Hello, everyone! After a two-week vacation filled with all the ups and downs you might expect with finals week, I’m back! Truth be told, I really missed being able to write these pieces during my “vacation” but I’ll be glad to be back to writing and getting these out as regularly as I can. So, what’s up first this week? Ah yes, our usual friends at Image.
Image
It’s been quite a bit of catch-up here on my end, and I’m still trying to catch up with as many titles as I can. First, I read the advance copy we received of The Closet #1 from James Tynion and Gavin Fullerton. This is going to be a smaller, personal tale of a father and son making their across the country as they move from NYC to Portland. Rather than the spectacle and grand picture of Something is Killing the Children or the operatic drama and shocking twists of Nice House on the Lake, The Closet feels like the quiet, contained short story Tynion wanted to get out of his system while working on his many other projects. Our main character, Thom, is a struggling father who doesn’t understand how to help his son overcome his nightmares. The story has its creepy moments, but the moments that really resonated with me were the ones that focused on the family drama. I’m a sucker for that stuff, so watching Thom desperately try to help his son overcome his fears, and feeling inadequate in the face of it all, definitely helped me connect with the story more. My main concern is just how much the story will stay with me once it is finished. As a shorter horror series, I’m worried that once it’s finished I may quickly forget about it as I move on to other books, but I hope that is not the case here. I suppose it all depends on the ending, but that’s still quite a ways away. Regardless, I did enjoy this first issue and I hope the next one is as solid and family-driven as the first.
I read Newburn #6 and that continues to deliver, though I am starting to wonder how much investment I have in the book anymore. The book has been providing some great one-in-done mysteries but the larger story is one that I’m still not sure how invested I actually am. Issue #8 is supposed to be the end of the first “arc” if you want to call it that and following that issue, I’ll have to see whether I continue to read this book monthly. (I did also read Newburn #7 but that doesn’t officially come out until next week. My opinions of the book, however, remain the same.) - 7.75/10
I read The Scumbag #13, the penultimate issue of the series, and it was decent though as penultimate issues go, I do wish this was better. Perhaps the delays between issues have stalled my excitement for a bit, but I didn’t feel as excited about this issue as I normally am. There are some great moments, particularly one between Ernie and Pam, but other than that it just sort of fell flat for me. I’m hoping the finale really delivers, but I dunno, I wish I could be more excited for it. - 7/10
Nocterra #10 came out last week and I had kind of the same reaction to this issue as I did with The Scumbag #13 (Maybe it’s something about penultimate issues?). While not a bad issue, it just didn’t resonate quite as well for me as the previous issue had and I felt kind of disappointed. Piper, who has been the main character of this arc, has been getting some really great moments throughout the arc and this issue was no exception but I think the reason this issue fell flat for me was because of the pacing of the story. Sundog Convoy finally arrives at Luna and…that’s pretty much it. Some fighting ensues but nothing of genuine substance happens until that last page which, in my opinion, is a pretty stellar hook for the next issue but really made me wish there was more meat to the rest of the issue. I dunno, it just kind of let me down and I’m hoping that the last issue of the arc really blows me away. - 7.5/10
Crossover #13 was a decent ending but honestly, I found myself more excited for the next arc than I was with the ending. The parts that really stuck with me were the ones where Cates opened himself up and talked candidly about his own struggles with addiction and a near-death experience. I can’t imagine how hard it was to be that open about it and I commend him for that. The other parts of the story, while entertaining, were just kind of messy and I wasn’t really sure how I felt in the end about how the story wrapped. But, given time, maybe that will change. I do plan on rereading this arc sometime soon, so we’ll see then. - 8/10
I still haven’t gotten a chance to catch up on Rogue Sun, A Town Called Terror, and the new Zack Kaplan books that I mentioned last time, but don’t worry! They will have their day soon enough.
Little Monsters #3 and A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance #7 I didn’t have much of an opinion on other than they were decent issues that continue the story but don’t really add too much. For ARTFV, it was cool seeing the issue mostly from Xavier’s perspective and, like with Nocterra, it also has a killer hook but other than that I didn’t have much to say about the story. Little Monsters has that same Lemire ennui that I love, and I do like seeing the backstory for each character in the group, but hasn’t really hit hard for me just yet. We’ll have to wait and see.
Little Monsters #3 - 7/10
A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance #7 - 7.25/10
I was excited to hear that Tom King and Elsa Charretier had announced that their digital-first series Love Everlasting (available on their Substack) was coming to Image in August, so I decided to finally sit down and read the first three issues of the series. I had been stockpiling them on my computer since January so it was nice to finally check it out. It leans hard into the romance comics’ influence of the 1950s and 60s and if you’re even vaguely familiar with what those books look and sound like, you’ll know what I mean when you read Love Everlasting. The first issue was really engaging and I was surprised at how well it read considering the very dated style of speaking that is used in these types of books. The second and third issues were also good, but a little slower than the first, although the second issue had a great twist in the middle of the story that I won’t spoil. Pacing issues aside, this series has such a great premise that it’s gonna be hard to wait each month for a new issue as I just want to gobble it all up like a greedy king rather than wait for my nice meal. The series kind of reminds me of Brubaker and Phillips’ Fatale, which tried to deconstruct the femme fatale figure in crime comics. This series, rather similarly, is trying to deconstruct the idea of the love interest in romance comics, and how these very similar women are forced to live different but similar love stories over and over and over again. It asks the question: if you realized that you had to live all of these different lives, and feel these different loves, what would you do to break free? And more importantly: could you break free? Like I said, with a killer premise like that I’m hooked and the hardest part of reading this series is going to be the wait.
