The Best Comics of 2013

The Comic Pusher Best Comics of 2013
by Jeffrey O. Gustafson

2013 was a year without a single marquis work that represents both the critical and commercial consensus in the way that certain monumental works seemed to overshadow previous years. This year had no Building Stories or Asterios Polyp, but that does not mean it wasn't a good year for comics. It was actually pretty great. 

Obviously this was the year of Gilbert Hernandez, but other creators had pretty prolific high-quality outputs as well. Matt Fraction - Comic Pusher's 2008 Creator of the Year - was working in a different stratosphere in 2013, and his Sex Criminals with Chip Zdarsky and Satellite Sam with equally prolific Howard Chaykin would have been enough for him to net the top spot if not for Hernandez. Mainstream superhero comics are always a mess, but Hickman's big-picture Avengers/Infinity work was especially entertaining, and his creator-owned work continued to be cutting edge. Despite no new material from the likes of Chris Ware we did get killer new indie anthologies from Los Bros Hernandez, Adrian Tomine, Michael Deforge, and Seth, and new graphic novels from Darwyn Cooke, Jason, and Fred Chao. The proliferation of high-quality archival reprint material continues to astound, and in yet another year that sees increasing in-roads into the mainstream with digital releases, 2013 saw an unexpected sea-change in how comics can be made and digitally distributed with Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin's Private Eye.

My choices for Best Comics of 2013 reflects the growing importance of web and digital comics (three entries), the Creator Owned Renaissance (over ten), and the availability of quality translated European works (including my still-surprising-to-me choice of Best Graphic Novel).  Without further ado (and about damned time, too) here are the 13 Best Comics of 2013.

Best Graphic Novel of 2013
The Initiates by Etienne Davodeau (NBM)

In 2010, French cartoonist Etienne Davodeau proposed a unique venture to his friend, the notable vintner Richard Leroy - he would spend the year assisting the winemaker in every aspect of production, from trimming in the winter to shipping in the fall, and the cartoonist would open up and introduce him to his world of comics. What transpires is told in the surprisingly wonderful non-fiction docu-comic and the Best Overall Graphic Novel of 2013, The Initiates from Futuropolis and NBM Comics Lit.

Davodeau chronicles Leroy, a dedicated artist of extraordinary commitment, his art wine. Leroy's obsessive devotion to his particular style of production - he has a relationship to the plants and the soil that borders on mystical - and the proven quality of his output year after year has won him a legion of fans across the globe. Embedded in Leroy's production, Davodeau does a remarkable job of translating, both visually, and descriptively, the entire universe of wine making and consuming that Leroy inhabits. Interwoven is the fascinating window into the world of French comic making. Davodeau introduces Leroy to Gibrat & Mathieu & Guibert and many more who appear in-person. When Leroy questions Lewis Trondheim's style, Trondheim shows up in the form of a brilliant one-page cartoon. Davodeau takes Leroy to comic conventions, Leroy sits in at editorial meetings, he reviews submissions, takes in art shows, and more.

In The Initiates, Davodeau has crafted a captivating, comprehensive, absorbing, delightful and incredibly entertaining documentary that certainly deserves to take its place in the growing nonfiction graphic canon. When you finish The Initiates, you get the sense of having spent the day with good friends, good food, good wine, and good conversation, falling under the spell of camaraderie capped off by the euphoria you can only get from a few drinks at the end of a day well spent.

Read my full review of The Intitiates Here. 

Best Comic of 2014 
Time, from xkcd 1190 by Randall Monroe

In March, Randall Munroe, the cartoonist behind the webcomic xkcd, published xkcd #1190, Time. The comic started as a single image that began to change, incrementally every hour. Some panels would feature a small change, others contained dialog and events and changes in scenery indicative of minutes or hours passing. Munroe published a new panel every hour for four months, a comic in 3099 panels, with each panel published every hour for 123 days in what is, all told, the Best Overall Comic of 2013.

The story is as unique and engaging as the format. Munroe, in his signature poetic stick figure style, weaves an elaborate, suspenseful sci-fi mystery, with two unnamed figures exploring an abandoned and troubling landscape. What transpires is akin to First Contact and a race against time to save a people from annihilation. The extreme and varied details of the comic's setting reveal Munroe to be a creator of extraordinary multidisciplinary intelligence, an innovative storyteller whose works show humanity and thirst for discovery. His art, so deceptively simple, continues to be detailed and above all else shockingly expressive for featureless stick figures, the format ambitious. The end result is breathtaking and dramatic.

The title of the piece refers to the unknowable future the characters inhabit, a future where recognizable human society has collapsed. It refers to the experience the travelers share, the time they spend together discovering things about the world and themselves they never could before guess. It refers to the unexpected deadline the travelers fall under to save their people. And it refers to the experience of reading the comic - separate from the unique temporal experience of its initial publication - the way the reader can manipulate the time of experiencing the work, one of modern comics truly monumental achievements.

Experience Time at the Munroe-approved resource geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190. Read my full commentary and analysis of xkcd: Time here.


Best Ongoing Series of 2013 - Creative Team
Saga by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples (Image)

The Comic Pusher Best Ongoing Series of the Year for the second year running, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' Saga continues to be an exhilarating, utterly absorbing, completely original sci-fi/fantasy drama. The story of two moon-crossed lovers from different worlds on the run with a price on their head, the narrative slowed down to build the world and expand the cast of key players.

Vaughan's masterful pacing keeps the cliffhangers and shocks coming. Staples' fine illustration a perfect visual voice for the story. Saga uses its unique setting and extraordinary characters to explore fundamental questions about family and love while telling an absolutely riveting, unpredictable, richly layered, often funny, and always humanistic story. There are a lot of good comics leading the creator-owned renaissance at Image, but nothing that creates and fills the niches that Saga does, let along with its continued level of success.

Best Ongoing Series of 2013 - Single Creator
MIND MGMT by Matt Kindt (Dark Horse)

Matt Kindt has been making graphic novels for a while, but his ongoing MIND MGMT has announced Kindt as one of the best overall creators and most distinct voices in mainstream comics. MIND MGMT - a bracingly original work that is also the Best Single-Creator Series of the year - is an enthralling journey into a world of superspies and secret histories, unique powers and the unknown forces of global manipulation. As a storyteller in his creator-owned works, Kindt is deeply invested in the effect spying has on societies and the individuals who wage the never-ending shadow wars that steer the course of history. The unique metaphysical powers and technologies used in spying in MIND MGMT and the winding pathways of interpersonal and intergovernmental treachery share equal focus with stories of human beings giving everything of themselves for an ideal or profit, often caught up in waves of human events beyond their control, sometimes controlling those waves themselves. Kindt masterfully utilizes espionage and everything it entails to explore unique facets of human interaction and global history. The issues released this year saw Kindt take his art and storytelling to completely new levels. The story constantly one-ups itself, in ingenuity, in twists, in character, in sheer style, and weaves a deeply labyrinthine mystery whose secrets unravel like seeds blossoming into massive trees, roots like an iceberg, branches dovetailing into everything you think you know. MIND MGMT is represents some of Kindt's finest work to date.

