“I don’t trust therapists.” “Any particular reason?” “I dated one once. He was the most royally fucked up guy I ever met. Besides, aren’t they supposed to take the pain away? Why the hell would I want that?” (Clive Barker, from Sacrament)

COMICS

Absolute Martian Manhunter volume 1: Martian Vision by Deniz Camp (writer), Javier Rodríguez (artist), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letterer), and Andrea Shea (collection editor). $17.99, 128 pgs, DC.

I liked issue #1 more than any of the “All In” issues, so I was curious to see where Camp was going with the story, and it turns out that he goes in some pretty cool directions. This is a superb comic about isolation, loss of community, fear, and what negative emotions can do to the connections we build with each other, and Camp wraps it all up in a freaky science fiction story and lets Rodríguez absolutely go to town on it. His protagonist, FBI guy John Jones, has become infected with an alien consciousness that calls itself “the Martian” for lack of a better term (it doesn’t seem to come from Mars, but maybe it does?), and he’s trying to come to terms with his own consciousness and even his personality being altered while the world goes to shit around him and he becomes more and more estranged from his wife and son. Camp does an excellent job showing how Jones is breaking down even as he’s seeing the world in a different way and begins to think of different ways to solve the problems plaguing Middleton, Colorado. The problems are things we deal with all the time, all amped up to 11 thanks to the baleful influence of “the Martian’s” enemy, but Camp does a decent job showing that it’s just people unable to overcome their basic prejudices, and all the villain does is give them a nudge. As I’ve said before, I dislike it when writers show basic shitty human behavior being created by outside forces, but Camp threads the needle pretty well, as it’s clear that even in a diverse place such as Middleton (which Camp sets up as a very diverse place), sometimes people can’t overcome their ancestral hatreds. Camp also does a good job showing how Jones is able to overcome those issues without simply fighting some bad guy, and while there is a “superhero fight” in the book, it’s between “the Martian” and its foe, and it’s not very much like what we usually see from superhero fights. This is just an excellent story about people whose lives have become untenable in some way and how they either do or don’t deal with that.

Rodríguez, as I noted, is amazing on this book. I can’t even get into the storytelling, which is dazzling, as he grounds the book nicely with strong lines and some interesting spot blacks but also shows how fragile and fractured Jones’s consciousness and the world is, with swirls of smoke (smoke is very important in this book) and weird perspectives and odd figures lurking in the background and panels that twist and bend and almost ooze across the page. So much of the book takes place in Jones’s mind, so Rodríguez uses odd figure work and odd shapes to show how his vision has been altered, and his final few issues, when shadows across town seem to come to life and then “the Martian” fights the bad guy, are truly breathtaking. The shadows match the personalities of the people rather than their shapes, and Rodríguez does amazing work with them, but it’s just a precursor of the big fight, which takes place in Jones’s mind, so Rodríguez can have fun with the violence, going surreal or abstract as the fight gets more intense. His coloring throughout is astonishing, as he uses big, bold colors to show the weird influence of “the Martian” and the bad guy, contrasting it beautifully with the relative dullness of the “real world.” He uses strong lines, but often a softer palette to add texture to the artwork, and it’s just gorgeous. Rodríguez has been doing really excellent work for both Marvel and DC for a while now, but man, this might be his best work.

It’s unclear why this is an “Absolute” book. It feels like Camp pitched it as a Black Label or Vertigo book, but DC wanted to put it in the Absolute-verse, so there it went. There’s a hint toward Darkseid being a player in the book, but it feels more like an olive branch to DC than anything else. Maybe Camp altered the story so that it was more “Absolutey,” but I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s going to last beyond 12 issues — a lot of people at my comics shop, for instance, don’t seem to like it because it’s too “weird” — and I don’t even know if I want it to go too long. It seems like something that will burn bright but burn quickly. Maybe. I will say that the people at my comics shop are fools, because this is a brilliant comic book. Check it out!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

One totally Airwolf panel:

This won’t end well

Batman/Deadpool by a bunch of people, but come on, you buy this because Grant “Ostrander Thinks He Can Fuck With Me?!?!?” Morrison wrote the main story. We know. It’s ok. $8.99, 55 pgs, DC/Marvel.

The God Of All Comics is often absurd and surreal, but they’re not often funny, so it’s nice to see them have some fun with this crossover, as they give us a story that pokes fun at themself and the conventions of the genre quite a bit. I mean, sure, they’re metatextual in this, but it’s almost as if they’re doing it because they know we expect it, and they use it quite well, even ending it on a bit of a heartfelt moment. Deadpool, of course, always pokes fun at the conventions of the genre in a metatextual way, so it’s not like Morrison has to dop any heavy lifting with that, but the way Deadpool is metatextual in this fits in well with Morrison’s sensibilities. The villain is fun, the deus ex machina is fun (and I’d say obscure, but it’s kind of become so much part of lore that I think almost everyone will get it), and Morrison even has some fun with the inexplicable romance between two characters. Mora kills on art, of course, and the story (which is 27 pages long) is just a fun inconsequential story. The others are even more so, even though they’re decent enough. James Tynion’s “John Constantine meets Doctor Strange” story is pretty good, even though Tynion ignores the two very cool cross-universe fights happening so that the two main characters can philosophize to each other, but it’s drawn by Hayden Sherman, so it works. Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo reunite for a Nightwing/Laura Kinney story which is fine but far too typical of these kinds of stories — they talk waaaaay too much about awesome the other one is, which is just a tad bit annoying. The story looks nice, though. Amanda Conner draws a goofy Harley Quinn/Hulk story written by Mariko Tamaki, which is fun solely because Conner is awesome. It’s nice to see Denys Cowan drawing the final story, but G. Willow Wilson’s vignette about Ms. Marvel meeting Static is even more treacly (in fewer pages) than the Nightwing/Wolverine one. Oh well.

