Resident Alien, The Best Undercover Extra-Terrestrial Murder Mystery Comic, Reviewed

Resident Alien: Welcome to Earth
by Peter Hogan & Steve Parkhouse
Dark Horse, 2013

Dr. Harry Vanderspiegle came to the small town of Patience, U.S.A., lost a bit far from home. He lives in a quiet cabin on a lake, generally sticking to himself. One day the police arrive at his door - there's been a murder, and could Dr. Harry help out by looking at the body? "But... Why ask me? Sure your own doctor..." "Well, that's our problem in a nutshell, doc. See, we only had one doctor in town, and he's the victim."

Dr. Harry - that's not his real name, of course - reluctantly agrees to aid the police in their investigation. But Harry is hiding a secret, a secret that could be blown by dealing so closely with the authorities in this middle-of-nowhere town, Harry is an alien from another planet.

Resident Alien, Volume 1: Welcome to Earth by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse is a fascinating and unique murder mystery. Harry, who is nothing more than your average normal guy who wants nothing more than to be left alone, gets roped not only into the investigation, but into being the towns new practicing doctor. He is decidedly alien in appearance, but with some telepathic effort he is able to disguise himself - but any interaction puts him at risk. The residents of Patience obviously don't know there is a alien in their midst, but the U.S. government knows something crash landed three years ago and they are looking for him.

Harry agrees to help out with the investigation, in part because to refuse would arouse suspicion, and in part because the idea of solving a murder is an interesting one - who wouldn't be curious about helping to solve a crime? But as he digs deeper into a web of drugs, death and deceit, he puts his identity and his very life at risk. Resident Alien is an utterly fascinating play between murder mystery and an alien far from home looking to protect himself and the people of his temporary life. How much of himself is he willing to give to these people who would hunt him down if they knew his secret? And how far is he willing to go to stop a murderer?

Presented with easy and accessible art from Parkhouse and simple yet engaging storytelling from Hogan, Resident Alien is a superb read now in trade paperback from Dark Horse.

Review: Marbles, Ellen Forney's Remarkable Chronicle of Dealing with Mental Illness

Marbles by Ellen Forney
Gotham/Penguin, 2012

Bi-polar disorder is especially insidious, a personality disorder that sends the sufferer toppling through waves of euphoria and despair, uninhibited mania and soul-crushing depression. And it is notoriously difficult to treat - one can spend years looking for the right combination of medications to effectively deal with the opposite forces at play, medications that often carry profoundly negative side-effects. Ellen Forney is a Seattle-based cartoonist, who, at the age of thirty was diagnosed as bi-polar. Marbles from Gotham Books is her frank and entertaining memoir of her journey of self-rediscovery and her long, arduous path to treatment and recovery.

At this point in her life she saw her manic episodes as nothing more than periods of hyper-creativity. As an artist, this worked to her advantage. But there were other things going on than just increased production of her art. In her manic episodes she was impulsive personally, professionally and sexually. She multitasked to the point of non-production. And, upon reflection, she was prone to sudden dark periods that would last months.

Once the diagnosis was made, the path to recovery was clear: medication and therapy. Forney had no problem pursuing the latter, though to her determent she was often less-than-honest with her therapist. It was the medication that scared her. Her concern, one shared by many with personality disorders, was simply that the medications would kill her personality, her creativity. She looked at her manic episodes, despite the exhausting physical tole it took on her, as fuel for her art and indeed her very life. What would happen to her if she was medicated? What would happen to her if she was not?

She was immediately put on regimen of medications to deal common for people with her condition, and immediately began to suffer the side-effects. Many of the medications approved for bi-polar disorder have just as many side-effects as benefits, physical and mental, making it harder for the patient to stick with the meds. While Forney and her doctor experiment with the right combination of meds, she researches the effects of mental illness on notable artists of the past and chronicles her progress through her art.

Forney's memoir is fresh and entertaining, comprehensive on the subjects of bi-polar disorder and the medications involved without coming across like a self-help book. She doesn't shy away from the negative things she had to go through, and her exploration of her therapy was engaging (in a way that Alison Bechdel's frustrating and insipid Are You My Mother simply failed at). Forney's art is also very accessible, and overall you are left with a remarkable, brave and simply fantastic memoir and study of mental illness.

Marvel's Irrational and Schizophrenic Graphic Novel Policies

I read a fairly broad spectrum of comics and graphic novels, but when it comes to mainstream super-hero slash shared universe sci-fi, I make mine Marvel, always have. I sell comics for a living, and from experience I can say that Marvel makes it as hard as possible to own their product in trade or hardcover, and even harder to sell from a retailing perspective.

When I sell a hardcover or trade or OGN (let's just call them graphic novels from here on out), I tend to push product first on quality of story, then on the value of the package the customer is getting. For me it is fairly simple to figure out the bang for the customer's buck: put plainly, after story quality, how many issues do you get for the money you, the customer, are spending?

When assigning prices and print availability of their graphic novels, Marvel and DC are operating in completely different universes, and I'm not talking the fictional kind. It seems evident that DC sees in the graphic novel format the future of the industry, a format they more or less invented in the mainstream, and they are completely right in thinking so. Comic sales in 2012 were as high as sales during the speculator boom in 1994, with Graphic Novel sales making up an astonishing $385 Million of $715 in total sales. So much of the mainstream market for comics see the format as books rather than single issues, both inside the comic shop and at the book store. And with the rise of digital comics, the piece of physical ephemera that will ultimately survive is the graphic novel on the shelf.

Two collections, both $24.99. Top is New Avengers
with 4 issues, bottom is Action Comics with 8 issues.

DC recognizes this and they have always been reliable in producing graphic novels that are an excellent value for your already stretched comic dollar. Marvel seems to be bleeding its audience of as much money as possible for the lowest common denominator of product. Like with everything I'm talking about here, there are far too many examples to count, so I'll just use two very recent examples:

Two hardcovers, both are $24.99. One is Action Comics Volume 1 (New 52), by Grant Morrison. The other is New Avengers Volume 5 by Brian Michael Bendis. Ignoring the quality criteria (one book is by one of the preeminent creators of his generation, the other is a capstone to a tired and overlong run), and just looking at quantity, Action Comics gives you eight full issues of story, where New Avengers gives you just four. Four issues of standard superhero fare for $24.99 is frankly ridiculous (DC charges just $12.99 for the first six issues of the widely acknowledged masterpiece All-Star Superman). Why on earth would you spend the equivalent of $6.25 per issue when most of the issues were less than four dollars each on original publication?

Two  more collections, this time $29.99.
On top is Secret Avengers with 7 issues,
on bottom is Night of the Owls with 16 issues.