(See also my review of Kindt's original graphic novel released in 2013 Red Handed: The Fine Art of Strange Crimes here)

Best New Series of 2013
East of West by Jonathan Hickman & Nick Dragotta (Image)

Throughout the expansive, high-concept ongoing East of West, writer/designer Jonathan Hickman and artist Nick Dragotta redefine the science fiction western (if it was ever defined at all). Hickman and Dragotta's high-concept series is, at its core, a treatise on our increasingly fractured society. But more than that it is an astounding work of arresting science fiction and high-tech fantasy, Hickman's inside-out epic love story in an unrecognizable America, Dragotta creating stunning artwork deeply influenced by European and Japanese sensibilities as much as whatever the hell comes from his head to his pen to the page. Hickman and Dragotta create and then hit the mark like few others in comics, East of West the best trippy, sweeping wonder you didn't know you craved.

Best Comic Strip of 2013
A Softer World by Emily Horne & Joey Comeau

The web photocomic A Softer World by Emily Horne & Joey Comeau is a unique and beautiful exploitation of the comics form that manages to transcend what is possible with photo comics. In each three-panel strip we get a perfect melding of Comeau's verbal poetry and Horne's visual poetry, executing works of narrative art that are concise, moving and powerful, often very funny, thought provoking, beautiful, or sad, and always an astonishing combination of images and words. Horne's photography and design is intimate, her panelization and editing emotive and dynamic. Comeau's narratives always translate pure accessible emotion in expansive narratives packed in a short space with a stunning economy of words. Both are poets of extraordinary skill who have forged a visual and narrative partnership of uncanny felicity. Strips in A Softer World often poetically explore themes of loss, sex, love, and depression in short narratives that can involve zombies and relationships and science fiction and divine absurdity, all the while elegantly commenting on the human condition. Even the slightest strips execute a timeless, efficient humor and depth. Throughout this year's best strips from the duo, Horne manages imagery both straightforward and elegiac, Comeau's prose the perfect counterpoint or illustration. Their strips continue to be vibrant and original masterpieces that transcend the comic form, narrative art in its truest sense.

For my essay celebrating A Softer World at Ten Years and 1000 Strips, click here.

Best Webcomic of 2013 
The Private Eye by Brian K. Vaughan & Marcos Martin (Panel Syndicate)

A discussion of Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin's periodical webcomic and publishing experiment The Private Eye must begin with the creators' innovative pricing, distribution and promotion of the project. A 10-issue series published by Martin on his and Vaughan's Panel Syndicate website, The Private Eye can be downloaded DRM-free, pay-what-you-want, in five languages. The series - a bold step away from every usual delivery method available in mainstream comics from two of the medium's premier talents - came out of nowhere and has proven to be a game-changer. All that, and a damn fine comic, too.

Vaughan excels at high-concept ideas, and The Private Eye is no different. In 2076, decades after The Cloud burst revealing the hidden secrets of everyone on Earth, the internet is gone, the press is law, and privacy is guarded by physical disguise. Against this backdrop is a hard-boiled murder mystery, told with humor and suspense. (The timeliness of the issues presented and the unique counterpoints with its release format are just icing.) But then there's the brilliance of the art by Martin with colorist Muntsa Vicente. Martin & Vicente present a slender, densely packed futurescape in widescreen retrofutureshock hypercolor. Martin's first creator-owned work, his art in The Private Eye is also some of his best. Now at the halfway point, Vaughan & Martin have packed a wallop in every chapter, and the series may prove to be a turning point for the medium and the creators involved.

For my essay on the importance of Panel Syndicates internationalization in The Private Eye, click here.

Best Limited Series of 2013
Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake by Natasha Allegri (Boom!)

This year's Best Limited Series and all-ages book was the fabulous Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake written and illustrated by Fionna creator Natasha Allegri. Much like Meredith Gran's superb Marceline and the Scream Queens - 2012's Best Limited Series - the auteur-driven side stories continue to be better than the ongoing Adventure Time book. Which isn't to say that Adventure Time proper is bad, indeed it is quite good. It's clever and fun and zany but it just doesn't click the same way Fionna and Marceline do. Part of the appeal of Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake is that this isn't just some all-ages perfunctory hackwork thing for Allegri: she created these characters for the Adventure Time television show, and they are clearly near and dear to her heart. The gender-swapped universe of Fionna and Cake is far more than just a Rule 63 version of the Adventure Time universe, these are fully fleshed out characters with their own unique perspective on the world of Ooo. Allegri's Fionna is a fierce, independent teenage girl who likes to punch stuff and she's pretty awesome. But wrapped in this gleeful energy and silly misadventure is a series of simple beauty, Allegri's cartooning inspired and full of love and life. Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake is a wonderful comic in every aspect, delightful, whimsical, funny, and elegant.

For more Adventure Time reviews, click here.

Best Non-Fiction Graphic Novel of 2013
March Book 1 by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell (Top Shelf)

Congressman John Lewis has had a unique perspective on American history. He was on the front lines of the non-violent Civil Rights movement in the deep south. He was there at the sit-ins and the student demonstrations, even directly working with Martin Luther King. He and his compatriots received verbal and physical abuse, facing down the very weight of history and the ingrained racist culture of oppression. March is John Lewis's autobiography of his time and experience on the forefront of the Civil Rights movement, co-written by Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell. Far from rote hagiography, Aydin and Powell mold Lewis's revelatory narrative into a compelling and uplifting warts-and-all chronicle, a celebration of the indomitably of the human spirit, an exploration at once deeply personal and broadly sociohistorical. The arc of Lewis's life story extends all the way through Barack Obama's historic inauguration, which acts as the framing device of the book. Wonderfully structured, engaging, and beautifully produced, March is a vital documentary of the Civil Rights era, told by one of the most important figures of that time.

Best One-Shot of 2013
Godland Finale by Joe Casey & Tom Scioli (Image)

I know it's a bit of a cheat to call the Godland Finale a one-shot, but Godland is a series that simply defies, and as much as the Finale was the 37th issue of Joe Casey and Tom Scioli's unparalleled work, it is also a kind of a self-contained graphic novella that masterfully condenses all the epic sci-fi weirdness Casey & Scioli had been producing for nearly a decade. At this point, trying to describe the plot of Godland is like trying to collect a cup of dark matter. Imagine Kirby-Jadorowsky-Moebius cosmology siphoned through a massive temporal LSD trip and you might scratch the surface. Or not. In any event, Godland is one of those singular creative accomplishments from a creative team working at the height of their collaborative powers, a cosmic comic-comic that shatters whatever reductive labels you try to apply and becomes simply The Casey-Scioli Experience. Godland is an explosion of art and uninhibited creativity, the kind you can only get from comics, a grand visual narrative experience and experiment so unlike anything else you've ever read.

Best Single Issue of 2013
Hawkeye 11 by Matt Fraction & David Aja (Marvel)
 
Hawkeye from the team of Matt Fraction, David Aja & Matt Hollingsworth (with stunning assists from a murderer's row of  Javier Pulido, Fransesco Francavilla, and comics' most promising new talent Annie Wu) was once again the best superhero comic of the year. Superhero in air quotes, if you will, because Hawkeye is floating along in its own post-non-post-superhero genre landscape. No costumes, no epic superhero battles, "just" the complicated civilian lives of both Hawkeyes, Clint Barton and Kate Bishop, both lost in their own individual ways, trying to find direction, to find themselves against a backdrop of the far-from-easy Life Superheroic. Clint, always beat up and never quite healing, has an open wound he is filling with violence and alcohol and isolation. Kate, just barely an adult, trying to forge her own identity despite the increasing pressures of adulthood and quasi-superherodom. And all set against the backdrop of the pressures of Life in the Big City, be it Brooklyn or Los Angeles. But especially Brooklyn.

