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May 4 2018

Death or Glory 1: Discussion

By Spencer Irwin and Mark Mitchell

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

Spencer: A few weeks ago I covered Isola 1, a comic I praised for its subtlety and its trust and respect for its readers’ intelligence; there was very little hand-holding, exposition, or lore, and the issue was all the stronger for it. Rick Remender and Bengal are attempting something similar in the debut of their new Image series, Death or Glory, but it unfortunately doesn’t work quite as well. By the end of the issue — and especially on a second read — the story and structure, the characters and their relationships, they all snap together in a satisfying way, but I spent much of my first read puzzled; moreover, there’s still a few elements that don’t mesh even on that second time around. Continue reading →

May 2 2018

Days of Hate 4: Discussion

By Patrick Ehlers and Drew Baumgartner

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

Patrick: Aleš Kot and Danijel Žeželj’s Days of Hate is the story of a future chillingly extrapolated from our social and political present. It’s an authoritarian hellscape where liberal and conservative are less policy preferences and more tribal banners. Ideologies are buried under the methodologies of success. Our characters are tools of either the regime or the revolution, so it’s tempting to say that their motivations are obvious: do whatever it takes so their side wins. But… that’s incomplete. People are more than just their beliefs — they are also the places and people they love. Days of Hate 4 shows how love anchors our heroes, but it also shows how it puts them in very serious danger of drowning.

Continue reading →

May 2 2018

Dread, Anticipation, and Waiting in Saga 51

by Spencer Irwin

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

The current arc of Saga has, in many ways, been a slower one. That’s not a complaint — Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples know exactly how to make even simple moments of domestic bliss, strife, or harmony absolutely riveting — just an observation. With Ianthe plotting in the background, and with Saga‘s track record of major twists and deaths coming at a fairly regular pace, there are likely some readers waiting impatiently to get to the next “big” moment and see exactly where this is all leading. Saga 51 brings us one step closer to a major reckoning, but it also reminds readers why these quieter issues are so essential to the series as a whole. Continue reading →

Apr 25 2018

An Episodic Reprieve in The Further Adventures of Nick Wilson 4

By Drew Baumgartner

The Futher Adventures of Nick Wilson 4

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

Comics and TV both exist on a spectrum between fully serialized and fully episodic storytelling modes. And any given series will move a bit within that spectrum, often to great effect — a typically heavily serialized story will offer up a beautifully self-contained installment, or a typically episodic one might find extra emphasis from that occasional “to be continued…”. As a miniseries, my expectations of serialization in The Further Adventures of Nick Wilson are even stronger, with each episode building to whatever conclusion writer Eddie Gorodetsky has engineered. Which makes issue 4’s episodic nature so refreshing — we couldn’t have seen it coming. Continue reading →

Apr 25 2018

Lazarus 27: Discussion

By Spencer Irwin and Ryan Desaulniers

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

Spencer: An interlude is meant to be a break, a diversion, something different from the norm. In the case of Lazarus 27 — specifically billed as part one of a two-part interlude — it means that Greg Rucka and Michael Lark are taking a break from the story of Forever Carlyle to instead focus on her brother Jonah. Jonah’s adventure isn’t just an interlude for readers, though; it’s one for Jonah as well, a chance for him to experience a lifestyle far different than anything he’s ever seen before. Unfortunately, like most interludes, I fear this experience may be a temporary one for Jonah. Continue reading →

Apr 25 2018

Family in Descender 29

by Ryan Desaulniers

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

You can choose your friends but you sho’ can’t choose your family…

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

How do you define “family?” The answer to this may differ drastically depending on a number of factors, but as subjective as the idea is, many social and medical science disciplines use “family” as a basic unit of study. A UNESCO report claims family to be “a kinship unit and that even when its members do not share a common household, the unit may exist as a social reality.” That strikes me an appropriately broad definition, but could we include robots in it? Descender 29 returns to the “present” after three issues chronicling the first interactions with the eponymous machines which may have created organic life in this universe to a galaxy on fire, but despite the huge plot pieces moving here, the development and dissolution of family units takes center stage. Continue reading →

Apr 23 2018

Axes of Horror in Infidel 2

by Patrick Ehlers

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

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Infidel is tough for me to write about because it is so damn real and so damn scary. To look at how Pornsak Pichetshote and Aaron Campbell are successful is to look deep into what scares me about the world. We’re talking about highly entrenched societal ills like racism, xenophobia, terrorism, murder. Infidel delivers on what’s scary about all of those enormous concepts, but perhaps more importantly gives similar horrific weight to the mundane inconveniences and atrocities of modern life and connects them to the aforementioned huge horrors. Do you feel safe, a few steps removed from accidentally throwing a loved one down the stairs? Well, joke’s on you: the spectre of Infidel is as close to you as a package of strawberries rotting on your kitchen counter. Continue reading →

Apr 19 2018

Moonshine 9: Discussion

by Patrick Ehlers and Drew Baumgartner

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

Hence, the enlightened ruler is heedful, the good general full of caution. This is the way to keep a country at peace and an army intact.

-Sun-Tzu, The Art of War

Patrick: Risk is terrifying. It’s so often the barrier to achieving anything worth achieving. And there’s a safety, a presumption of success by default, that comes from risking nothing. Sun-Tzu preaches measured responses and caution in all action. That same caution is as big a benefit for the characters of Brian Azzarello and Eduaro Risso’s Moonshine 9. Continue reading →

Apr 18 2018

Don’t Trust Dead Hand 1

By Patrick Ehlers

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

Detective Kujan: Who the hell is Keyser Sösz?

Verbal: Ohhh, fuck!

The Usual Suspects

The quality of any mystery or narrative twist is going to depend entirely on how much the reader trusts the reality they are presented with. Brian Singer uses a charismatic storyteller and the fog of ancient crime myths in The Usual Suspects. The ending is a twist that works, but only because the audience has been lied to from the beginning. Kyle Higgins and Stephen Mooney take a different approach to mystery in Dead Hand 1, telling the audience everything and letting an abundance of information shroud the actual mystery. Continue reading →

Apr 17 2018

Oblivion Song 2 Explores Different Approaches to Loss and Grief

by Michael DeLaney

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

The sad truth of our lives is that we will all eventually have to say goodbye to the person or persons we care about most. The thing that differs is how we all cope with that grief. Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici’s Oblivion Song 2 explores a few different ways in which we handle that loss. Continue reading →