Two more hardcovers, both $29.99 in this case. The first, one of the best reviewed superhero comics of 2012, is Batman: Night of the Owls, featuring sixteen issues of content. The other is Secret Avengers Volume 2 by Rick Remender, just seven issues of completely unremarkable fluff in shockingly cheap packaging. Atrocious pricing for the material presented.

These are just two quick recent examples, but believe me when I say that in the last three or four years, Marvel has consistently shocked me with the cheapness in value and quality of so much of the product at needlessly high prices. The majority of Marvel graphic novels are terrible values by this metric, but (in turns frustrating and relievingly) it is not universal; they do surprise me by (rarely) putting out quality material in a nice package at a decent price. An example I love to use (to great effect as I have hand-sold dozens of these) are the Invincible Iron Man deluxe hardcovers by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca, what was, for me, consistently the best superhero book on the stands. In the first deluxe hardcover you get 19 issues of content, the first three collected volumes of their extraordinary run, for less than $40. In contrast, the 19 issues of J. Michael Straczynski's Thor run are in a $65 omnibus, the 14 issues of the Brubabker/Fraction/Aja Immortal Iron Fist are in a $75 omnibus. But positive examples like this are far too few and far between.

This all says nothing of the poor production value of Marvel's collections (and DC is not much better for most of their catalog). Too often the collected editions are just the individual issues slapped between two covers, sometimes (but not often) with ad-hoc extras of little value. And increasingly, Marvel has been printing their graphic novels on cheaper paper, in cheaper packaging, with no sense of design. There is no regard for the permanence of the collected edition, the obvious fact that seems to escape Marvel and DC that it will be the graphic novel on the shelf and not the floppy in the long box that will stand the test of time. (I would be completely remiss not to note the beautiful production design by Jonathan Hickman on his Marvel books - but this is the exception, a rare example of a creator taking control of the design and presentation of his collected material for one of the big publishers to make the finished product a beautiful addition to ones library.)

And that doesn't even scratch an even more important factor of this equation and that is availability of product. DC has always been aggressive in keeping items in print and available to retailers, be it for their super-hero fare or their extensive and highly in-demand Vertigo catalog. DC approaches their graphic novel line like a legitimate book publisher (which, especially comparatively, they are). Marvel seems to approach their graphic novel line as nothing more than an extension of their individual issue line, something to be pumped out as cheaply as possible, as quickly as possible, and with little regard to availability after the initial printing, especially for hardcovers. I can easily drum up dozens of examples of so many great Marvel books that are impossible to find because they are unavailable at Diamond Comics Distributors, but here is one quick example chosen randomly: Daredevil by Frank Miller. The first two volumes of the Miller/Janson material are in-print, the third, for some reason, is not. In contrast, Miller's groundbreaking Batman work of the same period, The Dark Knight Returns and Year One, are not only perpetually in-print, but half the price of Marvel's Miller Daredevil material. Unfortunately, it is very common to find random volumes of a creator's run unavailable when it comes to Marvel - I'm continually infuriated at Garth Ennis's Punisher Max volume 7 and J. Michael Straczynski's Spider-Man ultimate collection 2 randomly out of print. Not a single volume of Peter Milligan and Michael Allred's critically acclaimed X-Force/X-Statix is available in softcover.

But most glaring, with a new Guardians of the Galaxy series premiering this week and a major movie in the works (to much positive excitement amongst Marvel fandom), the Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning books of recent years on which both are based are completely out of print. For some reason there have been new printings of the irrelevant 1970s and 1980s Guardians material. This is simply irrational and schizophrenic.

These comparisons don't take into account the quality of material being put out by many other publishers (or even Marvel's Icon imprint), and doesn't even scratch the surface on the problems in the individual issue market, be it the reduced page count, DCs notoriously messy editorial or Marvel's senseless variant thresholds. 

Being a Marvel fan and working in retail trying to sell Marvel graphic novels in this environment has left me fairly exasperated. I speak for myself here, and not for my employers, though I really believe these frustrations are shared by most retailers and Marvel fans. And I'd imagine these frustrations are shared by Marvel employees, who, by and large, are fans who want to put out better material at a better value but are hamstrung by the Isaac Perlmutter-dominated, as-cheap-as-possible executive culture long dominant at the company. The fixes that Marvel would need to apply are small: better value, better design, better quality, more quantity, deeper catalog. Unfortunately, based on current management, these necessary changes are unlikely to happen, to the detriment of both Marvel and the industry at large.

Review: 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente by Wilfred Santiago

21: The Story of Roberto Clemente
By Wilfred Santiago
Fantagraphics, 2011

Roberto Clemente is one of the most respected figures in the long history of baseball, as much for his extraordinary playing prowess as for his charitable works.  To those in his native Puerto Rico, he is nothing short of a national Hero.

Clemente was born in 1934 in Puerto Rico and spent much of his youth helping his father on sugar crops and playing stickball with friends. He was quickly drafted by scouts into the minor leagues, but the language barrier (he spoke little English), his dark skin - Major League Baseball was just a few years into integration - and inconsistency in play kept him on the bench until he was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1954.

It would be a few years before he would fully develop his skills at the bat, but his energy and defensive abilities (ultimately earning 12 gold gloves) kept him from riding the bench to the extent he did in development. Splitting his off-season between his enlistment in the Marine Corps Reserve and charitable work, at the beginning of the 1960s he developed the offensive excellence that would take him to 3000 hits, multiple batting titles, MVPs, and two world series for the historically struggling Pirates. He would win over the blue collar fan base of Pittsburgh and cement himself as a superstar in his home of Puerto Rico, but it was his charitable works that of which he was most proud - and tragically, which would spell his end.

It is against the backdrop of a burgeoning Puerto Rico and revolution in Baseball that Wilfred Santiago tells Clemente's remarkable story - or at least attempts to, in 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente (Fantagraphics, 2011). Visual historical dramas that aim to be biographies, be it film or comics, are always difficult to pull off. Without the advantage of prose or straight documentaries - and outside of autobiography - by necessity a potential chronicler must limit themselves to a specific period of time (take Spielberg's Lincoln) or cover as much ground as possible in broad strokes, which is what Santiago does in 21.

