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Newly Released Graphic Novels & Collected Comics – Sept. 15, 2015 Edition

September 15, 2015 by krisis

Sometimes being a comics fan is about branching out.

As I have documented in the past, I started reading comics with Marvel’s X-Men #3 in 1991. At the time I had no aspirations of reading other titles or publishers – I just wanted to know what these mutants were all about. However, once I visited a comic store, the purchase pattern started expanding. All the X-Men. Then a bit of Image. Oh, and Wonder Woman of course. Hey, these new Dark Horse superheroes look cool!

That’s part of why I like putting together this list. I’m a complete Marvel Zombie, a phrase historically indicating someone who reads the entire Marvel line. However, I’m not just a Marvel fan – I’m a fan of the comic medium. That means sometimes I need to just see what’s out there to break out of my normal fan comfort zone.

Hopefully this list helps you with that, too!

Crush of the Week: Heart In a Box OGN

Buy this comic. Buy it. Buy it!

Kelly Thompson is the brilliant author of the CBR “She Has No Head” column and the books The Girl Who Would Be King and Storykiller who finally exploded as a comic author in 2015 with Jem from IDW and Captain Marvel and the Carole Corps from Marvel. She is the real deal when it comes to amazing characters, and she also weaves in a thick vein of feminism (i.e., everyone has an equal opportunity) into all of her work. This is her first original graphic novel, paired with artist Meredith McClaren, about a girl who needs to literally put her heart back together after a breakup. You need it.

Interesting Unknown: Universal War One

From writer/artist Denis Bajram, the solicit: The whole world is at war. And it’s about to get worse. 2058. Humanity has colonized our entire solar system. In the middle of a civil war between the core planets and distant outlying planetary settlements, an immense black wall appears, cutting our solar system in two.”

This is a French comic translated and released by a Marvel imprint. The confusing thing is that it’s hit hardcover before – once for the original series, and once for the follow-up Revelations. This is longer than each of those , but not long enough to be both of them in one book(the original series were 64pg issues, the follow-up 48 – we’d have to assume 20% ads to fit into this sub-300pg book, which is high). I’m not sure what to tell you, but it looks cool!

Now, on to Marvel and the rest of the publishers! [Read more…] about Newly Released Graphic Novels & Collected Comics – Sept. 15, 2015 Edition

#MusicMonday: “Open Window” – Sarah Harmer

September 14, 2015 by krisis

At 1:30 PM on Saturday it was raining in Maryland.

I love the rain. Maybe it’s because I’m not a hot weather person or someone who spends much time outside. I think it has more to do with the cement porch on our row home on 64th street growing up. I would sit on the stoop when it rained and watch it come down safe from the storm, and enjoy that spicy cement petrichor of the city that followed.

I love the rain, but I’ve also never planned an outdoor wedding in a state park. That’s what I was considering at 1:30 PM on Saturday as our car idled at the foot of a little hill that lead up to the pair of pavilions that would house our good friend Karen’s wedding to her partner Matt. From our position, the rain seemed less lovable.

Karen was one of my earliest and most-persistent theatre friends at Drexel, and we worked on a run of shows together. She is like a Chaotic Good version of a typically mean Kristen Schaal character. Also, she is a experienced alto, a lawyer, and a librarian. As with E, she is one of those human beings that can and will achieve seemingly anything set before her.

I finished lacing up my boots and we mounted steps set into the hill. It was raining hard and I tilted my head sideways to keep my lacquered blue hair safe under E’s umbrella, lest my Super Goo [actual product name] run down my face in rubbery sluices. We did not know anyone in the pavilion. We picked up a pair of programs mounted on wooden handles, a bit spongey from the rain. Printed on the rear was SATB version of Charles Welsey’s “Hallelujah.” We squinted at the first measure to see if the starting pitch in bass was a G or an Ab and E gave me my starting pitch.

It rained during the ceremony, which was delightfully rooted in literature, law, and pop culture. At one point a sustained peal of thunder caused the pavilion to shudder, and while some guests winced Karen grinned madly and gave us all a thumbs up. It was an extremely Karen moment. Inside the pavilion there was love.

After the ceremony, we guests shuffled through the rain across a stone patio to a second pavilion. Inside this one there was magic – lights and glass and color and a murmuring of friends reuniting. I hewed closely to Hillary and her husband, who I can never spend enough time with, and their friend Amanda, who I have met a half a dozen times yet never had a conversation with. We discovered a guest book was full of empty pockets and were supplied with library cards on which we could write our notes.

I decided to catalog the check-outs and returns of our relationship, Karen and Peter: A Brief History (abridged). There was a gap in the middle 00s as we graduated and Karen accumulated degrees, which ended on E and my wedding day; Karen sang “Open Window” for our first dance. I still remember our first listen to Sarah Harmer’s record, driving around in Karen’s dinged little car to buy groceries or supplies for a fraternity event. The memory is mirrored by dozens (if not hundreds) of occasions of E and I singing through the entire You Were Here LP in our car, trading harmony and vocal percussion, me crying during the refrain “Lodestar” every single time.

