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Courtney Crumrin and the Fire Thief’s Tale

By Ted Naifeh
64 pages, black and white
Published by Oni Press

It’s been a while, but fans of sarcastic and slightly caustic girls with supernatural powers can rejoice—Courtney Crumrin has returned. With Courtney Crumrin and the Fire Thief’s Tale, Ted Naifeh is continuing to expand the series’s world—not only physically, but emotionally. He’s continuing to raise the stakes for all the characters involved, and the end result? I think it’s an important but good shift for the series.

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Papercutter #4

By Vanessa Davis, Sarah Oleksyk, and John Porcellino
32 pages, black and white
Published by Tugboat Press

It used to be that every time you turned around, a new anthology comic was launched. The anthology as a comic book series can work well as a showcase for both new and existing talent, and having to only fill 32 pages (on average) per issue means you can launch new publications regularly. These days, anthologies seem to be more graphic novels (like Flight or Kramers Ergot) than single issues of comic books; I think it was the usage of the older format that initially lured me towards Tugboat Press’s Papercutter. The creative line-ups looked strong, and by the time I was done with the three issues I’d read, I was filled with a renewed hope that the anthology comic book can still survive.

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Amulet Vol. 1: The Stonekeeper

By Kazu Kibuishi
208 pages, color
Published by Graphix/Scholastic Books

In mid-2006, Kazu Kibuishi temporarily placed his monthly webcomic Copper on hold so he could work on a new project, Amulet. I’ll admit that I was feeling more than a little grouchy at the time this knowledge came out; what was this strange new interloper that was coming between me and my beloved Copper? It was a little silly, with Kibuishi’s stories in the Flight anthologies as well as Daisy Kutter having certainly proven that Kibuishi wasn’t a one-trick pony. But in the back of my head was always the mantra, “Wait and see,” when it came to Amulet. Now the waiting is over—and trust me when I say that there is plenty of seeing to be done.

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Johnny Hiro #1-2

By Fred Chao
32 pages, black and white
Published by AdHouse Books

Every now and then, I hear people talking about the idea of going away from single issues of comics (in favor of strictly longer-form graphic novels) and I think to myself, “Would that really be such a bad thing?” What always makes me come to my senses, though, is coming across a comic that uses the single-issue format perfectly. And so, with that in mind, another book to add to that list is Fred Chao’s Johnny Hiro, one that can best be summed up as 32-page bursts of sheer fun.

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Flink

By Doug TenNapel
112 pages, black and white
Published by Image Comics

Having an effective ending to a story is, ultimately, crucial to how people will remember your creation. It’s the last thing that you encounter, so a mediocre story with a great ending will probably be thought of as better than its average level of quality really is. Likewise, a good story with a bad ending can poison the proverbial well, destroying a lot of goodwill that was built up with the audience until that point. In the case of Doug TenNapel’s new graphic novel Flink, the shift in my reception because of the last six pages? To say that it was immense was an understatement.

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MPD-Psycho Vol. 1-2

Written by Eiji Otsuka
Art by Sho-u Tajima
184 pages, black and white
Published by Dark Horse

I feel like I should open up this review with a note of congratulations to the creators and publishers of the book. So, to Sho-u Tajima, Eiji Otsuka, Kadokawa Soten, and Dark Horse, well done. You’ve done what very few other comics have managed; I was thoroughly disturbed by reading your comic, yet I’m dying to read more. I’m not sure what this says about you, me, or this comic—but for now I’m going to assume the comic. It’s going to help my peace-of-mind with the idea that a book about a series of disturbing and horrific murders and a multiple-personality-profiler helping solve them is not, in fact, a trope that would hook me regardless of quality.

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Lobster Johnson #1-3

Written by Mike Mignola
Art by Jason Armstrong
32 pages, color
Published by Dark Horse

Maybe it has to do with Mike Mignola having more free time on his hands now that he’s not drawing new issues of Hellboy, but it certainly feels like there’s been a small explosion of Hellboy material as of lately. The B.P.R.D. spin-off series is chugging steadily along, the Hellboy: Darkness Calls mini-series is coming to a conclusion, the new Hellboy: The Troll Witch and Others collection just hit stores, and if that wasn’t enough now there’s the Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus mini-series, spun out of earlier Hellboy appearances. But is it possible for there to be too much of a good thing?

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Daybreak Vol. 1-2

By Brian Ralph
48 pages, black and white
Published by Bodega Distribution

When is a gimmick not a gimmick? That’s a question I quickly found myself contemplating as I read Brian Ralph’s series Daybreak. Taking a rarely used storytelling device of setting the story in the second person (and thus making the reader part of the story), it’s easy to write off the decision as an attention-grabbing stunt, or just an attempt to be different. The more I read of Daybreak, though, the more convinced I am that Ralph’s using it as part of a plan to tell a very different story of survival. And when you look at it that way, it works remarkably well.

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Last Call Vol. 1

By Vasilis Lolos
136 pages, black and white
Published by Oni Press

Launching a brand-new series requires walking a fine line between plunging the reader directly into the action, and with trying to provide needed background and a feel for the setting. With Vasilis Lolos’s Last Call, the graphic novel format is in some ways both a blessing and a hindrance for that line, but ultimately I think he’s able to keep a sense of balance present.

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Translucent Vol. 1

By Kazuhiro Okamoto
192 pages, black and white
Published by Dark Horse

One thing I’ve noticed about a lot of manga is that the series can often begin with a chapter that feels like (to use a television term) a “pilot episode”—a single story that will be used to convince the publisher that you have what it takes to go to series. Often these comic book “pilots” are stand-alone stories, so even if it doesn’t get picked up for a series you can run the one-off story and call it a day. What surprised me about Dark Horse’s Translucent, then, is that after reading the first chapter I’d mentally written off the rest of the book as an idea that had already run its course, with nothing more to say. I was quite happy, though, to discover that I was absolutely wrong.

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