Trying to capture the essence of a man's life, let alone someone as outright deified in the history of a sport and of a people, is an unenviable task, and one that Santiago doesn't quite stick. Santiago starts in Clemente's formative years as a youth in Puerto Rico, but in a short biography with a premium on focus, he spends too much time painting a picture of war-time Puerto Rico and Clemente's early years. It is entirely feasible to weave a comprehensive cultural history into biography, just look at Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. Indeed, if Santiago had chosen to limit the work to just Clemente's early years and a cultural history of Puerto Rico in the 40s and 50s, the graphic novel would be decidedly more successful in execution. But as it stands, the portraits of Clemente and Puerto Rico are both fuzzy, indistinct. We're shown brief bursts of social upheaval, and how it may have effected Clemente and his family, but the picture painted isn't very clear and come across as just a series of unconnected events. Do the things that happen to his homeland and his family in his youth play a definitive formative role in his development as a man and as a ballplayer in later chapters? The answer is unclear, the events portrayed just kind of happen. In later chapters he seems to be effected by the early loss of a sibling (who wouldn't be), but like everything with Clemente in this book it just hangs there providing no connection or impetus to any future events. As it stands, the lack of focus, the pointless digressions into Puerto Rican history and a useless narrative-stopping telling of a religious parable all contribute to the mess of the book.

After bogging down in the first third, the book flies through Clemente's career as a gifted ball player. We see his frustrations with his treatment by his coaches, the language barrier, and his anger and confusion at Jim Crow America. Again the difficulties inherent in the style of biography Santiago attempts come into play. Trying to be all-encompassing as it is, there are short bursts of Clemente's life, both professionally and personally. We see some scattered career highlights, some personal events, but again it is too unfocused. How could any of it be focused when you are covering so much ground? The professional achievements scattershot throughout are difficult to follow, never really put into context, focusing on random accomplishments over others. The portrayed events that happen to him personally over 20 years are equally muddled, with great frocus on the late loss of a relative, and almost none on the birth of his children.

Beyond baseball, beyond his superstar status in Puerto Rico, Clemente will forever be known for his charitable work. Not content with a life of comfortable fame, he leveraged his celebrity into helping thousands of underprivileged people throughout Latin America, often doing the hard work himself. In 1972, an earthquake devastated Nicaragua and he organized relief efforts from abroad. The corrupt Nicaraguan government was redirecting aid into its own coffers, so to ensure delivery Clemente set out to accompany a supply flight himself. The plane was overloaded. It crashed into the Caribbean, killing all aboard. In death Clemente was lauded as an international hero. But you don't get a very clear sense of his charitable work here. It is simply presented as a means to get to his death and the end of the story.

For a biography we simply never get a clear picture of Clemente as a man. The story is clearly told with due reverence and love, but everything that happens to him, indeed Clemente himself, are all just cardboard cutouts moved around at the service of the plot. 

That isn't to say that there is nothing to enjoy about the book. As a biography it fails, but as a comic it absolutely crackles. The art is stunning. Santiago clearly captures baseball's (and Clemente's) unique energy and the Americas of the '50s and '60s and most distinctly the Puerto Rico of the 30s and 40s. Santiago is a skilled artist and he portrays baseball, quirky and ancient and superstitious and unique and perfect and flawed as the sport is in all it's glory. There is so much to enjoy about the multifaceted, angular, energetic, lively art that the narrative frustrations take a back seat.

Is it enough to recommend the book? It certainly warrants a place high on the short list of comics about baseball. But its frustrations are above its strengths, its potential far above what it achieves.

Analysis: Adventure Time: Goliad

Adventure Time, Season 4, Episode 10: Goliad
Original airdate, June 4, 2012

This is a reprint of an article written in Summer, 2012.

"I Was Afraid This Might Happen" ~or~ "It's My Way Or The Highway, Gob-Globbit" - An analysis of the Adventure Time episode, "Goliad"

Adventure Time is the remarkable television series from Pendleton Ward and Cartoon Network. It is that rare show that easily appeals to kids and adults alike, possessing a complex and nuanced continuity and quality of character-based storytelling unlike any other animated series on the air. Here I analyze one notable recent episode, "Goliad."

"Goliad" starts with Finn and Jake being summoned to the Candy Kingdom: Princess Bubblegum, spurred on by her prior near-fatal encounter with The Lich, and after more than 80 hours with no sleep, has created an heir to the Throne to rule over her Kingdom when she someday dies. Creating living things is old hat for the superscientist-monarch, and she has outdone herself with Goliad, a large, immortal sphinx-like creature forged from Bubblegum's own DNA. Goliad introduces herself to Finn and Jake with the voice and casual innocence of a small child. Despite the exertion and sleeplessness, Bubblegum wants to start teaching the being about leadership - Goliad was designed to be smart, literally scary-smart. Fearing for Bubblegum's health, Finn and Jake intervene, offering to teach Goliad all they know. Bubblegum agrees, and sleeps. Finn and Jake go out into the world with a genetic nuclear bomb.

While Finn builds an obstacle course to physically develop Goliad, Jake takes her to a nearby pre-school to learn some basics. Instead she is witness to a school of really, truly terrible, misbehaved youths. After the kids try to eat Jake's brain, Jake looses his cool. Goliad sees this as a valuable lesson in leadership: To get the kids through the obstacle course, she immediately reverts to bully tactics, yelling and intimidation. Finn implores her to not be heavy handed and authoritarian, but to use her brain. At this point, a third eye emerges from Goliad's head. She telekenetically freezes Finn and forces him through the obstacle course, an act that is clearly physically and mentally traumatic to a young hero who has been shown accustomed to physical and mental trauma. To this point Goliad has been seen as wide-eyed to the world and a bit over-eager, not intentionally dangerous. She took control of Finn's body and mind, forced him through against his will because this was the quickest, most efficient way - she has no concept of the pain she caused, or of the ramifications of bypassing Free Will in such a manner.

Finn, gasping: "You can't just control people or whatever, it's messed up." And here, the turn. Without hesitation, without a shred of doubt, Goliad answers simply, serenely, "No, Finn, this way is good. Everyone did what I wanted. Really fast, no mistakes, calm, like you said. This, definitely, is the way to lead." Goliad is no mere overgrown child fumbling her way through a strange, new world: she is a being of immense mental and physical power with no regard for choice or the well-being of those under her, where there is no concept of the end not justifying the means because there are no means, only the end. She is completely certain of the righteousness of her actions because she is achieving the ultimate goal of peaceful leadership, not just the imperative of the potential ruler but her genetic imperative, the very thing Bubblegum created her for.

Upon hearing Goliad's counter-argument of peace through control, no matter how morally repugnant, Finn does not immediately reject it as evil. He stumbles, and questions "No, no, wait, is that true?" Finn has a very well-defined moral code and an utterly unshakable sense of right and wrong. When confronted with this new reality of peace through absolute power, absolute control, Finn sees a shade of grey and for the first time in the series he is stopped in his moral tracks. We, the audience, are not given an answer and must work through the myriad issues of the use of power and free will ourselves (few television shows have the fortitude, intelligence, and faith in the audience to pull this off, just some of Adventure Time's many qualities).

