Yesterday, I called my wife at work to ask what a good name would be for a rat, not a joke-name like Brie Larson or Whisker Briskly: Private Eye, but like a good name. She yelled “MR. COFFEE” and hung up. I don’t know what she was in such a hurry to get back to; if her students kept trying to defuse their practice-bomb without her, their grades and all those lives are on them, as far as I’m concerned. I respect her and her career, but when a man needs a rat-name for a podcast you can’t just cut the wire of the color you don’t like and hope for the best.
As I write this President Biden, Ol’ Best-Of-Bad-Options Joe, has announced $10,000 of student loan forgiveness, which on the one hand is a laughable amount that will help almost no one and will only give its opponents leverage and room to say “You already got what you wanted”, when in fact we did not. However: it was good timing that his announcement came today of all days, because I got a glimpse of my Comixology order for the week and uh, it came with one of these? Is that normal?
I’m sure it’s fine. It’s probably fine. Please hurry with that check, Joe.
[Update: Turns out this was for-real a hell of a lot of comics and made for a real slog in Gigantic Unbroken List form, so I played around with some collapse/expand plugins; if there’s no immediate, overwhelming backlash this might become the new format]
Collects Alien #7-12. Fresh horror from a galaxy full of nightmares! An off-world terraforming station manned by an Appalachian religious sect has been beset by an outbreak of Xenomorphs! Now, a brave woman dying from a rare disease must defend her flock against the most perfect killing organisms in the cosmos! Jane may be facing her last days trapped inside a failing body, but she has already given her all to keep the colony together – and she doesn’t intend to stop now. But as the Alien menace spreads, secrets about Jane’s fellow Spinners are revealed and the once tight-knit community is torn apart. Can the survivors find a sanctuary that hasn’t yet been overrun? Will help arrive in time? Or will the true purpose behind the isolated colony destroy all hope? Alien, Vol. 1: Bloodlines was an enormously pleasant surprise, telling a deeply human story in the clutches of everyone’s favorite mechano-phallic monstro, and while this description makes me think it’s probably an in-title miniseries unrelated (or at least not directly continuing) the events of Vol. 1, this creative team has earned more than enough credit for me to return for the second volume. Plus, let’s be honest, “station manned by an Appalachian religious sect has been beset by an outbreak of Xenomorphs” sounds like it’s finally going to give us the straight-up religious-horror nightmare that the franchise has always danced around to greater and lesser degrees thematically, symbolically, linguistically, pretty much every way but literally. “Collects Devil’s Reign (2021) #1-6, Devil’s Reign: Omega (2022) #1. The story that’s been building for years is finally here! Wilson Fisk has risen from Kingpin of Crime to mayor of the biggest city in America. Now he’s going to bring his full criminal and political power to bear on the super heroes who call NYC home! The man who once destroyed Daredevil has targeted the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Captain America, Spider-Man, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and more. Fisk has an army of super villains at his command – including Crossbones, Taskmaster, Typhoid Mary, Shocker, Whiplash, Rhino and Kraven – and that’s just his opening salvo. Wait until you meet his Thunderbolts! But Mayor Fisk isn’t the only one with ambitions – and you know what they say about honor among thieves. From the blockbuster creative team of DAREDEVIL comes the final act in Wilson Fisk’s master plan!” I am…reluctantly, angrily drawn into yet another massive crossover event by the inescapable gravity well of my love for Chip Zdarsky’s Daredevil. It’s really friggin’ good! We’ve been re-litigating the value of Wilson Fisk a baddie in recent years, between Insomniac’s Spider-Man game, Into The Spiderverse, and the pretty decent Hawkeye progrum, and absolutely no one has used it to better effect than the ol’ Chipper. If I understand correctly the title is continuing after this event, but I don’t see any way this doesn’t conclude with a final-as-anything-can-be-in-comics conflict between Fisk and Murdock. Collects Devil’s Reign: Superior Four #1-3 and Devil’s Reign: Spider-Man. Listen: Time makes fools of us all. Collects Eternals (2021) #7-12. The Eternals have learned the truth