By the time issue 11 came out, Barton's life has come crashing violently down around his civilian identity. An innocent man is dead, and issue 11 deals with that revelation. What follows is a hard-boiled private detective story, complete with a detailed investigation and a femme fatale - except that it is told from the perspective of a side character, the mutt known affectionately as Pizza Dog. Fraction and Aja explore Pizza Dog's world through his senses, brilliantly using the natural pictographic language of comics in wholly inventive ways. Imagine of Chris Ware made a mainstream comic tangentially featuring superheroes, and that is Hawkeye 11. Not just a bold storytelling experiment, the creators utilize the issue to expand their established story and plumb the universal depth of the heart, a reflection on loss, a quest for truth. Aja and colorist Hollingsworth's work here is nothing short of revolutionary and a perfect encapsulation of the formula that makes Hawkeye the remarkable ongoing work that it is.

Best Short Story of 2013
"Translated from the Japanese" by Adrian Tomine, from Optic Nerve 13 (Drawn & Quarterly)

The second story from the latest issue of Adrian Tomine's anthology Optic Nerve is the beautiful, evocative, mysterious, heartbreaking and frankly flawless visual tone poem "Translated from the Japanese." The first page is a letter written in Japanese, and what follows over the next eight story pages is that letter from a mother to her infant son, translated and illustrated by Tomine. Tomine doesn't literally illustrate the letter's contents but shows still-lifes from the visual perspective of the letter's author: a sign at a terminal, baggage on a conveyor, a run-down apartment complex; a cityscape, towers lost in the haze. The letter opens, describing vague details of family discord, an iceberg tip of a mountain of pain hidden beneath the waves. Tomine's descriptions (through the letter's author) are straight forward, yet vivid, powerfully accompanied by his consistently remarkable illustrations. Tomine's ability to build an expansive, detailed life and give us just hints at the depths involved in such a short space showcases a remarkable gift as a storyteller. This is not a translation of a real letter, but Tomine's translation of the terror of parenthood and the indescribably difficult paths family life can take. Tomine inhabits the mother's character, and we, as readers, inhabit her, too. Here, in just a few pages, Tomine gives us a snapshot of a whole human life, one we are intimately connected to. In "Translated," Tomine takes his place with the masters of contemporary literary cartooning.

Read my full review of Optic Nerve 13 here.

Creator of the Year: Gilbert Hernandez

The Creator of the Year is without exception, and indeed without peer, Gilbert Hernandez. Beto released two new OGNs this year: the latest entry in the Palomar/Movie line in Maria M, and his wonderful roman a clef and celebration of childhood, Marble Season. These two works alone would be sufficient to cement his place at the top, but Hernandez is one of the planet's most prolific cartoonists, and 2013 saw a treasure trove of material from the Love and Rockets cartoonist, including hardcovers of his previously serialized Julio's Day and Children of Palomar, a new issue of Love and Rockets with brother Jaime, and two great Fantagraphics books about Love and Rockets including the indispensable Companion. 2013 marks yet a new high-water mark for one of the planet's finest cartoonists and literary voices. Gilbert filled the void of singular marquis comics with no less than five stunning works, collectively casting its own literary shadow for subsequent generations to wonder at. Someday you can tell your grandchildren that you were alive when the Hernandez Brothers were creating comics, and when Gilbert owned 2013.

Read my full reviews of Marble Season here, Julio's Day here, and Love and Rockets New Stories 6 here, as well as my comprehensive Love and Rockets guide here.

Twenty Honorable Mentions for 2013

Adventure Time by Ryan North, Shelli Paroline & Braden Lamb (Boom!), Best of EC Artist Edition (IDW), Chew by John Layman & Rob Guillory (Image), The End of the Fucking World by Charles Forsman (Oily/Fantagraphics), FF by Matt Fraction and Allred, Allred & Allred (Marvel), Fury by Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov (Marvel MAX), Hellboy in Hell by Mike Mignola (Dark Horse), Infinity by Jonathan Hickman et al (Marvel), Johnny Hiro: Skills to Pay the Bills by Fred Chao (St. Martin's Press), Multiple Warheads by Brandon Graham (Image), Nemo: Heart of Ice (League of Extraordinary Gentleman) by Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill (Knockabout/Top Shelf), The Complete RASL by Jeff Smith (Cartoon Books), Resident Alien: Suicide Blonde by Peter Hogan & Steve Parkhouse (Dark Horse), Richard Stark's Parker: Slayground by Darwyn Cooke (IDW), Satellite Sam by Matt Fraction & Howard Chaykin, Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky, Trillium by Jeff Lemire (Vertigo), Ultimate Comics Spider-Man by Brian Michael Bendis, Sarah Pichelli & David Marquez (Marvel), Wake Up, Percy Gloom! by Cathy Malkasian (Fantagraphics), and Young Avengers by Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie (Marvel).

For the Full Index of All Reviews, Click Here.

Previous Best Of Lists: 2008, 2009, 2012

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The Run: Ex Machina by Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris: World's Finest

The Comic Pusher Presents The Run: Ex Machina Part Six

In The Run, I review long-form comic works across multiple parts. In Part Six of my series on Ex Machina by Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris, I look at the next six stories, "Masquerade," "World's Finest," "The Race," Dirty Tricks, "Ruthless," and "Green" For the other reviews in this series, click here.

[A bit of a lightning round of Ex Machina reviews this week, covering five short stories and a small arc. Next week's penultimate examination of the series covers the last two arcs, followed by my final review on election day covering the series finale.]

"Masquerade"

We'll book-end this week's review with the third and fourth Special issues, this time illustrated by the great Jean Paul Leon. The first of these, "Masquerade," opens in October 2003 with Hundred reviewing a petition from the KKK to hold a rally in Central Park. That political hot-button (which also touches upon Hundred's role as a masked vigilante in contrast to the Klan's use of masks) frames the flashback to Hundred's first unintentional go at vigilantism precisely four years earlier.

Hundred, fresh from the hospital and all bandaged up like the Invisible Man (or perhaps the Unknown Soldier) from the explosion that took half his face, is at a pharmacy to get his prescription filled when a small crew of thieves enter in full Halloween costume to rob the joint. Before slipping out into the costumed night, they steal Hundred's watch, a family heirloom, and Hundred accidentally uses his powers to stop their gun from firing. Hundred clearly still has no inkling of the powers at his disposal, though he admits to hearing the watch calling out for him. He crashes at Bradbury's and has his first dream of The Great Machine. He goes to get his watch and stops one of the robbers who has gone completely insane.