Despite the weaker stories, the art is all very good, and the main story does carry things nicely. It’s not the greatest thing in the world, but I do love a good DC/Marvel crossover, so this is fun to read. I don’t know if these two companies can do something like this once a year or so, but it would be kind of fun. We shall see.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

It’s happened to me, sure

Buried Long, Long Ago by Anthony Cleveland (writer), Alex Cormack (artist), Justin Birch (colorist), James B. Emmett (editor), and Ryan Carroll (editor). $17.99, 113 pgs, Mad Cave Studios.

I’ve kind of become a person who gets every comic Alex Cormack draws, which is kind of odd. I don’t think he’s the greatest artist in the world, but he’s very good, but it just seems like he keeps doing work that, although it comes from different writers, generally seems to be in my wheelhouse, so I just keep getting them. I assume if he ever draws a Punisher story, I might give that a miss, but for now, he keeps drawing comics that are things I want to read. In this case, Cleveland dives into the story of Belle Gunness, who was a serial killer in the Midwest in the late 19th/early 20th century. Gunness presumably died in a fire in 1908, so, as the book tells us, a lot of her story remains untold, so Cleveland turns it into a weird, horror fantasy in which Belle’s three daughters return to her from school (whether or not they’re actually her children or just girls she’s adopted is … unclear?) and they become the POV characters, as they figure out what Gunness is doing (she lures men to her home through personal ads, and they bring their money which she steals after she kills them) and try to stop her, which does not go well, as you might expect. There’s something supernatural going on, too, which is probably to be expected, but Cleveland does a pretty good job with it. The plot plays out kind of as we expect, but it goes well, and Cleveland does throw some interesting twists in there that keep it lively. Cormack does his usual excellent work — as always, a few scenes are a bit too dark, but overall, the coloring is very good — with his excellence at creating creepy things in full force, but he also does some astonishingly beautiful, delicate work when the girls are just living their lives on the farm. As always, his line work is very good, as he always seems to make things scratchy without smudging his lines — they’re always very firm and defined, but he’s able to add roughness to the drawings nevertheless. There are some really creepy scenes in this comic, and Cormack is very good at those sorts of things. The book looks great.

This is a relatively standard horror story, but that’s not really a bad thing. Cleveland keeps things moving along nicely, and it’s drawn beautifully. It’s nifty.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Man, you don’t want to find out your cellar is like that

Downlands by Norm Konyu (writer/artist). $29.99, 272 pgs, Titan Comics.

I got a Norm Konyu book a couple of months ago, and now we have another one, except this was supposed to be out well over a year ago, so it’s probable Konyu did it before The Space Between the Trees, but who knows. Anyway, this is another terrific Konyu comic — the dude really knows how to create excellent comics! — that takes place in a small town in England (it’s based on a village in the South Downs, near the Long Man of Wilmington) that has a history that, like a lot of old places, never quite goes away. It takes place in 1996, which it kind of has to, because James, the main character, has to discover some things without simply Googling it. James is a 14-year-old whose twin sister, Jen, dies suddenly at the beginning of the book, and before she dies, she tells James she saw a black dog, so James becomes obsessed with that and begins to investigate it. It’s a small town with a single street (called “the Street,” which is kind of hilarious even though, as Konyu tells us in the backmatter, that’s what often happens in these small villages), and Konyu goes through the history of each house and what has happened to the people living there, and this becomes an interesting ghost story as James figures things out. This is a very well plotted comic — we see some things that happened to the villagers over the years early on, and then Konyu gives us chapters in which we learn about how they happened and how it all fits together, and it’s really well done. James does find out what’s going on with the black dog — I mean, it’s common trope in folklore, so it’s not too hard to figure out — but this isn’t really about that, as Konyu does some clever things with how we deal with death and what death actually is. Ultimately, the point he’s making isn’t too unique, but he gets there in a very interesting way. James is forced to dive deeply into history, and that’s another point Konyu makes quite well — how history affects us, how we need to learn from it, and how it might not be quite what you think it is. Konyu also does a nice job with the way he presents the ghosts — they’re not necessarily scary all the time, because they’re just part of the fabric of the town. Konyu, as usual, does amazing work with the art. His animated style might take some getting used to, but Konyu gives the characters such humanity even though he foregoes a ton of details in their faces and bodies. He also creates a fascinating world of this small village, which is both modern and ancient. Konyu blends those really well, and when James has an experience with the older village, Konyu’s work with the blending of the two worlds makes it work very well, because it’s not incongruous. Konyu’s colors are, as always, excellent — he does a watercolor effect that he uses brilliantly, as the book has nice solid colors but parts of it are wonderfully shaded and occasionally splashy when the supernatural stuff comes to the fore. It is an amazingly gorgeous comic, which is not surprising as we’ve seen so far from Konyu.

