Written by Warren Ellis
Art by Ben Templesmith
20 pages, color
Published by Image Comics
In many ways, Fell is an experiment. It’s a series of 16-page stories in comics, each intended to be self-contained, and priced at just $1.99. Can a cheaper-and-shorter series work, not only financially, but to the reader’s satisfaction?
By Jimmie Robinson
28 pages, color
Published by Image Comics
There are two kinds of “over-the-top” and it’s important to understand the difference. The first kind is when something is utterly crazy and implausible, but meant to be taken seriously. The creator has no idea that it’s gone off the rails, even as drinking games form around its existence. Then there’s the second kind, where it’s deliberately silly and nuts and the creator is laughing right along with you. That’s the kind I like, and it seems that Jimmie Robinson does too.
Edited by Joe Pruett
96 pages, black and white
Published by Image Comics
I really miss getting regular, high-quality comic anthologies. There have been a handful of good ones over the years, like Dark Horse Presents, Oni Double Feature, and Pulp. One that I used to pick up on an irregular basis was Negative Burn from Caliber Press; with it being a regular series, so much would depend on which creators were in a particular issue. Now, Image and Desperado Publishing have brought it back as a series of graphic novels, and based on this first taste, I think that good times are ahead.
Edited by Eric Stephenson
144 pages, black and white
Published by Image Comics
Love. Hate. Fear. Fate. Not the normal sort of words that jump to mind when people refer to “four letter words” In the realm of Four Letter Worlds, though, each of those words contain a multitude of possibilities, and editor Eric Stephenson has assembled a group of talented creators to each tackle just one of those words and all that it entails. The end result? An anthology that you definitely don’t want to miss.
Written by Rick Remender and Kieron Dwyer
Art by Salgood Sam
32 pages, two-color
Published by Image Comics
I’ll admit it, I was a little skeptical. Admit it, if you heard “vampire pirates” you’d raise your eyebrows too, right? It just sounded, well, a little silly. I owe Rick Remender, Kieron Dwyer, and Salgood Sam a big apology, though. Sea of Red is not only a distinctly non-silly book, it’s one of the better debuts of the year.
Written by Phil Hester
Art by John McCrea
32 pages, black and white
Published by Image Comics
Every time I turn around these days, there’s some new sort of “final days” media being released. The end of the world is a popular subject, and while the exact nature of how civilization is going to fall, one of the central ideas that pops up in most of these is the idea of the dead coming back among the living. That’s one of the main conceits of The Atheist, but Phil Hester and John McCrea’s take on the idea is just different enough that it almost immediately caught my attention.
Written by Joe Pruett
Art by Goran Sudzuka
32 pages, color
Published by Image Comics
One of the most popular myths and legends still being used in popular entertainment has got to be that of King Arthur. It’s hard to not know anything of Arthur, Camelot, and the Knights of the Round Table. When Beyond Avalon was announced, I was both intrigued and worried because the creators sounded promising, but did we really need another sequel to the stories of King Arthur?
Written by Jason Rand
Art by Juan E. Ferreyra
128 pages, black and white
Published by Image Comics
One of my favorite series of books from about fifteen years ago was Wild Cards, where super-powers had become part of every day life and everything was both the same and different at the same time. Small Gods gave me that same comfortable sort of feeling; not because the two series are the same, but because both of them are able to effortlessly take the world we live in and add in that one difference that changes everything.
Written by Robert Kirkman
Art by Tony Moore
144 pages, black and white
Published by Image Comics
There’s been a resurgence of zombies in popular media over the past couple of years. Maybe it’s a reaction to society in general, with mindless masses working in their office jobs and believing everything they’re told. Alternately, maybe it’s just because people really like shambling undead monsters that want to eat your brains. Either way, there’s definitely a lot of them as of late, and in comics there’s a clear winner of the most popular zombie book: The Walking Dead.
Officer Rick Grimes was shot while trying to apprehend a suspect, but what he didn’t know was that was the last normal moment of his life. When he woke up, several weeks had passed and he was all alone in an abandoned hospital. Well, abandoned by the living, at any rate. The world is now consumed by zombies that have taken over all large urban areas, and all it takes is one bite from them to transform you too into a zombie. Now Rick needs to find out what happened to his family, see if there’s anyone else out there still alive… and survive.
In terms of a suspense story, the first collection of The Walking Dead has exactly what you’re looking for. From the moment that Rick wakes up in the empty hospital until the very end of the collection, there’s barely a chance to stop and breathe as one attack or escape after another happens. In many ways, that’s both what I liked and disliked about The Walking Dead. It’s a book that never lets up in terms of suspense and tension, but it does so at the cost of character development. At the end of six issues worth of stories, we still barely know any of the cast aside from Rick himself, and even he qualifies as little more than a generic resourceful person. Hopefully this is something that’s fixed in later installments, because as much as I do enjoy the suspense portion of The Walking Dead, the book becomes very formulaic in its attack/escape routine. The back cover talks about how without modern conveniences people truly start living, and that’s what I want to see; the characters living, not just catching their breath between disasters.
Tony Moore’s art works well with the stories in The Walking Dead; it’s one that draws both humans and zombies alike with ease. It’s nice to see Moore getting all the little details right, like cheekbones or individual hairs on people’s faces as beards first begin to grow in. In many ways, Moore’s art reminds me of Steve Parkhouse, with people’s slightly angular features and how you still can see individual lines in people’s hair. Even the backgrounds look nice in The Walking Dead; you can see the barren trees in the backgrounds of the camp that give off a feeling of death, or the shambles that is Atlanta letting you know that everyone in the city is now gone. It’s a pity that Moore didn’t work on future volumes of The Walking Dead, because he’s able to capture Kirkman’s scenes well and really bring them to life.
The Walking Dead Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye is a good book, and I certainly enjoyed reading it. At the same time, though, things will have to change if the series is going to keep my interest. Hopefully future installments move away from the patterns that got established here; if The Walking Dead can keep moving forward, and start to concentrate on the people trapped within the world of zombies instead of just the zombies being a menace, this will be a series that can go on for a very long time to come.
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Written by Robert Kirkman
Art by Ryan Ottley
32 pages, color
Published by Image Comics
It’s hard to believe that it was just two years ago that Invincible #1 first appeared on the market. Part of a group of books launched at the same time at Image, Invincible has not only stuck around, but managed to increase its sales over time in a marketplace where the reverse is what normally happens. Now that the book’s been established for a while, it’s time to ask the question: quality-wise, how’s it doing?