We cut to the heroes who track down Bubblegum and inform her of what has happened. Bubblegum responds to news of Goliad's sudden embrace of authoritarianism through mind-control with an astonishing and revelatory resignation, "I was afraid this might happen." She confronts Goliad, who is now far beyond her ability to control, and attempts to reason with the creature, to introduce a more sympathetic, empathetic philosophy of rule. Bubblegum shows Goliad a bee and it's symbiotic relationship with the flower: the bee gets what it wants, the flower gets what it wants.

But Goliad cannot be persuaded, she has found the Answer to the Question of Rule and it is Control, and the right to rule is hers by virtue of her Power. There is nothing else to consider, not safety or happiness or choice. Goliad, with the same sense of serenity that comes from knowledge of pure righteousness, pure power, takes the bee: "Bee cares not for flower. If getting pollen hurt or kill flower, bee would not care. Bee is stronger than flower." She crushes the bee. "Goliad is stronger than bee." She resurrects the bee. "Goliad is stronger than all." This is a frightening display of the universal corruption of Power. This is Might Makes Right, the true story of Power in every System.

Bubblegum, thinking to herself, sees that Goliad is simply too powerful, "too far gone, too corrupted... I'll have to disassemble her and try again." But Goliad reads her mind and casually takes the castle and the Kingdom. This is all Goliad's, now, and Goliad rather likes that. Bubblegum rushes back to her lab to create another Candy Sphinx, one that can counter Goliad's immense power. After force-feeding Jake the nearby inhabitants of the Candy Kingdom, Goliad tries to rip Bubblegum's plan from Finn's mind (unsuccessfully - this is the greatest hero in all of Ooo, after all). And when all seems lost, Bubblegum arrives with a new being, a new nearly omnipotent Übermensch (Übersüßigkeitmensch, perhaps?). A being of blond hair and with a single-minded purpose, Storm-o.

Storm-o quickly takes out Goliad, freeing Finn. Goliad sees right away what has transpired. "Wait, brother! Why must we fight? Rule with me!" Storm-o is implacable, refusing to yield. Now Goliad sees her fate, a fate Storm-o has already embraced. They lunge at each other and end up locked in psychic battle, two perfectly matched beings of incomprehensible power, trapped inside the other for the rest of time, the total stalemate. Finn asks "If Goliad and Storm-o are the same, how come Storm-o's a good guy?" Bubblegum: "I used some of your heroic DNA in the recipe, and [tellingly here:] not Goliad's." Storm-o, the creation of Princess Bubblegum and the genetic scion of Finn the human, and also the final puzzle piece in the picture of Bubblegum as villainess-potential.

Let's look at the root of the conflict: Princess Bubblegum, after nearly meeting her mortal end, and only after discovering that the science/magic of Ooo cannot extend her own life into the infinite, creates a creature of extraordinary power to extend her rule past the bounds of death. She intentionally designed an immortal creature capable of mind control to subjugate her Kingdom for Eternity. An act she knew could backfire! ("I was afraid this might happen.") And backfire not for the first time, either: The Earl of Lemongrab, who briefly usurped power in season 3, was also created to be heir-apparent. Lemongrab, Bubblegum's creation, responded to power by trying to imprison everyone.

These schemes have long since stopped being a benevolent back-up plan to ensure continuity of power. It is simply reckless tyranny.

And here is where a startling character revelation seems to emerge: Princess Bubblegum may be the Story's great antagonist.

One of Adventure Time's remarkable traits is the consistency of the subtle and nuanced character portrayals. The creators have a very clear vision of who these characters are and what they mean to each other and the roles they will play in the larger story woven in the background. In repeat viewings you see that there is not a wasted character or line of dialog. Seemingly one-off or background characters (or even sight-gags, hello Waving Snail) come back later, often in important roles. Bits of seemingly throw-away character dialog are revealed to expose massive elements of who these characters are. Some episodes hinge on plot twists that rely on the viewer's knowledge of the characters and their histories and relationships. But as with anything, not everything is as it seems: The Ice King is at once the show's cheapest plot tool (he wants princesses, Finn and Jake intervene, repeat) and the show's most tragic character (a thousand years ago he unearthed an artifact that took over his mind, destroyed his relationships, cursed him to be an immortal ninja ice-wizard-monarch plagued by constant visual hallucinations).

Bubblegum is good-natured and she cares deeply for her people and for science as a tool for progress. But she is also consistently portrayed making terrible scientific mistakes (usually in the aim of achieving something pretty disturbing) resulting in everything from the all-powerful ruler-sphinxes to multiple instance of mass zombie-ism. When confronted with a massive error in judgment in the creation of a god-like sphinx, she creates another one. There is no check or balance on the science she wields, no second opinion or oversight on the ethics or consequences of her actions. Is she a mad scientist using her royal subjects as test subjects, a pink, pretty Doctor Doom? Or is she simply a driven scientist who seeks progress at nearly all costs. Both can achieve amazing results and the line between the two, as exhibited in Bubblegum's actions and even personality, can be very blurry.

Now take the creations of Goliad and Storm-o. Storm-o is inherently, unshakably good because of Finn's DNA. Bubblegum makes this clear, but she's also obfuscating a deeper truth with tricky wordplay. She contrasts the two being's dual-nature by noting that Storm-o doesn't have Goliad's DNA. What she means (and what we can see right away) is that Storm-o doesn't have *her* DNA.

Storm-o is good because of Finn. Goliad is evil because of Bubblegum.

Goliad decides she knows what is best for her people, and will do whatever it takes to ensure and enforce peace and order. Just like Bubblegum. Goliad used mind-control, Bubblegum uses science. And there is the unavoidable grander metaphor in the deadlocked sphinxes, pure opposites of equal power, fated to an eternity of even-matched battle. Finn is still coming to terms with the inescapable reality that, despite everything they have been through, Finn and Bubblegum will never be together (a great pain in the heart and soul of our hero). And maybe the message in the image of the deadlocked sphinxes is that Finn and Bubblegum cannot be together, not because of mere incompatibility but because they are opposites, destined to be at odds in the future. Finn can never be with Bubblegum because to be with her is to put himself and his home in the crosshairs.