It’s another very good comic from Norm Konyu. I guess I’m not surprised!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Well, that’s a pickle

Gehenna: Naked Aggression by Patrick Kindlon (writer), Maurizio Rosenzweig (artist), Matteo Vattani (colorist), and Jim Campbell (letterer). $16.99, 96 pgs, Image.

Kindlon isn’t the greatest writer, but he’s carved out a nice career doing his thing, so good for him! He seems to have planned this for four issues, which is what we get, but according to him, sales were great, so they’re moving on with the story. I do wonder if he changed the ending a bit to allow a sequel, because if this ending was his original plan, it very much leaves things open-ended, so it would have been weird if he didn’t plan on more. But, Kindlon writes in the back that he didn’t want the book to be anything other than what it was, which is a full-on pulpy action adventure — Greg Hatcher, I think, would have loved this book — with a very Seinfeld-esque sensibility: “Nobody learns anything.” Kindlon was very clearly influenced by action movies of his youth (I don’t know how old he is), in which the good guy simply shows up and fights bad guys and we learn next to nothing about him. Gehenna, his protagonist, is very opaque in this comic — we know her husband was killed over a very stupid “offense” to a mobster, but we don’t know much more about that, plus she has a kid about whom we know nothing. In the beginning, she is trying to find another mobster, who “owns” the hit on her life, which was put on her because she started killing people for revenge. She can’t find the mobster, but she finds his son, who is immediately in danger because a bunch of people seem to want him dead. Gehenna switches to “mama bear” mode and begins protecting the kid, and the entire comic is her trying to get away from the killers and killing them when she can’t get away. It’s quite relentless.

I get that Kindlon doesn’t want Gehenna to have an “arc,” and that’s fine. He notes that a staple of genre fiction is the utter lack of an arc, and he’s not wrong. Still, if he’s going to keep going with Gehenna the comic, at some point it would be nice if things slowed down a little. He notes that there are over 150 Destroyer novels, which is impressive. Has anyone read all of them? Probably not, because if you read a few, you get the gist. If Kindlon does that with Gehenna, it will get boring fast. Maybe it can sustain one more arc. But at some point, if we’re going to keep reading, it needs to give us something different. At least, I would like that. I might be wacky.

Anyway, I like Rosenzweig’s art quite a bit and I’m glad he’s doing something fun, and boy howdy, he gets to draw a shit-ton of mayhem in this comic. As usual with this kind of fiction, none of these people would be able to move, much less fight, after enduring this violence, but that doesn’t mean that Rosenzweig doesn’t draw it wonderfully. He uses rough lines and lots of hatching to really make this world a tough place, and his slightly cartoonish style makes the figures flow and move very nicely. Kindlon sets this in a world slightly off-kilter from ours (there seem to be superheroes, or at least costumed vigilantes), so Rosenzweig gets to add some subtle weird stuff, too, which is fun. It’s a very groovy-looking book.

More power to Kindlon, I guess, and I hope we get more of this comic, which is pretty fun. (I will say that there are variant covers in the back, and a few of them are just downright porn. I was surprised, because that seems like more of a Zenescope thing than an Image thing, but gadzooks, look out if you get this trade!)

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

A typical panel in this comic!

Geiger volume 4 by Geoff Johns (writer), Gary Frank (artist), Brad Anderson (colorist), Rob Leigh (letterer), and Brian Cunningham (editor). $16.99, 135 pgs, Image.

Johns’s flagship “Ghost Machine” title continues to roll merrily along, as out hero, Tariq, is bummed because he’s, you know, a radioactive dude (plus, I mean, his family is dead, which can’t be fun), but his buddy, Nate, keeps trying to cheer him up. Unfortunately, Tariq’s radioactive-ness is getting a bit out of control, so Nate gets him to Lewistown, Montana (with Junkyard Joe, who shows up in the first issue of this trade, along for the ride) and begs for help from … the Radioactive Woman, Ashley Arden (Geigerette?)! She reluctantly agrees to help Tariq, but Pop Culture Rule #1 is never far from our mind, is it, and Ashley has (wait for it) A HIDDEN AGENDA!!!! But what is it? Will it kill our hero, or do something else that’s not as bad? NO MAN CAN SAY! (Which is probably why it’s a woman’s plan.) Oh, the drama!

