Image Comics is pleased to announce the list of WHERE WE LIVE: LAS VEGAS SHOOTING BENEFIT ANTHOLOGY contributors.
Curated by JH Williams III, Wendy Wright-Williams, Will Dennis, and Image Comics’ Publisher, Eric Stephenson, one hundred percent of the proceeds for the WHERE WE LIVE anthology will be donated to an existing GoFundMe campaign for the survivors in Las Vegas.
Just under six months since Hurricane Maria plowed through Puerto Rico with a destructive force that left island residents desperate for survival or forced to flee to the U.S. mainland, the island is still struggling to rebound. Today, the St. Louis publisher announces their commitment to relief efforts in a partnership with United Way of Puerto Rico, in conjunction with the release of Puerto Rico Strong, a comics anthology from some of today’s top talent!
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Whenever we look for answers, we always hope that it’s always going to be simple. Even if we find the answer, we know it in our minds. But how many times do we truly comprehend the answer? Knowing and understanding are two very different things, and it’s one of the hardest concepts to grasp. But for this particular comic, the line tends to blur between knowing, understanding and predicting something from what we know. Before I continue with this review, the following book is an anthology of written and illustrated stories. It is necessarily a comic but a collection of tales from different mediums. If you do not find the idea of written stories or anthologies appealing, I’d suggest you stop reading this review.
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Comics like P M Buchan’s Hangover are everything that’s fun about picking up a title with no expectations, and I’m dead serious when I say I went in with NO expectations. I picked the book for a ridiculous and very me reason: I was hungover. I looked at the title and thought ‘Now here’s a book that understands me.’ Was P M Buchan’s Hangover about being hungover? No. Am I happy I read it? Absolutely. If this is what this man's hangovers are like, we need to drink together. Hangover is not one storyline, but an anthology of strange, disturbing, and darkly hilarious short comics. It’s the funny pages for anyone interested in cannibalism, Satan, and things that go bump in the night. I wouldn’t judge anyone who reads it based on that take away alone- shine on you crazy fucking diamonds. This review would go on for pages if I went story by story and talked about my likes and dislikes, so I’m going to try something new in my review structure.
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This year's Millarworld Annual is out! Another new batch of writers and artists to look out for next year. Mark Millar has given a few up-and-coming artists their big break working on a few of Millarworld’s biggest titles. I was excited to see this out; I now have some artists to watch for over the next few months!
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Attack on Bug City is a story in the upcoming anthology Colossal Chaos being published by Stache. I’m letting you know this up front because this is not a review of the entire anthology, nor do I have any plans to review the entire anthology. You can look for the anthology on Kickstarter if you’re interested in this story.
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In the introduction to this anthology, the editors, Zora Gilbert and Cat Parra, say, “we wanted to fill a book with stories about queer characters simply living life and finding happiness.” In this they have succeeded.
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Oh boy… not a lot to review this week, but if you’re reading Weekly Shonen Jump regularly, then you’re in for a treat as this issue features One Piece, My Hero Academia, Dr. Stone, The Promised Neverland, Hungry Marie, Food Wars!, Black Clover and One-Punch Man. Most of those are series I’m reading and enjoying, but I will only be covering The Promised Neverland and the final two Jump Start series (Maybe there’s still more for next time?) Hungry Marie and Dr. Stone.
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Welcome to my two-day late review of Weekly Shonen Jump. I am trying to get this review up and done on Monday’s when it actually releases, but so far that hasn’t happened. Well if you’re unfamiliar with how I write this review, check out previous issues or just jump in, you’ll figure it out.
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As a select few of you may remember, I haven't had the best of luck with anthologies as a critic on this site. Often produced cheaply with freely obtained content from enthusiastic artists who see the unpaid labor as simply being 'part of the hustle.' Frequently your indie anthology is a disposably printed black and white magazine packed in with not-quite-there art and cliché choked flashbang stories by writers not yet sophisticated enough to be compelling in a compressed storytelling space.
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From boy wizards to future cops, from Martians trashing England to missions through post-apocalyptic landscapes – the 40th anniversary year of Britain’s biggest comic will be packed with incredible new collections!
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Find out why Anthologies are on our “Worst of 2016” list.
Read MoreThere’s only one question to ask yourself before considering buying Draw Blood #1. Are you still interested in reading short horror comics? If so, then buy Draw Blood. If not, then we’re done here, and you can move on. I read this because it was sent to us for review. That’s the only reason. I wouldn’t have sought it out otherwise. I’m telling you this because you need to take what I say with a grain of salt.
Read MoreIf you’re going to buy an indie comic anthology, for your money, make it Future Quake. There’s a lot of stories, and it genuinely feels as if each creator was given a minimum page count rather than a max. Each story takes the time to breathe and in some cases, develop into an interesting tale.
Read MoreI debate if I should review Adam + Gill’s Trivia Game. I didn’t particularly like it, but I think that’s because comedy is so subjective. Whereas I didn’t find Trivia Game funny, I’m hopefully that someone reading this review will check it out and find it funny and then subsequently hate my review for not heaping praise upon it. I can live with that if it means that I help someone find this book and enjoy it.
Read MoreUsually, I’m not a fan of anthologies written by one person. It takes a talented writer with a solid vision to pull off such an anthology. For the most part, creator and writer, Jacques Nyemb does just that. Humanescent is unique in that the theme isn’t superheroes, sci-fi or the typical “here’s the character tell a story with them and use these personality tropes” themed story. I’ve never read a collection of stories about “being human” and while that could come across as intentionally vague to some people, I find it to be ambitious.