Is Bubblegum a young woman teetering on the razor's edge of good and evil? Is she a developing villain? Or is she like most people, a good person capable of ungood things? Bubblegum is not a true villain in this story by any means (that would be the Lich, of course), but it is hard not to see the potential for villainy in her or to entertain the idea that some act of hers may put Ooo in some grave jeopardy? I may be reading too much into this of course, but this is a series that hides things in plain sight and thrills in seeding stories that do not pay off for months or years. The stories of Storm-o and Goliad are not over and the fate of Ooo may be intertwined with theirs.

Whatever the potentialities, there is salvation for Bubblegum and Ooo in Finn the Human. Finn's inherent goodness, his willingness to fight Fate, and his belief in the goodness of others may prove to be the x-factor that tips the scales in favor of Bubblegum's redemption. And he has shown in dozens of instances that he will fight for what is right until he cannot fight anymore - he is nigh-unstoppable. Mere destiny has not stopped Finn before and I don't see that happening now, especially if it involves someone he loves. In the episode "The New Frontier," Jake dreams of his death, a prophesy to be embraced - Finn successfully fights off the weight of destiny and disrupts the very path of the future itself to save his brother. Even the presence of the Cosmic Owl, one of the series' two acknowledged deities, could not dissuade Finn from saving Jake. Bubblegum can drift towards villainy all she wants (or doesn't want), it matters little because Finn will be there to stop it, or die trying.

Finn may also be the salvation of Bubblegum because Finn will always believe in Bubblegum, always, no matter her actions. But even Finn's unassailable belief in others may prove to be his undoing: In the episode "In Your Footsteps" an impressionable bear shows up mimicking Finn, looking to be a hero like him. Jake does not trust the bear, but Finn sees nothing wrong and accepts and encourages the bear in his path. Finn's belief and acceptance backfire on him - unknown to him, the bear was an agent of The Lich, and the bear-spy succeeded in delivering to The Lich the Enchiridion, the manual of heroism on Ooo and the device that nearly succeeds in turning the entire Multiverse over to the Lich. Finn's pure heart was nearly the key to his ruin. If he was wrong about the bear, could he be wrong about Bubblegum? Could Bubblegum be used against Finn unknowingly, only to turn on him knowingly?

And perhaps this all means everything to the future of our characters and the show, and perhaps it is all meaningless.

"Goliad" is one of Adventure Time's most complex and layered episodes in a series full of them. Time will tell the importance and impact of these events, or at the very least reveal that I think about shit like this way to much.

c) 2012, 2013 Jeffrey O. Gustafson 

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Reading Love and Rockets - The Definitive Guide to Comics' Supreme Masterpiece

Updated for Spring 2015.

The Definitive Love & Rockets Reading Guide and Full Bibliography

In 1981, brothers Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, spurred on by their brother Mario, self-published an independent comic anthology called Love and Rockets. Within a year, Fantagraphics began publishing their work, bringing to the world a seismic change in what comics as a storytelling medium were capable of. Featuring mature, character based stories, the quality in art and story of the work of Los Bros Hernandez continue to represent the high-water mark of independent, creator-owned comics. The importance of Love and Rockets and the stories contained therein can never be understated. Los Bros' work is required reading.

Each author's stories are independent of the other's, and should be approached separately. Jaime ("Xaime") has almost exclusively told one continuing story over the last 34 years, Locas, while the far more prolific Gilbert ("Beto") has serialized several different ongoing stories and many more short stories over the decades in Love & Rockets (the most prominent being the Palomar/Luba Cycle), plus numerous other works for other publishers.

The comics of Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez contained under the Love & Rockets umbrella of titles have been published across 124 issues over 34 years, in four distinct phases across four anthologies and seven mini-series; collected in 29 sequential hardcover & softcover albums, collections, and graphic novels; and eleven softcover omnibus (Love and Rockets Library) collections.

The easiest way to read Love & Rockets is in Fantagraphics' fantastic softcover omnibus editions - The Love and Rockets Library - which collect all of Jaime's work through 2007, and most of the Gilbert Palomar/Luba cycle. Below is the definitive reading order of all of both authors' Love & Rockets work to date, plus Gilbert's extensive non-Love & Rockets catalog of creator-owned material. At the bottom of the page I also list the full Love & Rockets bibliography, covering every issue and collection under the Love & Rockets umbrella of titles and graphic novels from 1981-present.

LOCAS, by Jaime Hernandez

The story of Perla Luisa Chascarillo ("Maggie") and her friends, Las Locas, the epic starts out as throwback sci-fi adventure stories and quickly segue into an extraordinary chronicle of the Los Angeles Barrio Punk-Rock scene of the 1980s (in a universe with superspy professional wrestlers and superhero women). Following Maggie and her paramours Ray and Hopie as they grow and age in real-time over more than 30 years of story and featuring Jaime's clean, clear art-style and astonishingly frank characterizations, Locas is simply the finest ongoing character drama being produced by anyone in any medium, the great American graphic novel, comics towering literary achievement.  

Most of the Locas material is collected in the softcover omnibus Love and Rockets Library editions from Fantagraphics:
1: Maggie the Mechanic
2: The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S.
3: Perla la Loca
4: Penny Century
5: Esperanza

Locas continues:
6: La Maggie La Loca (serialized in The New York Times Magazine and collected in The Secrets of Life and Death, see below)
7: God and Science, The Return of the Ti-Girls (hardcover)
8: The Love Bunglers (hardcover)
9: Untitled, Love & Rockets New Stories 5 and 6 (not yet collected)
10: Untitled, Love & Rockets New Stories 7 and 8 (ongoing, not yet collected)

There are also two oversized hardcover omnibus collections, LOCAS I and LOCAS II, but only LOCAS II is in-print. In 1988, Fantagraphics released The Lost Heart and Other Stories, reprinting various short stories for the bookstore market.

There is also an excellent Jaime Hernandez art book, The Secrets of Life and Death: The Art of Jaime Hernandez (Abrams Comic Arts, 2009), which also collects La Maggie La Loca and some of Las Locas' first fanzine appearances from 1978 and 1979.

The Palomar/Luba cycle, by Gilbert Hernandez

Initially the extraordinary character drama following the inhabitants of Palomar, a financially poor yet socially rich central American town, over time the story follows several of the inhabitants and their decedents as their lives take them to America and through the world of organized crime, B-movies and beyond. Featuring Gilbert's dense and fearless art, complex in story and structure, fiercely political and unblinkingly sexual, a unique and original vision that stands as the medium's second finest ongoing work behind only Jaime's Locas.

There are five of the Fantagraphics omnibus The Love and Rockets Library volumes:
1: Heartbreak Soup
2: Human Diastrophism
3: Beyond Palomar
4. Luba and Her Family  
5. Ofelia

There are two hardcover omnibus collections covering the above material: Palomar, out of print; and LUBA, in-print. In 1988, Fantagraphics released The Reticent Heart and Other Stories, reprinting various short stories for the bookstore market.