Johns continues to do a nice job with this post-apocalyptic adventure. I mean, it’s nothing too shocking, as Johns has no interest in making “art,” because he just wants to entertain the heck out of us, but that’s fine, because this is entertaining. Tariq’s issues have been shown throughout the series, and now we get Ashley, who has a slightly different but no less upsetting origin story and which makes her more sympathetic even if we’re not quite sure what she’s up to. Nate continues to be a very good character, humanizing Tariq through his own humanity and making sure Tariq doesn’t devolve too far into bitterness. Johns has also done a good job with the ancillary characters — the president shows up in this collection, and he’s an interesting if definitely evil fellow, but we also get the people who are living in this post-apocalyptic wasteland, and Johns does a good job making them a little more than just cardboard villains. Frank, of course, is just killing it on this book. His fight scenes are beautifully staged and choreographed, and he does such a good job with the characters, as their emotions are wonderfully etched on their faces. He and Anderson continue to do a great job with the radioactive people, and Anderson is having way too much fun with the neon greens in his toolbox. It’s a really nice book to look at, which isn’t surprising given Frank’s long track record.

As has happened a few times since Johns launched this imprint, this is one of two “Ghost Machine” trades that came out in November. Will I like the other one too? Read on to find out!!!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

That guy’s having a bad day

Globetrotters: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s World Tour by Julian Voloj (writer), Julie Rocheleau (artist/colorist/letterer), Anne-Sophie Dumeige (color assistant), Cromatik Ltd. (letterer), and Christopher Bradley (editor). $25.99, 178 pgs, Abrams ComicArts.

After her radical exposé about conditions in New York’s insane asylums (which, of course, was also turned into a comic), Nellie Bly needed something else to do as a reporter, so she decided to go around the world in less than 80 days, as she believed the standard set by Phileas Fogg could be beaten (Verne’s novel had come out some 15 years earlier, so technology had improved slightly). None of the men in her life — her bosses at The New York World — think it’s a good idea, because she’s a woman, but Joseph Pulitzer, who owned the newspaper, saw dollar signs because he could sensationalize the crap out of it, and he gave the go-ahead. The bosses at The New York Cosmopolitan thought it would be a good idea to get into the game, so they enlisted Elizabeth Bisland, the literary editor (which was a “respectable” job for a woman, so she didn’t use a pseudonym like Bly did) to race Bly, going the opposite way around the world (they thought Bly going east would slow her down, and sent Bisland west). Bly, somewhat hilariously, doesn’t even know she’s in a race until very late in the day — it was international news, but she was in too big a hurry to read the newspaper and no one told her about it. Bly “won” the race, completing the journey in 72 days, while Bisland ended up taking 76 days. Both women wrote books about their travels, which are the primary sources for this book. As the creators point out, almost every odd thing in the book is true … or at least is what Bly and Bisland told us about.

It’s a pretty good book — Voloj does a nice job switching between the two women and showing their experiences. Bly was a bit less genteel than Bisland and more adventurous, so she’s always crashing through the book while Bisland tries to restrain herself. Bisland also doesn’t take the race all that seriously at first, so she doesn’t panic like Bly does when she misses a connection (Bly, as I noted, doesn’t know she’s in a race with Bisland, but she’s still in a race with Phileas Fogg, so she freaks out a lot when she can’t travel when she planned). They both encounter chauvinistic men, of course, but they also meet people — men and women — who admire them. There’s some excitement in the book — both Bisland and Bly have to deal with storms in the Pacific — but most of the excitement comes from the fact that these two women are experiencing new things, and Voloj does a really nice job showing how they both try to understand cultures and people that were very exotic back in 1889/1890 (and still are today, at least a little bit). It’s interesting to see how easily a white person — even a woman — can move through the world, as this time period was almost at the peak of white people ruling shit, and Bly and Bisland, while they are certainly more interested in the native cultures than most people might be at the time, are still blissfully unaware of the tensions roiling beneath the surfaces of the many places they visit. That’s certainly not the point of the book, and that’s fine, but it is kind of keen that Voloj and Rocheleau show us the women interacting well with the people they come in contact with.

Rocheleau’s art is very nice, too. It can be somewhat cartoonish, but she shifts easily from the kind of abstract, “simplistic” facial expressions — the circles for eyes, the ovals for mouths — to a far more detailed look, which is neat. She uses the more abstract expressions when the women (usually Bly) are reacting bigly to things, which helps amp up the emotion, and it works well. She does a marvelous job with the clothing, which has to work when it’s a specific time period, and she does wonderful work contrasting it with the native clothing, which is usually far more functional for the place where the people live. She gets the details of these places beautifully — they’re a really nice blend of native architecture and culture with the layer of colonialism on top of it, and she does some nice metaphorical work occasionally, with the storms and when Bisland gets ill, and it works well within the context of the book. She does excellent work with the brushwork, too, giving the book a nice, rough look, which fits with the time frame. Rocheleau’s coloring is amazing, too — she uses a lot of warm colors throughout, with some neat cool colors thrown in to temper it all. This is a beautiful book, and it does a nice job moving the story along.

