Welcome to The A.V. Club’s monthly comics preview, where we recommend new books to check out over the next few weeks. This month, we’ve got five exciting picks, ranging from Godzilla to Zatanna.
Bronze Faces by Shobo, Shof, Alexandre Tefenkgi, and Lee Loughridge (February 5)
Boom! Studios
Reclaiming cultural artifacts from museums is a hot topic in comics right now. This January, Image Comics’ The Horizon Experiment ended with the Finders//Keepers one-shot, featuring an Indiana Jones/Lara Croft-type archaeologist who steals artifacts from museums and returns them to their original homes. That theme carries over to Bronze Faces #1 (Boom! Studios), in which three childhood friends hatch a plan to rob the British Museum when it debuts a work created by one of their fathers.
Writers Shobo and Shof are no strangers to heist narratives, but unlike their Afrofuturist sci-fi comic New Masters, Bronze Faces is set in our current times, allowing them to address the ways that colonialism has historically impacted West African cultures. Artist Alexandre Tefenkgi and colorist Lee Loughridge have worked together on multiple projects, including the Eisner Award-winning crime comic The Good Asian and post-apocalyptic Once Upon A Time At The End Of The World, and they have remarkable skill capturing a specific time and place while imbuing that detail with personality and energy. The creative team is rounded out by Eisner Award-winning letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, who turns words into dynamic visual elements that help give each title he works on a distinct identity.
Godzilla Vs. America: Chicago by Various (February 26)
IDW
Godzilla is doing overtime in the world of comics this year, wrapping his fight with classic literary figures this month before taking on Marvel and DC superheroes and embarking on a tour of destruction across the U.S. Godzilla Vs. America: Chicago (IDW)features four short comics by an assortment of Chicago creators, including solo stories by Tim Seeley, Caroline Cash, and Ezra Claytan Daniels and a collaboration between writer Mike Costa and artist Ryan Browne. It’s a clever idea that gives local creators the opportunity to celebrate their cities through a fantastical lens, and this initial line-up offers a wide variety of styles to bring fresh perspectives to the pop culture icon. Browne’s cover references the notorious Dave Matthews Band bus incident, which should give you a good idea of the book’s sense of humor about Godzilla rampaging through the Windy City. And the next installment of the anthology series will help victims of real-world devastation: IDW recently announced that 100% of the profits from April’s Godzilla Vs. America: Los Angeles will go to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, directly aiding bookstores and comic shops affected by the Los Angeles wildfires.
Into The Unbeing: Part Two by Zac Thompson and Hayden Sherman (February 12)
Dark Horse Comics
In February, artist Hayden Sherman will have three new books on stands. Absolute Wonder Woman and Batman: Dark Patterns showcase how Sherman invigorates established properties with unconventional page layouts and striking designs, but Into The Unbeing (Dark Horse Comics) is an even greater display of their talent, a creator-owned biohorror story that allows Sherman to push their imagination even further by handling both the linework and colors. Written by Zac Thompson with lettering by Jim Campbell, Into The Unbeing follows a group of researchers uncovering the secrets of a mysterious landform that is actually a gigantic body containing its own ecosystem of alien beings and deadly terrain.
The collected edition of Part One hits stands this week, and it’s a harrowing journey full of twists and turns, switching character perspectives with each chapter to give the chills a strong emotional foundation. Sherman does incredible work heightening the dread of Thompson’s script while creating an environment that has a strange, unsettling allure, inviting readers deeper and deeper into it to discover what fascinating new creations emerge from Sherman’s pen.
Raised By Ghosts by Briana Loewinsohn (February 5)
Fantagraphics
Briana Loewinsohn’s Ephemera was one of the best comics of 2023, a graphic memoir that explored the difficulties of growing up with her mentally ill mother with heartbreaking tenderness and lush natural imagery. Whereas that title featured an adult Briana looking back, her latest work, Raised By Ghosts (Fantagraphics), is a YA memoir set entirely during her adolescence, sending readers back in time to the early ’90s. Diary entries illuminate young Briana’s inner thoughts as she navigates new friendships at school and the challenges of living with divorced, neglectful parents, and as Briana becomes more isolated in her social life, the pages of her diary become a more prominent aspect of the visuals. One of the most intriguing aspects of the book is the way that the storytelling changes as young Briana starts developing her artistic voice, shifting away from the traditional structure and realistic imagery into more expressionistic territory. It emphasizes the way that art helps her process and work through her challenges at school and at home, finding comfort in the endless possibilities that exist on the blank page.
It’s a truly wonderful time to be a Zatanna fan. The backward-speaking magician superhero was the star of a prestigious miniseries in last year’s Zatanna: Bring Down The House by writer Mariko Tamaki and artist Javier Rodriguez (collected edition out on March 18), and she’s staying in the spotlight with a new six-issue miniseries written, drawn, and colored by Jamal Campbell with letters by Ariana Maher. Campbell’s artwork on books like Far Sector, Naomi, and Superman established him as one of the most innovative and versatile artists in superhero comics, and the Nightwing story he wrote for Batman: Urban Legends was a compelling, action-packed yarn exploring the intersection of superheroes and the entertainment industry. That makes Campbell an exceptional pick to tackle DC’s premier performer, who is tasked with saving her kidnapped stage crew from the clutches of a new villain, The Lady White. The preview art from Zatanna #1 (DC Comics) reveals how Campbell combines the heroine’s flashy theatricality and supernatural ability to create magic on the page, and the biggest selling point of the series is seeing what Campbell will do when he’s writing and drawing a longer story for the first time.
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