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Indie Comics You Should Be Reading 2016
Bobby Derie
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
New year, new indie comics thread!
Joe Golem, Occult Detective from Dark Horse wrapped up, and I think I actually like this little exploration of a new Mignolaverse better than the book (Joe Golem and the Drowning City) that gave birth to it. Three issues still feels like a bit of a stretch for the amount of story, but I'm not really complaining.
October Faction from IDW and Steve Niles - I have no idea how this is still an ongoing. I think it lacks something of the edginess of Niles' better works, but it has a lot of the hallmarks of Criminal Macabre and related titles. Really, Niles has always wanted to write a grittier, more Universal Monsters version of the B.P.R.D., and despite multiple attempts has never managed to get an ongoing series out of it. Still, twelve issues is pretty good!
Bitch Planet from Image - I'm waiting on the trade for this one, but I hear good things. It reminds me of a Grindhouse single spread out to a series.
So what Indies are you reading - that others should be reading as well?
Joe Golem, Occult Detective from Dark Horse wrapped up, and I think I actually like this little exploration of a new Mignolaverse better than the book (Joe Golem and the Drowning City) that gave birth to it. Three issues still feels like a bit of a stretch for the amount of story, but I'm not really complaining.
October Faction from IDW and Steve Niles - I have no idea how this is still an ongoing. I think it lacks something of the edginess of Niles' better works, but it has a lot of the hallmarks of Criminal Macabre and related titles. Really, Niles has always wanted to write a grittier, more Universal Monsters version of the B.P.R.D., and despite multiple attempts has never managed to get an ongoing series out of it. Still, twelve issues is pretty good!
Bitch Planet from Image - I'm waiting on the trade for this one, but I hear good things. It reminds me of a Grindhouse single spread out to a series.
So what Indies are you reading - that others should be reading as well?
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Elephantmen 2260 is in it's third iteration currently (following Elephantmen and it's predecessor Hip Flask), and stars an ensemble cast of mostly war-bred talking animals in a "peaceful" world that supposedly no longer needs them. Sometimes there's meditations on PTSD, social inequality, or you'll get a police procedural, spy stories, a romance (ill-fated or otherwise), or maybe just the general weirdness of killer meteorites from outer space. All of this just sort of flows together in a well-written mishmash by Richard Starkings and a few different artists (like Boo Cook, Axel Medellin, Moritat and others).
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
You know, it just didn't click for me. I mean, I'm the biggest Kieron Gillen fanboy ever - I burn a PC Gamer UK review at his altar nightly - and the idea behind "Mercury Heat" sounded really cool, but the actual book just irritated me. I found every single character in it tremendously unlikable.
When "8House" and "The Spire" came out, I felt like they were trying to do very similar, but "8House" was better at it, or at least was more my style of comic. Now that multiple issues of both have come out, I'm pleased to say that I was wrong: they're both great. "8House" is more about letting multiple creative teams build up a weird, shared world together, and "The Spire" is more about pushing forward on this main storyline (with worldbuilding happening in the periphery and in between breaths). Both worth checking out. (I still like "8House" more.)
In related news, I'm still thrilled that "Island" is a thing. Remember when a "Flight" anthology would be released on a semi-regular basis? I loved those things. "Island" is like getting a mini-"Flight" every month. Some stories are better than others, sure, but I really like being exposed to different creators on the regular like that.
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It's silly. It's therapeutic in the way that gleefully killing smurfs and watching the blue paste squeeze through your toes is cathartic. It may not be an instant classic, but I'm enjoying it.
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https://t.co/F9XoFYAeYO
"Ride or Die" confirmed Dominic Toretto, as they took off to find the Dragon Balls in hopes of reviving their friend Sonic
I'm horrendously picky with what I want out of my comics, and this does so many things absolutely right in unexpected ways. I tend to prefer the promises of a good Sword and Sorcery title over other stuff. Here, MacLean's got this fascinating take on it that straddles the latter day Hellboy in Hell Mignola style with the more candyland attitude of, say, Adventure Time.
Head Lopper is a big bad dude in the business of cutting heads. That smiley blue face is that of a witch who is now a living severed head along for the ride, scheming to find a way to escape or destroy her captor, and in the meantime happy to pester him with insults.
Beyond that, though. What to say?
It's a really, really well made book. As a quarterly title is has significantly more pages than your average comic, but beyond that it just feels large. The gutters on each page are a little smaller than standard, giving more vertical room than you may be used to. The art style is really pared down in this excellent way that makes the colors pop and be these rich, uninterrupted shapes instead of riddling these things with heavy detail. Everything feels big, in a way most comics don't manage to achieve except maybe in a splash page. It's a great effect.