Palomar/Luba continues:
6: High, Soft Lisp
7: Children of Palomar (New Tales of Old Palomar)
8: The Adventures of Venus
9: Untitled, Love & Rockets New Stories 5-8 (ongoing, not yet collected)

There are four spin-off original graphic novels from Fantagraphics, essentially in-universe presentations of movies mentioned throughout the post-Palomar/Luba cycle, in Graphic Novel form:
A: Chance In Hell (2007)
B: The Troublemakers (2009)
C: Love From the Shadows (2011)
D. Maria M. Book 1 (2013)
E. Maria M. Book 2 (2015)

--
Julio's Day (2013) collects his non-Palomar/Luba story serialized throughout Love & Rockets Volume II.


Significant Non-Love & Rockets material by Gilbert Hernandez

Gilbert Hernandez is one of the most prolific cartoonists on the planet, and has produced a significant amount of other material outside of the Love & Rockets auspice (most of which are in-print), including:

Birdland (Eros, 1992; out of print)
Girl Crazy (Dark Horse, 1996)
Yeah!, with Peter Bagge (DC, 2000)
Grip: The Strange World of Men (Vertigo, 2002; Dark Horse, 2014)
Sloth (Vertigo, 2006)
Speak of the Devil (Dark Horse, 2008)
Citizen Rex, with Mario Hernandez (Dark Horse, 2009)
Fatima: The Blood Spinners (Dark Horse, 2012; 2014)
Marble Season (Drawn & Quarterly, 2013)
Loverboys (Dark Horse, 2014)
Bumperhead (Drawn & Quarterly, 2015)

Gilbert also worked with Jaime and Mario on Dean Motter's The Return of Mister X (Vortex 1984-1985); the series has been collected numerous times (Vortex, 1986; Warner Books, 1987; iBooks, 2004; Dark Horse, 2006 - all out of print).

From Los Bros Hernandez:

There is one softcover Fantagraphics omnibus focusing on both the brothers' work, also containing contributions from Love and Rockets founder, Mario Hernandez:
-Amor y Cohetes

For the series' 30th anniversary, Fantagraphics released several books about Love & Rockets:
-The Love and Rockets Companion: 30 Years of Love and Rockets 
-Love and Rockets: The Covers
-The Love and Rockets Reader: From Hoppers to Palomar

There are two Love & Rockets Sketchbooks focusing on both brothers' works (only Volume Two is in-print). A retrospective, Ten Years of Love and Rockets was released in 1992.

--

The Full Love and Rockets Bibliography (1981-Present)
Below is the comprehensive list of anthologies, mini-series, collections and graphic novels that make up the entirety of the Love & Rockets oeuvre from Los Bros Hernandez.

Love and Rockets, phase one (51 issues between 1981-1996)
By Los Bros:
Love & Rockets (self-published one-shot, 1981; reprinted as the first Fantagraphics issue)
Love & Rockets (Volume 1: Numbers 1-50, 1982-1996)
Love & Rockets Bonanza (One-shot, 1989)

Love and Rockets, phase two (30 issues between 1996-2000)
By Jaime:
Whoa, Nellie! (1-3, 1996)
Maggie & Hopie Color Special (One-shot, 1997)
Penny Century (1-7, 1997-2000)
By Gilbert:
New Love (1-6, 1996-1997)
Luba (1-5, 1998-2000)
By Los Bros:
Measles (all-ages anthology prominently featuring work from Los Bros, 1-8, 1998-2000)

Love & Rockets, phase three (36 issues between 2000-2007)
By Los Bros:
Love & Rockets Volume II (1-20, 2000-2007)
By Gilbert:
Luba (6-10, 2002-2004)
Luba's Comics and Stories (1-8, 2000-2006)
New Tales of Old Palomar (1-3, 2006-2007) 

Love & Rockets, phase four (7 issues, 2008-present)
By Los Bros:
Love & Rockets New Stories (1-7, 2008-Present)

Sequential Collections and Graphic Novels:

In 1985, Fantagraphics began publishing sequential albums in hardcover and softcover of the all Love & Rockets material, containing stories from both brothers in each volume. Beginning with Volume 7, Fantagraphics alternated between brothers for each volume. Volumes 1 through 15 are numbered. Starting with Volume sixteen, Fantagraphics presented the stories as unnumbered graphic novels in varying formats.

1: Music for Mechanics (Los Bros, 1985)
2: Chelo’s Burden (Los Bros, 1986)
3: Las Mujeres Perdidas (Los Bros, 1987)
4: Tears from Heaven (Los Bros, 1988)
5: House of Raging Women (Los Bros, 1988)
6: Duck Feet (Los Bros, 1988)
7: The Death of Speedy (Jaime, 1989)
8: Blood of Palomar (Gilbert, 1989)
9: Flies on the Ceiling (Jaime, 1991)
10: Love & Rockets X (Gilbert, 1993)
11: Wigwam Bam (Jaime, 1994)
12: Poison River (Gilbert, 1994)
13: Chester Square (Jaime, 1996)
14: Luba Conquers the World (Gilbert, 1996)
15: The Hernandez Satyricon (Los Bros, 1997)
16: Whoa Nellie! (Jaime, 2000)
17: Fear of Comics (Gilbert, 2000)
18: Locas in Love (Jaime, 2000)
19: Luba in America (Gilbert, 2001)
20: Dicks and Deedees (Jaime, 2003)
21: The Book of Ofelia (Gilbert, 2005)
22: Ghost of Hoppers (Jaime, 2005)
23: Three Daughters (Gilbert, 2006)
24: The Education of Hopey Glass (Jaime, 2008)
25: High Soft Lisp (Gilbert, 2010)
26: God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls (Jaime, 2012)
27: Julio's Day (Gilbert, 2013)
28: Children of Palomar (Gilbert, 2013)
29: The Love Bunglers (Jaime, 2014)

The Love and Rockets omnibus softcovers already noted above were released sequentially as The Love and Rockets Library.

1: Maggie The Mechanic (Jaime, 2007)
2: Heartbreak Soup (Gilbert, 2007)
3: The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S. (Jaime, 2007)
4: Human Diastrophism (Gilbert, 2007)
5: Perla La Loca (Jaime, 2007)
6: Beyond Palomar (Gilbert, 2007)
7: Amor y Cohetes (Los Bros, 2008)
8: Penny Century (Jaime, 2010)
9: Esperanza (Jaime, 2011)
10. Luba and Her Family (Gilbert, 2014)
11: Ofelia (Gilbert, 2015)

Outside of Love & Rockets and Gilbert's major non-L&R creator-owned material noted above, both brothers have also had short stories and contributions as writers, artists, and cover artists featured in many work-for-hire and anthology projects since 1980, as well as a handful of scarce mini-comics published at various conventions over the years. For a comprehensive index of every single work by Los Bros through 2013, as well as timelines, character guides, interviews, and more, see the utterly indispensable resource The Love and Rockets Companion: 30 Years of Love and Rockets by Mark Sobel & Kristy Valenti.