"Masquerade" is overall a fairly straightforward Year One-esque pre-Great Machine superhero story, a nice, stylistic piece of filler. I love Leon's art, and what he produces in "Masquerade" (and later in "Green") is superb. But stylistically, it's just too far from Harris's grounded pop-superhero photo-reffed sci-fi. Leon's atmospheric, flat, noir style just doesn't jive with the rest of the series in the way that Sprouse's stuff does from the first two Specials that make up Life and Death. And unlike most of the short stories throughout Ex Machina, it is also largely inessential, providing nothing terribly new in terms of character development and understanding. "Masquerade" is a small window into a brief encounter with The Great Machine, and an even briefer non-issue with the politics of dealing with hate groups.

"World's Finest"

"World's Finest" - another Vaughnian play on words, referencing both the DC superhero team-up book and the common term for the NYPD, New York's Finest - is a short little biographical look at NYPD Commissioner and gadfly of The Great Machine, Amy Angotti. "World's Finest" is structured much in the same way as "Stand Alone" (which looked at Rick Bradbury's life), quickly focusing on a small life event and then leaping forward several years. The framing sequence is Angotti on the roof of One Police Plaza, talking on the phone with Hundred, and the flashbacks look at Angotti's meteoric rise to the top of the NYPD along with her relationship with her husband and contentious relationship with The Great Machine.

Vaughan and Harris really do translate the why and how of Angotti in the short vignettes of "World's Finest." We see the moments that made her the cop she would become, and her own kind of obsession with The Great Machine. There are some high-impact moments that Harris captures beautifully, plus a couple of nice little plays with the illogic of superheroism.

"The Race"

"The Race" involves Race and like the hamfisted title, handles the concept with the subtlety of a wrecking ball. Naturally the center of the story is David Wylie, Hundred's right-hand man at City Hall, who Hundred believes can be the next Mayor. While Hundred is on the phone with Wylie, he sees a ghost of a slave (or possibly some kind of manifestation of the City-Machine's guilt... or something). Hundred thinks it's connected to any number of times City building projects have disturbed nigh-ancient slave burial sites. Vaughan uses it as an excuse to talk about New York's complicated history with slavery and the general inequity that still exists, and to look at the first time The Great Machine and Wylie met. But overall, it's all too transparent and just doesn't work.

Dirty Tricks

A common theme in superhero fiction is the ripple effect a notorious costumed vigilante leaves in their wake. Vaughan and Harris have explored facets of this before, with Leto and his copycat Machine, and the villain Pherson's origin stemming from the Voice of Hundred. Then there is the individual who gets fixated and obsessed with the hero, usually with a psychosexual component. In Dirty Tricks, a young woman who was saved by The Great Machine and became dangerously obsessed begins to cause trouble for Hundred and his administration (they even dub her Trouble). Her high-profile stunts and vandalism would not be a major issue if not for the Republican National Convention.

The RNC is the point of Dirty Tricks - the GOP isn't just hosting their convention in NYC, they want Hundred to be speak at it. Throughout Ex Machina, Hundred has straddled all sides of the political fence, but his willingness to talk at the RNC raises eyebrows within his left-leaning administration. He sees this as an opportunity for himself, and at the very least his City. But before anything can happen, the Trouble trouble needs fixing, and the ultimate solution is a little silly. Nonetheless, the ramifications of Hundred's acceptance of the RNC will have a far-reaching impact. I just wish Dirty Tricks wasn't so dull and had more dirty tricks in it.

"Ruthless"

"Ruthless" opens in October, 2004, with comic writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Tony Harris meeting in a park in Manhattan. They are on their way to meeting with Hundred's administration about making a biographical comic about him for DC. Vaughan meets Hundred (who confuses him for Brian Michael Bendis) and they talk about the City, September 11, love, and life. Hundred convinces Vaughan to follow his heart and he picks two creators to make the graphic novel of his life. The End.

But there's much more to it. By featuring Vaughan and Harris as themselves, it would be easy to look at "Ruthless" as mindless self-indulgence. But it is important to view this within the context of the established relationship the series has with superhero comics. Hundred, Bradbury and Kremlin became The Great Machine not from any logical approach but from the distinct illogic of superhero fiction. When you get powers, you get dressed up and fight crime because that's what heroes did in the comics Hundred read growing up. Because of Hundred's love of comics and the specific way he rose to political power, it's not a stretch to imagine that someone may want to make a comic about him. That Vaughan and Harris are trying out for the gig is appropriate. More than anything, though, "Ruthless" is not an excuse to do the "Grant Morrison meta thing" as Vaughan says himself, but as an elegiac love letter to New York City.

Outside of Morrison's well-worn trademark of writing himself into nearly everything he makes, creators showing up in their own work has a surprisingly long history in superhero comics. The way it happens in Ex Machina is less contrived due to the book's identity of being so solidly grounded in (at first) a recognizable mirror of our own reality. It also allows Vaughan to poke fun at himself, with Hundred professing to not like Vaughan's Y: The Last Man and Harris complaining about Vaughan's tendency to drop useless factoids all over the place. But "Ruthless" isn't about comics, it's about New York. Putting himself and Harris into the title allows Vaughan to come to terms with his own relationship with the City and his eventual decision to leave it to be with the woman he loves. And it allows him to tell a beautiful, moving story unique to the personality of New York.

"Ruthless," like every other chapter title in Ex Machina, has many meanings and layers, but the simplest is that Vaughan's wife is the playwright Ruth McKee. At the time this story takes place, Vaughan, exactly like the version of him presented here, is contemplating a move out of New York to be with his then-girlfriend, Ruth. "Ruthless" is Vaughan's Dear John letter to New York, and it's sad and uplifting and beautiful. The stunning, surprising final two pages, the comic within the comic about The Great Machine, drives this home. (The final pages form a break from Morrisonian Metafiction: "Ruthless" doesn't see Vaughan and Harris making the comic that features Vaughan and Harris making the comic because Vaughan and Harris in the comic don't get to make the comic.)

Despite it's inside baseball references to comics culture, "Ruthless" works for the same reason everything else about Ex Machina works, logic, humanity, and a love for New York. Having an understanding of comics culture and who the creators are enhances the reading experience, but outside all the referentiality, "Ruthless" stands on its own as a celebration of New York, her people, and her indomitable spirit, and the small moments of profound beauty that pop up in this glorious town, if you know how to look. 

"Green"

"Green" is filler by every definition, published as fluffing to pad out shipping delays in the series' original run. The story, about a nutcase who offs one of Hundred's opponents in the press, is almost pointless. There's also the standard hint of a possible link to Hundred's powers (that may just be spurious bullshit). There's not much in Ex Machina that can be called bad (except for maybe Ex Cathedra), and even the worst stories have some value. But Green is clunky, provides zero character development, and provides nothing to the mythos of The Great Machine. This is just skippable filler, no more, no less.

--
Overall the six stories reviewed above are collectively the weakest run in the series. "Ruthless" makes the slight slog worth it, though to be fair it is one of the more divisive issues in the run and your mileage admittedly may vary. We're now in the home stretch our extensive look at Ex Machina - the next three epic, tragic stories feature Vaughan's best writing and Harris's best art. If "Green" is at a one on a scale of ten, everything else in this series is about to get ramped up to eleven.

--
Ex Machina Special 3, "Masquerade" is collected by DC/WildStorm in Ex Machina Volume 8: Dirty Tricks (December 2009) and Ex Machina Book 3 (Hardcover, May 2010; in softcover Fall 2014).