of their existence. Their society is in shambles. Who can lead them? Who is the visionary that can raise them up from the ashes? Hail Thanos…the Mad Titan…Eternal Prime?! After warring with the Deviants for a million years, our disheartened Eternals have had enough. They want to end the endless war, to live in peace side by side. Unfortunately, the Deviants have other ideas. And so the Eternals undertake a pilgrimage to Avengers Mountain, the massive structure that was once one of their Celestial gods. But the Avengers are done with the Eternals’ secrets, and they demand explanations! And when Ajak makes contact with her Celestial god, will the answers she receives help guide the Eternals or send them further into disarray? The volume previous to this is my only experience with the Eternals, save the movie that, several months later, is still paused at the 1/3 mark on my Disney+, where it shall remain, like a giant stone Celestial gripper jutting into the stratosphere but somehow not into any history books. That said, I enjoyed the hell out of that first volume, which combines Gillen’s famously sharp writing (did you know that the Earth is both alive and hilarious?) with a flavor of superpowered storytelling that carries a markedly different tang than most Marvel fare; certainly the mythological nomenclature snags fast on my love of religion, just as the lists and divisions and classification systems–the choirs, if you will–of Eternals and Deviants also light my shit up like pinball machine, so my experience was far from objective or unbiased, and also it was awesome. Less awesome: the events at the end of Vol. 1, which reveal that every Eternal resurrection comes at the cost of one mortal human life, the preservation of which is supposed to be their whole friggin’ deal. This puts their struggle with Thanos–whose aspect here is much more Johnny The Homicidal Maniac murder-ballerina than guy who doesn’t understand resource-management but has a great voice so people listen to him–in an entirely different light. A spooky light, under which everyone’s speech-bubbles will be black for some reason and the Hot Topic sale never ends! “In the aftermath of an unthinkable act, Radek and the golem decide to work with the Resistance, only to find themselves falling into a deadly trap. Will they make it out alive and save as many people as possible, or will this be the end of hope in the city?” First off, I love that the above blurb for the entire collected series is not at all interested in catching you up to speed or prepping you for the experience, that is not its problem; if you aren’t already hip with Radek and the golem you better catch the fuck up. Or you can go check the blurb for the first issue, which informs us that the who, where, and what are The Resistance, Prague, and that the Nazis have introduced supernatural warfare into their litany of sins against humanity, forcing Praguers to once again call upon their oldest defender: the Golem, who I can only hope will proceed to absolutely wreck the racist jackasses who threaten his charges, be they human or monstrous, in the name of HaShem. Y’all know I love me some supernatural warfare, and have a fondness for Judaism that hasn’t yet resulted in a restraining order, so I’m predisposed to be hype for this one. Collects King Conan (2021) #1-6. An old and terrible danger threatens to end King Conan’s saga once and for all! Jason Aaron and Mahmud Asrar return to the saga of Conan – and together they take the Cimmerian futher than has ever been revealed in any media to date! As Robert E. Howard posited, when King Conan of Aquilonia grows restless on the throne, he sails west, toward land and adventure unknown. Now, see the first step of that fateful journey! When an unholy alliance is forged and fallen warriors rise to fight again, will Conan finally be forced to succumb to the lure of cursed sorcery? And what of his son, Prince Conn, and the kingdom of Aquilonia left behind? Prepare for the adventure of a lifetime, the end of an era and the final stand against Thoth-Amon! Do you wonder where the self resides, is it in your head or between your sides, and no matter where it resides, what is it in mine that makes me such an absolute fucking mark for our favorite surly Cimmerian? Could it be his stated policy of responding to any and all challengers, whether man, magic or monstro, with a donation in their name to Stabitat For You-Manity??? Whatever it is, sign this citizen up for the deluxe package posthaste. “Acclaimed Filipino cartoonist and three-time National Book Awardee Manix Abrera, with ABLAZE, are