Also available on Substack is Chip Zdarsky’s Public Domain, which I also received an advance copy of from Image a little while ago. I didn’t have much to say on this one, it seems very in line with current superhero comics criticism and it’s hardly bad, I just didn’t think it added all the much to the conversation. I really liked some of the family dynamics between fathers, sons, and brothers, and I hope it leans more into that than into further superhero criticism. Again, that is a valid critique and it’s one that continuously fails to be properly addressed, but I didn’t feel that this book said anything that hadn’t already been said before.
Dark Horse
Black Hammer Reborn #12 ended? Except not really? I said I would riot if it pulled another The Quantum Age and it kind of did except not really? It’s so weird, I have to say this, because while the story does provide a conclusive end to Lucy’s story (if the story wants to) it doesn’t provide an ending for the Anti-God/Second Cataclysm story. Now, I know that Lemire has already announced the Black Hammer: The End mini-series coming soon, but I still feel like I’ve been cheated in some way since this was promised as the big climactic storyline that would deal with the Cataclysm. I guess, in the end, maybe this story was really just about Lucy returning to the fold? But if that was the case, I wish they hadn’t wasted so much time on the Colonel Weird subplots, or the multiverse stuff and put that in a separate mini-series or something. I dunno, it’s an ending that is strange, bizarre, odd, surreal, and all the other synonyms for weird that you can think of. I can’t say I hated it, but I definitely didn’t like it. So, there it is, I guess? - 6.5/10
Quick News
Old Dog #1 from Delcan Shalvey was officially announced recently and I’m looking forward to this one. As I mentioned in a previous newsletter, I enjoyed the short story that was in the IMAGE! #1 Anniversary anthology recently so I hope the ongoing is just as satisfying. I was also FLOORED to learn yesterday that apparently, as part of the new Frank Miller Press publishing line that Frank Miller is starting, we’re getting a sequel to, of all things, Ronin. Yes, 1983’s Ronin, the pre-Samurai Jack. I have no clue how a sequel will play out (and I’m not sure I entirely want to know) but my curiosity is definitely peaked at this. We’ll just have to wait and see. Basilisk is returning in July and, based on the quality of that issue,
Personal Reading
Last night I decided to a break from doing nothing and I read two trades: Red Team from Garth Ennis and Craig Cermak and Men of Wrath from Jason Aaron and Ron Garney.
I discovered Red Team a little while ago (shortly after I had started reading Preacher) because I loved the idea of Garth Ennis doing a police drama. So, after a few years, I finally had the chance to sit down and actually read it. It’s a different read from many of the Ennis books I’ve read because, to my shock, there’s very little black humor. After reading books like The Boys, The Pro, Preacher, the Kev books, and Midnighter, this was a bit of a departure from the black humor I normally associate with Ennis books. The closest Ennis book I can compare from my own collection is Sara, the book he did at TKO a little while back. That story, which is based on the true story of female Russian snipers in WWII, also had very little humor and was played incredibly seriously. I imagined that was because of the sensitive and very real subject matter, but I can’t be sure. With Red Team, that serious tone is also applied and the little humor that is there is very subdued and subtle, so subtle you might not even notice it. As for the story, it’s definitely a gripping read but an incredibly dense one as well. I’ve known Ennis to be wordy in his books in the past, but Red Team almost takes it a step further. We’re given numerous scenes of people in rooms just talking, endlessly, about their thoughts and opinions on whatever topic is at hand. It is engaging dialogue, although it can be a bit confusing at times, as Ennis is opting for a realistic, conversational style of dialogue. Sometimes it flows well, and sometimes it doesn’t. This sort of muddles the themes of the story which, for me at least, is about policing in America, or NYC at the very least, and all that comes with being a part of that system. A flawed system that, as our characters point out, pushed them in the direction that led to this story. As I sit here and type out my thoughts, I remember how much all this stuff resonated with me yesterday, but I’m also reminded of how the dialogue hindered the potential of this story. There are numerous moments throughout the story where the book has a really interesting point to make but takes so long to arrive at that point that my interest has waned. I think, if the dialogue and wordiness of scenes had been polished, this could have been a really exceptional book.
Men of Wrath is a Jason Aaron book. In fact, it might be the most Jason Aaron book that ever was. But just to be sure, let’s check to see if this book contains…checks notes… A crotchety older man? Check. Father/son drama? Check. A heavy emphasis on Southern accents? Double-check. Congratulations, it’s a Jason Aaron book, though I mean that in the best of ways. This book takes all his tropes and puts them into a really engaging crime drama involving a legacy of generational violence for the Wrath family, a father forced to kill his son, and the ability to change that legacy near the end of your life. It’s this last theme that makes the ending so bittersweet because even though our main character, Ira Warth, finally makes an attempt to curb his family’s legacy of violence it’s too late for his son who ultimately dies because of his father’s failed mission. After the events of the main story are wrapped, Ira is left to die of cancer in the hospital and spends the rest of his days knowing that his son’s girlfriend and their daughter, Ira’s grandaughter, will have nothing to do with him. Even when he tried to turn over a new leaf, he came up short in the end and has nothing to show for it. And thus ends the lineage of the Wrath men. Not with a bang or crash, but a slow and quiet death, one that defies the legacy of the Wrath men. Make no mistake it was not a perfect story. There were points where I really struggled to care about the Wrath men and their plights, and I wish that the writing had given me more reason to care about Ira and his son Ruben rather than them just being the main characters of the story. It’s also a quick read and where there were moments of fast-paced action and violence, I feel they could have been replaced with scenes of getting to know our characters more. So while not an excellent read, it was very fun and almost read like an off-shoot of Southern Bastards, just not quite as polished.
Reccomendation
Nothing special for me this week. Maybe check out Red Team?
All right, that’s it for me this week. Hopefully, I’ll be back next week, but we’ll see. Until next time, dear readers…