison’s groundbreaking JLA run and wrote about them in my column. It is lucky I received this, since I don’t know if I would have bought the book myself as I felt like I’d just read a ton of this run and didn’t want to risk spoiling it. Of course once I started reading I was extremely happy about it. The groundwork Morrison initially laid, now builds to great effect. He continues to develop and elaborate on the storylines of the team and individual characters to the point where I found myself actually wanting to read the crossover stories that were referenced (and I usually hate crossover stories.) In amongst his complex and gloriously random storylines, there is a basic humanity to the character’s conversations which is terrifically endearing, it works to anchor and ground the fantastic stories. As it began, it continues, with Morrison giving everyone their own voice and distinctly relatable character. Now I’ve still got volume 4 to read next and I’m excited to get to it.

Sonia Harris writes her column–Committed–every Wednesday on Comics Should Be Good!

Atomic Comics

Retailing | In the wake of the August closing of the Atomic Comics chain, Mesa, Arizona-area retailers are searching for ways to diversify in an attempt to keep their own stores afloat. Mike Banks, owner of Samurai Comics, has even opened a new location next to Atomic’s former flagship store to serve customers who suddenly found themselves without a comics shop. [East Valley Tribune]

Creators | Mike Mignola talks about his plans for next year’s Hellboy in Hell: “It’s a personal story about him, but with huge ramifications for the structure of Hell. I’m trying to get Hellboy free of the giant, Beast-of-the-Apocalypse storyline. That story has to get bigger before it can be put away. This first arc is the culmination of all the prophecy crap I’ve been trotting out throughout the years. We put a lot of things to bed.” Mignola also discusses his plans for B.P.R.D. and why he can’t watch the pilot of The Amazing Screw-On Head. [io9]

Creators | Tom Spurgeon continues his holiday interview series with a lengthy chat with Jeff Parker that spans his early comics-reading experiences, the influence of his artistic background on his writing, and his career at Marvel. [The Comics Reporter]

Creators | Geoff Johns reveals the thinking behind his transformation of Aquaman in the newly launched DC Comics series: “You have the fans, like myself, who always root for the character, and you’re always on the defensive immediately. And I wanted to take that approach in the book, that he’s the ultimate underdog of superheroes. He becomes much more human and relatable by being underestimated.” [TV Guide]

From American Vampire #22

Creators | Scott Snyder talks about the upcoming arc of American Vampire. [USA Today]

Creators | Writer Joshua Hale Fialkov discusses his work on I, Vampire. [FearNet]

Publishing | Torsten Adair offers comics publishers some advice for presenting their products online. [The Beat]

Comics | Yueh-lin Ma has a thorough overview of the Taiwanese comics scene, some of which may seem familiar: Japanese manga and American superhero comics are huge over there, but times are hard for local artists, and they are having a tough time getting a foothold in mainland China. [The China Post]

Comics | Paul Gravett mines the latest Previews for a handful of the most promising graphic novels due out in February. [Paul Gravett]

Judge Bao and the Jade Phoenix

It’s time once again for our monthly trip through Previews looking for cool, new comics. As usual, we’re focusing on graphic novels, collected volumes and first issues so that I don’t have to come up with a new way to say, “ Wonder Woman is still awesome!” every month. And I’ll continue letting Tom and Carla do the heavy lifting in regards to DC and Marvel’s solicitations.

Also, please feel free to play along in the comments. Tell me what I missed that you’re looking forward to or – if you’re a comics creator – mention your own stuff.

Archaia

Judge Bao and the Jade Phoenix - A detective story set in ancient China. Plus: cool name.

Avatar

Dicks #1 – Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s humor makes my top hat explode and my monocle fly off my face, but I remember this being pretty popular back in the day and I imagine that it’s new presentation in color and leading into a new storyline could make it popular again.

Bongo

Ralph Wiggum Comics #1 – This, on the other hand, is exactly my kind of funny. Kind of like 30 Days of Night, I’m astonished no one’s thought of it before. Too bad it’s just a one-shot, but hearing that Sergio Aragones is one of the contributors makes me want to poke myself with my Viking helmet to see if I’m dreaming.

Terror on the Planet of the Apes #1

Boom!

Terror on the Planet of the Apes #1 – Boom continues its domination of the Planet of the Apes by reprinting classic stories from Marvel’s time with the concept. Between Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Boom’s other PotA comics, I’ve been itching to read these stories.

Adventure Time #1 – As much a welcome no-brainer as Ralph Wiggums Comics. Oh, man. Now I want a crossover!

Dark Horse

Conan the Barbarian #1 – Not only does this have Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan; it also features one of my favorite Conan characters, Bêlit the pirate queen.

BPRD Hell on Earth: The Long Death #1 – The Mignola-verse is managing to come out with some kind of first issue or collected volume just about every month now. That’s amazing. In this mini-series, the team returns to the spooky woods from New World.

Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi #1 – If this had come out fifteen years ago when I was still voraciously devouring all the Star Wars EU history I could get my hands on, I would’ve been dancing like a Twi’lek slave girl over finally getting the story of how the Jedi came to be. It’s one of the few events in Star Wars history that haven’t yet been explored.

Dark Horse Presents #9 – Featuring Tarzan, Lobster Johnson, and the world’s largest pirate ship. Not in the same story, unfortunately, but still pretty cool.

DC Universe Presents #6

DC

DC Universe Presents #6 – The Challengers of the Unknown take over the title with a beautiful, fantastic cover by Ryan Sook.

Legends of the Dark Knight: Jim Aparo - This isn’t even out yet and I’m already impatient for Volume 2.

Northlanders, Volume 6: Thor’s Daughter - I’ve been looking forward to finally trying out Northlanders with this volume. Telling the story of the Siege of Paris through the eyes of a Viking woman is a great hook.

Dynamite

Warriors of Mars #1 – Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter stories couldn’t be more different in tone from Edwin Lester Arnold’s goofy Lieutenant Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, but the similarities in concepts (Southern soldiers transported to Mars where they fall in love with princesses) has had fans and writers making connections between them for decades, including Alan Moore in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Now Dynamite’s taking a turn with Carter’s princess (or her people, anyway) kidnapping Gullivar’s.

First Second

Friends With Boys - I’m all for three things: First Second publications, Faith Erin Hicks comics, and stories about people learning to communicate with people unlike themselves. No, wait: four things. Ghost stories.

The Big Town

Fantagraphics

The Big Town - Charles Schulz’ son wrote this novel (the last in his jazz-age trilogy) about the end of the Roaring Twenties and “the role of business, crime, morality, and love in our lives.” It’s not comics, but it sounds ambitious and transporting.

Humanoids

Celestial Bibendum – New York is now on the Seine and there’s a lonely seal named Diego living in it. That’s weird enough that I’d like to know more.

IDW

Road Rage #1 – You might think that the short story “Trucks” was Stephen King’s ultimate homage to the Richard Matheson novella Duel. After all, “Trucks” was collected in Night Shift and King himself directed the movie adaptation of it, Maximum Overdrive featuring Emilio Estevez, AC/DC, and a giant Green Goblin mask. What you might not know is that King also collaborated with his son Joe Hill on a biker-gang novella called Throttle that’s more directly inspired by Duel (which you probably remember was also adapted to film as Stephen Spielberg’s first feature-length project). IDW is now adapting both Duel and Throttle to comics with this four-issue mini-series.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Volume 1: Change is Constant – The first issues of the new, ongoing series are collected.

Jack Avarice is the Courier - I love the way IDW released this mini-series: weekly over the course of a single month, then the entire collection the month after that. I’d love to know how it sold for them, but for me as a consumer, that’s a perfect system.

Thief of Thieves

Image

Thief of Thieves #1 – Some new guys named Robert Kirkman and Nick Spencer team up to write one of those crime comics the kids love these days.

Glory #23 – Rob Liefeld’s Extreme relaunch continues to impress me with the talent it’s choosing. In this case, Joe Keatinge (Popgun) and Ross Campbell (Shadoweyes) offer a very different take on the Wonder Woman archetype.

King City - Brandon Graham’s masterwork is finally collected.

Marvel

Winter Soldier #1 – The closest thing we’re going to get to a Black Widow comic right now.

Ka-Zar by Mark Waid and Andy Kubert, Volume 2 - Ka-Zar vs. Thanos. ‘Nuff said.

Metropolitan

Journalism - A collection of short comics by cartoonist/war-reporter Joe Sacco.

Moonstone

The Lone Ranger: Vendetta - The concealed cowpoke and Tonto investigate a serial killer with possible connections to the Ranger’s dead nemesis, Butch Cavendish.

Rohan at the Louvre (French edition)

NBM

Rohan at the Louvre - A newly famous mangaka meddles with a cursed painting deep in the bowels of the famous museum. This will not end well.

Oni

Sixth Gun, Volume 3 – Trade-waiters have reason to whoop it up now that the next installment of the awesome Weird Western is on its way.

Courtney Crumrin, Volume 1: The Night Things Special Edition – The comic that put Ted Naifeh on so many radars gets color and a hardcover.

SLG

Malleus Maleficarum: A Guide to Catching Witches - Everyone’s favorite Inquisitorial treatise on How to Hunt and Torture Pagans, the Homeless, and Other People You Don’t Like is adapted to comics.

Top Shelf

Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland – One of the last projects Pekar worked on before his death is also – according to Alan Moore’s intro – “one of [his] very greatest works.”

That’s it for me. What are you looking forward to?

B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: The Pickens County Horror #1 variant

As announced last summer at the San Diego Comic Con, Dark Horse has released the schedule for Mike Mignola’s 2012 “Year of Monsters” variant cover program. The variant covers, which feature Mignola drawing classic monsters, will be available to retailers who order five or more copies of the standard cover.

“Mike Mignola got into the comics business with the simple goal of drawing monsters for a living,” said Scott Allie, Dark Horse managing editor, in a press release. “Mike celebrates 2012 by pitting his greatest characters against his favorite monsters on these special covers, unrelated to the stories inside.”

The schedule for the first half of the year can be found below, which shows that at some of the covers will appear on the just-announced B.P.R.D. titles. Lobster Johnson: The Burning Hand #1 arrives in stores on Jan. 11.

January—Lobster Johnson: The Burning Hand #1
February—B.P.R.D Hell on Earth: The Long Death #1
March—B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: The Pickens County Horror #1
April—Lobster Johnson: The Burning Hand #4
May—B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: The Transformation of J. H. O’Donnell
June—Baltimore: Dr. Leskovar’s Remedy #1

X-23 #20

Sales charts | Responding to an iFanboy article that speculates on what titles Marvel might cancel next, Men of War and Viking writer Ivan Brandon makes the case against sales charts and the subsequent analysis of them each month: “There’s an ongoing debate, for a bunch of years now. There are numbers that circulate every month, inaccurate numbers, people track them, people use that flawed ‘data’ to comment on what they see as the progress or decline on the list. A lot of comics professionals are against this, for a lot of reasons. In my case, for my books, the books I personally share copyright on … my reason is, and no offense to anyone out there: My income is none of your business. Just as your income is none of mine.”

