Category Aftershock Comics

Aug 15 2018

Stylizing Subversion in Hot Lunch Special 1

by Drew Baumgartner

Hot Lunch Special 1

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

I’m fascinated by stories where a criminal world of evil bubbles up through the veneer of suburban/small town life. David Lynch’s Blue Velvet might be the defining example of that particular genre, but the Coen Brothers’ Fargo is another great one. And actually, the television adaptation/reimagining of Fargo might be my favorite such story to date — the extra space afforded by serialized storytelling allowed the series to mine some truly chilling, truly bizarre moments while still keeping one foot in a recognizable small town world. Indeed, it’s that anchor in reality that makes Fargo more appealing to me than, say, Lynch’s Twin Peaks, which eschews normalcy in favor of anadulterated Lynchian weirdness. Don’t get me wrong — all of that weirdness makes Twin Peaks the masterpiece that it is, but I maintain that Fargo‘s more familiar setting is what makes the occasional brushes with violence all the more unsettling. That’s very much the approach Eliot Rahal and Jorge Fornés have taken in Hot Lunch Special 1, which relishes the innocence of its midwestern setting, even as its criminal underside makes a few key appearances. Continue reading →

Apr 10 2018

Virginity and Values in Betrothed 2

By Patrick Ehlers

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Last month, Mark likened Betrothed to a manga series, citing a number aesthetic and thematic similarities. That observation is astute, but perhaps incomplete. Writer Sean Lewis and artist Steve Uy aren’t just playing the greatest hits of the manga medium, they’ve got the sheet music for The Hero’s Journey on the stand in front of them, and are dutifully playing every note Maestro Campbell wrote. The second step on this journey is the Refusal of the Call to Adventure, so that is precisely what Kieron and Tamara do in the second issue of Betrothed. Continue reading →

Mar 20 2018

It’s Manga’s Greatest Hits in Betrothed 1

By Mark Mitchell

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

If you like reading manga you will probably enjoy Betrothed 1, and if you like Betrothed 1 you will probably enjoy reading manga.

That’s obviously a broad generalization, since manga is a medium, not a genre, and there are many different stories told within that medium, but as a lapsed Weekly Shonen Jump subscriber, I’ve read enough breezy meet-cutes and hastily staged fight sequences to comfortably state that Sean Lewis and Steve Uy’s Betrothed 1 is a solid effort at a Manga Tropes Greatest Hits Collection. Continue reading →

Mar 7 2018

The Promise of Infinite Possibilities in Fu Jitsu 5

by Drew Baumgartner

Fu Jitsu 5

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

There are infinite possibilities occurring simultaneously, every second.

Fu Jitsu

And with that, Jai Nitz and Wesley St. Claire lay out the case for more Fu Jitsu. Sure, they get more specific at the end of the issue, encouraging folks to spread the word about the series to help keep it alive, but the reason to keep it alive is revealed right there in Fu’s opening lines: this is a series built on infinite possibilities. Indeed, Nitz and St. Claire are so confident with that truth that they don’t need to bother explaining how future issues could even be possible. [SPOILERS aplenty after the break]  Continue reading →

Jan 10 2018

Best of 2017: Best Series

Series

We all love a good one-off or anthology, but it’s the thrill of a series that keeps us coming back to our comic shop week-in, week-out. Whether it’s a brand new creator-owned series or a staple of the big two, serialized storytelling allows for bigger casts, bigger worlds, and bigger adventures. That bigness was on full display this year, as series made grand statement after grand statement about what they were all about. These are our top 10 series of 2017.  Continue reading →

Dec 28 2017

Back to the Future meets Wile E. Coyote in Fu Jitsu 4

by Drew Baumgartner

Fu Jitsu 4

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Man, I’m such a sucker for time travel stories. Fu Jitsu 4 has plenty of other sci-fi insanity that someone might latch onto, but I can’t help but be charmed by the little time paradoxes and other time travel quirks built into the narrative. Indeed, the irreverent tone that Jai Nitz and Wesley St. Claire have struck with this series allow them to have much more fun with those tropes than any other time travel story I’ve ever encountered. Continue reading →

Dec 18 2017

Monstro Mechanica 1: Discussion

by Michael DeLaney and Mark Mitchell

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Michael: Leonardo da Vinci is the Renaissance Man: inventor, painter, mathematician, historian — you name it and the man probably had a hand in it. His influence on human ingenuity is vast and varied. In fact, in the Comics realm, da Vinci’s “bat-winged” flying machine ended up being a visual inspiration for comics’ most popular figure: Batman. In Monstro Mechanica, Paul Allor and Chris Evenhuis make da Vinci’s marvelous mind the object of desire among devious forces at work in Florence. And while there is the titular “Monstro Mechanica” in the form of da Vinci’s mechanical man, Allor and Evenhuis cast some doubt on whether or not da Vinci’s marvelous mind makes him hero or villain. Continue reading →

Dec 5 2017

The Right Kind of Experts in Jean Grey 9

by Patrick Ehlers

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

There’s a whole corner of the Marvel Universe devoted to mutants with psychic abilities. It is a niche corner, seemingly invisible to the rest of the heroes, particular those without the X-gene, until the point one of them threatens to upend everything. Usually, this has to do with their connection to the Phoenix force, which is simultaneously the source of their most terrifying power and their most humbling weakness. It’s complicated, it’s abstract, it’s supernatural and extraterrestrial at the same time. In short, it’s not easy to understand. In Jean Grey 9, writer Dennis Hopeless and artist Victor Ibáñez illustrate just how much special knowledge is required to deal with Young Jean Grey and that ominous Phoenix. Continue reading →

Dec 4 2017

Fu Jitsu 3 Takes on The Silver Age

by Patrick Ehlers

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

The general thesis of Fu Jitsu appears to be: “comics are weird, but resonate with us anyway.” Or perhaps the resonance is because of the weirdness. Writer Jai Nitz and artist Wesley St. Claire never really imply causation in one direction or another, but with issue 3 of Fu Jitsu, they do make a strong case for the last correlation between the two qualities throughout comic book history. Yup: issue one was about the diegetic past, issue two was about a diegetic present, and issue three is about the meta-past. Continue reading →

Nov 28 2017

Eleanor and the Egret 5: Discussion

By Drew Baumgartner and Patrick Ehlers

Eleanor and the Egret 5

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

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Drew: What moral do we take away from heroic self-sacrifice? We undoubtedly see nobility in a hero prizing the life and safety of others more than their own, but our own takeaway is likely much more modest — we might sacrifice our material comfort or time for the benefit of others, if not our lives. But is “self-sacrifice is good” the only way to look at those stories? Is it possible to look at a hero laying down their life for others and identify with those others — not the hero making the sacrifice, but the beneficiaries of that sacrifice? Is it possible that we see the hero’s death less as a noble choice and more as satisfying a cosmic need for heroes to die — a “sacrifice” in a very different sense of the word? It’s the kind of conclusion you might expect of a world-ending sci-fi computer to draw, but it’s also embedded in the idiosyncratic resolution of John Layman and Sam Kieth’s Eleanor and the Egret. Continue reading →