Ex Machina 34, "World's Finest" is collected in Ex Machina Volume 7: Ex Cathedra (October 2008) and Ex Machina Book 4 (Hardcover, January 2011).

"The Race" was published in Ex Machina 35; and Dirty Tricks was serialized in Ex Machina 36-39. Both are collected in Ex Machina Volume 8: Dirty Tricks and Ex Machina Book 4.

Ex Machina 40, "Ruthless" is collected in Ex Machina Volume 9: Ring Out the Old (May 2010) and Ex Machina Book 4.

Ex Machina Special 4, "Green" is collected in Ex Machina Volume 9: Ring Out the Old and Ex Machina Book 5 (Hardcover, April 2011)

Nota bene: The reviews in this series have heretofore followed the order from the five 'Book' collections, which slightly diverge from the order of the "Volume" collections. For the final installments of these reviews, I follow the story-chronological order after "Masquerade" (which actually takes place before the previously reviewed Ex Cathedra). "Green" is the most out of place, undated in the story, collected before '"Ruthless" in the 'Volume' collections and oddly after Ring Out the Old in the 'Book' collections. For the purposes of this review and for the best reading order, "Green" should follow "Ruthless."

The Wednesday Review: Pretty Pretty Deadly

Pretty Deadly 1 is the debut creator-owned comic from Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Rios, and it's pretty awesome. The story doesn't quite hook you from the start as the issue is clearly set-up, but what is there is, yes, pretty, and also dirty and bloody and violent, too. A western, it opens with a stunning page two a little girl blowing the head off a bunny and some dialog we don't yet know the context for. The scene shifts to a town, one of those late 1800 American old west towns, full of saloons and whorehouses and horses and dust and folks carrying guns . An (apparently) blind old man and a little girl cloaked in black feathers have rolled in with their snake-oil cart ready to push their wares. Except their wares are stories, and she gleefully tells a pretty dark story about the daughter of Death. After they leave town, they are set upon by shady ill-doers while back in town the daughter of Death shows up, scares the bejeezus out of everybody, and then picks up the trail of the old man and the girl. For some reason. It's not quite clear who the players are and what their motivations may be. Despite the hint of fantasy, everything else about Pretty Deadly is down and dirty western, and the final page is wonderful. Rios's fine, high-energy, high-style line and Jordie Bellaire's colors just nail the visuals. The story still needs developing but is still solid enough; I'll stick around to see where this goes.

Velvet 1 is Ed Brubaker's latest noir-ish book, this time with the superb art of his long-time Marvel collaborator Steve Epting. A grounded spy thriller, Velvet is about the British spy agency's secretary who is also a badass spy herself. One of their best agents gets killed in the field, another agent is set-up for the crime, and Velvet gets caught somewhere in between.  Brubaker and Epting work well together, so the two doing espionage stuff feels natural. And while its nice to see them doing spycraft outside a sci-fi superhero universe, the book doesn't really crackle. Epting kills it on the art, but the story, featuring every comfortable spy-fiction convention including an eye-rolling frame-up at the end, is just flat.

The Massive 16 sees Kapital and crew going up against old-timey sailboat whalers (because its not like there's anything else going on). This series is still so maddeningly uneven. Mind MGMT 16, on the other hand, is still so consistently superb, with issue  exploring with a stunning science fiction novel counterpoint. And Kindt's art manages to get more and more assured. This is some of mainstream's finest stuff. Sex Criminals 2 focuses on John this issue, and the exploration of his sexual identity and sexual superpowers is just as heartfelt and entertaining as the first issue's look at Suzie. 

Young Avengers 11 takes a twist (and a big cast expansion for next issue), FF 13 has some Allred-cubed Watcher-action, and Ultimate Spider-Man 28 has Miles accepting the burden of his future while Roxxon drops some knowledge. Plus there's a sweet new Hellboy graphic novel with Fegredo, Midnight Circus out today.

The Wednesday Review: NYCC Hangover Edition

Happy Wednesday! New comics are out. I don't know about you, but I'm still recovering from New York Comic Con. A metric ton of stuff came out last week, this week's relatively slim pickens, but thems the con-month breaks.

There was some biggish news from the Con: Dan Slott and Allred & Allred are doing Silver Surfer, and it sounds pretty boss. Marvel is putting Miracleman back in print, all the way through Gaiman and Buckingham continuing their unfinished story, and it's about time. And I'm really keen on reading all this, finally. Finally, finally. Anyway, I was reporting from the Con, typing up panel reports for The Beat with my mad qwerty skillz - see them here. Onto the comics.

First up, Dogs of War by Sheila Keenan and Nathan Fox is out today. Read my original advance review here. (I liked it.)

It's been a while since we've gotten our Hawkeye fix but Fraction, Aja and Hollingsworth make the wait worth it. Issue 13 is all nine-panel grids, no real action but after-action. The point of Hawkeye isn't the punch-em-ups, but the recovery, the time in between, the quiet dark, the hangover, and issue 13 inhabits this space. Taking place around the same time as the Annual, Clint is falling deeper and deeper into malaise if not depression, falling into a bunch of bottles if not the bottle, always on the mend and never quite mending, his life spinning slowly if not spiraling out of control. This is superb visual storytelling, delicate, sublime. More Hawkguy and Lady Hawkeye, please.

Hoo, dilly, I've been digging Infinity, but Avengers 21 and New Avengers 11 were kind of messy, visually. Deodato's incursion and Yu's annihilation were muddy, and neither seemed up to the meatiness of Hickman's slightly over-dense scripting. But the cover to Avengers 21 is pretty awesome, so props to Yu.

Fables 134 is one of the best issues of the series in years. Bill Willingham and the aforementioned Mark Buckingham deliver an emotional gut-punch. It's hard to pull off twenty pages of just two characters talking (half in front of a blank background, no less), but Willingham's scripting of two old friends (of the readers if not each other) and Buckingham's expressive, beautiful art pulls it off.

Zero 2 was quite good. Writer Ales Kot is joined by Tradd Moore in this issue (it has rotating art teams, thanks for the heads up, Ales).  Kot takes Zero's story to the beginning, a child soldier forged in a cauldron of pain and hate. Moore's stuff takes some warming up to, but the last three panels are astonishing.

Invincible 106 was fun, Adventure Time 21 played some Watchmen 11 trickery-doo, and Fantastic Four 13 shows me again why I just can't stand Mark Bagley's art.

The Wednesday Review: NYCC Edition

Happy Wednesday, everybody! It's Comic Con week here in New York, and like any big con week there are a metric ton of good books out. I cover some of the comics I read before deadline below, but first a cool-looking indie book that came out a couple of weeks ago...

