DC’s Injustice comic could have been a cheap cash-in on the success of the fighting video game, but instead it became one of the best Justice League stories of the decade. Writer Tom Taylor set the groundwork for this comic-book expansion in the first Injustice: Gods Among Us series, and when he came back for …
Christopher Priest has a long history with Spider-Man, serving as a writer and editor on Marvel’s Spidey titles in the ’80s. As a writer, he would drop in for a few issues and then depart, and that pattern holds true with Priest’s new Spider-Force, a three-issue miniseries tying into the Spider-Geddon event. The plot…
Following Brian Michael Bendis’ takeover of DC’s Superman line, the Supergirl ongoing series has been given a new direction courtesy of two of Bendis’ pals, writer Marc Andreyko and artist Kevin Maguire. New villain Rogol Zaar claims he is responsible for the destruction of Supergirl’s (and her cousin’s) home planet…
Cosmic Ghost Rider has proven to be one of Marvel’s most popular new characters, but his appeal goes beyond the cool factor of seeing Frank Castle become the future Spirit of Vengeance. By having the Punisher serve as an agent of Mephisto, a herald of Galactus, and the slave of Thanos, Donny Cates has made Cosmic…
One of the great joys of reading graphic memoirs is seeing how artists imbue real, everyday encounters with energy and expression, using their creativity to enrich the mundane. In her new Drawn & Quarterly graphic memoir, Blame This On The Boogie, Rina Ayuyang details her time growing up as a Filipina-American in…
As valuable as escapist entertainment can be, we also need to pay attention to the pressing real-world issues that are shaping/destroying our world. Vertigo’s Border Town engages with serious themes of racism, xenophobia, immigration, and cultural identity, but it has a playful, fantastic spirit that makes it a…
In the early ’90s, South Africa was on the brink of a full-blown civil war. Tensions between the white colonial government and the black population were blowing up into bloody conflicts—violence that intensified when Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years, signaling the death knell of the apartheid…
The Flash has one of the best rogues’ galleries in comics, but how do you find ways to keep these characters fresh? Joshua Williamson has been writing this series for nearly 60 issues, and for his most recent extended storyline, he’s embracing cosmic forces to give Flash’s villains a dramatic power upgrade. The events…
Eric Kostiuk Williams’ comics are visually defined by their malleability. His forms shine like latex and stretch like taffy, and his stories take place in surreal, psychedelic environments that morph as time passes. That fluid visual aesthetic ties into major themes of his work like gender expression, queer culture,…
Amanda “Livewire” McKee has long been one of Valiant Comics’ most compelling characters, a woman who forged a heroic path after discovering that the cause to which she devoted her life was less noble than she thought. She was a member of the Unity superhero team, led her own group of superpowered individuals in the…
With James Wan’s Aquaman hitting theaters in two months, DC is boosting the hero’s profile on the page with crossovers putting him at the center of stories featuring major properties like Suicide Squad and Justice League. After facing off against the Squad last month, Aquaman is about to be submerged in “Drowned…
After hijacking Kitty Pryde and Colossus’ wedding in X-Men Gold #30, the newly married Rogue and Gambit have embarked on a honeymoon that has gone about as well as these things normally do for superheroes. Which is to say it’s been a total disaster. They decided to go to space to get away from all the drama on Earth,…
The best horror stories make it impossible to turn away, even after your fear takes over. They transfix you and keep you turning the page (or watching the movie), casting a spell that makes the misery of others irresistible. Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino’s Gideon Falls is one of those stories, a comic that turns…
Bobby Drake and Emma Frost have a complicated relationship. In the ’90s, Emma possessed Bobby’s body and helped him unlock the full potential of his ice powers—but it still involved unwanted psychic manipulation, and that’s not cool. Emma has flip-flopped between hero and villain for years, and she’s currently in a…
Justice League Dark is a superhero book driven by horror storytelling, so it makes sense that it would be at the center of an event during the spookiest month of the year. Wonder Woman & Justice League Dark: The Witching Hour is a weekly storyline unfolding in two 48-page one-shots and this month’s issues of Wonder…
22 years in the making, Jason Lutes’ Berlin is a sprawling work of historical fiction detailing the rise of the Nazi party in a fractured Germany struggling to recover from the devastation of World War I. When Lutes began his comic-book series in 1996, he couldn’t have known just how relevant it would be for the…
Much like vampires and zombies in past years, kids on bikes with flashlights have become a defining force of popular horror. Stranger Things is a streaming TV sensation. It broke box office records. Paper Girls has multiple Eisner Awards. There’s a hungry audience that flocks to these stories, and Oni Press is getting…
For the mother and son at the center of Max de Radiguès’ Bastard, quality family time comes from being on the lam. May and Eugene have just been part of a sprawling heist that saw 52 places robbed at the same time, and heat from both the police and their back-stabbing partners sends them on the run.
The DC Universe has been in a state of rapid change since the conclusion of the Dark Nights: Metal event. The Source Wall at the edge of the multiverse is broken, allowing threats to emerge that have continued this cosmic transformation. Justice League Odyssey is a new series taking a group of heroes into the Ghost…
Marvel’s X-Men line is about to go through another rehaul with Uncanny X-Men returning as a weekly series in November, but hopefully the end of this recent color-coded phase doesn’t mean the end of Tom Taylor, Carmen Carnero, and Rain Beredo’s X-Men Red. The solicitation for December’s issue #11 reads a lot like a…
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