Tom Spurgeon offers a counterpoint: “Sales information seems to me an obvious positive, not because it reveals the bank accounts of creators, but because what sells and to what extent is basic information about a marketplace, and the shape and potency of a marketplace seems to me a primary item of interest for anyone covering that marketplace. It’s foundational to our understanding of how things work and why. Certainly this information is already manipulated to brazen effect by companies with something to put over on customers; I have to imagine this would become worse under a system of no information at all being released.” [Ivan Brandon, The Comics Reporter]

Habibi

Awards | Craig Thompson’s Habibi is one of five finalists for the French comics organization L’Association Des Critiques De Bandes Dessinées’ annual Prix De La Critique. The winner will be announced Dec. 5. [The Comics Reporter]

Creators | Mike Mignola, Bill Sienkiewicz, Walt Simonson and several other creators are selling illustrations of classic Universal Monsters on eBay to raise money for 6-year-old Aidan Reed, who was diagnosed last year with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. [Newsarama]

Creators | Laura Sneddon profiles Watchmen and V for Vendetta writer Alan Moore, who talks about creating The Ballad of Halo Jones, one of the first non-superhero women to headline her own series: “There wasn’t a single – I mean, I was annoyed – there wasn’t a single girls’ comic in Britain … I thought, well if you do more stories that are aimed at women, you’ll get more women reading the comics. It would seem fairly simple and straightforward, but there was a lot of resistance.” [The Independent]

Eduardo Risso

Creators | Artist Eduardo Risso discusses his career and craft in along interview conducted by Michal Chudolinski at the International Festival of Comics and Games in Lodz, Poland. [Comics Bulletin]

Creators | Mike Costa talks about his work on Blackhawks and G.I. Joe: Cobra. [USA Today]

Manga | Shaenon Garrity explains Chobits, the CLAMP series about a world in which humans can own robots with personalities — persocoms: “Chobits is the strangest of beasts: a difficult, complex, thought-provoking T&A manga. Ultimately it chooses to have its cheesecake and eat it too, raising a host of challenging questions only to leave them unanswered so as not to spoil the romance.” [Anime News Network]

Digital | Remember when your mom threw out all your comics? Digital comics saved the day for one reader who accidentally destroyed her cousin’s comics collection. [Teleread]

Commentary | Rich Clabaugh looks at Fantagraphics’ first Carl Barks collection, “Lost in the Andes.” [Christian Science Monitor]

Comics | Bob Temuka looks at some forgotten superhero titles from the 1980s and 1990s. [The Tearoom of Despair]

Blogosphere | The Panelists, a blog devoted to analyzing individual comics panels, is disbanding. The writers, all of them well regarded in the comics community, are simply too busy doing other things. [The Panelists]

'It's all going to hell in 2012'

Following the teaser they sent out last week, Dark Horse Comics has announced five new B.P.R.D. titles that’ll be released next year and will “shake the organization to its very core.”

Here’s the line-up:

• First up, in February comes B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: The Long Death, written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi, with art by James Harren (Abe Sapien: The Devil Does Not Jest, Heralds). A team is sent to the deadly woods from New World to investigate a new series of disappearances, but they discover more than just the monster responsible, as loyalties are questioned and tensions mount!
• March will see the release of B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: The Pickens County Horror, written by Mike Mignola and Scott Allie, with art by Jason Latour (Wolverine, Scalped) and an all-new cover by Becky Cloonan. This chilling two-issue series brings a B.P.R.D. crew into the grips of a backwoods vampire clan hiding out in a Gothic southern home.
• Next, in May comes B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth­: The Transformation of J. H. O’Donnell, pairing Mike Mignola with Scott Allie again for the discovery of what drove the Bureau’s expert on ancient foes to near madness after a mission with Hellboy 24 years earlier. This supernatural thrill ride features art by B.P.R.D. newcomer Max Fiumara (Amazing Spider-Man) and a cover by Becky Cloonan.
• That same month features the return of the regular B.P.R.D. team of Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, and Tyler Crook, with B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: The Devil’s Engine. The Zinco Corporation again rears its ugly head after a devastating earthquake, pitting Devon and Fenix in an uneasy alliance against bat-faced monsters and the evil empire’s other mad-science experiments! Additionally, this new series will feature covers by former Hellboy artist Duncan Fegredo.
• Finally, Cameron Stewart returns to the B.P.R.D. universe in June with B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth­: Exorcism. In this story we learn more about Ashley Strode’s evolution as an agent after she meets up with a familiar face for a series of exorcisms in a rural Indiana town. Mike Mignola and Cameron Stewart team up to share writing duties, with pencils by Cameron and covers by Viktor Kalvachev.

“Let’s break some stuff that can’t be fixed. Let’s turn some corners where there’s no going back,” said Mike Mignola in a press release. “In both Hellboy and B.P.R.D., we’re saying, ‘Well, once we do this—once we round this corner—that’s it!’ It’s not like, ‘Oh, Batman, different costume.’ We’re doing stuff where there’s no way to fix it. That is the new reality in our world. You’re REALLY going to see that in 2012.”

Hiya kids, it’s time for What Are You Reading?, a weekly look into what the Robot 6 crew has been reading lately. Today’s special guest is Thom Zahler, creator of the delightful superhero/romantic comedy comic Love and Capes.

To find out what Thom and the Robot 6 crew have been reading lately, click below.

*****

Michael May

Baltimore

I didn’t get to Baltimore: The Plague Ships before Halloween like I’d planned. I had illusions about reading the novel it’s based on first, but I’m slow with prose and the graphic novel was just sitting there on my reading table; taunting me with its gorgeously gruesome Mignola cover and its peg-legged, harpoon-wielding hero. I’m sure that I would have gotten more out of it had I read the novel first, but Mignola and Christopher Golden did a fine job (as they will) of keeping the comic self-contained and filling in enough details to explain the world (an alternate reality in which WWI was cancelled on account of vampire-plague) and What’s Come Before (Lord Henry Baltimore may have sort of caused the whole vampire-plague and is hunting the Vampire-in-Charge for reasons having as much to do with Revenge as Saving the World).

Ben Stenbeck’s art has a great look (he’s got a special gift for fungus-zombies) and in the sketchbook part he explains how closely he worked with Mignola on creature designs. And thanks to Dave Stewart’s colors, The Plague Ships feels very much like part of the Hellboy-verse even though it’s not.

I wasn’t planning to say anything about Justice League #3, because I’m still frustrated by the price tag, but I have to mention how perfectly and succinctly Geoff Johns updated Wonder Woman’s mission for the post-Flashpoint DCU. “This place…is filled with so many wonderful things…but there is also a darkness that lurks here too. One I’m going to fight. That’s what I’m here for. That’s why I’m staying. To fight.” The post-Crisis missionary-of-peace/Amazon-warrior dichotomy never worked for me, but this essentially updates her Golden Age motivation for coming to our world and it’s awesome in its simplicity.

Brigid Alverson

Tesoro

Natsume Ono’s Tesoro is a collection of her short stories that were published between 1998 and 2008. Ono has a lovely, linear drawing style, and we can see it develop from scribbly to more controlled between the earlier and the later stories. Her storytelling technique improved as well. I like Ono’s work because her characters are so human; a lot of manga characters behave in stereotyped ways, almost like little person-bots, but hers have moments of real doubt, awkwardness, and silliness. Several of the stories are set in Italy, as were her manga Gente and Ristorante Paradiso, and others reflect small incidents in everyday life in Japan. The book is beautifully produced with French flaps and earth-toned inks, and it really feels like something special. While genre manga such as Naruto and Vampire Knight will always dominate the American market, it’s nice to see Viz bringing over more literary titles like this one.

It’s well known that Osamu Tezuka was an admirer of Walt Disney, and that shines through in his Princess Knight, which was originally published in 1953. The edition I am reading, published by Vertical, is actually a retelling of the story that Tezuka did in the early 1960s, but the Disney connection is still there; this is a children’s story, and it is filled with adorable animals and cutely rounded angels and villains. The pacing also makes me think of animated cartoons, with lots of short gags and asides. Princess Knight was one of the early shoujo manga that set the style and the conventions for many manga that followed, but it is quite enjoyable in its own right, aside from any historical significance.

Tim O’Shea

Supergirl #3

Supergirl #3: As I settled into the third issue of this series, I realized something I should have realized at the outset of this series. Why did DC set up a new universe where right out of the gates it’s clear that Superman is not the sole survivor of the destruction of Krypton? Why did the new Supergirl have to be so oddly related to Superman, essentially in the same way it was in the old DC universe? I was distracted in the first two issues as the new Supergirl gathered her wits about her. In this third issue, I just found myself bored, feeling like the series has settled into another Supergirl series that will suffer ultimately lackluster sales and tread on the brink of cancellation. But I am getting ahead of myself, for right now, with this issue #3, I realize I have no interest in returning for issue 4.

Blue Beetle #3: Again a new DCU retreading much of the same ground as the last Blue Beetle series. But in this instance, there’s a major difference in that I find myself still interested. And the reason likely is the supporting cast—namely Jamie’s strong family ties. In this issue, writer Tony Bedard allows Jamie’s mom (and her love of her son) to shine through with a really great, intense scene. Also the villains in this round of the Blue Beetle seem a bit more violent than the last one (not an asset, or a detriment, merely an observation).

Captain America #4

Captain America #4: For the first arc of a new Ed Brubaker Captain America title, this plot is sluggish and not engaging at all. What really astounded me in this issue was Steve McNiven’s art; more specifically his portrayal of Sharon Carter in one scene. Worried about the fate of Steve Rogers, McNiven has Carter nervously bite her lip. It would be understood she’d worry about Steve, but to have a longtime, accomplished SHIELD agent and a member of the Secret Avengers bite her lip? The helpless female lip bite is beneath Carter’s character, no matter how much she may care for Rogers. (Plus it shows minimal faith in a guy that just a year or so ago proved he could come back from the friggin dead)

Birds of Prey #3: This new incarnation of the Birds of Prey has little in common with the old one, but to my delight it continues to work for me. Writer Duane Swierczynski does a great job of juggling all of the cast members and giving them little moments to impact the storyline, while still moving it forward and engaging.

Avengers Academy

Avengers Academy #22: I was glad to read writer Christos Gage tweet that the book is not at risk for cancellation (unless the rumors of its cancellation negatively impacts the number of people buying it, then we have the infernal self-fulfilling prophecy), so I can respect his request for folks to pre-order the book. For Quicksilver fans wanting to know if he was ever going to talk to dad (Magneto) in this series, you get your answer in this issue. Clearly Gage had been loading up and looking forward to writing this issue, but in his haste to tackle the meet-up at every single angle, he dropped the ball slightly. I still love the series, do not get me wrong. But when given the chance to unleash a major character reveal, the reaction to the news is muddled and lost amongst the other action ongoing in the issue. It is my hope this reveal has rippling impacts. In the meantime, however, I still consider this the best Avengers book Marvel is publishing.

Thunderbolts #165: Regular WAYR readers will not be surprised. A book written by Jeff Parker? O’Shea loves it. Indeed, but this is an extra enjoyable Parker story (no really), because it is a time travel story. Parker getting to play in 1940s Marvel, with the Invaders is never a bad thing in my book. With this issue, Parker is at his best with the Namor and Satana scenes (though the dialogue and action from Moonstone is a close second).