Tales of the Night Watchman is a self-published indy series created by Dave Kelly & Lara Antal, about Nora, an often exasperated NYC barista and her roommate/coworker Charlie who is also a time-displaced supernatural superhero the Night Watchman. The third issue of the series, featuring the short story "The Night Collector," came out last month. The overall story that writer Kelly has been telling - of the mysterious origin and powers of the Night Watchman mixed in with Nora's broke New York girl life - never really quite gels, though its clear there is a larger story going on and the mundane way Kelly approaches vigilantism has promise. Lara Antal's art and lettering are the efforts of an obvious novice - nothing wrong with that, the stories are just difficult to read. Antal is learning, and her art (and the overall production values of the finished comic) improves drastically between the first two issues. Issue one, scribbled apparently with a ballpoint pen, is, generously, a mess, but in issue two her art is a lot cleaner, though not anywhere nearly as good as guest artist Molly Ostertag in the third issue. Issue 3 is largely stand-alone, featuring a fairly rote vampire story, but Ostertag's art is phenomenal, and I'd really like to see more from her. That said, overall Tales of the Night Watchman gets incrementally better but is still not quite ready for primetime. But the creators show some promise, and future issues seem likely to increase in quality. (And I should note that Antal's mini-comic, A Comic Guide to Brewing is pretty awesome.)  And speaking of mini-comics, Koyama Press continues to impress with their diverse, high quality offerings from cutting edge creators. The publishers behind Michael Deforge's extraordinary Lose anthology have also put out a nice original collection from Nathan Bulmer, Eat More Bikes. Named after his hilarious daily webcomic, Eat More Bikes is a fabulous showcase of Bulmer's particular style and humor.

Hey, New Comics!

Infinity, Chew, Shaolin Cowboy

I've been talking a lot about Infinity in the Wednesday Review, because it's just so damn good. In issue 4, Hickman and Opena and Weaver deliver a thrilling, breathless grand sci-fi superhero magic. This is the best superhero story of the year and one of the best superhero books Marvel has put out since Civil War. Catch up, stick with it, this is extraordinary, wonderful stuff.

This is a big week for infrequent releases, and demons are sure enjoying a nice winter holiday as we speak, for the new Shaolin Cowboy 1 dropped today. The exclamation mark was invented to describe Geoff Darrow's brilliant, hyper-detailed art and hyper-manic storytelling. This entire comic, from the dense novella-length recap page that opens the story through the teaser for the next issue ("More Zombies! More Chainsaws!") is a rare treat, an exhibition of a mad master at work. And Dave Stewart's colors are astounding, too (of course). 

Walking Dead 115, the beginning of the event All Out War features Stefano Guidano on inks, and it's the best art the series has had in its ten year run. The writing is solid and it is absolutely gearing up for an intense story.

Chew 37 continues to mix high-concept weirdness with fantastic character drama with genuine hilarity in story and art. Layman and Guillory are working a pretty special voodoo with this book, inventive, clever, high energy and always surprising.

I challenge you to find a creator having more fun making comics than writer Jason Aaron on Thor. I challenge you to a cage fight over it. 

Resident Alien: Suicide Blonde 2 was another superb outing from Hogan & Parkhouse. They manage to elevate a fairly straightforward mystery with simple, elegant storytelling, and the back-door sci-fi elements are icing on the very well-made cake.

Buck Rogers 2 by Howard Chaykin was ugly and racist, a 180 from the last issue (or maybe not, feh). If you want your jetpack fix, get Amy Reeder and Brandon Montclare's Rocket Girl 1. In it a teenage time cop from the sortof future goes back to NYC in 1986 to fix something that goes wrong. I'm not entirely sold on the concept, but the first issue is good fun and worth checking out.

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I haven't read these yet, but they are in the pile and certain to be amazing: Multiple Warheads: Downfall collects the long out of print early black and white MW work of Brandon Graham. Graham is working on a different level of pure creativity and I'm excited to see this early stuff. The new volume of Best American Comics is out, edited by Jeff Smith this year. There is far more mainstream representation this time around (a positive), though like all volumes of the Best American series the merits of the entries are decidedly debatable. More on this one later this month. Battling Boy from Paul Pope looks frankly breathtaking, no surprise there. Palookaville 21 from Seth is a gorgeous new hardcover with some new Clyde Fans, a couple of shorts and sketchbook material. Finally, Love and Rockets New Stories 6 is out, featuring 25 (!) short stories from Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez. Words do not exist to describe how excited I am for this new volume. It's Love and Rockets, what more needs to be said?

The Wednesday Review: Fantastic Four Squared

New today, the Original Marvel Graphic Novel, Avengers: Endless Wartime by Warren Ellis and Mike McKone. Read my original advance review here.

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In Marvel's long history of not keeping its long history in print, one of the most frustrating catalog holes was the Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four. One of the undisputed masterpieces of the silver age of superhero comic storytelling and the very template from which the modern Marvel Universe was forged, THE Fantastic Four. The grand graphic statement of Jack Kirby, the world's greatest comic magazine, The Fantastic Four. The Fountain from which we all drink, Fantastic Four. The forge of Kirby the King, Kirby the Great, He, capital He, Kirby the alpha, the beta, the gamma, the delta, the epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, iota, the kappa, the lamba, the mu nu xi, the omicron pi, the rho, the sigma, the tau, the epsilon, the phi chi psi and the omega. Out of print, some softcovers available, most of it in black and white, but out of print, out of bloody print in the glorious-when-they-can-bother-to-make-them omnibus format. And lo, what does the rising sun of this glorious early fall Wednesday portend but a new printing of The Fantastic Four Omnibus Volume 1! On any Wednesday, but especially a slow Wednesday where I just typed out the entire Greek alphabet to fill space, this is reason to celebrate.

Omnibus 1 collects the first thirty issues (or about a third, through 1964) of the Kirby-Lee run in all its manic glory. This is stunning superhero sci-fi comicbookery, with all the component atoms that would make the ingredients of the FF to come, Kirby's art and story, Lee's words and salesmanship. Here you are given the unstable molecule that was KIRBY, throwing spaghetti at the wall of reality and translating every symbol and cypher that showed, even the stuff that doesn't stick because he's got a job to do and like four other monthlies to plot and draw, damnit. Kirby wasn't born the King, but in Fantastic Four he created the Throne through blood and sweat and took it bodily from the gods of art and fiction who assumed it to be theirs and ascended to his blue collar high art mindbending emperorhood. It doesn't all work, but when Lee & Kirby strike out in these early issues - and boy, howdy, do they ever - they strike out swinging. What does work, where they hit the sweet spot of the bat, changes everything. Doom and Namor and Doom and The Watcher and Doom and Doom and DOOM. Mind you, it doesn't get really, really good until just after this volume when Joe Sinott comes in to ink Kirby and Stan & Jack refine their voodoo to crystal clear flawlessness, but that doesn't make the contents of this tome any less historically, artistically, culturally significant. If the Lee-Ditko Amazing Spider-Man of the same time represents a candidate for one of the Great American Novels of the graphic canon, this is the prequel to the next candidate, exhibit B in the archive of the Silver Age to pass down the eons.