MacLean does a really fantastic job making a book about a bad man with a sword killing monsters, and isn't afraid to use really clean illustrations swimming in vibrant colors to do it. It really looks like a complete object, cover to cover, and has almost none of the magazine-style presentation all too common to a lot of comics that often makes them seem so damningly disposable.
I know some of us go on about Island, but I think it's because...it's different. And it's ballsy in a way you don't see a lot of everyday. Back in the 80s and 90s, mainstream comics were ballsy in showing a little skin, a little bad language, some violence. Hellblazer was ballsy because it tweaked taboos about the occult. Transgressive comics. It had Very Special sequences where it could talk seriously about AIDS or whatnot. Howard Chaykin's Black Kiss was ballsy for being so explicit about sex while retaining its artistic sensibilities. It was all calculated crudeness, seeing what you could get away with. And for sure, that kind of thing helped push the boundaries of what was permissible in comics. But Island is a different kind of ballsy.
The cover and main story for this issue is by Onta, who is best known for his furry homosexual comics on the web. He's done print, but if he's ever done anything mainstream before, I've never heard about it. The fact that he's done porn isn't a big deal. Brandon Graham did porn. Jerry Siegel did porn, back when he was drawing Superman. And this is not a porn comic. But what it is, is a talented artist getting the chance to tell a story for a (hopefully) larger audience. And it's a story that's a lot more ballsy than most of what Vertigo ever cooked up, because it doesn't have to be crude to get the message across.
And it helps that the rest of the issue is great and is just...different. I know we have a wide range of choice in comics, but I'm so burnt out on the costumed shenanigans of the Big Two, I'm really just happy to relax and lose myself in a good anthology comic.
I'm still really digging The Spire. I won't say it's a favorite or anything, because I have a feeling that it could have been scripted a little tighter, or the background developed a little more. But y'know what? It's been pretty rock solid since issue one. Serious at the right moments, silly at the right moments. It doesn't rush itself, and what we learn of the world I like. I want to see more of it. And that's more than you can say for a lot of comics.
Cheating a little on this one, since it's a Euro-comic (or something; Jodowrosky is Argentinian or something). I am a long-time fan of Jodowrosky's comics, which tend to read like Dune-fanfiction crossed with a blend of Eastern and Western mysticism. Showman Killer's set more-or-less in the same general 'verse as The Incal and The Technopriests, so you sort of know the drill: space royalty, cosmic empires that run on gold coins, impossible weapons and invincible warriors, dastardly shenanigans, a dollop of sex and some screwy religions. If you like Jodowrosky, you'll like this one; otherwise, skip it.
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Monstress is beautiful and does some really neat world building. I would day what is about but a lot of it's unclear so far. There are monsters and there's a religion that is basically at war with them? That art though!
Black Magic is like my wife and I's favorite TV shows but in a comic book. Also the art is just gorgeous. Mostly black and white but with really striking and subtle uses of color. It's about a cop who's a witch.
I'm really liking Black Magic so far, but I also just feel like "procedural + [genre]" is a combination that can't lose (for me, at any rate). I guess Black Magic has been a little lighter on the "procedural" side of things, but still.
Monstress just did not work for me at all. It's obviously a masterfully-done comic, but I found the (metaphorical) ugliness and cruelty in the first issue exhausting. I think there's a danger in refusing to consume media because it makes you feel "bummed out" or whatever; to be a literate, erudite person, you need to consume more than just fun and happy things. At the same time, at what point does the value of reading something that routinely bum me out start to wear thin? When DC's New52 launched, I tried to be super-supportive, and bought probably 75% of the books. I quickly dropped Swamp Thing and Animal Man (despite really wanting to like them, and really wanting them to succeed), because I just felt mildly depressed after every single issue. The deformed and tormented living creatures that were depicted in both books just tired me out emotionally, and I felt like the books were draining me without providing any meaningful value in return. The first issue of Monstress made me feel the same way: that I took a beating without getting back anything of value. This is just my personal experience, though; I really hope that the book works out, because Marjorie Liu is a great a writer and the book is clearly very meaningful to her, and comes from a personal place.
Sometimes, I think that there might need to be some kind of unwritten rule about covers, like, "If it's not part of the original art, no more than five words/names showing on the front cover. This limit includes the title of the book."
I swear, so many books are starting to look to me like they were attacked by postage stamps, and it's beginning to give me the same reaction as looking through a dirty window at something.