While Voloj doesn’t do anything too surprising with the story, it’s still a very solid telling of an interesting moment in history. The women never met, which is fascinating to me, and Bly died destitute, which is kind of sad. Both women moved feminism along well, although, of course, although it would take thirty more years before women got to vote and even today, 135 years later, men still think women can’t do everything men can do. Globetrotters is a cool comic. That’s all it needs to be!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Commerce rules all!

Heat Seeker: Combustion by Charles Ardai (writer), Ace Continuado (penciler), Juan Castro (inker), Asifur Rahman (colorist), and David Leach (letterer). $17.99, 88 pgs, Titan Comics.

I love this whole dopey series, both the “Gun Honey” main series and these spin-offs — they are pure trash, but Ardai just slams open the throttle and does not care at all about slowing down. Does it matter what this is about? Dahlia is hired by a scientist to take his daughter to a safe place because bad guys are after him and her, but of course all! is! not! as! it! seems!!!!! and Dahlia finds herself fighting all sorts of people and taking her clothes off because of course she does. I mean, other characters take their clothes off, too, because of course they do! Continuado does a decent job with the art — his women are ridiculously busty and wear clothing that is just not suited for all the action they go through, but he does some grisly work late in the book that’s really cool, and who doesn’t love ridiculously busty women wearing clothing that is just not suited for all the action they go through? I don’t know — boobs, action, betrayals, and the book ends, literally, with two women naked in bed — it’s goofy and takes itself seemingly too seriously but maybe not? Ardai seems to enjoy writing these, and I enjoy reading them, but yeah, they’re trash. Who doesn’t love good trash occasionally?

Rating: I dunno … Greg Hatcher would like this too, how’s that?

One totally Airwolf panel:

Of course he did!

The Hero Trade by Matt Kindt (writer), Robert Venditti (writer), David Lapham (artist), and Dave Sharpe (letterer). $12.99, 190 pgs, Bad Idea.

This is a collection of short stories by Kindt and Lapham from the past five years, since Bad Idea launched, basically. Some of the stories feature the same characters and they’re all tangentially connected, but they still stand alone, and they’re all pretty good and definitely mean and nasty. I mean, the collection begins with a dude selling a superhero’s body parts out of the trunk of his car, so you know it’s mean and nasty! The stories are quite good, as you might expect: there’s the dude selling body parts; the person getting high by snorting dust shaved from a superhero’s tooth; there’s the dude who finds out his wife is a superhero; there’s the guy who can get news from the future and how he uses it and how he prepares for the superheroes to come for him; there’s the hacker farm that gets into “Batman’s” accounts and what happens afterwards; there’s the woman who’s in love with a sentient toaster. It’s satirical to a degree, which keeps it from being too bleak, as it’s clear Kindt and Lapham are having some fun with the concept of superheroes in the real world, but that doesn’t mean it’s not kind of bleak. There’s not a ton to say about it — Lapham’s art is terrific as always, and Kindt has fun poking at the conventions of superhero fiction, and it’s a good collection. ‘Nuff said!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

‘Hey, let’s get away from that guy!’ says that dude

Huge Detective by Adam Rose (writer), Magenta King (artist/colorist), Darts Dalton (artist), Minimone (colorist), DC Hopkins (letterer), and Ibraheem Kazi (collection editor). $19.99, 120 pgs, Titan Comics.

This is a bit disappointing, because the premise is neat — giants (which are called “The Huge”) rise from the ground unexpectedly and humans have to learn to live with them, and one of them teams up with a human to solve a strange case — and even the plot is odd enough to work — I don’t want to give it away, but it’s bizarre and nifty and fits well into this world, but the execution is a bit lacking. It’s not a bad length, but it does feel like Rose could have fleshed out the relationship between Detective Tamaki and Gyant, the giant (ha!) who is sent to help her, as it always feels a bit wonky. There’s also the societal aspects of the Huge existing, and Rose adds a lot of that into the book but it seems a bit like window-dressing when it could be deeper. I’m not just saying this because I like that sort of thing — the solution to the mystery they’re investigating gets into this stuff a bit, but it doesn’t hit as hard because Rose hasn’t delved enough into how this society functions with a race of giants occupying Australia (which is where they decided to live after the initial shock) and how humans perceive them. It’s just a weird, disjointed story, as Rose zips all over the place and the characters even seem to employ the Great Game of Thrones Teleportation Device™ to zip around. Similarly, King’s art is perfectly fine, but because he has to put Huge and humans in the same space, occasionally the perspectives are off and the panels become a bit confusing. He does some good work with Gyant and Tamaki interacting with each other, but at other times, it’s almost like he forgets how big Gyant is supposed to be. He’s putting a lot of information into the book, and it feels like every once in a while he could have used a big splash or something to contrast the two characters a bit. There’s one double-page splash that’s pretty well done, but it takes place in a cave that feels like it’s been established as more cramped, so a Huge like Gyant wouldn’t be able to stand up as much as he is. Little things like that throw me, but perhaps they would not throw you. To each his own!