But because Marvel assumes we all have deep pockets and don't have to pay rent or buy groceries and go state-mandated insurance shopping, they're also releasing another Fantastic Four omnibus, this of a modern run, a damn good modern run of which I am quite fond, the sexily named Fantastic Four by Hickman Omnibus HC Vol 01. A big hardcover collecting the first half of writer/designer Jonathan Hickman's definitive run on the First Family, this is a Fantastic Four of the big picture, big adventure, and pretty damned big ideas. A first blush of Hickman's impeccably designed, long-form superhero science fiction he's now weaving across the Avengers books, his FF is probably the best take on the team in many years. Utterly fantastic, Hickman and artists Sean Chen, Dale Eaglesham, Nick Dragotta, Steve Epting and more tell a huge universe spanning story that expands the FF family and world in entertaining and dramatic fashion. Reed and Sue both star equally, Johnny has a heroic turn unlike any he's had, Ben's heart fills the pages, and the kids and the family take center stage in the Future Foundation towards the end of this collection. Though the art becomes a victim of the modern trend of getting-the-book-out-on-time-visual-cohesiveness-be-damned mainstream attitude, the efforts of Eaglesham, Epting, and Hickman's current East of West co-creator Dragotta shine through. If I didn't already own all of this in Hickman's gloriously designed hardcovers (and if I didn't live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet) I'd pick this up in a heartbeat. But if you can spare the Benjamin, it's worth every penny.

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Hey, new comics!

Three new anthologies were released today, each with a little bit to offer. First up, Liberty Annual 2013, always an entertaining hodgepodge of short stories benefiting the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Fabio Moon, Richard Corben, and Gabriel Hardman all have quality stories, but the best is the wonderfully over-the-top "What If Wertham Was Right" by Joshua Williamson and Ron Chan. Batman Black & White 2 has a Rafael Grampa story that is worth the price of admission alone. Finally, Witching Hour is the latest in Vertigo's line of twice-a-year genre anthologies. It's a lot less cohesive, and far more miss than hit, than the last anthology, Time Warp. Vaguely, though inconsistently, witch-themed, the best stories have nothing to do with witches. "Mars to Stay" by Brett Lewis and Cliff Chiang, about a one-way trip to Mars - funded by sponsors and crowdfunding - the mission spirals out of control in a wonderfully illustrated, packed 8-pager. The best story in Witching Hour is "Little Witch" by Ales Kot and Morgan Jeske. Completely devoid of genre trappings (despite leaping ahead in time), "Little Witch" tells the story of a soldier in Afghanistan who is forced to leave behind a small child he befriends, and the ways that decision haunts him. Surprisingly touching, this is a stunning short story and the best thing Kot has yet written.

Elsewhere, Trillium 3 and Lazarus 4 were both superb, and Fantomex Max 1 was an ugly mess that seemed like an excuse for pumping out Marvel's profanity quota.

Happy Wednesday, everyone.

The Wednesday Review: Bring on the Sex Criminals

Sex Criminals 1 by Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky
New today from Image

I hadn't the slightest clue what to expect about Sex Criminals 1 from Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky. I knew the title, that bloody genius possibly misleading title; I knew that a bunch of creators whose work I love have enjoyed the first issue; and I know Fraction and Zdarsky did a ton of interviews about it in every corner of the internet, none of which I read. Now I have a solid idea what Sex Criminals is and what I can grokk about it is brilliant-touching-sexy-cool.

Suzie tells the story of her adolescence in flashback. One horrible day in the mid-1990s, a coked out disgruntled employee marched into the bank her father worked at and randomly killed him. Losing her father at such a young and formative age would be traumatic enough. Her mother would get lost in sadness and alcohol, and so she lost her, too. And right as she was losing her parents, she began to find her sexuality. Those perfunctory changes we all go through are hard and weird and confusing enough, more so when we have no guidance or frame of reference, yet even more so when your orgasms can stop time. Actually stop the actual flow of actual time.

Suzie would find a home in libraries, and would grow up and go through the normal trials of teenagehood and adulthood and then her favorite library was about to be closed down by the bank, always the goddamn banks shitting on her life in their own way (in all our lives in their own way). So she threw a fundraiser and at the fundraiser she meets Jon, and Jon's not her first boyfriend, but there's been no-one else quite like him. And then they discover something about eachother and here the title of the comic finally comes into play on the last page. Jon and Suzie aren't sex criminals as much as (maybe) criminals who use sex as... well, you'll have to read it.

And you should read it. Zdarsky's art is pitch-perfect throughout. The sequences set in the past are whimsical and elegant and the sequences in the present are sharp and emotional. The story Fraction weaves - and especially the character work - are all frankly astonishing. He finds the balance between sexual coming of age and the depths of loss and the heights of love and being a kid and being an adult and everything in between (with possible supernatural powers thrown in, why not). What a fascinating, wholly unexpected, totally unique work. (And what better time to pick up a book called Sex Criminals than during Banned Books Week.)

FF 12, East of West 6

Also new this week, Fraction kindof sortof had FF 12, but he's largely off the book now and I was worried it wouldn't have the same pop. Those worries were unfounded, of course. Lee Allred joins Mike Allred and Laura Allred and everything is decidedly all Alright. There are a couple of really cool moments here, and Allred-cubed nail the awesome.

Just as much as Jonathan Hickman has been making game changing superhero comics in Infinity (Avengers 20 out this week), East of West 6 continues to redefine the science fiction western (if it was ever defined at all). Nick Dragotta continues to absolutely kill it with this series. Now is the time to dive into their world - pick up the first trade for ten bucks and dive in with issue six, better and cheaper than a movie.

The Wake 4 continues to be a little too silly, Unwritten 53 continues to be frustratingly uninteresting (it's main virtue being Peter Gross tackling Fables art, but the story is still falls flat), Ultimate Spider-Man 27 was fun, and Dark Horse Presents has lost its mojo. Speaking of Mojo(jojo), Powerpuff Girls 1 by Troy Little from IDW was delightful (but I'm a sucker for the PPGs), Jupiter's Legacy 3 had Frank Frickin Quitely, Young Avengers 10 was gorgeous (as usual) and fairly substantive storywise (not always usual), and Fatale 17 was the best of the '90s story so far.

Finally, Saga 14 and Mind MGMT 15 continued to be Saga and Mind MGMT, which are guarantees for quality that exist pretty much nowhere else.

The Wednesday Review: Moebius in the Year of Chaykin

Powers: Bureau 7, Daredevil 31. Please judge these books by their covers.

Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming's Powers is often wildly uneven. The series often falters when Bendis and Oeming go into world-building or epic all-out event-style superhero spaff, and it works best when it embraces its procedural, street level roots. (Coming out regularly helps, too.) Powers: Bureau 7 is a one-shot focusing on a Madrox (or, sure, Dupli-Kate) style multiplier whose dupes keep on ending up dead. Bendis doesn't get (too) out of control with his dialog and Oeming reins in his often unnecessary blank space; the story plows forward a little too quickly, but that doesn't take away from the overall quality in what is the best issue of this series in many years. 

Mark Waid and Chris Samnee's Daredevil has been consistently superb, thus the mild shock from the colossal missteps in this week's issue 31. After a hamfisted Foggy/cancer sequence, the issue quickly cuts to Matt and associates watching the news for a controversial verdict. See, a racist white woman killed an unarmed black teen and the case has been the center of a media firestorm. The verdict comes down as not guilty. (This is a transparent ripped-from-the-headlines mirror of the Trevon Martin case.) Things take a turn when The Jester (of all people) hacks the live feed of the post-trial press conference of the (black) District Attorney to make it appear as if the D.A. wants everyone in New York to hunt down the jurors who miscarriaged justice. And of course the city erupts in violence and riot. Waid assumes the worst of New Yorkers of all races, here, and of humanity in general. The solution to the riots, involving Daredevil getting Ant-Man to seed the clouds to make it rain, is as as dumb as the entire setup is offensive. Samnee's usually delightful art is dragged into the gutters by Waid's almost obscenely stupid story. The issue is clunky and exploitave, an unnecessary excersise in misplaced topicality, and a pretty bad comic by any measure.