I looked up from my sketching of our timeline to see that it wasn’t raining anymore. The sun was low and obscured, casting a pinkish hue across the cement patio between the two pavilions. It was perfect light – a sustained “magic hour” to capture every wedding memory in photograph. (“Are you a photographer,” our neighbor inquired later as I extolled the virtues of the light. “No, I learned it from E.” “Oh, she’s a photographer? “No, she’s an an engineer, but her degree is in photography.”) I heard a certain melody lilting through the air…

Here, witnesses appear
And recognize how sacred
Love can be when stated

I leapt up from my seat on our bench to find E already on the patio waiting to dance. We spun slowly and whispered the melody into each other’s ears, pausing occasionally to smile away a potential sob.

As the song ended, a whirling dervish of smiles and flowing white enveloped us in a muscular hug: another perfect memory with Karen.

Review: Birthright, Vol. 1 – Homecoming, by Williamson & Bressan

September 13, 2015 by krisis

Image Comics knows what’s up with finding readers outside of the Direct Market. Valiant, too. Really, everyone except DC and Marvel.

These companies realize that buying the first collection an untested property from an author you may or may not know is a risky proposition, and generally not something you’ll plunk a $20 down for. That’s why nearly every Image first volume trade paperback is a handy $9.99 – which puts it in the five to eight dollar range when you buy it online.

That’s the story of how I wound up with a copy of Birthright, Vol. 1 – a $6 gamble on a book with a beautiful cover that evokes Sword In The Stone with hints of more dire elements along the edges. I was completely unfamiliar with creator Joshua Williamson by virtue of him solely writing for DC after his first pair of creator-owned works, both short-form. That’s changed in the past two years, with Williamson writing a trio of ongoings for Image – Ghosted, Nailbiter, and Birthday (plus Robocop for BOOM!).

When I wrote up Nailbiter in last week’s new comic roundup and decided to grab the first volume (again: $6), I realized I had another Williamson book in my in box (an actual longbox) waiting to be read!

How was it?

Birthright, Vol. 1 – Homecoming

Written by Joshua Williamson with art by Andrei Bressan and color by Adriano Lucas

#140char review: Birthright is Goonies crossed w/Sword In the Stone plus something sinister, like Harry as an agent of Voldemort. Bressan’s art = perfection.

CK Says: Buy it!

Birthright is a batter of different genre tropes that baked up into something a lot tastier than its individual ingredients.

Birthright is primarily a Chosen One narrative in the Joseph Campbell model, like Star Wars and Harry Potter before it. Where it deviates is that we’re getting the story after the fact, and we see that part of the reason all of those stories end so pat is that the orphan hero tends to make some choices that haunt him after his victory. That’s the case here with young Mikey, who disappeared into the woods on an early birthday without a trace during a game of catch with his dad.

Here’s where creators Joshua Williamson and Andrei Bressen do something a little weird. They spend their start-up issues focusing on the human trauma behind a child who disappears, writing a family drama and a police procedural for a few pages before the fantastic main plot gets underway. It’s a risk. It gets a little too simple at points (random cop dude insists, “He is a security risk.” To what, exactly?). There’s a repeated rubber-band snap as we get yanked out of the fantasy-themed pages we crave and back into a dingy interrogation room. Yet, that tension and genre-hopping is what marks Birthright as not the hero story we’ve come to expect. It’s what makes this book a page-turner even before the biggest twist is unfurled.

The remainder of that success comes from artist Bressen and a remarkable set of colors from Adriano Lucas. Many indie comics are well-executed but don’t achieve the right color palette or gradient shading, but here Lucas breathes three-dimensional life into Bressen’s characters. They nearly leap off the page when they are in motion.

It’s difficult to say more without completely spoiling the super-punch surprises of the plot here. It turns out that the fantasy world has an ongoing relationship with Earth, as represented by several unusual visitors who have crossed over. They are working at cross purposes to each other, and it’s hard to know who to trust – especially if you are a family that has been shattered by grief for the past year. Would you believe anyone who told you what you wanted to hear and offered you a means of putting your life back together? Or, would you be skeptical of everything offered to you after such a tragic loss? How Mikey’s family answers these questions divides them down the middle.

Ultimately, the heroic tale and the familial drama are one and the same, and to enjoy them both you might need to forgive the police procedural portion of its weaker spots. What shines through each element is that the whole Chosen One business is unfair. It picks on kids who don’t know who they are or want to be and it tears families apart by necessity. Every one of the four family members has been damaged in the process, and with so much book ahead of us it’s unknowable whether they can help each other heal or if the wounds will just fester.