Thom Zahler

Daredevil

Mark Waid’s Daredevil has been raking in its share of accolades. You now why? It’s fantastic! Everything they say is true. Mark’s writing a comic book in the very best sense of the world: long stories, short stories, overreaching arcs and yet ever 20 page issue is a satisfying chunk. What’s most remarkable to me is how quickly he manages to pivot Daredevil from the bleak character he’s been to a more shiny happy character, and yet it doesn’t feel forced but effortless.

Mark, along with his artists Paolo Rivera and Marcos Martin are also finding new ways to show and to use Daredevil’s powers. That’s not an insignificant task for a character who’s been around as long as The Man Without Fear has. They manage to visually illustrate Daredevil’s very non-visual senses in just a stunning way.

Really, I love everything about it. It’s Shakespeare the way it was meant to be seen.

Over at DC, I find myself loving Action Comics. That’s a superhuman feat in itself because the new telling of Superman’s early years is not the one I’ve gotten used to, or even the one I’d prefer. But Grant Morrison is harkening back to the early 30’s rough-and-tumble Superman and carrying me along for the ride. It’s a Superman with a bit of an edge, and if you’d pitched it to me that was I would have turned it down. But it seems to be working.

Grant Morrison has a way of embracing all the varied, and sometimes conflicting, facets of a character. He’s making this book one of the ones I have to read as soon as it comes out. And the art by Rags Morales is just beautiful. That guy must have gone to a good school. (Kubies rule!)

You may have missed it, but Dracula the Unconquered was one of the highlights of Halloween. The other was seeing the Tim Burton exhibition at the LACMA, but that’s not important right now. The book, written by Chris Sims with art by Steve Downer and Josh Krach is the type of comic I want to see more of. I think in complimenting Chris on it, I compared it to a Twix bar. It’s got all sorts of sugary goodness to it, but enough of a solid crunchy core to it that it’s not empty calories.

Dracula the Unconquered

Dracula the Unconquered takes place in 1901 as Dracula is freed from his imprisonment in the Tower of London by nefarious people for nefarious plans. I don’t want to spoil anything more than that. Here’s the thing: it’s an all-ages comic. My goddaughter will love it when I give it to her, and I love it to. It doesn’t make the common all-ages mistake of talking down to its audience. She will like the fun art and the frenetic pace of the story.

Most interesting to me is that Dracula here seems to have the bloody past from the novels, and yet the character is instantly engaging and likable. I’m looking forward to seeing how Chris straddles that line.

Also, the comic is embracing digital only. It’s a 24-page story all for just a dollar! (Listen up Big Two.) It’s the perfect price that you can’t say “no” to, and distributed in a way that wouldn’t be possible years before. I thing digital and print books can co-exist, and I’ going to enjoy seeing Action Age help carve this path.

The Dreamer

Lastly, while I haven’t finished reading it yet, I adore Lora Innes’s The Dreamer, published by IDW. The second collection of Lora’s time-traveling historical romance just came out this week, and so far it’s just as good as the first. Lora writes and draws the book, with colors by Julie Wright.

Lora excels at portraying very grounded, human characters doing grounded, human things. It’s an artist’s compliment, but I envy her ability to portray fashion and fabric in a way which eludes so many of us. Yet, her art is never overwrought and has a Disneylike quality to it. It’s just so… smooth.

It’s also a historical piece and Lora doesn’t skimp on the history. She’s clearly got a love for the American Revolution time period and it shines out of every inch of the book. She doesn’t sacrifice storytelling for accuracy or the other way around either, it’s very much a well-balanced approach. I find myself thinking “I wonder if that really happened” and then, more often than not, find out that it did indeed. It’s great to see someone who cares so much about the accuracy of the world they’re building and the story they’re telling.

The book also exists as a webcomic, too, so give it a look at http://www.thedreamercomic.com/.

Setting the Standard: Comics by Alex Toth 1952-1954

Welcome to What Are You Reading?, where each week we talk about what comics, graphic novels, books and what-have-you we’ve been reading lately. This week our special guest is Brian Ralph, creator of Daybreak, Cave-In and Reggie 12.

To see what Brian and the Robot 6 crew have been reading lately, click below.

*****

Michael May

BPRD 1947

I almost got caught up on BPRD last Halloween – pretty much from the beginning of the series – and it was an excellent way to spend October. I think I’m going to make a tradition out of it: catching up on the last year’s worth of BPRD stories this time each year. This week, I picked up where I left off with Volume 13, BPRD: 1947. I don’t know why Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon hadn’t done a Hellboy story before this one, but I’m not complaining. It was worth waiting for. Especially using their different styles to depict two different worlds: sometimes figuratively; sometimes literally.

My favorite part of the book though comes at the very end when Trevor Bruttenholm’s debriefing about the adventure with a colleague. The last several hours have been harrowing and Bruttenholm’s been ignoring young Hellboy because he’s distracted by the very dangerous case. As he and his friend – a former Catholic priest – talk, his elderly companion makes an observation about the nature of religion as the panels pan around Bruttenholm’s office, focusing on his diverse collection of idols and fetishes. “Man has given a thousand different names to his God,” the priest says, “but look into the face of each one long enough and hard enough – you will find one Truth.”

The old man doesn’t say what it is and I’m not enough of a religion scholar to know what he meant for sure, but my personal belief is that God – however people think of him – is all about our being good to each other. I was thrilled to see that idea born out in the story. The priest seems to imply that Bruttenholm should destroy the demonic Hellboy while he can, but the professor instead goes out and plays catch with the child he’s been neglecting. It’s a beautiful moment, made more touching by the knowledge of how Bruttenholm’s love for his “son” will eventually overcome Hellboy’s supernatural programming towards evil. This kind of stuff is why Mike Mignola and Company’s comics are the best damn ones on the shelves.

Brigid Alverson

Mangaman

Barry Lyga and Colleen Doran’s Mangaman is like the novelization of Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. It’s the story of a manga character, Ryoko, who gets pulled through a rip in the universe to an ordinary American town, where he is sent to an ordinary American high school. The catch is that Ryoko retains his manga characteristics—speed lines appear when he is excited, then drop to the ground for the janitor to sweep up, people he is thinking about appear in the panel, and his eyes turn into hearts when he sees the lovely Marissa, the homecoming queen who is dissatisfied with her life and shows up every day in a different costume. On the one hand, it’s the traditional story of a stranger in a strange land, but on the other hand, it’s a metafictional meditation on the comics medium. Either way, it’s laugh-out-loud funny in places and a great read.

In a much more traditional vein, Psyren, the latest manga in Viz’s Shonen Jump line, is a fairly standard shonen manga story about a tough guy (with a heart of gold) who is thrust into a series of challenges. Ageha starts off the book by beating up a bunch of gang members, so you know he’s badass, but he has a soft spot in his heart for the bespectacled Sakurako, who was a childhood friend. So when Sakurako disappears, and Ageha realizes it has something to do with a shadowy organization that recruits people with phone cards, he jumps right in and winds up fighting off killer arthropod robots in a desolate landscape. There’s nothing in this first volume that I haven’t seen before in some other manga, but it’s well drawn and a good read, so no complaints.

Tim O’Shea

Justice League

Justice League #2: Not sure which plot point annoyed me more. When Green Lantern and Batman whispered in the heat of battle, so the guy with super-hearing could not hear them. Um, right. Or maybe a Hal Jordan/Green Lantern so new to the secret identity aspect, he says Flash’s first name (when expressing concern that Flash had revealed an aspect of his secret identity by telling Batman he worked in a crime lab). I’m done with this title.

Birds of Prey #2: Trying to do a book like this in the new DC universe (one without Oracle) is a challenge. But I think writer Duane Swierczynski has found the right cast member replacement (for Oracle) with Starling in the role of Black Canary confidant. I am intrigued to see how Katana (who joined the cast in this issue, along with someone else) changes up the mix. I’ll be back for issue #3.

Herc #9: This series has already been cancelled, but I cannot help but continue to buy it as this series in particular allows the writing team of Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente to indulge their comedic tendencies. It’s a fun read, but sadly not one that attracted enough readership. This issue in particular allows for some hilarious bits between Herc and his dad, Zeus.

Nightwing #2: I am pleased with writer Kyle Higgins’ repurposing of the Haly Circus for this new series. In rebooting the DC universe, I am glad they did not majorly revamp the Batfamily. Dick Grayson remains one of my favorite characters in the DCU, new or old. In general, I wish there were more heroes that smiled more often, like Nightwing.

Batman #2: Depending on how this first arc plays out, I may proclaim Batman to be one of my favorite new DC titles to date. Some people have grown tired of the story device where the reader is thrown into the middle of the plot and then brought back to that point via flashback (hell I am confused trying to describe it). But that plot device worked really well in this issue. As much as I enjoy writer Scott Snyder, artist Greg Capullo is the one that sells the kineticism that ripples through this issue’s action.

Brian Ralph

Captain Easy

Roy Crane’s Captain Easy Vol. 2. (Fantagraphics)

I absolutely fell in love with volume one when it came out. These were comics people had recommended to me over the years, but I had only caught glimpses of it until that first volume came out. It did not disappoint! Roy Crane draws these huge adventure strips featuring a soldier-of-fortune, Captain Easy. He wanders the globe helping dames and punching out goons and villains. It’s a fun combination of action and laughs. Sometimes very serious and other times very cartoony, in both story and art style. I just love the way Roy Crane draws these goons.

And the colors! The palettes are unusual and beautiful. A comic artist could just go through here and steal these lively color palettes. Volume 2 is a little more goofy than Volume 1, the stories seem a little less urgent. But I still love it.

The books are also really beautifully designed and very nicely packaged.

Lynd Ward: Six Novels in Woodcuts. (The Library of America)

I received this box set for my birthday. This is a collection of 6 stories by Lynd Ward and has a forward by Art Spiegelman.

Originally I had discovered Lynd Ward and these early silent woodcut graphic novels while I was rooting around in the RISD library as a student. I became very interested in them. I took up scratchboard as a way of imitating the woodcut look. It taught me a lot about working in black and white. By looking at these stories I learned how to unlock that puzzle of placing areas of white next to dense black to create vivid and rich imagery.

When you think about it, woodcuts are such a laborious process and yet these stories seem really fresh and lively.

It’s a handsome box set, and you’ll look like a real smarty for having it on your shelf. That is, if people ever come over your house.

Melvin Monster

Melvin Monster: John Stanley Library. (D+Q)

Actually my seven-year-old son Miles has been reading this, along with the other books in the John Stanley library. (Even “Tubby” has his own book now!)

The Melvin Monster series features this good-hearted little monster kid, who despite being a monster wants to do good things. This frustrates his Frankenstein Dad and his Mummy Mom. His “Baddy” Dad wants him to do bad stuff! I think my son likes it because it’s kind of edgy and twisted at times. They are beautiful books of course, nice hardcovers, real rough-and-tumble style for the kids. I imagine someday passing these down to my grand kids.

These books are engaging to Miles, he’ll sit there giggling and reading, and Dad can get some “Me” time.

Setting the Standard: Comics by Alex Toth 1952-1954 (Fantagraphics)

These are short comics by Alex Toth, quick 3-4 pagers that would appear in comics like “Thrilling Romance” or “Crime Files” in the 50′s.