Zero 1's three covers.

I'm still warming up to Ales Kot's comics, I guess. Wild Children was a little too explicitly Grant Morrisonesque and I couldn't stick with Change beyond the incomprehensible first issue. Thankfully, today's new Zero #1 with artist Michael Walsh is much more approachable while being no less high-concept than his earlier stuff. After a killer opening sequence we flash back to 2018 where the eponymous Agent Zero is in Gaza neck-deep in the middle of all-out war between Israel and Hamas. Each side has unexpectedly developed supersoldiers and each side's soldier is beating the holy living hell out of the other. Zero's mission is to grab the tech for (apparently) England before anyone else gets their hands on it (and without anyone noticing). What ensues is a brutal and dirty fight between the supersoldiers with Zero on their tails caring only about achieving his objective. Walsh's art is completely in the vein of the expressive, minimalist, Mazzucchellian trend spearheaded elsewhere by Aja, Samnee, Pulido, Leon and the like, which is helped even more by Jordie Belaire's superb, muted color pallete. Zero is Kot's best comic yet, down and dirty high sci-fi war and badass spycraft.

I've been saying for a while that this is the year of Gilbert Hernandez, but it might also be fair to say its the year of Howard Chaykin. Satellite Sam is one of the year's best books, he's also doing an out-of-the-blue Buck Rogers series (the first issue of which was entertaining in the Ennis reboot mold), and today Image released Century West, his western graphic novella originally produced for the European comic market. The year of Chaykin, perhaps?

But the biggest release this week/month is Madwoman of the Sacred Heart by Moebius and Alejandro Jodorowsky. This isn't one of the Jodoverse sci-fi works like Incal but a good ole fashioned Eurocomic erotic thriller. This is one of the few Moebius works now available in English, and each time any of his work comes back into print there should be parades down Fifth Avenue and exhibitions at The Met. This is MOEBIUS. Madwoman reprints all three albums of the 1990s Crowned Heart stories in yet another gorgeous hardcover presentation from Humanoids.

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Also good this week is the still-pretty-amazing Infinity by Hickman and his talented crew of top flight artists (in New Avengers 10 and Infinity 3). I'm loving this damn comic event thing, and Hickman is blowing up everyone's spot showing the mainstream superhero world how an event should be done. Meanwhile Bendis over-Bendises on Battle of the Atom (in Uncanny X-Men 12), but thankfully there's Chris Bachalo on art. And DC continues to put out more pointless plastic trash than the Pacific garbage gyre.

The Wesdnesday Review: Worlds, Worlds, Worlds

Happy Wednesday - this week, some of the year's best, all wonderful science-fiction at that.

Resident Alien 2: Suicide Blonde #1 (Dark Horse)

Harry, the doctor of the small town of Patience, is looking at the body of a young woman lying dead in her own filth in a hotel room, an apparent suicide. Harry is assisting the police in their investigation - he helped catch a murderer once before, and as the town's only doctor he also doubles as a forensic expert, of sorts. But there's more going on, and what appears to be a suicide may be a murder. And the girl, a unknown stranger in this small town, may have connections to the mayor. As Harry looks at her body, we get his narration that opens the issue: "There are less than a million inhabited worlds in the known Universe. Life is so rare, so precious..."

Resident Alien 2: Suicide Blonde #1 marks the return of Harry Vanderspiegel, one of comics' best and most compelling new characters. (Confusingly, this is the second part of the story after the initial chapter serialized in Dark Horse Presents, but you can dive in here.) Harry is a stranded extra-terrestrial, roped into being the doctor of a small town. He uses telepathy to mask his appearance, and his powers help him in his reluctant investigation. He knows the girl is not a suicide, that she was pregnant, and that the Mayor, despite his connection to this stranger, is not responsible. With his firebrand assistant, they go off to Seattle to follow a lead, all the while in the background the U.S. Government tightens its dragnet following their own leads in search for this stranger, far from home. Once again, Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse deliver a fine, even elegant murder mystery noir with a subtle sci-fi bent grounded in wonderfully executed straightforward character drama. What a fantastic comic.

Prophet 39 (Image)

Most of the time - well, all of the time, who am I kidding - I haven't the foggiest idea what the hell is happening in Brandon Graham, Simon Roy, and Giannis Milonogiannis's Prophet. I just know that I always like it. It's always a profoundly weird, often almost hallucinogenic science fiction somethingorother loosely based on, of all things, Rob Liefeld's stuff. (Whatever.) Today's Prophet 39 puts whatever overarching story they've been doing to the side (not that I would have noticed) and goes for a multimillennium chronicle of one of the Prophets (the ten thousand year old Diehard) in an astonishing jam-issue one-shot featuring a dozen great alt-creators smashing our brains against the wall. In twenty pages Graham and crew look at episodes from Diehard's truly epic life as friends die and empires fall and loves are found and lost and Diehard lives a hundred lives. Wow. And how. A veritable masterpiece of concise psychedelic scientification, if we fire something into space as a final ark with examples of the comic artform on it as the Earth is crumbling around us, this should be on that boat.

Oh, and they throw in Graham's script and breakdowns in the back, just in case it wasn't already awesome enough.

Avengers 19 (Marvel), Manhattan Projects 14 and East of West Volume 1 (Image)

Jonathan Hickman's big ole Marvel superhero event thing Infinity continues, this chapter in Avengers 19 with Lenil Yu. We're back in space splitting time between the captured Captain Marvel and crew and Captain America pow-wowing with the Galactic Council. This issue is all tension and plot, an expansive space opera written in conversation and betrayal. There's a lot of dialog in this issue, and sparse but explosive action, but it never gets bogged down thanks to Hickman and Yu's superb execution. We learn a ton about the Builders and their motivations, and Captain Marvel, even in captivity, shines. Everyone wonders aloud what the hell makes those bloody humans so special and then shit hits the fan in the (slightly silly, sure) final panel  Hickman is effortlessly juggling a lot of storylines in Infinity, between way outer space and Earth drama, and each chapter nicely ups the stakes and moves the whole enterprise forward.

Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra's Manhattan Projects 14 came out today, as well. A most different kind of sci-fi nigh-on space opera, Kennedy's other shoe drops as the various Manhattan Projects come under Oppenheimer's noose. But even cooler, just to outdo himself, the first trade paperback of Hickman and Nick Dragotta's East of West came out today, and it's really one of the best comics of the year. About the Four Horsemen, a conspiracy, and a tripped out sci-fi western alternate history America, East of West is stylish and completely riveting, and worth thrice the price at just ten bucks.

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Also worth checking out this week: Sidekick 2 from Joe's Comics was some more vicious fun playing with the whole sidekick idea, Walking Dead 114 nicely sets up Skybound's functional equivalent of an event for next month, Jeff Smith's superb dimension hopping noir thriller RASL came out in a glorious full-color hardcover omnibus, and Marvel finally put back into print the inimitable Jim STERANKO's complete seminal Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. run.