The dual-worlds narrative plus a last page reveal might leave you a little cynical that this is very much a post-Saga derivative. I’m optimistic. I believe in Williamson’s easy scripting and the consistently gorgeous visuals from Bressan and Lucas enough that I’m signing on for a full-priced second volume. Birthright has the potential to be a lasting epic if it can keep up the momentum of this first five-issue sprint.

Marvel Now In Hindsight: Every Writer, Ranked

September 10, 2015 by krisis

ANMN-promo Next month, Marvel launches an all-new era of series and storytelling (with the same history and continuity) called “All New, All Different Marvel!”

What does that really mean? Think of it this way – Marvel treats every few years of their comics as like a TV Season or one of their Cinematic Phases. Every comic released from October 2012 to right now was part of “Marvel Now.” As of the end of this month, every one of those comics will end, and we’ll start a new season or phrase, called All-New, All-Different Marvel.

That means we just had three whole years of brilliant, interconnected storytelling in the largest and most long-running shared universe in the world – and I read every comic along the way.

As a look back at what was awesome about Marvel Now, I’m ranking every writer in the bullpen. What’s great about this list even the writers at the bottom of the rank turned in some five-star issues for me, but the ones at the top are the unquestionable best-of-the-best of Marvel Now – they write the books I immediately snag from the box and read in the middle of the floor like an eager little kid.

The criteria: Writers had to be the sole pen behind more than six issues or more than a single arc in the main Marvel Universe during Marvel Now, beginning with Uncanny Avengers in October, 2012 and extending through titles currently in their Last Days arcs during Secret Wars like Magneto, Ms. Marvel, Loki, Black Widow, and Punisher.

Honorable Mention: Warren Ellis – If we let Ellis loose on this list he may very well be its ruler every time, so let’s call him “Warren Ellis the King Emeritus of Marvel”. His 2014 run on Moon Knight (go to the guide!) was a jagged reboot of eminent readibility and his Avengers Assemble (go to the guide!) team-up with Kelly Sue DeConnick was a delight. That’s what Ellis does for Marvel: parachutes in once a year to leave things nice and messy for the next writer up at bat. We love him for it.

In ANAD: Writing Karnak, the Inhuman. This should be pretty interesting since Karnak was dead last time I checked. He’s also one of the most interesting Inhumans, so getting him back under Ellis’s pen is an awesome development.

Now, on to the list! Do you have some different opinions? Sound off in the comments! [Read more…] about Marvel Now In Hindsight: Every Writer, Ranked

Newly Released Graphic Novels & Collected Comics – Sept. 8, 2015 Edition

September 8, 2015 by krisis

Saga-Vol05 Happy unofficial end to summer that is really just an end to wearing white pants, because really no one wanted to see you in white pants.

Okay, you probably either already know about that or don’t care, so I’ll stick to the topic. This post covers all of the collected comics and graphic novels out this week. It is more than just a list because I’ve researched each book to give you the context. It’s a guide to what each collection is about and what you might want to pick up to get there.

This is an odd week for comic collections – one obvious blockbuster, a few interesting entries, and a lot of things I’m not so familiar with. I suppose it’s not the best idea to ship a big bounty right after a holiday and with schools and colleges back in session? As a reminder, Amazon is sometimes 1-2wks behind the direct market on these releases.

Let’s go!

Crush of the Week: Saga, Vol. 5 – Collecting #25-30.

If you’ve never read Saga before, it’s an unusual series that can’t be entirely summed up. It’s worth it to try the first bargain-priced trade, which introduces this ragtag group of regular people, bounty hunters, and robotic royalty. Plus a truth-diving cat.

Truth be told, I found the last trade of Saga to be a bit flat – high on acrimonious domesticity and everyone was awful to each other. Space-faring was grounded and terrible choices took center stage, as did Alana as she starred in a popular interplanetary soap opera. Yes, really. I know that’s the story Vaughan is telling, but I don’t like stories with no one to root for. While that still might be the case in this trade, now everyone is coming together (Gwendolyn! Lying Cat! Prince Robot!) and I think we’ll get a hint of the broader plot in store for us. In Vaughan’s other landmark series we’d be at about the halfway point, but he’s said he intends for this to run longer than Y The Last Man and Ex Machina (both highly-recommended!), so who knows where we might wind up from here?

Interesting Unknown: Steven Universe, Vol. 1 TP – Collecting #1-4.

I’ve heard nothing but effusive praise from my adult friends on this cartoon about adventures, identity, and consent. After turning their My Little Pony license into a machine and watching BOOM! have a breakout hit with Adventure Time, I think IDW knows how to make this a success. The interesting thing is that I get the feeling is still slightly under the radar – it’s not an Adventure Time sized hit already, nor does it have as much content and fandom amassed as when that comic began.

Now let’s take a look at what Marvel, Dark Horse, DC, IDW, Image, Valiant, and other publishes have in store for us this week! [Read more…] about Newly Released Graphic Novels & Collected Comics – Sept. 8, 2015 Edition