--
Version 3.0, 03/15. A version of this article originally appeared on JHU Online in February 2013.  

More Love and Rockets from The Comic Pusher:
Gilbert's Year: Julio's Day Reviewed
The Poetry of Childhood: Gilbert Hernandez's Marble Season
Sibling Rivalry in Los Bros Hernandez's Love and Rockets New Stories 6
The Best Comics of 2013

Further reading, from Fantagraphics: 
How to Read Love and Rockets

The Best Comics of 2012

This article originally appeared on JHU Online in December 2012.

2012 has been a fantastic year for comics across the board, from independent to mainstream to online and beyond. In quality over quantity, this year finally saw the publication of Chris Ware's latest magnum opus, Brian K. Vaughan reminded the world that he's still one of the best scribes alive, and Alan Moore shook his fist and yelled for us to get off his lawn. Not enough can be said about the quality and quantity of the new creator-owned renaissance spear-headed by a dozen fantastic Image comics. IDW shined with their extraordinary production values on all kinds of unique projects, we saw the conclusion of Vertigo's last truly great series, and fiercely original creators like Jason Aaron, Matt Fraction, Jonathan Hickman and Brandon Graham had banner years. The works of folks like Garth Ennis, Meredith Gran, Jeff Smith, Matt Kindt, Gilbert Hernandez, Harvey Pekar, Carla Speed McNeil, Mike Mignola and so many more all reminded me why I love comics and why I've got the best job in the world.

So without further ado, here are the 12-ish best comics of 2012. 

Best Graphic Novel
Building Stories by Chris Ware (Pantheon)
Chris Ware's decade-plus in the making (second) masterwork is an experience and graphic novel unlike any other. A sprawling, fragmented box set of fourteen graphic novels, comic pamphlets, broadsheets and related ephemera from our greatest living cartoonist, Building Stories is a character piece entrenched in the way we remember and the language of comics-as-memory, how we build stories, and how stories build us. Non-linear, the plot, such as it is, has no beginning, middle, or end. The reader is given vignettes from the life of an unnamed central character, and a handful of supporting characters (including a building and a bee). This is something that cannot really be described so much as experienced, and Ware's extraordinary writing, illustrating, coloring, lettering and design make this undoubtedly a must-own for any library.

Best Ongoing Series
Saga by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples (Image)
The year's best-reviewed and certainly most eagerly anticipated new series, there seemed to be no doubt that Brian K. Vaughan's new open-ended ongoing sci-fi parable would be on pretty much every best-of list under the sun. And for good reason, too: Featuring eye-popping art from the year's breakout new superstar, Fiona Staples, Saga is easily accessible to new readers with its story about moon-crossed lovers set against a fiercely unique magical space opera backdrop. Vaughan is very well regarded for believing that comics are "the destination, not the blueprint," and this is certainly a work that revels in comics' budgetless visual and storytelling possibilities. Every issue is a giddy brainfeast: royal robots with television heads, interstellar bounty hunters, and enough family drama to put any tense Thanksgiving dinner to shame... it even has a snail-mail only letter column. There is simply nothing like this and I can't wait for the next however-many years of story to come. For quantity and quality, it's also the best value in the store - the first trade paperback collecting 150+ pages of story in the first six issues is just ten bucks. You've been hearing about this from everyone, now is the time to dive in, your future self will thank you.

Best Concluded Series (tie) 
Scalped by Jason Aaron & RM Guera (DC/Vertigo)
Punisher by Jason Aaron & Steve Dillon (Marvel MAX)
The best character drama being produced by anyone in any medium, in it's untidy heartbreaking conclusion Scalped has cemented itself in the pantheon of truly the finest comics ever produced. Comics' functional equivalent of television's The Wire, Jason Aaron and RM Guera's unparallelled undercover crime-noir masterpiece never ceased to thrill with astonishing plot-twists and beautiful, gritty art. Far from being sad about the series' conclusion, I'm thrilled by the prospect both of reading the complete story from scratch yet again and the opportunity to put this amazing work in new readers' hands. Start this now and you will get absorbed into a dark, breath-taking ride unlike any you have ever taken.

Also of special note is the conclusion of Jason Aaron & Steve Dillon's completely stunning Punisher MAX. The Punisher MAX run by Garth Ennis (now returning to form in Fury MAX) is simply the best Marvel comic of the previous decade - and the work of Aaron & Dillon lives up to it. Shocking, gripping, game-changing, Aaron & Dillon's Punisher MAX is a frankly brilliant chronicle of the end of Frank Castle's life while seamlessly interweaving realistic versions of standard Marvel Universe villains. This is Jason Aaron's best Marvel work in a career (and year) chock full of fantastic mainstream superhero writing, and simply the best work of Steve Dillon's storied career.

Best Limited Series
Adventure Time Presents Marceline and the Scream Queens by Meredith Gran (Boom!)
Starring the tragic/immortal Marceline The Vampire Queen as the frontwoman behind the rock outfit the Scream Queens, and Princess Bubblegum as their tour manager, the reader is easily disarmed by these characters from Pendleton Ward's extraordinary Cartoon Network television series Adventure Time. Expecting a paint-by-numbers story of a band on tour and the conflicts that inevitably arise, we get nothing short of a flawless character-based story exploring the pressures of stardom and the universality of the internal and external turmoil of self-doubt. From the start, amid the nuanced character work and the straightforward and uncomplicated analogies, Meredith Gran turns in a virtuosic artistic performance that treats the reader to astonishingly rendered set-pieces of unbridled rock inspiration, both the experience of performing and listening to rock music. A quadruple threat that is also the year's Best Surprise, Best Licensed Comic, and Best All-Ages Book, this mini-series is fun, funny, thoughtful, and simply, absolutely flawless.