I’ll read one of these before I go to bed. I like that in a short page count he quickly develops a rich story and twilight zoney twist. Sometimes it’s a bizarre romance or horror story with a stunning conclusion. They’re a fun read.

The art! Alex Toth really did some cool things with chiaroscuro. And the panel compositions are really unique and interesting. He did some dramatic and unexpected things with the arrangement of the characters and the still-life elements. It’s inspiring. I think all cartoonists should pick this up and borrow some ideas from Alex Toth.

Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice. Ivan Brunetti (Yale University Press)

This originally came out a few years ago, but it’s been recently republished. I love this little book. Ivan presents a class on cartooning, but I think his approach is very unique. The tone of the book is kind of conversational and informal, like you are actually in Ivan’s class. I recommend this book to my students, but I’d always recommend it to anyone who is interested in comics and cartoons and the thought process that goes into putting them together. It fits nicely in your pocket.

B.P.R.D Hell On Earth: Russia #1

Hello and welcome to What Are You Reading? This week our special guest is Dark Horse assistant editor Jim Gibbons, who I spoke to about his new job on Friday.

To see what Jim and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below …

*****

Brigid Alverson

Snarked

Top of my stack this week was the first issue of Roger Langridge’s Snarked! His remained Walrus and Carpenter are con men with hearts of gold, and while neither of them is too bright, the Walrus has a certain practical ability to get things done. So when Princess Scarlett and her baby brother, Prince Rusty, are in danger because of scheming by the palace advisers, none other than the Cheshire Cat himself points her toward the rascally pair. It’s good, old-fashioned comedy with a familiar storyline and gentle humor that both children and adults can relate to.

I also enjoyed the second issue of B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: Russia. I feel like this is a very muscular story that sort of grabs you and drags you in. Kate Corrigan and Johann Strauss are in Russia investigating some sort of icky problem, and the plot moves along briskly in this issue with a bit of exposition and a nasty case of possession. There seem to be several strands to the story, and it will be interesting to see how Mike Mignola and co. tie them all up.

With the third volume of their Archie Archives, Dark Horse has found their formula — minimal front matter (this one features an introduction by Archie Comics president Mike Pellerito but no other historical information) followed by a solid collection of vintage comics. Volume 3 features comics from 1943 and 1944, and in addition to the odd look of the characters — Archie has prominent buck teeth, Jughead looks like one of the Dead End Kids and seldom opens his eyes‹there’s the strangeness of wartime Riverdale, where goats run freely and people worry about ration points. A bit of background on these comics would have been nice; a number were inked by Janice Valleau, whom David Hajdu highlighted in the opening pages of The Ten Cent Plague as an established comics artist who left the field during the dark days of the 1950s.

Tim O’Shea

Sweet Tooth

Sweet Tooth #26: I hate to agree with my pal Dugan Trodglen, but I suspect he is right when he feared writer Jeff Lemire’s involvement in the new DC52 would negatively impact the quality of this book. I am a huge fan of guest artist Matt Kindt, but this first installment of a three-issue arc bored me immensely, no matter how effectively Kindt drew and painted the story, Lemire’s script was heavy on narration and less engaging than what I come to expect on Sweet Tooth.

Huntress #1: Remember the whole new DC52 and how everything is starting from square one (unless you were connected to Batman [and were not Barbara Gordon])? Well Paul Levitz was writing Huntress in the late 1970s (albeit Helena Wayne back then) and Levitz is writing her again more than 30 years later. Way to shake it up, DC. I bought
this book against my better judgment because I have enjoyed artist Marcus To so much in the past. Huntress going against Italian organized crime…again. Yippie. Won’t be back for issue #2.

Action Comics #2: So Rags Morales and Brent Anderson split up art duties on writer Grant Morrison’s second issue. Anderson’s Lois Lane is distinctive (in a good way). Just wondering, am I the only person that tires of Kryptonian dialogue that no one understands? Small quibble, I promise. The book continues to be a fairly interesting read, though clearly rehashing the same Superman ground we’ve seen before. A great deal of the new DC52 smacks of high-end Elseworlds so far, but for now it’s selling quite well of course.

Thunderbolts #164: Modern day pseudo-Thunderbolts trapped in 1943 Austria along with the Invaders provides for some hilarious faux wholesome period dialogue (Boomerang saying “Aw, shucks” for example) from writer Jeff Parker. Artist Kev Walker looks immensely stronger on art (unlike last week’s complaint) when inked by Terry Pallot. Really hoping next week I will not have to stare at another Marvel house ad touting an Avengers Solo book launching October 2010 (really nice attention to detail, gang).

Hulk #42: Wonder what happens when Thunderbolt Ross starts dabbling in foreign policy as the Red Hulk? Nothing that makes Steve Rogers happy, but it does make me content (as well as set up the foundation for some interesting guest stars) in the first installment of the “Hulk of Arabia” arc. With the series increased publishing schedule, there’s no way that artist Gabriel Hardman can draw every issue. So I was pleased to see that Patrick Zircher’s artistic style (while not exactly like Hardman’s) in this issue is not a jarring transition to a style that clashes with Hardman.

JK Parkin

Ready Player One

I was traveling for the past couple weeks, visiting family and friends in Texas, which meant I had some down time to catch up on some reading — mostly on my iPad. Considering it’s setting and subject matter, I think Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One was written specifically for me. Dystopian future (check), virtual reality (check), a street-smart teenager (check) and more ’80s references than you could roll a 20-sided dice at (huh?). The story is set in a future where the real world is something everyone wants to escape from, but luckily there’s a virtual reality world, OASIS, that’s filled with various planets, quests and avatars of all kinds for someone like our hero, Wade, to dive into. Wade’s a poor kid in Oklahoma looking for a break, and when the creator of the virtual reality world Wade pretty much lives in dies, the kid goes on a quest to solve the riddle the guy left in his will. Fans of the old Atari game Adventure will remember the three castles you had to find the keys for; James Halliday set up a similar quest in the OASIS, and whoever can find the three keys, open the gates and solve the puzzles within will not only get the guy’s enormous fortune, but also control of the OASIS. Halliday was raised in the ’80s on John Hughes movies, TV sitcoms, video games, comic books, Dungeons & Dragons and Rush songs, and all of that comes into play as Wade tries to solve the puzzle before anyone else — including a shady corporation who wants control of the OASIS. Just following along to see what references Cline would throw in next was fun, but what really made the book was the main character, an underdog you can’t help but cheer for.

On the comic front, I downloaded a few on the road, including the first two chapters of the new Ultimate Spider-Man and the last two chapters of X-Men Schism. I haven’t read any USM since maybe the second or third story arc; I was always good with the first Peter Parker and never felt the need to follow the second, despite the fact that the book was well crafted. But I was curious enough about Miles Morales to see how they’d introduce him, and after reading the first two issues I can say I’m hooked, at least for a few more issues.

As for Schism, while the series read like a prologue to the upcoming X-Men relaunch, i.e. it didn’t feel very self-contained and didn’t introduce a lot of surprises, I dug some of the elements of it. One the new Hellfire Club, and second, Jason Aaron’s Wolverine. I never read his take on the regular Wolverine series, but I think I see some trades in my future. And I’ll at least be checking out the first few issues of Wolverine and the X-Men later this year.

Jim Gibbons

The majority of what I end up reading is directly related to my work as an assistant editor, but here are a few things I’ve been enjoying in my spare time…

The Coffin

Mike Huddleston’s work on Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s The Strain has been consistently blowing me away, so I’ve been checking out a bunch of Mike’s other work. I recently read the Phil Hester penned The Coffin after hearing Guillermo del Toro give it a personal recommendation at Comic-Con—that’s a pretty good pedigree as far as I’m concerned. It’s a very enjoyable and really great looking read about keeping souls on earth after death in robot “coffins.” Up next, I’ll be delving into Huddleston’s The Homeland Directive written by Robert Vendetti. I’ve flipped through it and the art looks phenomenal. I’m psyched to jump into that one.

B.P.R.D Hell On Earth: Russia #1 was an amazing first issue. Tyler Crook is really hitting his stride and I’m super excited to see how the Bureau interacts with their Russian counterpart. Given, B.P.R.D. is one of my favorite comic series of all time, so… not a hard sell for me there regardless.

Based on what little I’ve read, Green River Killer is shaping up to be one of the best graphic novels of the year.

In the realm of superheroes, I’ve been enjoying Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force. It’s much preferable take on the X-Men’s wetworks team than some comics in recent years, as far as I’m concerned—a lot less angsty and a lot more fun. Plus, the Age of Apocalypse nostalgia they’ve been throwing in there seems directed specifically at readers like me who grew up thinking AoA was one of the best things to ever happen in comics.

I’m always working my way through a few massive archival books. Right now I’ve got bookmarks in Marvel’s gigantic Howard the Duck Omnibus and the Jack Kirby’s Eternals Omnibus. And if I do things right, I’ve always got unread Stan Sakai comics around. Right now, I’m trucking through Space Usagi and starting up Fantagraphics’ beautiful Usagi Yojimbo omnibus. Sakai’s an absolute master, so I always aim to have some of his work on hand.

Demon Knights

Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy at our local comic shop based on certain spending limits — $15 and $30 — as well as what we’d get if we had extra money or a gift card to spend on a “Splurge” item.

Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList, and tell us what you’re getting in our comments field.

Michael May

If I had $15, I’d start with Demon Knights #1 ($2.99) and Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE #1 ($2.99). I’m excited about a lot of the DC Dark corner of the New 52; especially these two. Frankenstein is a continuation of the only Flashpoint series I stuck with and features one of my two favorite characters from Morrison’s Seven Soldiers of Victory. I wasn’t that interested in Demon Knights at first, but I was impressed by Paul Cornell’s chasing down a female fan after a panel at San Diego to pitch the series to her as something that people who are looking for great, female characters will enjoy. And I’ve been wanting to dig deeper into Cornell’s work anyway. On the Marvel side, I’m still thrilled about how well Alpha Flight is doing (creatively, I mean, but I guess it must be doing okay in sales too), so #4 ($2.99) is a must-buy for me. And I can’t wait to see how Mystery Men ends with #5 ($2.99). That’s been one of the high points of my summer, comics-wise. Finally, I’d grab X-Men Legacy #255 ($2.99) to dip my toe a little deeper into the X-Men world after being away from it for a while.

If I had $30, I’d add All-New Batman: The Brave and the Bold #11 ($2.99) for the Batman/Jonah Hex team-up and Korgi, Volume 3: A Hollow Beginning ($9.95). I’m a volume behind on Korgi, but the first one was wonderful (I love wordless comics and the art’s amazing) and I’d like to catch up. If I could borrow a dollar from someone (I’ll buy you a pop later), I’d also add Bonnie Lass #1 ($2.99). I’ve already read it online and will buy the eventual collection, but it would be nice to have a copy to pass around to friends.

I’ve got two splurge items this week. I’m very into Sherlock Holmes lately, so I’ve been eager to read Moriarty ($14.99). I’ve already read Kody Chamberlain’s Sweets ($14.99) in single issues and loved it (though it drove me crazy with how much Kody’s color palette made my mouth water for warm, chewy pralines). I don’t want to choose between these two, but if forced, I’d go with Sweets partly because I’m a big fan of Kody’s work and partly because I’m a little parched.