proud to present his graphic novel “12”. Ya gotta love the chance to support a marginalized creator’s voice and snag a collection of short stories at the same time! Ya just gotsta! It is not an optional love. I’m intrigued by the premise of wordlessness and the promise of a wide breadth of weirdness and emotional tumult. There’s another entry below that deals with longer-form dialogue-free storytelling below, but for this entry I’m specifically fascinated by the notion that these are explicitly intended to transcend linguistic barriers through non-verbal storytelling; even in other silent-storytelling works I’ve experienced, I still tend to think of them as being framed in English because, well, I think in English, right? Kinda? And if you’d asked me with no prep I would assume that a french silent-story would still…feel kinda French, I guess???, but is that nonsense? That seems like it might be nonsense. THIS IS MORE CONFUSED THAN I LIKE TO GET IN THE PREVIEW AND INITIAL THOUGHTS, MANIX ABRERAS. Well done. “Disturbing dreams shake Alistair “Allie” Jacobi’s nights. But his daytime life is not much better. His father, the boss of a criminal organization, has decided that it’s time for his son to gain experience in the underworld. So Allie, 19, finds himself doing an “internship” in a convenience store run by the man who, under the cover of home deliveries, is selling drugs to the entire city. To teach him the “job” is Christopher, an older guy. The bond created between the two of them will give life to dark presences and disturbing and enigmatic premonitions.” In the course of snagging the cover-art to post above, I found myself confused because it appears to transpire that the physical and digital Vol. 1 collections have different covers? A cover that you may notice is significantly less, well, sensual and pretty gay, right? Like I mean that sincerely, not as a childish dig, I should hope I don’t have to say, and in flipping through looking for a cover gallery I can confirm the book itself is indeed hella gay, but it’s interesting and very strange to me that the digital market should, one presumes, be seen by publishers as a more welcoming place for an LGBT+ work than the physical market, despite the physical market and its indie scene still being where so much of the work done by and for the LGBT+ community does and presents its work. What’s that about? And the physical cover above doesn’t even list it as Vol. 1? Man what a weird fuckin industry. “Meet your new favorite food critics: a chubby wolf named Mita Jiro and a ripped tiger named Yanagi Kagetora. Kagetora used to eat to live, but that changed when he met Jiro — who lives to eat! Jiro is more than happy to help his striped friend explore the restaurants and delicacies tucked within their city, and he enjoys all their finds with great relish. There’s nothing better than a hot meal to bring two (animal) people together in this deliciously illustrated story.“ Listen: I don’t know whether these two are just pals, or smoochin’, or what, but as long as they visit lots of hole-in-the-wall curry bistros and little-place-I-know ramen bars and similar, I’m along for the ride. I hope the food looks delicious and that, as the cover would indicate, Ramen Wolf is an annoying goofball who gets on Curry Tiger’s nerves in an endearing way. END OF THOUGHTS. Where is Lee Harvey Oswald’s body? The Kennedy assassination is a rat’s nest of conspiracy theories: mafia involvement, a second gunman, a government cover-up… but the most important one may just be the idea that the body in Oswald’s grave is not actually Lee Harvey. Meet the ragtag group of “useful idiots” unwittingly brought together to clean up the crime of the century — a wannabe cowboy from Wisconsin, a Buddy Holly-idolizing (former) car thief, a world-weary Civil Rights activist ready for revolution, and a failed G-Man who still acts the part. Eisner Award-nominated writer, producer, and director Christopher Cantwell (Iron Man, The United States of Captain America) and artist Luca Casalanguida (Lost Soldiers, Scout’s Honor) deliver an off-kilter crime thriller set in the shadows of history’s greatest conspiracy! Collects Regarding the Matter of Oswald’s Body #1-5. I love an historical conspiracy, I love a reverse-heist, I love that rascal-bastard Oswald thanks to The Department Of Truth, and I enjoyed the hell out of Scout’s Honor; I think legally I was required to buy this, and I’m terrified of the consequences if I should be found negligent. I also love the idea of a Man of Mystery’s mortal remains becoming an Artifact; where is it? Why