There’s nothing really wrong with Huge Detective — it’s certainly entertaining and interesting — it just feels like there’s a better story struggling to get out. I wish it had, but in the meantime, it’s a clever murder mystery set in a slightly odder world than ours, and that’s always fun to check out!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Always go for the throat!

Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu volume 2: Subterranean Jungle by Jed MacKay (writer), Domenico Carbone (artist), Devmalya Pramanik (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer), and Jennifer Grünwald (collection editor). $17.99, 110 pgs, Marvel.

Yes, I know I’m in the bag for Moon Knight, but I will call it out when it’s not completely up to snuff, I think, and the previous collection was fine, but this one is very good, and it’s clear that MacKay was using the first trade of this new series (sigh, another #1 issue) as a build-up to this one, which makes me wonder why Marvel didn’t just release a nice 10-issue trade of this — with the small number of pages per issue, it’s not like it would be that long anyway! Our hero, who got a beat-down from the new drug dealer because of secret reasons that I’m not going to share with you (it’s a fun reason, so I don’t want to spoil it), figures out a way to defeat him, and it’s kind of clever. He also has more conversations with Khonshu, which are always fun — I don’t love that recent writers have leaned into the fact that Khonshu is actually real, as I prefer it ambiguous, but I do admit that MacKay has done a very good job with the interactions — and there’s a very fun (in a Moon Knight comic?) issue in which the squad has to figure out how to talk to Hank Pym and they come up with the dumbest possible way to do it (but, I mean, it works, so yay, Squad!). Plus, MacKay drags some nifty Z-level villains out of mothballs — Jester, Cubist, Zaran, Deadzone, and Killer Shrike appear in this comic! — and that’s always good to see (I always had a soft spot for Killer Shrike, so I was happy he was there!). The lack of consistency, art-wise, continues to annoy me, but both artists do a decent enough job, with Pramanik really doing well in the final three issues, as he uses interesting layouts and gorgeous brush work to make those issues more feverish and frenetic than the first two (where Carbone does a solid but unspectacular job). I know, it’s a Marvel comic, so wishing for an artist to last more than, I don’t know, four issues is probably a foolish notion, but they keep getting pretty good artists to draw Moon Knight, so I guess I can’t complain too much.

MacKay seems to like writing the character, and he writes him well, so I’ll keep buying it. It’s as simple as that!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Is she at Comic-Con?!?!?

Redcoat volume 2 by Geoff Johns (writer), Bryan Hitch (artist), Andrew Currie (inker), Brad Anderson (colorist), Rob Leigh (letterer), and Brian Cunningham (editor). $16.99, 173 pgs, Image.

Johns tells a bunch of shorter stories in this collection, which will eventually connect to the rest of the “Ghost Machine Universe,” as we see some links in this trade, but which also continue to embed Simon Pure in U.S. history and folklore. He meets a murderous family in 1873 Kansas, he hangs out with Johnny Appleseed in 1816, he meets Annie Oakley in 1890, and he helps Dolley Madison get out of the White House with a painting she doesn’t want to lose in 1814. In the middle of this, we get a three-issue story set in the Civil War, where Simon meets a couple of time travelers, one of whom read too many Harry Turtledove novels and is trying to give modern weaponry to the South so they win the war. That’s the one, obviously, that ties into the Greater Universe (Geiger makes a cameo), but I can’t imagine that Johns isn’t going to use all of these stories to somehow inform the bigger plot as we move forward. I think what I like most about the stories is that they’re … kind of inconsequential? I mean, like I noted, I think Johns will probably tie them together as we go along, but, I mean, in the Johnny Appleseed story, Simon and Appleseed have to fight a giant worm that’s not evil in any way, it’s just a giant worm that doesn’t know why it’s so big. In the Annie Oakley story, they do stop a robbery and hostage situation, but it’s basically just Simon and Annie flirting through a shooting exhibition (Simon tries to hook up with her, but Annie is happily married and she shuts it down). Simon has to escape from British soldiers and protect the First Lady in that story, but he’s also just helping her rescue a painting. The Civil War story is a bit heavier, as Simon comes to realize how evil slavery is (he never really thought about it before), and that’s obviously the important story, but it’s nice that Johns puts these one-off adventures in here, too, because it makes the heavier stuff hit a bit harder while also not letting the book get dragged down into darkness. It could — there is a serial-killing family in this collection — but Johns doesn’t let it. I mean, he could have done that when he wrote fro DC, but I guess it was too much fun butchering characters for that (and no, I will not let it go).

Hitch continues to do amazing work. I don’t know how often this book comes out, but he does not look rushed at all, which was occasionally his problem when he was working for the Big Two. I haven’t seen all of his work over the past several years, but is this his best work since he was doing The Ultimates? He and Currie and Anderson are really working well together, keeping Hitch’s smooth lines and beautiful fluidity while adding just enough roughness to make Simon and his world feel real. Hitch has always been great at “epic” stuff, and we get that here, but he’s very good at the quieter moments, as well. I never thought Hitch had “lost it” like some people on-line seemed to think, but I do think he was a bit sloppy occasionally, which I assumed was because of the time churn of the Big Two. Here, it seems like he has a bit more time to work, and the results are wonderful.

