Image Comics

In Cell by Cell, I look deeply into the panels of an issue, appreciating and analyzing the story and artistic composition.

The weird and wonderful world of Mythic, where science is a lie and all the myths and legends of the ancients are what actually make the universe tick, continues in issue number four with half the issue dedicated to the main storyline, and half the issue dedicated to a character, Dr. Baranski, who has been featured in approximately half a dozen panels.

It’s a silly fear that haunts the deep recesses of my mind from time to time that is constantly pushed further and further back as independent artists get to work on new properties. The latest example is I Hate Fairyland from Skottie Young over at Image Comics, based around a premise so neat and original that it’s downright annoying it only recently came into existence.

At New York Comic Con, I had the opportunity to chat with prolific colorist Matthew Wilson about his colors and process on The Wicked + the Divine and Phonogram, his relationships with various artists as well as get a sneak peek of the upcoming Black Widow series he is working on with writer Mark Waid (Archie) and artist Chris Samnee (Daredevil). Wilson first came to prominence with his colors on Phonogram: Singles Club with frequent collaborators Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie and has colored a variety of Marvel books, like Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Wolverine, and Secret Avengers. He recently finished a run on Daredevil with Waid and Samnee and is currently taking a break from the Eisner nominated WicDiv as guest artists draw and color this arc. Matthew Wilson is also the colorist on Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl and Paper Girls from Image Comics and Deadpool vs. Thanos from Marvel as well as the upcoming Mighty Thor and Black Widow from Marvel.

A toast to Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky! For achieving what no one anywhere ever even anticipated. For imagining an asexual character who possesses a similar ability to stop time. This issue begs more than a few explanations. Does this new character, Alix, move through the space of the “Quiet” differently than Suzie, Jon, Kegelface, and others? What is up with Carl Sagan’s uncomfortable innuendo? And why is Alix watching the original version of Cosmos instead of the reboot with Neil deGrasse Tyson? Does this mean the Sex Criminals universe is set in the past? Or maybe even an alternate timeline?

Laura’s been our naive and unreliable narrator this whole time. She’s been our witness and audience analog since the beginning. But as of issue #11, page 22, she’s dead. Except maybe she isn’t. We aren’t the first to put forth this possibility. The germ of this article came from reviews of issue #14, “The Re-Re-Remix,” that included something like, “a new Valkyrie who may or may not be Laura.” But the evidence pointing to Persephone’s return in the form of Woden’s mysterious new companion is, in our minds, nearly incontrovertible.

Ted Brandt and Rosy Higgins are an artistic team from Bristol, England. They are currently working on Princeless: Raven Pirate Princess with writer Jeremy Whitley. (Secret Wars: Secret Love.) It is an all ages comic from Action Lab and a sequel to the Princeless: Pirate Princess and is about Raven Xingtao, an Asian lesbian teen pirate, who must wrest back the title of Black Arrow (Think Pirate King in Pirates of Caribbean.) But, first she must assemble a crew for her ship, and that is what she has been doing over the past three issues with the help of shifty Half-Elf thief Sunshine and Katie, who is a dead ringer for Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones and inspires her to assemble an all female crew. Higgins pencils and colors the comic while Brandt handles the layouts, inks, and letters on Raven Pirate Princess. They are also working on a B-side (backup story) with Kieron Gillen in an upcoming issue of Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl and an adorable all ages comic Dog of Wonder featuring Action Lab’s company mascot, who is literally a dog with a jetpack.

Hosted by the energetic Miz Caramel Vixen, the founder of Vixenvarsity.com, the #BlackComicsMonth Diversity in Comics panel featured a wide variety of panelists from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and sexualities. They also work in vastly different comics genres from Mildred Louis writing and drawing a Magical Girl webcomic with women of color called Agents of the Realm to David F. Walker, who directed a documentary about the blaxploitation genre and currently writes Cyborg for DC Comics and much more. One of the panelists, Mikki Kendall, only recently broke into comics with the Swords of Sorrow: Lady Rawhide/Miss Fury one-shot and is more well-known for her pieces about intersectional feminism for XoJane, The Guardian, and others as well as prose fiction. Vixen let each panelist speak their mind about what diversity means to them, and they often tied in their thoughts with their comics from Genius (which I scored a free copy of) to Princeless and even Batman.

Plutona #2 is a personal story, and Jeff Lemire and Emi Lenox give readers a raw perspective into the lead characters’ thought processes and reactions. They sound and react like scared kids with Ray being more rebellious while Diana is just freaked out and wants to tell her family, and Mie is the inquisitive one. Teddy seems like a passionate fanboy, but the final pages add intrigue to his character and set up issue 3 for some possible twists and turns. Plutona #2 is a comic about death, and it faces it head-on with Lemire, Lenox, and Bellaire showing the ups and downs of adolescence amplified in the face of tragedy with honest writing, intimate art, and timely colors.

From Under Mountains #1 has magic, demons, familial struggles, murder, mystery, and a whole lot “Um, so what’s it about?” Gorgeous art meets minimalist storytelling in this new series from Brandon Graham’s 8House imprint.