Graeme McMillan

Daredevil #3

It may be week three of DC’s New 52, but the book I’m most looking forward to this week is Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 9: Freefall #1 (Dark Horse, $2.99); the last series ended with enough of an uptick after a run of dull issues that I find myself optimistic about its return, and if I had $15 this week, I’d start with that. Then I’d probably go for Optic Nerve #12 (Drawn & Quarterly, $5.99), because it’s apparently Adrian Tomine’s return to the multiple short humor story format after his extended stories of recent years, and I always preferred his earlier stuff (I think my Portland Hipster cred might’ve accidentally been boosted by that statement. Sorry). To round out the haul, I’d grab Batwoman #1 (DC, $2.99) and Daredevil #3 (Marvel, $2.99), two near-sure things based on previous installments of the characters by these particular creators.

If I had $30, I’d stock up on some New 52 books after all, grabbing Demon Knights #1, Green Lantern #1, Grifter #1, Legion Lost #1 and Mister Terrific #1 (All DC, $2.99). I’ve got various levels of hopes for all of these, although I’ll admit that last week’s Stormwatch debut harshed my Paul Cornell love a little bit, and the Mister Terrific optimism is based as much on the character’s potential as the creators. But we’ll see how the books end up…

When it comes to splurging, I’m going to plump for the potentially surprising choice of Archie: The Married Life Vol. 1 (Archie, $19.99). I had a chance to read the first episode of one of the “Married Life” stories this weekend, and enjoyed it much more than I would’ve expected, and knowing that there’s a trade coming out justa few days later… Well, it almost seems like bad manners to pass that up.

Brigid Alverson

If all I have is $15, life is very simple: I pick up the ninth volume of Twin Spica ($10.95), the wonderfully drawn drama about Japanese teenagers at astronaut school, and the latest issue of Life with Archie ($3.99) so I can follow this engrossing soap opera, and I put up my feet for a couple of hours and read.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 9: Freefall #1

If I had $30, I’d pile on more floppies. I haven’t been following Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but the first issue of Season Nine ($2.99) seems a good place to jump on. I’m taking a bit more of a chance diving in with issue 2 of Baltimore: The Curse Bells ($3.50), but I have always liked Mike Mignola’s storytelling. For some all-ages fun, I’ll add Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors #5 ($2.99) and Super Dinosaur #4 ($2.99), both from Image. That’s a good size stack, and I’m still under $30, which is just as well.

Because this is a great splurge week. The first volume of DC’s Sugar and Spike Archives ($59.99) is my first choice; the Sugar and Spike comics I read in Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly’s Toon Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics got me hooked on this classic little-rascals comic by Sheldon Mayer years ago, and I’m happy to see more. I’d love to see the second volume of Dark Horse’s Archie Archives ($49.99) as well. With those two tucked under my arm, I won’t feel so bad about leaving the slipcased edition of the Mad Fold-In Collection 1964-2010 ($125) on the shelf; it’s a great idea, but after paying over a hundred bucks for a book, I’d be reluctant to deface it by actually folding the pages.

JK Parkin

Pigs

Man, $15 just isn’t going to go a long way this week. I’d probably start with Pigs #1 ($2.99), the new Image title from Ben McCool, Nate Cosby, Breno Tamura, Chris Sotomayor and Rus Wooton, which is about a second-generation KGB Cuban sleeper cell that’s activated and assigned to overthrow the U.S. government. And I agree with Michael on Frankenstein, which was one of maybe two or three Flashpoint mini’s that was ultimately satisfying. So I’m on board for Frankenstein, Agents of SHADE #1 ($2.99). I’d also mirror Graeme and Brigid in getting the new Buffy series ($2.99), then I’d round it out with the latest issue of Fear Itself ($3.99).

If I had $30, I’d also grab Daredevil #3 ($2.99) and Alpha Flight #4, two of my favorite new titles. I’d round it out with four new #1′s for $2.99 each — Resurrection Man #1 (Abnett and Lanning! Wohoo!), John Carter: A Princess of Mars (Roger Langridge? Sold) and Batwoman #1 (It’s been a long time comin’).

For my splurge, again, there’s a lot to choose from, but ultimately I’d grab either The Complete Major Bummer Super Slacktacular ($29.99) or the new release of God Somewhere, as I’ve heard both are worth checking out and I haven’t read either of them.

Disney & Marvel

Legal | The Los Angeles Times reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Toby G. Scammell with insider trading. Scammell has been accused of using confidential information “surreptitiously gleaned” from his girlfriend to make $192,000 off of Disney’s 2009 acquisition of Marvel Entertainment. Scammell’s girlfriend was an intern working in the corporate strategy department at Disney. [Los Angeles Times]

Comics | Heidi MacDonald rounds up questions creators have raised about the Womanthology project, which raised $109,000 on Kickstarter, specifically about how the extra money will be used and whether the creators who are involved will be paid. Organizer Renae De Liz has posted additional details on the Womanthology site. [The Beat]

Conventions | Wizard World Chicago Comic Con gets into full swing today in Rosemont, Illinois. Comics guests include Brian Azzarello, Jim Cheung, Mike Deodato Jr., Gary Friedrich, Patrick Gleason, Mike Grell, Dave Johnson, Ariel Olivetti, Eduardo Risso, Bill Sienkiewicz and Ethan Van Sciver. The Chicago Sun-Times briefly spotlights attending artists Ivan Brunetti and Don Kramer, while the Daily Herald interviews Brunetti and Nate Powell. [Wizard World]

Awards | Voting is open for The Shel Dorf Awards, which announced the nominees for an expanded awards program this year. Robot 6 has been nominated in the “Comic Blogger of the Year” category, so thanks to everyone who nominated us. The winners will be announced Sept. 24 at Detroit Fanfare. [Shel Dorf Awards]

Rachel Rising

Creators | Russell Burlingame conducted two different interviews for two different sites with Echo and Rachel Rising creator Terry Moore, one that covers several topics and another specifically on digital comics: “Not just me, but everybody in comics is watching the digital front move in like a storm. But it’s not hitting like we thought. It’s taking longer. There are no digital book success stories yet, most of the people on planes are not reading an ebook, nobody’s rich yet… in fact, nobody’s replaced their print income yet. When digital can replace your print income, then the storm will hit.” [Comicbook.com, Comic-Related]

Creators | Landry Walker and Eric Jones go in-depth with Comic Box Commentary on Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the Eighth Grade, from the original pitch to their favorite scenes to thoughts on what might happen if there were a sequel: “It’s all a bit of a jumble in my head,” Walker said. “I do think we would see some familiar characters from Argo appear. Brainiac 5. The Phantom Zone. We’ve shown some of the art produced, so obviously Lex is back at some point. Satan Girl. Melinda Mee (Bizarrogirl). The Locker of Solitude (have to keep a super horse somewhere). Robin. Lena Thorul, Jungle Princess…” [Comic Box Commentary]

Creators | Mike Mignola discusses the upcoming Hellboy in Hell series he’s writing and drawing. [LA Weekly]

Creators | Kristy Valenti interviews artist Jim Rugg (Street Angel, Afrodisiac) about his family dynamics and his many and varied interests. [The Comics Journal]

Creators | Leland Myrick, the artist for First Second’s graphic novel Feynman, talks about his collaboration with Jim Ottaviani on the biography of the famous physicist. [Lagrange Points]

Creators | Tom Racine turns his video camera on two successful webcomics creators, Brad Guigar (Evil, Inc.) and Dave Kellett (Sheldon). [Tall Tale Features]

Blue Lantern Batgirl

Comics | With the releases this week of Batgirl #24, the last issue before the DC relaunch in September, writer Bryan Q. Miller provides his notes on the last pages of the book that denote what he saw for the future of Stephanie Brown. [DC Women Kicking Ass]

Comics | Kirstin Butler counts down “10 Masterpieces of Graphic Nonfiction,” including The Photographer, Burma Chronicles and a graphic novel adaptation of The Elements of Style. [The Atlantic]

Digital | Marvel comics are now available via comiXology’s web portal as well as its mobile apps. [comiXology blog]

Blogosphere | Comics Should Be Good contributor and CBR reviewer Chad Nevett will once again participate in Blogathon 2011, to raise money for the Hero Initiative. [GraphiContent]

Petrograd

Next month (August 3 to be exact) marks the release of writer Philip Gelatt and artist Tyler Crook‘s original graphic novel (published by Oni Press), Petrograd. To mark the upcoming release, Crook was kind enough to do an email interview with me. You might also recognize Crook’s name and work, given the fact he started his high profile role as Dark Horse’s B.P.R.D. artist this month. We discuss both projects. But before the interview begins, here’s Oni’s description of Petrograd: “During the height of the first World War, a reluctant British spy stationed in the heart of the Russian empire is handed the most difficult assignment of his career: orchestrate the death of the mad monk, the Tsarina’s most trusted adviser and the surrogate ruler of the nation. From the slums of the working class into the opulent houses of the super rich, he’ll have to negotiate dangerous ties with the secret police, navigate the halls of power, and come to terms with own revolutionary leanings, all while simply trying to survive.” Once you’ve read the interview, be sure to also visit CBR’s Petrograd preview.

Tim O’Shea: Were you interested in Russian history at all before tackling Petrograd? Once you got involved with the project, how much research did you have to do, on a variety of subjects, including the British Secret Service?

Tyler Crook: I was only interested in Russian history a little bit before this project. But mostly I’ve been interested in Russian Literature. Mostly Gogol and Dostoyevsky. Reading that stuff requires a little bit of history knowledge but I only ever figured out enough to get by. Phil Gelatt, the writer, did most of the heavy lifting when it came to doing the research. I read a couple books about the Soviet Revolution and scoured my local libraries for book with photos of Russia during the time period. I tried to use Google sparingly. The hardest part was finding photos of regular people doing regular things.

O’Shea: With Petrograd, a self-described “tense, edge-of-your seat spy thriller”, what is the key to properly pacing the work’s tension visually?

Crook: The basic idea with this story was to slowly build the tension leading up to the assassination. Everyone knows that we are going to try kill Rasputin so it won’t be a surprise. But we can make it exciting to watch. On a sort of technical level, I relied on panel shapes a lot. I worked out certain points in the story where I would introduce visual elements like slightly tilting panel borders – Stuff that the reader will hopefully feel rather than see. Then when you hit the assassination scene everything goes completely off the rails and every page is full bleed and panel borders are all crazy. On a less technical, but more important level, I tried to really focus on the acting of my characters. I tried to get your characters to emote enough that the reader can see that stuff is changing and getting harder for them. Hope fully the will feel the tension build just by looking at peoples faces.

O’Shea: In what ways did working with writer Phil Gelatt appeal to you?

Crook: Working with Phil was awesome. I feel like it was a true collaboration. He got me involved really early on in the script writing process. There was lots of back and forth and bouncing around of ideas.

O’Shea: Did you color your own art in Petrograd?

Crook: Yes I did. We did a couple different tests on how to handle the toning the book. It was originally going to be just black and white but as I was getting close to finishing, I started doing some tests and I hit on a way to do a watercolor wash that we could overlay as a second color. So that’s what we did.