Two more Johns collections this month — what have I become?!?!?!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Is he?

The Savage Sword of Conan #11 by Liam Sharp (writer/artist), Ron Marz (writer), Dany Earls (artist), Richard Starkings (letterer), and Tyler Smith (letterer). $6.99, 64 pgs, Titan Comics.

In the letters page of SSoC #11, someone writes in: “I am astonished. I had never heard of Liam Sharp until reading Savage Sword #8. After reading his story I scarcely could understand how his name is not heard reverberating off of rooftops!” Now, I’m a bit surprised someone reading comics in 2025 has never heard of Sharp, but that’s fine — you can’t keep up with everyone, I guess. I am surprised that this dude fired off a letter to Titan without, you know, going on the interwebs and researching this fantastic artist he digs so much … who’s been drawing comics for well over thirty years. That just seems strange. Come on, Luke Thomas, check this guy’s work out — he’s been a great artist for a long time! Anyway, I found it humorous. Next time I expect Thomas to gush about this guy Walt Simonson he just found out about — hey, he signs his name so it looks like a dinosaur!

Anyway, Sharp is back in this issue with a much longer story than his last one, and it’s terrific, as you might expect. Conan is out in the East somewhere, and the men he’s leading are slaughtered, and he ends up in the mountains, and there’s a king who looks exactly like him (it’s not him, though!!!!), and there are other dimensions, and ancient feuds, and weird mages, and mystical artifacts, and it’s all very cool. I don’t mean to be facetious — the story is engaging and well done, but, I mean, Sharp’s art is the reason we’re here, and it’s definitely worth it. Sharp’s work is stunning here, from the raw violence of the ambush and the freezing world Conan navigates to the ornate and baroque beauty of the king’s and mage’s courts. When Conan meets one of the mages, there’s a double-page spread of her sanctum, and it’s gob-smackingly beautiful. Sharp uses rounded panels to make our eye flow across the page easily, and he often uses parts of the scenery as panel borders, integrating each individual panel into a larger whole. His brushwork is exquisite, creating a weird yet somewhat earthy world in which magic and rough violence clash. It’s a staggering piece of work, culminating with a double-page spread of a cracked world and sky that will leave you breathless.

Marz’s story of Cormac Mac Art, another Howard creation, is pretty nifty, with good, solid art from Earls. It’s not nearly as spectacular as Sharp’s story, but it’s a good back-up tale.

If you haven’t been reading this latest iteration of Savage Sword, well, you should, because they’ve all been pretty good issues, but if you haven’t, do yourself a favor and grab this one. It does not disappoint at all!!!!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Conan might want to walk away …

Shadows of the Sea by Cathy Malkasian (writer/artist) and Conrad Groth (editor). $24.99, 161 pgs, Fantagraphics.

Malkasian gives us another kind of weird, deeply humanistic story set in a strange not-quite-our-world, and as usual, she does it very well. It’s kind of difficult to review her work, because she kind of sticks in her lane and she’s very good at what she does, so it feels like the same kind of comic as her previous ones, even though it’s always very nice to read her work. I don’t know — I’m not a professional, so I ramble a bit at times, give me a break!

Where was I? Anyway, Shadows of the Sea features a very short woman, Doris, wandering around, getting picked on by bullies, and generally not having a good day. Early on, when the bullies are picking on her, she’s observed by an anthropomorphic terrier (all the animals in this world wear clothing and walk on two legs, it seems) who has just been let go from his job as a landmine sniffer, as he has a dismissal letter (with a reminder of his non-disclosure agreement), a big wad of cash, and a metal leg (thanks to, you know, the landmine sniffing). He helps distract the bullies, which get them off her case, and they begin traveling together, despite some initial reluctance on her part. The dog doesn’t talk (well, not at first), and Doris talks a lot, which fills the space as they walk. It’s unclear what Doris is doing — she wants to get back to her husband, Ralph, who’s a sailor, and she obviously loves the sea, but she simply begins following the dog as if he knows where he’s going, and then complains when he leads her places! Eventually, after some side treks, they reach the ocean, where we discover what is vexing each of them, and both of them learn something about themselves and are able to move on with their lives. I certainly don’t want to spoil it, but Malkasian is always good at creating these oddball characters (Doris especially, as she has a bizarre accent and has some weird ideas about the world) and then imbuing them with a deep personality that makes them lovable. Both Doris and the dog (his name is Stanwick, but we don’t learn that for quite some time) have issues, but the way Malkasian presents them is beautifully done and allows us to share with them their journey to enlightenment. As always, her lush, beautifully painted artwork gives us a world that’s both very different from and yet weirdly familiar to ours, and she is always excellent at showing the emotions play out across her characters’ faces. For a character like Stanwick, who doesn’t talk very much, this is important, but it’s also very well done with Doris, who presents one face to the world through her speech but shows another with her expressions. She’s a tough lady, but Malkasian does a wonderful job showing the wells of sadness deep inside her.