Injection is another regular pick-up, although I think it'll read better in the trades, because the wait between issues kills me. Ellis is on familiar ground here, and you slip into his writing like a comfortable shoe; the art is clean - don't know if I've seen Declan Shalvey on anything before - and I don't normally note colorists, but Jordie Bellaire makes some very balanced compositions. Over all, I really like this series and want to see more of it.
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
Link here; http://www.comicbookresources.com/comic-previews/victorie-city-1-idw-2016
Georgia O'Keeffe
Be sure to like my Comic Book "Last Words" on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Last-Words-The-Comic-Book/458405034287767
and Magenta the Witchgirl!: http://www.drunkduck.com/Magenta_the_Witchgirl/
Also, Prophet Earth War is pretty solid. I still think that the first collection of issues is the best - really, the single best re-imagining of a series ever, I'd put it against anything Warren Ellis or Alan Moore ever did - but that doesn't mean this second series is anything less than awesome, and we're only two issues in.
There's also a new Image title out called The Discipline. I picked it up because it said "Peter Milligan" on the cover, but after reading it through I'm not sure - it reads a bit like a supernatural-themed Sex Criminals, which is kinda cool, but it's a little too thin to see if it's got any meat beneath the foreplay as yet. I dunno, it reads a bit too much like somebody wanted to do Constantine by way of 9 1/2 Weeks. It could be fun, but I reserve judgment. Art is competent, workmanlike, but doesn't wow.
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
The Discipline's first issue was good enough that I plan on picking up the second issue, but not good enough that I have any intention of committing to the story yet.
Also on the sexual content front (though it probably deserves to be X-rated, or at least a very hard R), Insexts has been an interesting read. It's a sort of penny dreadful story set in Victorian London, involving two lesbian women (a lady and her maid) who transform themselves into were-butterflies and how one of them in particular is seeing her humanity slipping away in both a literal and figurative sense through her transformation and her actions. It's a Victorian horror story with ghastly murders and social commentary and bizarre happenings, and I'm enjoying the hell out of it, but I also think that it's probably not for everyone.
I've been reading and enjoying Black Magic quite a bit. I'm a big fan of how color is used - only to show magic in action. I also feel like it's the sort of comic that seems intentionally well suited to transition to the big or small screen.
The Tithe is a good read. The initial arc focuses on FBI agents trying to track down a hacker targeting crooked mega-churches for real-world heists; the second arc changes things around a little and focuses on false flag attacks against Christians to drive public opinion against non-Christians. The antagonist of the first arc, Samaritan, is a lot of fun.
Velvet by Ed Brubaker feels a lot like his Captain America run, in the best possible way. The threats are more personal, the hero is a little less nice (but still very much a hero), but the tone feels similar.
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I think that the story in the second issue fell short of the first, and the third issue is better than the second but not as good as the first.
Likewise, the latest issue of Rat Queens is a mess. No sass, no wit, and the artwork has taken a bit of a nose-dive. Boo-hiss. I really miss Stepjan Sejic. Although I want him to get better. And if any of you have been missing out on his Witchblade comic, Switch, which has been delayed by his shoulder injury, he posted the unedited version of issue #3 up on DeviantArt for free. Which is a pretty cool thing to do, because while it's not exactly a fast-paced series, it is fun and I love his artwork.
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
I liked Rat Queens latest issue, but it's a things-fall-apart issue so storywise those tend to be messy. Will probably read better in trade. (Didn't know Sejic was injured though, just thought that between Switch, Sunstone and covers for various other series he'd been too busy to do Rat Queens.)
Best of the week: Phonogram vol 3. (Still like "Singles Club" better, but art-wise this is the best so far and I like "Singles Club" because it has issue #4, which is all I want in a comic)
I feel like his faces are a little same-y (especially on women), but I love his style overall.
That's a problem a lot of comic book artists have though (and again especially on women). Sue and Alicia Masters being a wig away from being the same person was a plotpoint in early FF (and makes Johnny marriage decades later ... interesting?). Akira Toriyama even has a joke on it in Dr. Slump where one of Arale's friends dresses up as their teacher by putting on a wig, with Toriyama shouting from the side that they are abusing his inability to draw more than 1 female face.
Would be more interested to note artists that can draw more than 1 female face (apart from young woman, really old woman, really obese woman. Yes, Campbell, you're not getting away that easily).
That is all.
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...I think that about wraps it up.
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Aspen itself is on Volume 4 (and angling towards a cross-over with another title to make a "universe"), but even more suprisingly, Shrugged got a sequel series. A sequel series that apparently stalled a couple years ago, there's 3 or 4 issues out of 6 that were released, but considering Turner himself was one of the creator-writers on the original, and it wasn't nearly as popular as I wanted it to be, I figured the company would let sleeping dogs lie.
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