If such a thing could be called it, 1963 is minor Alan Moore. In 1993, Image Comics was still a very young company created by the “hot” artists of the time when Jim Valentino, always the most old timey alternative rebel of the Image crew, got Moore, Steve Bissette, Rick Veitch, John Totleben and a bunch of their friends to create 1963, a pastiche on the early days of Marvel comics. The Fantastic Four becomes Mystery Incorporated. Iron Man becomes the Hypernaut. Spider-Man becomes The Fury, and the Avengers become The Tomorrow Syndicate. Image’s slick and calculated characters took a backseat to Moore and company’s retro insanity. To create a whole package, even the ads and editorial pages recreate the feeling of a bygone age. For a brief period in 1993, the Marvel spirit of 1963 lived again, but this is Alan Moore, so it isn’t a complete lovefest for the work of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck and the Marvel Bullpen.

There’s nothing more satisfying than going back to a comic and finding the issue where everything just clicks into place. The concept, the characters, the story, and the art just start working perfectly in tandem. For Sex Criminals, Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky’s funny book about love, sex, depression, weird tentacle cum monsters, endless background dick jokes, and making fun of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie that one time, it was definitelyissue #3. The issue is tagged with the subtitle “My Sexual Errors and Misfortunes 2001 – Present,” but it’s more commonly known as the issue where Suzie sings ‘Fat Bottomed Girls.’

Unless you’re a big fan of 1990s British pop punk and riot grrl music, the name Kenickie is just a character of Grease to you. (Only one of their songs is available to stream on Spotify, but some of their live performances and music videos are on YouTube.) However, the band plays a major role in the first issue of Phonogram: Rue Britannia as writer Kieron Gillen (making his comics debut) and artist/letterer Jamie McKelvie use them as a feminine alternative to the masculine power of the Brit Pop music that dominated the 90s and will play a major role in the series going forward. The first issue is about David Kohl, the series’ protagonist as he goes to Ladyfest in Bristol, England to leach off the magical energies of these “pop-feminist” artists, meet with a phonomancer named Lady Vox, and most importantly to him, pick up women. He is a toxic agent in a space meant to empower, and McKelvie dresses in him in all black with a dark grey Superman sigil or “pop icon” that Kohl wears for the masculine power of the superhero with none of his morality or hopefulness.

Zero is a great example in which the medium of comics can be utilized to tell compelling, challenging stories with a wide array of art styles that touches on relevant and personal subject matters. Ales Kot’s dense script with the vast selection of artists and consistent, style adhering colourist extraordinaire Jordie Bellaire make this a very special book.

Despite issues with the story and art, The Beauty is a promising, high-concept horror/scifi comic. Given time, the story and art will improve. It already explores the darker side of beauty obsession, and looks to go even deeper into the horrid rabbit hole.

Fatale may look like the type of noir story that Brubaker and Phillips have built their artistic partnership on, but this is not a noir mystery. The horror that pervades this series, the evil of a world trying to wash over everything good and pure, is new ground for this team. Brubaker writes stories about bad men and women, but it’s rare that he writes about a rotten world. Fatale is a story of victims. There are no heroes in this series as Josephine and Nicolas fight just for their own survival. Brubaker and Phillips’ Fatale stumbles as it attempts to tell a story through multiple timelines but their story about survival and obsession shows the versatility that this team possesses to tell any kind of story.

Sex Criminals #12 truly runs the gamut tonally from the broad, crude, and occasionally laugh out loud comedy of Jon and Susie escaping from Douglas to an incredibly informative lecture about normality and abnormality framed in ideas about female sexuality from Professor Kincaid, a porn star turned college professor and ally of Jon and Susie’s against the Sex Cops.

Virgil’s marketing description had me at “queersploitation.” I’m a casual buff of exploitation film history and genre and thought Virgil bringing the genre to issues of queerness was an apt marriage for 2015. The comic is executed with a sincere and serious commitment to its parent genre and sensitivity to the subject matter but lacks the campy sense of fun that many contemporary exploitation texts have.

In a future Earth populated by animal humanoids, the magic they depend on is slowly disappearing.

Kudos to Stjepan Šejic on his wonderful cover for issue #12, which acts as prelude for the issue at hand with a single bit of apt imagery–Betty, in the place of Bilbo Baggins, stealing candy from a dragon she is unaware of. Similarly, this issue shows our ever confident Rat Queens questing towards Mage University and finding more in the shadows than they are prepared to face. While that sounds rather ominous, the humor remains and is foregrounded in a story of increasing gravitas.

Comic book readers love a good old, super elite character that takes charge of matters and, depending on the circumstances, takes no prisoners either. Wolverine, the Punisher, Batman, all of these and countless others have graced the pages of illustrated storytelling throughout the years, dishing out their own versions of justice because they were simply the better equipped, trained and lethal of the parties engaged in contests of skill and might.

Taking the concept of having a DJ god to a new level, Gillen and McKelvie deliver an issue using mostly previously used art and remixed it to get inside the head of Woden, the actual worst member of the Pantheon.

The second arc of Outcast closes with more questions than answers. This seems to be the way the comic likes to operate. Throughout the first twelve issues Kyle and Revered Anderson have encountered countless demons and those possessed but know relatively little about how to fight them. Also, whenever Kyle saves someone they are sometimes worse for ware. Robert Kirkman is hinting in Outcast #12 that the answers are to come. Until there are adequate answers to the burning questions in Outcast this comic could easily become rote and follow the same pattern of demon encounter, faith questioned by Kyle, faith trusted in by Reverend Anderson, then possible exorcism. These issues need some form of answer or Outcast will get old fast.