O’Shea: What were some of the scenes that proved the most ambitious to execute?

Crook: Probably the assassination scene. I guess the challenge with that was trying to keep the action going, making it exciting, but to also give the reader the chance to feel that they are witnessing something horrible.

B.P.R.D.

O’Shea: Did you become more or less nervous about your upcoming B.P.R.D. assignment, after learning that Mike Mignola, John Arcudi and editor Scott Allie were all unanimously behind making you the new artist to take over after Guy Davis?

Crook: Jeez, I don’t know. The whole thing came together so fast that I didn’t have time to get too nervous until I was neck deep in deadlines. These guys have put a lot of faith in me. I think the thing that scared me the most was when Scott mentioned something about how he was working with John Severin who was making comics before my dad was born. In contrast, my first comic comes out this July. That’s pretty humbling.

O’Shea: Your art style is very different than Guy Davis’ approach, and yet have you braced yourself for the critics that will try to compare you two. Are you planning on avoiding reading reviews of your initial work on B.P.R.D.?

Crook: I’ll probably read some of the reviews. I think it’s natural for people to to want to compare my work to Guy’s work. And I think that there is a lot of similarities with our stuff but there are also a lot of differences. So hopefully people will approach my stuff with an open mind and take it for what it’s worth.

O’Shea: When garnering the B.P.R.D. assignment, were there certain characters that initially drew you into taking the assignment? Also, now that you’ve been drawing the B.P.R.D. cast for a period of time, has your affection and for certain characters shifted to different characters?

Crook: The B.P.R.D. characters are awesome. All of them. Liz Sherman is probably my favorite character but they are all really great. lately I’ve been really enjoying Kate Corrigan. With all the talk about wanting well written female characters, I think people often forget how good John Arcudi and Mike Mignola are at writing female characters. I think their characters are so natural and real feeling that you often don’t even notice that they aren’t falling into the same lame cliches that other comic book characters are.

O’Shea: As a creator new to the B.P.R.D., from an (until recently) outsiders’ perspective, what is it about the B.P.R.D. series that appeals to so many consumers?

Crook: For me the attraction has always been the characters. The monsters are awesome and the whole world going to hell is awesome. But the thing that keeps me coming back for more is the characters. I want to see how they are going to deal with these changes and to see what it does to them. I feel like I can connect to the B.P.R.D. team on an emotional level that I can’t with other super hero teams. Also there are consequences in the Mignolaverse. When they save the world it always seems to cost them dearly.

Tr!ckster

Last July, right before the San Diego Comic Con kicked off, a group of creators started planning an alternative to Comic Con International via Facebook and other channels.

“It appeared to us that a dramatic shift was taking place, a move away from individual artists, creators, and comics… There are a number of folks that have decided to bow out this year,” creator Ted Mathot, who creators comics like Rose & Isabel when he isn’t making movies for Pixar, told Brand X last year. He said they hoped to have an alternative to San Diego in 2011.

And now we know exactly what that is — Tr!ckster, a free event that will take place July 19-24 at the San Diego Wine and Culinary Center, which is across Harbor Drive from the San Diego Convention Center. The event will include retail space for creators to sell “creator-owned wares” like “small run and limited edition books, fine art prints, toys, clothing, and more;” a fine art gallery space; and a series of “focused, creator-driven demonstrations and discussions of method, process, and theory concerning the act of creating new, uniquely-voiced works of art.” Each Symposia will be a ticketed event and will feature creators like Mike Mignola, Mike Allred, Steve Niles, Bernie Wrightson, Skottie Young, Jim Mahfood, Scott Morse, Mathot, Derek Thompson, Greg Rucka, Craig Yoe and more. They plan to run two per day.

The group also plans to offer a $20, 48-page hardcover art book at the event, with illustrations by Mathot, Young, Doug TenNapel, Andy Kuhn, David Mack, Mike and Laura Allred, Mike Huddleston and many more, plus an eight-page story by Morse.

For more information on the event, visit their home page or Facebook page.

Flashpoint #1

Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy on Wednesday based on certain spending limits — $15 and $30 — as well as what we’d get if we had extra money or a gift card to spend on a “Splurge” item.

Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList if you’d like to play along in our comments section.

Graeme McMillan

If I had $15 this week, I’d immediately go for Flashpoint #1 (DC Comics, $3.99) – I am very, very unsure about the number of tie-ins DC are pushing out for the new crossover event, but with Geoff Johns in charge, I’m suspecting that the main book will be worth a look at least. I’d also grab the relaunched GI Joe #1 (IDW, $3.99), if only to follow up on the “Cobra Civil War” storyline that I admit has completely caught my attention unexpectedly. Curiosity would also get me to pick up both Moriarty #1 (Image, $2.99) and Total Recall #1 (Dynamite, $1.99), two new launches that will hopefully take familiar ideas and characters in directions I wouldn’t expect…

If I had $30, then I’d be adding DC Comics Presents: The Flash #1 (DC, $7.99) to my list, because I’m a sucker for silver age Flash, and for well-done time travel stories. Add to that, regular purchase Batman Incorporated #6 (DC, $2.99) and New Mutants #25 (Marvel, $3.99), the latter because I have fond memories of the original run and also quite like new ongoing writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, who take over with this issue, and I’ve already hit my spending limit. Jeez: Comic
books can be expensive.

To Splurge or Not To Splurge? DC has the edge this week for me, with Deadman Vol. 1 ($19.99) reprinting the original appearances of Boston Brand and two separate Joe Kubert books, Jew Gangster ($14.99) and Yossel ($14.99), being reprinted as well. Just how much am I allowed to splurge again…?

Chris Arrant

Northlanders #40

If I had $15, my first pick would be Northlanders #40 (Vertigo, $2.99) by Brian Wood and guest artist Matthew Woodson. I’ve been following Woodson’s work for about eight years now, and after several abortive attempts at comics he’s finally coming due with this issue. Woodson is a massive talent that I hope gets the right breaks in comics to show what he can do. Second up would be FF #3 (Marvel, $2.99); Hickman and Epting aren’t listening to the hype but focusing on the story and the development of the FF side of the Marvel U. Third would be Flashpoint #1 (DC, $3.99), a given for anyone writing about mainstream superhero comics but also as a fan it could be something special; I have a lot of faith in Geoff Johns’ abilities, but this will surely be a test for him. Finally, I would get New Avengers #12 (Marvel, $3.99); I applaud their risky decision to put Chaykin and Deodato in the same book, and I look forward to them doing more of this when the time is right.

If I had $30, I’d get the second piece in the Flashpoint puzzle — Flash #12 (DC, $2.99). I’m a huge fan of Francis Manapul, and this series has given me that in spades. Unfortunately, DC is canceling the series with this issue — so I guess there will never be another Flash title… ever.

My other picks would start with Astonishing X-Men #37 ($3.99), which while I love Jason Pearson I might be bailing on this if he’s dropping off the series. Second would be Undying Love #2 (Image, $2.99), as I love Tomm Coker’s art. Third would be Hellboy: Being Human (Dark Horse, $3.50); I love the team-up of Mignola and Corben, and that luchadore comic they did with Hellboy awhile back was a favorite of mine.

Splurge: For splurging, I’d pick up the reprint of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s Fighting American ($19.99). I have a soft spot for patriotic heroes, and I hope this is something special akin to what Alan Moore did with Supreme.

Chris Mautner

Little Lulu Vol. 27

If I had $15: A new Little Lulu volume from Dark Horse is always a must-buy for me, so volume 27, The Treasure Map ($14.99), is pretty much a given for me at the $15 mark.

If I had $30: For me, the book of the week is clearly Garden, the latest manga from the ever avant-garde Yuichi Yokoyama, courtesy of Picturebox ($24.95). It’s an extended exploration of Yokoyama’s usual interests — discovery, motion, machinery, artificial “nature” and guys with weird things on their heads. In this book, a large group of people explore a large garden, with ever more surreal and stranger the deeper they progress. I hope to have a review of the book up either this week or next, but suffice it to say I really, really liked this book a lot and strongly recommend it.

Splurge: Nothing really that splurge-worthy for me this week, so I’ll use that money to help me pay for both books at once.

Brigid Alverson

Mega Man

If I had $15: I’d pick up the first issue of Archie’s new Mega Man series ($2.99), just to see what’s up with that. And then I’d add the seventh volume of Twin Spica ($10.95), a really great manga about a girl who wants to be an astronaut in Japan’s space program.

If I had $30: I’m having a rough week, so I’d load up with some lighthearted comics: Donald Duck #366 ($3.99), from BOOM! Studios, because it features a classic pirate tale and I’m a pushover for classic pirate tales; Love and Capes Ever After #4 ($3.99); and The Smurfs and the Howlibird ($5.99 for the paperback).

Splurge: It’s going to be Yoichi Yokoyama’s Garden ($24.99), although I had mixed feelings about his Travel: I really loved the experience of reading the book, but I didn’t like the mask-like faces he put on the humans. The non-human elements, and the sense that he gave of a real train journey (I take a lot of trains—he nailed it) is what made the book so great, but the figures were distracting. So I’ll give Garden a try, but in a way, I feel like it’s a book that I should read rather than a book I’ll enjoy curling up with.

Michael May

Moriarty #1

If I had $15, I’d start with Viper’s Missing Linx graphic novel ($7.95) about Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Skunk Ape, and the Yeti teaming up to fight a mad scientist. Then I’d go for Moriarty #1 ($2.99) because connecting your book to Sherlock Holmes is an easy way to get my money. And I’d finish off with Veronica #206 ($2.99), which kicks off a two-part crossover with next month’s Betty in which the girls resume their careers as groovy super spies.

If I had $30, I’d add the Hellboy: Being Human one-shot ($3.50) because it’s Hellboy, but also Hellboy and Roger. I miss Roger. I’d also grab Joe Lansdale and Sam Kieth’s 30 Days of Night: Night Again #1 ($3.99). I’m cautious about 30 Days of Night stories that aren’t by either Steve Niles or Ben Templesmith, but I’d buy a Lansdale/Keith book no matter what it was about. Then – thanks to Brigid’s pointing it out – I’d also add Donald Duck #366 ($3.99) for the pirates and the nostalgia. And finally, because I’ve got some money to burn, I’d grab Flashpoint #1 ($3.99). I’m far more interested in some of the side-series (Frankenstein, Lois Lane, and the stuff with Wonder Woman for example) than in the main story though.

Splurge: Geez, DC. Birds of Prey #12 comes out this week and you’re just now releasing the hardcover collection of the first six issues? I’ve been waiting for it, so I’m grabbing Birds of Prey, Volume 1: Endrun ($22.99) to finally see Gail Simone’s return to Black Canary and the girls, but can you please speed that process up some?