Best New Ongoing Series that's not Saga
The Manhattan Projects by Jonathan Hickman & Nick Pitarra  (Image)
Jonathan Hickman has had one hell of a year over at Marvel between the conclusion of his epic Fantastic Four run and the beginning of his Avengers saga. But the best stuff from one of the best writers and designers in comics is still in the creator-owned realm, and of his three creator-owned series this year, The Manhattan Project takes the cake and explodes it. Utterly nuts in every positive possible way imaginable, The Manhattan Projects is an alternate history telling of the United States' secret black ops science program. It's wall-to-wall mad science with an evil multi-Oppenheimer, drunk Einstein, A.I. FDR, Russians, Nazis and aliens. I was initially cool on Pitarra's cartoony-Quitely style art, but as the series found its footing I couldn't imagine a better suited artist for the series nearly indescribable insanity. Volume One is out so give this a try if you haven't yet. And as with Saga, Image has put out a swell one-dollar reprint of the first issue.

Best Superhero Series
Hawkeye by Matt Fraction and David Aja with Javier Pulido (Marvel)
Only incidentally a superhero book, Fraction and Aja's Hawkeye is a hurricane of fresh air in a sometimes moribund genre. Hawkeye is about a guy, a costumeless, powerless Clint Barton, and what he does on his day off in Brooklyn, and the folks who live in his apartment building, and a girl who stole is name, and a bunch of gangsters, and his dog, and arrows, and, like, stuff. David Aja's art is stylish and just plain perfect, also inspiring the best stuff of his career from Javier Pulido on the alternating arcs. Every issue makes me want to jump up and down and thank comics and Marvel and New York City for all existing. The first trade comes out in March, but you can easily dive in with any issue - Hawkeye features largely self-contained one-ish-shot stories, a rare treat (and lost art) in mainstream comics.

Best Anthology
Dark Horse Presents 
It is the conceit of every anthology that it will contain material that can be hit-or-miss. That just comes down to variety and the vagaries of personal taste, and sometimes you get mostly miss (like this year's dreadful Kramer's Ergot). But Dark Horse's venerable anthology managed to hit more than it missed, with definite standouts that on their own would belong on this best-of list: David Chelsea intreagued me with The Girl With The Keyhole Eyes and Carla Speed McNeil blew me away with Finder: The Third World - indeed, everyone should get McNeil's astounding Finder Library tomes from Dark Horse, massive collections of her extraordinary science fiction work. Dark Horse Presents had so many great short-stories, serials and introductory salvos for longer series from so many great creators - Kelly Sue DeConnick, Phil Noto, Geoff Darrow, Richard Corben, Michael Avon Oeming, Steve Rude, Francesco Francavilla, Dean Motter, Harlan Ellison and so many more. At eight bucks a month for 80-100 pages of creator-owned goodness with some licensed goodness thrown in is one hell of a bang for your comic buying buck.

Best Non-Fiction Work
Cleveland by Harvey Pekar with Joseph Remnant (Top Shelf)
For non-fiction works in 2012 there were major disappointments: Guy Delisle's dull Jerusalem and Alison Bechdel's frankly insufferable Are You My Mother failed to meet expectations of their previous works. Who else but the inimitable Harvey Pekar to save the day. One of his final works is also one of his best. A bittersweet love letter to a town falling on hard times and a capstone to the autobiographies of one of comics most important creators, Harvey Pekar's Cleveland is a short but important work about the history, soul, and character of one of America's struggling former metropolises, and one man's unique journey through the history and the city he loves. Featuring fine art by Joseph Remnant, it is a vital social document and a masterful piece of graphic history.

Best Occasionally Published Series (tie)
Pope Hats by Ethan Rilly (AdHouse)
Casanova by Matt Fraction & Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba (Marvel/Icon)
Sometimes comics take a bloody long time to come out, or feature long delays between arcs, but when you get to them the quality far outweighs whatever delay you have to put up with. First, seeing one issue maybe once a year or so, is Ethan Rilly's utterly wonderful Pope Hats, a straightforward story of a law clerk in a not-so-straightforward law firm and her freewheeling actress roommate. Rilly's art is clean and fresh, his story oddly riveting. I look forward to each new chapter as much as the similar but far more complex Ganges from Kevin Huizenga.

Second, 2011 finally saw the triumphant return of Fraction, Moon & Ba's interdimensional superspy epic Casanova, first in full color reprints, then an astonishing, dark new mini Avaritia. Casanova is still consistently Matt Fraction's best work, deeply personal, dense, sexy, trippy. We should be seeing the fourth volume in 2013... or not, who knows. Just get the first three and reread those a few times, you'll find something new each time.

Creator of the Year
Brandon Graham
For Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity, King City, and Prophet (Image)
Brandon Graham is working at Kirby-levels of sheer creativity, perfectly encapsulated in his new Multiple Warheads. A truly unique art style and hypercreative sci-fi storytelling, a perfect synthesis of clever art and language, it often feels like the page can barely contain what his brain is giving the universe. It's comics like this for which comics exist. And this is just a drop in the creative ocean that is Brandon Graham. 2012 saw the release of his stupendous Tokyopop to Image mega-series King City in a gorgeous twenty dollar package. In twelve issues of black and white awesome, in a narrative slightly more cohesive than Multiple Warheads, Graham shows how much fun you can have reading - and I imagine, for him, writing and illustrating - COMICS. And then there's Prophet, created by Graham with Simon Roy, Farel Dalrymple & Giannis Milogiannis, based on, of all things, a Rob Liefeld property. Thankfully having nothing to do with Liefeld in style or story, Prophet is innovative, stylish (in its own sense) science fiction that is a lesson (along with books like Hawkeye) to publishers that simply allowing creators to take the reins and run unrestricted is the formula for quality and originality missing in so many properties. Less editorial, more creatorial. 2012 is the year of Brandon Graham and creators like him, who, thankfully for comics, are starting to come out of the woodwork.

20 Honorable Mentions for 2012, in alphabetical order: Batman by Scott Snyder & Greg Capullo, Chew by John Layman & Rob Guillory, Fantastic Four/FF written by Jonathan Hickman, Fatale by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips, Fury MAX by Garth Ennis & Goran Parlov, G0dland by Joe Casey & Tom Scioli, Goliath by Tom Gauld, Hellboy by Mike Mignola, The Hive by Charles Burns, The Invincible Iron Man by Matt Fraction & Salvador Larroca, Journey Into Mystery written by Kieron Gillen, Love & Rockets New Stories by Los Bros Hernandez, MIND MGMT by Matt Kindt, RASL by Jeff Smith, Richard Stark's Parker: The Score by Darwyn Cooke, The Twelve by J. Michael Straczynski & Chris Weston, the Ultimate Spider-Man comics of Brian Michael Bendis and Sarah Pichelli and David Marquez, Unwritten by Mike Carey & Peter Gross, X-Factor written by Peter David, xkcd by Randall Monroe.

c) 2012, 2013 Jeffrey O. Gustafson