do we need to know where it is? If it isn’t where it’s supposed to be, why isn’t it, and what is where it’s supposed to be? Why the hell does any of it matter? I hope I get to find out, although given the nature of mysteries I have a feeling the trail of breadcrumbs and the following of it will be more fun than the lost German children or the crouton-swollen pigeon at either end. And that’s not a complaint! It’s fine! I’m grateful to be here! Oh god please don’t redact me, I have a small handsome cat-son and a wife with a Pusheen-calendar habit that’s wildly out of control! Yesterday: New Orleans’ greatest hero, ROGUE SUN, was murdered. Today: rebellious teenager DYLAN SIEGEL discovers that Rogue Sun was his estranged father, Marcus—and that he’s inherited his father’s mantle. Tasked with protecting our world from the forces of the supernatural—and solving his father’s murder—Dylan will be forced to come to terms with the man he’s spent the majority of his life hating. From acclaimed writer RYAN PARROTT (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Dead Day) and rising-star artist ABEL (Harley Quinn, Crimes of Passion) comes A SUPERNATURAL MURDER MYSTERY that explores the complicated bond between father and son and cements itself squarely in a corner of the MASSIVE-VERSE! Collects ROGUE SUN #1-6 Select praise for ROGUE SUN: “Traditional hero storytelling styling and a throwback sensibility—in a well-told and fun manner.” —The Hollywood Reporter’s HeatVision “Incredibly accessible and is an easy pick up for anyone who loves superheroes and wants something a little different.” —AIPT This seems suspiciously tailored to me; reluctant inheritance of a mantle, superheroics clashing with the supernatural from the beginning, father-son issues, the solving of a supernatural murder-mystery. I feel as thought I’m being preyed upon here, predated, and like every livestock-animal I have become accustomed to my captivity and sprawl willingly upon the dinner-table. “STEP BY BLOODY STEP may be my new favorite comic. SPURRIER, BERGARA, and LOPES have created something that celebrates everything comics can be: mysterious, inventive, bursting with imagination, and also incredibly heartfelt without ever saying a word.” —JEFF LEMIRE (Sweet Tooth, THE BONE ORCHARD MYTHOS) THERE IS A GIRL. She has no memory and no name. Nothing but a GUARDIAN. An armored giant who protects her from predators and pitfalls. TOGETHER THEY WALK across an extraordinary fantasy world. If they leave the path the air itself comes alive, forcing them onwards. Why? The girl doesn’t know, but there’s worse than beasts and bandits ahead. CIVILIZATION, with its temptations and treacheries, will test their bond beyond its limits. STEP BY BLOODY STEP is a fantasy opus from the Eisner Award nominees behind CODA (sélection officielle Angoulême 2021): MATIAS BERGARA (Hellblazer, THE SCUMBAG) & SI SPURRIER (X-Men Legacy, Hellblazer, The Spire). Breaking new ground for the possibilities of sequential art, this completely wordless visual feast will delight fans of Princess Mononoke, ISOLA, and the visionary works of Moebius. Collects STEP BY BLOODY STEP #1-4 Select praise for STEP BY BLOODY STEP: “Rewards rereads. The visual storytelling is intuitive, but still kind of unique, and EW can confirm that subsequent reads can shed light on key details or transitions that may have gone unnoticed the first time.” —Entertainment Weekly “Full of grandiose environmental spectacle and giant-vs.-monster action, but there’s just as much magic in the smaller moments, which show off a different side of BERGARA’s ingenuity.” —Polygon “A gorgeously drawn introduction to a bizarre, fascinating, and wordless world.” —Comic Book Resources I’ve touched briefly before on limited use of dialogue as a tool for encouraging, and indeed frequently requiring greater creativity and efficiency in visual storytelling, and the prevalence of these traits in YA and children’s media making them well worth the time and attention of the growed-big reader. Given that all signs point to this not being a work intended for wee boogens–the observant reader will note the word ‘Bloody’ in the title–the creators have that much larger a challenge ahead of them in implementing that kind of storytelling, given that their audience is one much more accustomed to their comics generally having like, all the words. Life at the Otogi household has gotten much more lively now that Kanshi has moved in. Nico continues to work on using magic to help others, but fellow witch Nemu Miyao arrives with terrible news—there’s a warlock after Nico! Meanwhile, while