WonderCon

Conventions | Although final figures aren’t yet available, WonderCon organizers confirm attendance likely surpassed the 39,000 fans who came to last year’s convention. [Publishers Weekly]

Publishing | On his always-interesting new blog, Jim Shooter reminisces about the genesis of Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars: “We went through a number of ideas for names for the toy line and series. Mattel’s focus group tests indicated that kids reacted positively to the words ‘wars’ and ‘secret.’ Okay.” [Jim Shooter]

Publishing | Longtime print broker Chikara Entertainment, which also offered book packaging and consulting services, has closed. [ICv2.com]

Retailing | Sarah Cohen provides a snapshot of South Florida comic stores struggling amid a weak economy and a changing marketplace. Some retailers have changed their strategies by diversifying their merchandise, holding events and reaching out to customers via the Internet. Others, however, prefer to do business the way they always have. “Making events and using social networking is pushy,” says Jorge Perez, owner of A&M Comics and Books in Miami. “It might help business, but then you would be on the computer all day doing stuff like that.” A&M, the oldest comic store in Florida one of the oldest in the nation, has seen business drop by about 40 percent since 2008. [Miami Herald]

Retailing | Jamie Dirom briefly profiles Michael Bower, owner of the 17-year-old Phoenix Comics in Calgary: “I think part of the reason for the success of the business is being willing to admit when things aren’t working, and changing. That’s how a lot of businesses go out. They keep trying to do the same thing that’s not working over and over until they’re gone.” [Calgary Herald]

Retailing | The Fort Collins, Colorado, newspaper spotlights 19-year-old Nathan Tigges, who opened New Genesis Comics last month with his 18-year-old friend Andy Ricciardi. [The Coloradoan]

Galactus, by Moebius

Creators | Geoff Boucher profiles 72-year-old artist Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, who discusses his career, his failing eyesight, and his influence: “Someone wrote, ‘Moebius is a legendary artist.’ I put a frame around me. A legend — now I am like a unicorn.” [Hero Complex]

Creators | Gene Yang has joined the faculty of Hamline University’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program. [The Cool Kids Table]

Creators | Dan Parent talks about the upcoming Archie Comics miniseries starring Kevin Keller, Riverdale’s first openly gay resident. [The Associated Press]

Creators | Tiny Titans artist Art Baltazar is the subject of a longish profile in his local newspaper. [Daily Herald]

B.P.R.D.: Monsters #1, by Tyler Crook

Creators | Tyler Crook chats about following Guy Davis as artist on B.P.R.D.: “Coming after a dude like Guy Davis is rough. He put such a strong stamp on the B.P.R.D. world that it’s hard to tell sometimes what parts are just Guy’s style and what parts are really part of the world. But my goal is not really to fill Guy’s shoes. I’m not going to be doing a Guy Davis impersonation. Instead, I’m trying to bring my own energy and my love of the material and see if I can bring something different and good to the world. Working with Mike and everyone else has been awesome in this regard. They’ve encouraged me to just do my thing. And I’m trying my damnedest to do it to the best of my ability.” [Bloody Disgusting]

Comics | Todd Allen spotlights nine titles selling fewer than 20,000 copies that he thinks deserve more attention. [Indignant Online]

Jell-Oboy, by D4N13L

For fans of Mike Mignola, and of gelatin desserts, RIPT Apparel has premiered this “Jell-Oboy” shirt design by Bolivian artist Daniel, aka D4N13L, the guy behind “Undefined Age Martial Artist Tortoises,” “The Scarlet Caped Super Green Aquarrow Man’s Emblem,” “LadyPool” and other comic book-themed tees. The design’s available as adult and kids T-shirts, hoodies and onesies.

Kirby King of Comics

Hello and welcome to What Are You Reading? Our special guest today is Ryan Cody, creator of Icarus and illustrator of Villains and Jesus Christ: In the Name of the Gun. You’ll be seeing more of Icarus around these parts starting very soon …

To see what Ryan and the Robot 6 crew have been reading lately, click below.

*****

Brigid Alverson

Strangers in Paradise

I bought a copy of Strangers in Paradise from author Terry Moore himself at C2E2, and it helped make the trip back go more quickly. This is a classic book that came out during my long hiatus from comics, and I’m glad to have finally discovered it. Just in the first few chapters Moore quickly sketches out a set of characters—Katchoo, Francine, and David—and sets the story barreling out of the gate at full speed. I love their personalities, his deft hand with dialogue, and the twists and turns of his stories, and I’m definitely signing on for the whole series.

I also read an advance copy of, One Soul, by Ray Fawkes, which is due out from Oni Press in May. Fawkes splits each page into a nine-panel grid and tells 18 stories in parallel on each two-page spread. His characters are widely separated in time and space and never actually meet, but they have a lot in common, and parts of their lives echo each other. I read it once, but I know I will have to read it a few more times, partly because it’s hard to keep 18 characters straight and partly because I know I’m going to see more in each re-reading; there are many patterns and subtleties that are only starting to emerge.

Carla Hoffman

New Mutants #23

I read New Mutants #23 this week and suddenly, everything makes sense. Having already read the start of this ‘new perspective’ side event (Age of X: Alpha and X-Men: Legacy #245) back when they were released, I wasn’t expecting much from chapter four of this storyline. At first glance and being thrown into the action as it were, the characters just seemed like pale Age of Apocalypse shadows and the idea of a full scale war between mutants and humans was something I know I had read before. There was nothing to stick to as far as where this whole thing would be going. But there is a new an interesting piece of the plot that shows up in New Mutants #23 that reminds me that no one would or should get away with printing the same old story, no matter how cool the character designs are. I’d tell you more but that would ruin the discovery of it on your own, which is always part of the battle. Mike Carey is giving nothing to you directly, but through deduction, you’re actually working right alongside Magneto and Rogue to find out what’s really going on.

So fellow X-Fans, take note: if you read the first part of Age of X and compared it to something you have already read or didn’t find anything interesting in the infinite war between mutants and humans, give it another chance. Read New Mutants #23 as see if the twist doesn’t make you think a little more kindly on those earlier issues. If it does, go back and read them (that’s X-Men: Legacy #245, New Mutants #22 then X-Men: Legacy #246; don’t worry there’s a list in the back) because I know you’ll catch things the second time around. Things that really do make this a story I don’t believe we’ve seen before, despite some familiar window dressing and the ever-so fashionable lens of nostalgia. I’m already starting to re-think my ideas of a ‘never-ending battle between mutant and man’ and what that really means…

Michael May

Colonia

I finished the first volume of Jeff Nicholson’s Colonia, but I don’t think I’ll be going back for the second. In his introduction, Nicholson compares what he’s trying to do with Bone, and I can see the similarities. As a concept, it works wonderfully: an innocent boy and a couple of companions enter a world filled with strange people and creatures, but instead of Bone‘s medieval-fantasy setting, Colonia‘s locale in based on the early days of New World colonization and piracy. That’s a milieu I enjoy more than the Middle Ages, so it should have worked.

Unfortunately, though his story is interesting, Nicholson isn’t as proficient as Jeff Smith at creating humor in his art. The dialog is funny enough, but the visual timing’s all off and Nicholson lacks Smith’s gift for expressive faces and slapstick. That also makes the characters rather flat, so while I really wanted Colonia to work, I kept thinking that I should be reading Bone instead, pirates or no pirates.

Tim O’Shea

Yo Gabba Gabba

I am kicking myself for neglecting to mention a release from last week, the 128-page Yo Gabba Gabba Comic Book Time anthology. Imagine a book with a range of talent including, Michael Allred, Philip Bond, J. Bone, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Evan Dorkin, Sarah Dyer, Chris Eliopoulos, Matthew Loux, J. Torres (who also co-edits the book with James Lucas Jones), and Dean Trippe (among many, many others). For whatever reason, I’ve never seen the Yo Gabba Gabba show, but despite my ignorance I immediately fell in love with this book. Why? Because Jamie S. Rich (who wrote the first story in this anthology) provides a story resolution that partially involves The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Seeing an Allred-drawn character singing Rolling Stones lyrics is the kind of left field moments I love in a story.

My tastes don’t lean toward horror or supernatural, but one has to take notice when BOOM publishes the first issue of a new Hellraiser series, written by Clive Barker. And there’s a back-up tale written by Larry Wachowski. I am a lousy judge of horror, but I speculate that the folks who enjoyed Hellraiser under Barker’s vision will really enjoy this book. Even though not a fan of the genre, I will admit I was impressed with the linework on the main title from Leonardo Manco.

Graeme’s post that praised BOOM! Studios’ Dracula: The Company of Monsters reminded me that I had allowed the comic to drop off my radar. That’s despite the fact I am a huge Kurt Busiek fan (see the aforementioned aversion to horror). But this week, prompted by Graeme, I read the series’ first volume (collecting issues 1-4) –a story created by Busiek and written by Daryl Gregory–and will likely try to track down the more recent issues. This modern day take on Dracula has him terrorizing board rooms–and gives us odd scenes of the vampire acclimating after his resurrection and reading the New York Times.

There’s no doubt that Marvel is flooding the market with Thor and Captain America one-shots, due to the upcoming theatrical releases. But Kieron Gillen actually pulls back the mask (real and metaphorical) on Batroc the Leaper–indulging in some interesting character exploration. I am hard pressed to recall another writer examining the fiscal and logistical challenges to the life of a villain. Added bonus: the 1967 battle between Batroc and Cap, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby from Tales of Suspense #85. It includes two great moments: Stan Lee having Cap mocking Batroc: “How’s this for some fancy stuff weeth zee hands” (as he punched the villain) and Lee shutting up and allowing Kirby to do a fight scene for one page (nine panels) with no dialogue.

Tom Bondurant

Green Lantern #64

Following Blackest Night, I had thought Green Lantern was in a bit of a rut, gazing into the Rainbow Lanterns’ collective navel without having much of a direction. However, I was pretty impressed with the first two parts of “War of the Green Lanterns” in GL #64 (written by Geoff Johns, penciled by Doug Mahnke, inked by Christian Alamy et al.) and Green Lantern Corps #58 (written by Tony Bedard, penciled by Tyler Kirkham, inked by Batt with Rob Hunter). GL #64 pulls together the past year’s plot threads into a neat little bundle of revenge, tied together with the longstanding notion that the Guardians’ omniscience doesn’t always make them right. What’s more, Krona’s plan involves the return of some “classic” Green Lantern mythology; and as ominous as those developments were, it was good to see Johns returning to them. Bedard and Kirkham come at the same events from a different perspective in GLC #58, but they too end up with our heroes facing overwhelming odds. “War of the Green Lanterns” could actually be that proverbial storyline which changes everything, but it’s setting up those changes nicely so far.

Having just spent some time with the ’70s Batman Family stories which reintroduced Kathy “Batwoman” Kane, I was delighted to see her return in Batman Incorporated #4 (written by Grant Morrison, drawn by Chris Burnham). The issue worked well as an interlude in Batman’s Argentinian adventure, but it may have worked even better as yet another giddy deconstruction/celebration of Goofy Sci-Fi Batman. Robin’s dialogue about “even the dog wear[ing] a mask … makes it all dumb instead of special[,] like it doesn’t matter anymore” is probably the most pointed criticism of the (for lack of a better term) “anti-goofy” reader. Still, once again Morrison has given meaning and resonance to a dusty corner of Batman lore, even echoing the great Alan Brennert’s treatment of an aging, wistful Batwoman in the classic “Interlude on Earth-Two” (Brave and the Bold #182, January 1982), while continuing to advance the “United Colors of Batman” theme he’s been working for the past five years. Just a really great issue all around, and I haven’t even mentioned Burnham’s wonderful work.

