By Sophie Campbell
204 pages, black and white
Published by SLG Publishing
I should have guessed the second I heard about Shadoweyes that it would be anything but typical. Creator Sophie Campbell is probably best known for her graphic novel series Wet Moon, with its beautifully off-beat soap opera of characters and relationships. So while Shadoweyes is indeed Campbell’s take on a superhero, the end result is something far different than I suspect most people would be expecting.
Story and pencils by Joe Pimienta
Script and inks by Lindsay Hornsby
200 pages, black and white
Published by SLG Publishing
What is about stories involving mentally deranged children? It’s a strange little niche market that exists in horror stories of all shapes and sizes, where the innocent looking kid turns out to be a stone-cold killer, going after babysitters, family pets, or (inevitably in this sort of story) parents. It’s that particular niche that Joe Pimienta and Lindsay Hornsby mine for their graphic novel A Friendly Game, but even at 200 pages, what we get is such an accelerated descent into madness that this book is hard to swallow on multiple levels.
By Brandon Dayton
132 pages, black and white
Self-Published
I wish I could remember where I picked up a copy of Green Monk. My best guess is at the Small Press Expo, but your guess is honestly as good as mine. The reason why I say I wish I could remember, is because I also have no recollection of how it ended up trapped between my couch and the wall it’s next to for at least a year or so. (Oops.) The sad thing is that I wish I’d found it earlier so I could have already spread the word about how much I love Brandon Dayton’s art.
By Edie Fake
256 pages, two-color
Published by Secret Acres
It’s hard to try and describe Gaylord Phoenix, Edie Fake’s collection of mini-comics of the same name. Mythological journey? Beat poetry in a visual format? Stream of consciousness? Explosion of sexuality? It’s all and none of those, and while it’s not a book that is the easiest to read (or accessible to all), for those willing to try and decipher its puzzle I think there’s a reward to be had.
By Rumiko Takahashi
200 pages, black and white
Published by Viz
I’ve been having fun reading brand-new chapters of Rumiko Takahashi’s series Rin-ne on the Shonen Sunday website each week; for those who like something a little more permanent, though, the book is also being published in a series of collections. (Doubly so since once the collections are released, the individual chapters come off of the official site.) Picking up the latest volume, it strikes me that while I’m enjoying the series overall, in some ways this feels like a slight step backwards for Takahashi.
Written by Aaron Ximm
Art by Kaven Soofi
16 pages, color
Published by Ten Speed Press
Over the years I’ve seen a lot of extremely strange and silly books show up at my doorstep. One of the most memorable ones in that regard, though, has got to be the upcoming spoof children’s book Pat the Zombie. A tongue-in-cheek version of the classic Pat the Bunny (in which very young readers get to pat a fluffy bunny and in many others ways interact with pages), this takes everyone’s favorite mashup subject, zombies, and sets them loose on the hapless reader.
Written by Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen
Penciled by Keith Giffen, Pat Broderick, Carmine Infantino, and Howard Bender
Inked by Larry Mahlstedt, Bruce Patterson, and Dave Hunt
416 pages, color
Published by DC Comics
When friends got me hooked on the Legion of Super-Heroes back in the early ’90s with Keith Giffen, Tom and Mary Bierbaum, and Al Gordon’s infamous "Five Years Later" run, I eventually started moving backwards through the team’s history, reading all of the previous Legion of Super-Heroes comic that began in 1984. I never went any further back at that time, though, and in doing so I missed what remains one of the most well-known stories involving the characters: The Great Darkness Saga. With the softcover collection having gone out of print years ago, this new deluxe hardcover seemed to be a perfect time to see if it still holds up to all the praise heaped on it over the years.
Continue reading “Legion of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga Deluxe Edition”
By Mitsuru Adachi
576 pages (v1) & 376 pages (v2), black and white
Published by Viz
First, a quick point that I need to bring up: I’m not a fan of baseball. Watching it on the television just does nothing for me, and while I have a good time at the occasional trip to the ballpark with friends, it has to do with the experience (and getting a chili cheese dog and a beer) rather than the game itself. I mention this not because I think it’s any sort of superior viewpoint (I’m actually a little envious of my friends who love it), but because you need to know that before I tell you the next fact. Cross Game, Mitsuru Adachi’s comic about high school students playing baseball, is now probably one of my favorite manga series of all time.
By Hergé
64 pages, color
Published by Little, Brown
I promised myself late last year, after reading Charles Burns’s X’ed Out, that I would make 2011 the year that I finally sat down and read the collection of Tintin albums that I got for a steal back in the day, but had never actually gotten around to starting. It’s a rather obvious omission in my comic reading vocabulary (despite growing up reading a friend’s Asterix books, but never trying the Tintin books sitting right next to them), and it’s been an interesting process going through them in order. With Tintin and the Broken Ear, the sixth book from Hergé, I’m happy to say that I feel like I’ve finally gotten far enough in that I can see what all the fuss is about.
By Sarah Becan
192 pages, sepia-toned
Published by Shortpants Press
I think all you have to do is say the words, "Ouija Board" to get a strong reaction out of anyone. Love them, hate them, believe in them, scoff them, there’s always an opinion just waiting around the corner. Sarah Becan over the years created four mini-comics that illustrate sessions she was part of using a Ouija Board, and thanks to a grant from the Xeric Foundation, collected them all into a sharp looking little book last year.