patrolling the school, Kanshi runs afoul of the enemy. The prophesied disaster is about to strike! Vol. 2 was actually extremely beefy narratively speaking, introducing two new main-cast characters powerfully different motivations and personalities to complicate the dynamic while still building on the impending prophecy-disaster that’s been brewing since Vol. 1; I don’t thiiiiiiink we’ve met any other witches of significance yet, and certainly no warlocks, so that’ll add even more colors to the storytelling palette, and I can’t wait to see how they mix and exactly what kind of Grumpy Ogre Boyfriend they make. So that’s me this week, guys, gals, nonbinary pals and N/A. And now, being mildly sick, I will retire to my divan to watch Picket Fences, blow my nose too frequently, play Valkyria Chronicles 4, and have my body temperature fluctuate wildly and erratically. What did you all get? Do you think the tiger and the wolf will ever figure out that you can make curry ramen? Were would you hide Oswald’s body? Scream you answers to the North, and then repeat them down in yonder comment section. (I have to mention my newsletter in every article, and how if you sign up for it here you get one (1) email at the start of the month with a brief round-up and link-list of everything I wrote on the previous page of the calendar; what I haven’t been able to tell you until now is that by doing so, you’ll secure your right to a piece of exclusive, collectible content in every issue that I will never publish on this site, social media or anywhere else on the internet. Trust me, you want this, come check it out.) I’ve been one poor correspondent
A new 2022 series is already listing three issues, so unless they decide to group and collect those as Vol. 3 (not likely, but not without precedent), I doubt we’ll see more from this specific creative team after Vol. 2, although writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson is staying on board so the new series will at least be consistent on that axis! That dripping, yonic axis.
Also up this week is Devil’s Reign: Superior Four, which collects the three issues of Superior Four and the Devil’s Reign: Spider-Man one-shot. It’s not that I’m not interested in that–every time ‘superior’ pops up in a villainous context Marvel I enjoy it, historically speaking–but definitely not interested in collecting a system of satellite-titles orbiting around a crossover event when the entire Devil’s Reign Companion or similar will doubtless be collected in an omnibus at some point, as War of the Realms was a couple of months ago and as King In Black will be in I thiiiiink a couple of months? I’ve grown past the need to collect all the colors of Stone for the new narrative Infinity-Gauntlet Marvel finds a way to release every year or two.
The Fantastic are no more – long live the Superior Four! Otto Octavius has acquired a taste for the infinite. Empowered by Wilson Fisk, Doctor Octopus faces a tantalizing, unprecedented opportunity to scour the Multiverse, amassing an army of…himself! Theirs is a fighting force to march on our reality, proving the supremacy of Octavius once and for all! But as these Doc Ock variants begin their assault, can they set aside their egos to work together – or will their megalomania unravel the fabric of the Multiverse? Meanwhile, the events of DEVIL’S REIGN have had a profound impact on Doctor Octopus’ arch-foe, Spider-Man. And now the newly returned Rose – desperate to prove he’s a bigger bad than his father, the Kingpin, ever was – has the web-slinger in his crosshairs!
I ask you: how am I–me, a simple dumbass–expected to resist Oops! All Octopodes! when it is a well-known fact that my favorite of all webslinging adventures was Dan Slott’s Superior Spider-Man? I am but a man, your Honor, subject to a man’s failings and elemental weaknesses to that little bowl-cutted weirdo. Plus, I looked it up, and it seems like there will only be three Devil’s Reign trades: The one above, this one, and an X-Men one to follow next week, so maybe Marvel their learned their lesson; Absolute Carnage, War Of The Realms and King In Black were all so huge and sprawling that the omnibuses (which are coming out years after the actual crossover events) are the only way to experience the entire story without spending more than a hundred dollars on titles that you may or may not actually have any interest in just to see how tangentially they were related to the main plot-arc. There I justified it, shut up and let me read about my Big Green Nerd, Flaming Dead Nerd, Pointy Canadian Nerd, and Nerd Classic™️.