There’s a lot going on in the comic, and I’m not getting into a lot of it. Plot-wise, it’s not complicated, but Malkasian doesn’t always seem too interested in plot — she’s much more interested in the characters, and both Doris and Stanwick are unusual and fascinating characters. The plot is fine, but what makes the book very good is the way these two characters interact with each other and the world, and it’s a gripping comic because of that.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Don’t fuck with Doris!

Solomon Kane: The Serpent Ring by Patrick Zircher (writer/artist/colorist), Pete Pantazis (colorist), Richard Starkings (letterer), Tyler Smith (letterer), and Chris Butera (editor). $17.99, 93 pgs, Titan Comics.

Zircher claims he’s a big fan of Solomon Kane, and if he wants to keep making comics as good as this one, I’m on board with it, as this is a terrific comic. It takes place earlier in Kane’s life, as Zircher explains in the backmatter, and it’s set during the reign of Elizabeth between, it seems, 1585-1592 (based on context clues). He’s on an English ship that attacks a Portuguese caravel, and he kills a passenger by accident and, to atone, takes the man’s package and delivers it to Abramo Bensaid, a Jew living in Venice (with, it should be noted, his comely daughter Diamanta). The package is a treasure map, showing the way to the serpent ring of Thoth-Amon, which is in West Africa somewhere. Abramo is an archivist who knows a lot about ancient, esoteric things, so he and the dead man were hired by a former Knight of St. John to find the ring. The knight, Rolando Zarza, also shows up in Venice with a friend of his, Nico Cassini, and they all end up on an expedition to Africa to find the ring. Meanwhile, in Africa, a Jesuit missionary, Father Goncallo, meets up with a priestess of an African religion, and things do not go well. When Kane and his group meet Goncallo later, he’s not exactly on their side. They head into the wild to find the ring, and bad things start happening, as you might expect.

Zircher’s story is fun and adventurous, and because it’s told from a modern perspective, Kane is anti-slavery, doesn’t dig how the Jews are treated in Europe, doesn’t think it’s the worst idea in the world for Diamanta to come along on the expedition, and has more respect for the Africans than he does for the less than respectable Europeans. That’s fine, though, because it doesn’t seem too out of place for Kane, and Zircher doesn’t make it too obnoxious — Kane does not come from a class of people who would look down on everyone, and he’s smart, so there’s no reason why he wouldn’t be a bit more enlightened. Zircher indulges in some stereotyping with regard to the evil priestess, but unlike a lot of stories about “deepest, darkest Africa,” he does a decent job with the other Africans, showing that they’re just people like anyone else, so an evil priestess isn’t the only representation in the book. Meanwhile, he does a really nice job with the five main characters — Kane and Diamanta have their moments, of course, and even the “bad guys,” Zarza and Cassini, turn out to have more depth than you might expect from garden-variety greedy bastards. The priestess, Sha-Kabet, is not as well developed, but Zircher makes sure that we know her motivations as well, and we can’t help but sympathize with her, as she’s standing against European exploitation of her land. Zircher does a nice job making sure that the climax becomes a bit more gripping than it might be, thanks to his making each character a bit more complex than he had to, thereby upping the stakes as things become apocalyptic once they confront the priestess in her temple.

Zircher’s art is superb, as well. He’s been a great artist for so long, and it’s nice to see that he keeps pushing himself. His line work is very precise, and in a less skilled artist and with worse coloring, it might be too sterile and digital, but Zircher adds gorgeous hatching to roughen the art up, and he and Pantazis do a very nice job with spot blacks and shading to give the drawings texture and grittiness. Zircher occasionally adds Benday dots to backgrounds to make them less digital, too, which is smart. His action scenes are dynamic, and he does well at the end, when things become a bit more epic, and he really does a good job showing the vastness and mystery of Africa. It’s really a gorgeous comic.

As I noted, Zircher seems to be a fan of the character, so Titan would be wise to keep letting him do Kane stories. It’s not that hard!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

The most important thing!

Tanga vs. the Kaiju of Cammera by Kevin Maguire (writer/artist), Rosemary Cheetham (colorist), and Jared K. Fletcher (letterer). $18.99, 126 pgs, Rocketship Entertainment.

Back in the day, I bought every DC comic for the month of January, 2011, and wrote about them all (it’s true!), and that’s where I first came across Maguire’s Tanga, as she appeared in the back-up story in Weird Worlds #1. Maguire was supposed to do a 12-issue run in that comic, but the “New 52” kerfuffle came about, and he finished it in a different anthology series, My Greatest Adventure. Neither book set the world on fire, and eventually, Maguire got the rights back (he writes in the backmatter about how she was joint-owned, so neither he nor DC could do anything with her without the other’s consent, but he maddeningly does not tell us how he got the full rights back) and now those stories have been collected (with any references to DC characters scrubbed out — Tanga refers to “Bolo” at one point, which is obviously Lobo) in this handsome trade. The production values are really nice — it’s a bit bigger than your normal trade, so you can see Maguire’s gorgeous art sized up a bit. It’