Read MoreBy Dustin Cabeal
Doctor Crowe is an anthology or sorts in that there are four separate stories, but they’re all written by Corey Fryia, and each story has a different artist. It’s very similar to what other publishers do on annuals in which they invite different creators to tell a variety of stories with a set of characters, but in this instance, it’s one man telling the stories. I’m not opposed to that; I just wish it had a damn name beside "anthology."
Read MoreOver the past two years, I have read an exhausting number of anthologies. It was once a comic format that I enjoyed since you were able to read a lot of comics from a variety of creators. Now it seems as if it’s the golden standard for indie publishers to highlight a lot of new talent, which isn’t bad, but with it comes a varying degree of success. Success that I didn’t find in Tales from Orbit.
Read MoreIssue #9 of Nix Comics Quarterly, The garage punk themed comic horror anthology is ready to go to press, and I would like you to help get the book to print in time for Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC) in October by pre-ordering a copy through Kickstarter. REWARDS:
Cover by Stephen Blickenstaff: This issue's cover was created by the artist/musician responsible for one of the most iconic album covers of all time! (The Cramps: Bad Music for Bad People) What a thrill to have him on board for this issue!
Stories:
The Vicar: Whispers From The Alley by Ken Eppstein and Michael NenoThe monster huntin' garage rockin' preacher faces off against a werewolf But that's just the beginning of the story as his right-hand man, Alberto, has a conversation with... A dog in the alley?
Illustration by Michael Neno
Butcher Baby by Ken Eppstein and Gideon Kendall Verna thinks there is something wrong with her roommate Sally's creepy new additions to her Beatles collection. It's a frightening foursome to be sure!
Illustration by Gideon Kendall
Hellhounds On My Trail by Ken Eppstein and Pat Redding Scanlon
Ana Satura, Introduced in the Vicar Story in issue #7 and fresh off a starring role in Nix Comics summer Tee-Shirt sale, gets her own story! It's all guitars, hot rod cars and karate chops as we get a little insight into who Ana is!
Illustration by Pat Redding Scanlon
The Shoplift Horror by Christian Hoffer and Andy Bennett
The owner of the last record store on earth has to deal with post-apocalyptic Lovecraftian horrors on a daily basis.... So exactly is what is so horrifying about a simple shoplifter??
Illustrated by Andy Bennett
Did It Really Happen? Thor Meets Stan Lee by Ken Eppstein and Mark Rudolph
What happened when Canadian rocker and bodybuilder Jon Mikl Thor met Marvel's Stan Lee? Well, it was more than a little cloudburst! 'Nuff Said.
Illustration by Mark Rudolph
Bus Stop Ned has a good day by Ken Eppstein and Matt Wyatt and Bus Stop Ned has a recipe by Matt Miner and Jude Vigants
Two new stories featuring everybody's (least) favorite commuter! Dialog taken from actual real bus stop "horror stories"
Once upon a time, 2000 AD could have saved the comic book industry—or at least the ideas behind the series could have. A British anthology comic book series that, in retrospect, almost looked like the UK version of a Weekly Shonen Jump where every week would be a collection of four-to-five different serialized comic stories done by various writers and artists. This was a series that gave way to characters like Judge Dredd and, owing to its punk zine scene roots, told some of the best hard-hitting science fiction and satire of the 1980's.
But now that it's 2016 and 2000 AD is still publishing comics, the format and style doesn’t hold up as sharply as it once did.
Most of this issue’s problems come from the classic 2000 AD format. The series publishes in a slightly-larger-than-single-issue length of 32 pages—meaning each of the five stories in every issue has to tell its chunk of a serialized story in about five-to-six pages.
The restriction of this format has paved the way for some incredibly inventive methods of storytelling but here; most of the stories feel chopped up and squeezed in without a second thought towards if they make for an interesting read on their own.
Judge Dredd is investigating a crime with a suspect who might now look like a woman and, despite this being part three of the current story, I can’t tell if there’s a lick of satire or irony in the story they’re telling. The other stories here that don’t hit the mark have some interesting ideas going for them: an intergalactic version of the Cold War that still takes place in the 1960's or a story about a member of a salvage space ship forced to murder his own crew after being experimented on by aliens.
They’re cool and visually interesting science fiction stories but reading them here felt like picking up a random newspaper to read the Mark Trail strip. There’s a story happening here but it feels too cut up to get anything more than a sense of it.
The two stand-out stories in 2000 AD Prog 1993 are “The Candidate” and “Mindmine.” “The Candidate” follows one of the psychic cops of the Judge Dredd world as she attempts to prevent the assassination of a politician. Politicians in the Judge Dredd universe don’t have particularly long life spans and it is up to Anderson to pick the assassin out of a crowd who all want this politician dead. The story’s tense and sends a strong sense of just what kind of wall this psi-cop is up against. There are moments of shock and the artists here even manage to end the story on a shocking twist all within the five page restriction.
“Mindmine” stands out with its almost Looney Toons style art about the story of an alien civilization as a soldier has to defuse a psychic mine implanted in the consciousness of a random citizen. It's a story that reminds the reader just how weird and jarring 2000 AD is willing to go as the shocked civilian relives the memory of his son’s birthday party as an explosives unit tries to disarm the bomb.
While these stories stand out, they stand out as reminders of the weird political legacy 2000 AD has always had and especially how they managed to convey satisfying and varied experiences within five pages of content. This current book can’t shake the feeling of having been made by a group of people who were once edgy in the 80's but now are just old and the types of stories being told are showing their rust.
The comic anthology willing to push the boundaries of what types of stories are being told still feels like a necessary and exciting prospect. Unfortunately, however, that anthology will more likely come from the legacy left behind by 2000 AD comics rather than 2000 AD itself.
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