ISidenote, consider this your friendly reminder to stop using ‘golem’, which is a specific thing in a real human religion, as a shorthand for ‘magical/divine/mechanical construct’ in your fiction and D&D games and similar; come up with your own cool shit, it’ll be more fun and more memorable for being yours. Here, have these to start you off:
-Thaumautomaton
-Hex-Mechs
-Mannequinfernals
-Pantheonstruct
See! It’s not hard! Even a dumbass like me can do it! Go to town.
Jason Aaron does reliably good-to-great work, including an ongoing Conan series to which this apparently serves as a conclusion or coda and Savage Avengers, when Conan–if you can believe it–was an Avenger, and like–it’s not that I’m not interested in Prince Conn and Thoth Amon and Roshamon and Gone Baby Gone and The Adventures of Tintin, but I also don’t have any particular investment in them; I’m just here to watch that big sulky boi fuck shit up, sandals treading jeweled thrones and whatnot, and of that I believe I can rest safely assured.
Twelve remarkable stories, weird and surreal, thought-provoking yet funny,
sometimes disturbing, others terrifying, but nonetheless always enchanting.
Twelve genuinely touching stories, all drawn in Manix’s engaging style,
devoid of words but communicating loudly.
Each story with its own charm, and intriguing twists – a young man spends his entire life searching for answers but shock awaits when he finally gets that eureka moment; someone finds love that unexpectedly finds somebody else; two men argue over who goes first on an escalator; a mother and daughter fight over a cockroach; a drunk man urinates on a tree and gets a big surprise – making you wonder how these mundane plots can turn out bizarrely, prompting you to reflect and crave for more!
What is the meaning of life? Is finding happiness worth it when you lose what really matters the most? Would you even know what matters the most?
Embrace pain and sorrow. Hope for love and will for hope.
Manix Abrera’s 12 breaks all language barriers, cutting straight to your soul, touching your heart in ways you cannot imagine.“
In any event I’m always here for a supernatural crime-story, and look, sometimes smoochin’ leads to stabbin’, sometimes drugs lead to hugs, it’s a big world, and sometimes you have to lead a life of crime because you’re a psychic, we’ve all been there, we all know this classic way.
A quick bit of research reveals that this “MASSIVE-VERSE!” actually began with and includes Radiant Black, which was extremely enjoyable and to which I thought this bore striking similarities even before I discovered that connection, so that’s fun! Image has always been the Nintendo of the big three; DC and Marvel have their stables of capes and have had since before World War II, which allows Image to focus on not necessarily weirder stuff, but different enough to have developed a distinct flavor of superheroism, what with your Invincibles and Spawns, and Witchblades and similar, not all of which are to my taste (those last two are a little 90’s for me, although as the man said, kids love chains). It’ll also be nice to get in on the ground floor of a sandbox for connected storytelling; the last time we had one of those worth keeping up with was Black Hammer, and while I’m no more bored with the Batted and Spidered-Men than anyone else it is very nice to have options that aren’t locked into the two main, pre-established universes.
There’s also a great pedigree on display here; The Scumbag is a delightful exercise in gross excess, as I’ve noted before, but quite apart from its good-natured determination to make the reader go “AW JEEZ, EW, C’MON” on every page it has a level of visual complexity and sense of scene and blocking that I think will be a huge strength; probably fewer dick jokes. Probably.
There’s no sign yet of whether said disaster will mark the end of the series or simply the end of the first arc, and frankly neither would surprise me given the uptick in limited-volume manga series we’ve been seeing gain prevalence in the Western market.
I’ve been too, too hard to find