Ryan Cody

Sadly, for someone who claims to be a writer himself, I do not read as much as I should, and what I do read is mostly comics. One book I just finished was Kirby: King of Comics by Mark Evanier. I found a used copy at Hastings for $8 and thought there was no way to go wrong there. It’s basically a beautifully illustrated biography of Jack’s life in comics. It touches a little on his youth, mostly in how that affected his later ideas of the stories he wanted to tell, and goes through his long career. There was nothing scandalous or really mind-blowing about it, but it was a quick read and gave a good impression of the greatest comic creator ever. It also has some beautiful artwork in it including some variant designs for Marvel’s Norse Gods that are amazing.

The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women

Another recent book I read, and in part had read to me, was The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women by James Ellroy. It’s a biography that has the single focus of Ellroy trying to explain and come to terms with his relationship with women, and how those relationships reflect back to him being 10 and his mother being murdered. It has a snappy pace and is hilarious more often than not. Biographies are probably my favorite types of books when I do sit down to read, it’s often that the truth can be as entertaining as fiction if you care enough about the subject.

The artist side of me mostly follows other artists when it comes time to read comics. No matter how good the story is, if the art is boring to me, I can’t get through it. I really enjoy the B.P.R.D. and Hellboy books, Guy Davis did some fantastic work on those and Arcudi and Mignola have created a great universe for the characters. I try to follow Powers as much as I can, again I think the setting and relationships coupled with insanely talented art make for good reading. Last but not least, I just finished reading The Winter Men by Brett Lewis and John Paul Leon. That was fantastic, from plot, to script, to art, one of the best books I have read in a very long time. It had everything I love; crime, amazing powers, corruption, bad language and even a tiny bit of nudity. I highly recommend it.

It’s the end of an era. B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth: Gods #3 hits stores today, the final issue of the long-running Hellboy spinoff’s latest miniseries — and with it, the tenure of Guy Davis as the series’ regular artist draws to a close. Davis will be returning for the occasional project in Mike Mignola’s unique horror-adventure universe, and everyone involved gives his replacement, near-overnight success story Tyler Crook, their vote of confidence; given Mignola and company’s track record in selecting artists, from Davis to Duncan Fegredo to Richard Corben, I’m inclined to take them at their word. Even so, as I wrote at length the other day, Davis’ work on B.P.R.D with Mignola, lead writer John Arcudi, and colorist Dave Stewart (not to mention letterer Clem Robins and editor Scott Allie) has been one of the past decade’s absolute high-water marks for superhero (or supernatural action, if you prefer) comics. From sadness to spectacle, horror to humor, stunning creature designs to quiet character moments, there was pretty much nothing the guy couldn’t do.

In honor of Davis, Arcudi, Mignola, and Stewart’s remarkable achievement, I’ve selected a suite of my favorite moments from the Guy Davis era of B.P.R.D.. And in honor of the Ogdru Jahad, the Seven-Who-Are-One dark gods whose rise the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense is battling (perhaps in vain) to stop, I’ve expanded the list past our usual “Six by 6″ format to include seven stunning scenes. My hope is that they showcase the range, subtlety, sophistication, and power of one of the best artists working in genre comics — arguably in all of comics — today, and highlight just how well he and his collaborators worked together. Just be warned: SPOILERS AHEAD.

1. Sadu-Hem Reborn (B.P.R.D. Vol. 3: Plague of Frogs)

Demons, vampires, Nazi occult experiments run amok, Lovecraftian entities bent on destruction: Horror has always been the heart of the Hellboy universe. But while many comics display the trappings and markings of horror — after all, it’s as easy as drawing some rickety mansions and creepy creatures — it takes a real mastery of the form, of pacing and tone and knowing just what to show and how to show it to us, to make an image that genuinely unnerves, disturbs, frightens. That’s what Davis pulled off in his first full B.P.R.D. arc, with Mignola on scripting duties. When the mad priest the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Development had been tracking finally rips the shroud off the hulking, shambling monstrosity he’s been shepherding, the resulting vision — the evil cosmic entity Sadu-Hem in quasi-human form, or an “elephant-man fungus” as Mignola’s direction to Davis put it — is as horrifying to us as it is to Agent Kate Corrigan as she watches through the window. It’s the eyes that do it, the beady eyes in that massive fleshy head, staring right at us, recognizing us, knowing that we’re there. I feel exposed when looking at this page.

2. The Caverns of Num-Yabisc (B.P.R.D. Vol. 3: Plague of Frogs)

So we know Davis can draw awful things; turns out he can draw awe-inspiring things as well. During an out-of-body experience, the “anthro-amphibian” Abe Sapien has a vision of an underwater temple where dwells a giant jellyfish-like entity — one whose gills and markings bear a striking resemblance to his own. We soon find out that it was an attempt to harness the powers of this being that transformed an antebellum occultist named Langdon Caul into the fish-man we know and love today. But this initial revelation really needed to impress, since Abe’s secret origin was so very different from what most readers likely expected. (I assumed he was from some underwater race, not a one-off mystical mutation.) With Dave Stewart’s luscious blue-greens riding shotgun, Davis created a vista of vast yet simple splendor, and a deity of strange, sinister alien beauty.

3. In the Boardroom of the Black Flame (B.P.R.D. Vol. 5: The Black Flame)

When writer John Arcudi joined the B.P.R.D. team to take on lead writing duties, with Mignola as co-plotter, overseer, and impresario, the black humor always present in Hellboy and its spinoffs started burning darker and hotter than ever. No other sequence illustrates just how weirdly, creepily funny the book could be than this one from The Black Flame, in which the titular villain — a corporate C.E.O. with what eventually proves to be a very unfortunate fixation on Nazi occult programs — calmly strolls into a board meeting in full flaming-skull regalia and sacks his entire slack-jawed staff. Mignola says in the collection’s afterword that the sequence was his idea, but only because he thought it was the kind of thing Arcudi might write himself, showing just how fluid a collaboration the team’s work really is. The idea itself is a beaut, but it’s Davis’s masterful character design for the Black Flame and expertly calibrated body language and facial expressions for the man beneath the mask and his underlings that sell the sequence on the page. Simply put, these are two of my favorite pages from any comic ever: Bizarre, hilarious, perfectly paced, and utterly unforgettable.

4. The Death of Roger the Homunculus (B.P.R.D. Vol. 5: The Black Flame)

In an explosion that seemed to hit me nearly as hard as it hit the doomed members of the Bureau, Roger the Homunclus — a seemingly throwaway character born of a medieval alchemical experiment, revived and rescued by Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. centuries later, and until these three pages a surprisingly charismatic man of action in the team’s adventures — died. With him died the sense that B.P.R.D. would stick with a status quo: A motley crew of scientists, soldiers, and supernatural beings shutting down hotspots of evil activity around the world. No, in this book, our friends and heroes can die, and even the fact that they’re made out of mystically animated inanimate matter can’t put them back together again. It would take several more issues before the team truly gave up on the idea that Roger could be revived, but it was clear to me that all hope had vanished the moment I saw Davis’s menacing rendition of the Black Flame, small and silent and glowing with malice, standing in the corner, waiting to snuff out a hero’s life.

5. Katha-Hem Triumphant (B.P.R.D. Vol. 5: The Black Flame)

Talk about overturning the status quo. In this spectacular spread, Davis and company did more than kill off a character we believed untouchable — they tore up everything we thought we knew about how the world of Hellboy would work. Until the colossal entity called Katha-Hem appeared, towering over the fields and cities of Nebraska, the incidents faced by Hellboy and the Bureau were mostly localized in nature, to the extent that the team’s existence and activities could be kept, if not quite secret, than at least somewhat subdued in terms of public profile. But when the Black Flame and his plague of frogs summoned Katha-Hem, the world as we knew it changed. There’s no denying the existence, presence, and menace of the supernatural once it’s left a Godzilla-style trail of destruction through the American Midwest, killing untold thousands of people and thwarting the mightiest military the world has ever known. No longer was the B.P.R.D.’s mission a matter of small towns overrun by frog monsters or haunted by ghosts, or of abandoned castles occupied by vampire monarchs or relict Nazi scientists. Now it was a matter of stopping the destruction of life on Earth, on a scale no one could possibly miss. Davis’s gargantuan whale/slug/insect creature, bearing down on a town it dwarfed it size, brought this home in a way words could never do; leading up to it by showing us a chastened Black Flame, sitting with his arms on his knees like an exhausted commuter and barely able to articulate the magnitude of his transgression (“I…I think I made a mistake.”), simply proved that for Arcudi and Davis, character beats and world-changing two-page spreads were inextricably linked.

6. Abe Betrayed (B.P.R.D. Vol. 7: Garden of Souls)

Meet the men who drank champagne while their friend became a freak. “Are you the same men making rather merry as I changed from man to fish-creature?” Abe Sapien’s later words to his former colleagues in the Oannes Society — a Victorian cult dedicated to harnessing mystical oceanic energies in order to preserve humankind (well, some of it) in the face of the coming apocalypse, to which Sapien, in his former incarnation as the fully human Langdon Caul, once belonged — were quietly vicious, or as vicious as he dared to get when chatting with nearly 200-year-old cyborgs and übermenschen. But their response to him is even more vicious, in its way: They tell him that back before he transformed, he’d been 100% down with their “you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs” approach. Abe’s discovery of the story behind his creation in Garden of Souls was as shocking to him as it was to us. We’d known since his communion with the jellyfish god how he’d become an Icthys sapien, but neither he nor we had imagined that he’d originally set out on the journey that led him to his watery preservation tank for reasons as coldly, murderously utilitarian as those of the Oannes Society. The beauty of the sequence above lies in how Davis’s cross-cutting, figurework, and facial expressions reveal just how callous the Society could be — and how Abe’s glass-smashing rage at their betrayal of the man he once was comes with the knowledge that that man would have been just as cruel had their positions been reversed.

7. Daimio and Daryl (B.P.R.D Vol. 8: Killing Ground)

Here’s another desert-island page for me. Killing Ground was still another overturn-the-apple-cart arc for B.P.R.D., in which their field commander Ben Daimio’s terrible secret — that within him lurked a bloodthirsty god of the jungle, held back only by great effort — was revealed at terrible cost. It was also another case where seeds planted long ago — in this case Daryl, a hapless family man who’d been possessed by the rampaging spirit of the Northern wilderness called the Wendigo — blossomed and bore horrible fruit. As these two creatures ran amok in the B.P.R.D.’s mountain headquarters in a story as tense, claustrophobic, and sometimes explosively violent as Alien or The Thing, we wondered how the shattering of the Bureau by Daimio’s transformation would ever be resolved. In the end … it wasn’t. Escaping from the base and wandering into the snowy wastes, a devastated Daimio, the blood of countless friends and colleagues on his hands, sits and waits for what he knows must be coming. Then it’s there, an implacable spirit of vengeance, featuring one of Guy Davis’s strangest and scariest and most unique designs. And that’s how the team leaves us at the end of the arc: With a moonlit image of a guilty man, naked and alone, silently standing before a thing that should not be. There’s so more mystery and melancholy in this one eerily beautiful image by Davis than in many entire runs. As such, it’s a fitting symbol for a truly wonderful body of work.