We don't want to alarm you...but Christmas is coming!
ALL STAR SECRET SANTA EXCHANGE!
To start the silly season on the right foot this year we thought we'd host our very own in-store ALL STAR SECRET SANTA EXCHANGE! If you like the idea of getting to pick a surprise gift from under the All Star Christmas Tree the rules are simple:
-Pick and purchase a Santa gift from around the store of the value between $15-$25.
-Leave your Santa gift with us to later wrap and place under the All Star Tree.
-Before you leave, take your pick from the presents already under tree!
This might be the simplest, non crap Secret Santa EVER!
BUT WAIT, What about actually making sure you get what you are after this Xmas?!
ALL STAR CHRISTMAS WISH LISTS GIFT REGISTRY
In years gone by we've tried our best to ensure you get the gifts you want by simply filling out one of our ALL STAR CHRISTMAS WISH LISTS GIFT REGISTRY cards.
All you need to do is grab a Wish List at one of the counters and fill it in with items from around the store you are after. Leave it with us and then simply tell your loved ones when they ask you "what would you like for Christmas" that they just need to head to us, request to look at our Wish List for the perfect gift idea, while still remaining a surprise!
As good as and idea as this might seem, it can be hard to remember to fill a Wish List out. So like last year we thought we'd give you a extra Yuletide incentive.
Welcome back the ALL STAR 25 DAYS OF X-MAS!!!
Just by filling out an All Star Wish List, your name will be entered in a draw for the chance to pick a mystery gift from under All Star Christmas Tree as of the 1st of December! A different person will be drawn each day in the lead up to the 25th, picking a mystery gift from the gifts left under the tree. Come Xmas day, all entries (including previous winners) will be in the drawn to win the Big All Star Gift!
So there it is! Just for giving you the chance of getting something you really want this Holiday Season, you could score a mystery comic gift! The rest is up to you, come in, fill out the Wish List, tell folks where they need to go to get you want you want and maybe, just maybe you might win a mystery comic gift from us! Truly this is a Christmas Miracle!
TERMS AND CONDITIONS:
-This is a instore promotion only.
-Ask for the Wish List at the counter.
-Each mystery gift will be drawn at close of each day and the winners name will be announced on Facebook that evening.
-Winners names will be removed from the rest on the draw until the 25th, where all entries will be re-entered for the chance to win the Big All Star Gift.
-The winner of the Big All Star Gift will be announced on Boxing Day.
So it's the second week of November and already we are turning our thoughts to Xmas plans. This week sees the return of the ALL STAR XMAS WISH LIST GIFT REGISTRY and with that the chance to win a Christmas present from us as part of THE ALL STAR 25 DAYS OF X-MAS just for filling a list out! As an added bonus we are doing a In-Store Secret Santa! For more details just ask at one of the counters. But until then...COMICS!
So more sweet big new issue #1's for Marvel, top of that list being Tom Taylor's new X-23 series ALL NEW WOLVERINE #1, Mark Waid starting on ALL NEW ALL DIFFERENT AVENGERS #1 and Al Ewing's ULTIMATES #1 with Black Panther leading the team, then a new event issue with SECRET WARS #7to cap it off! Early year adventures of Superman that shape Clark to the hero we know him as today could not be more wonderful and heart felt with Max Landis writing SUPERMAN AMERICAN ALIEN #1. Vertigo give us Backdraft the comic with start of SLASH & BURN #1. Jason Aaron and R. M. Guera, the team behind the classic Vertigo series, Scalped are together again for a tale of biblical proportions about the first fall of man in GODDAMNED #1. Angel Heart mash up with Videodrome, yeah it's a weird idea but Dan Watters works it together perfectly in this new bayou/tech-magic noir in Image's, LIMBO #1. ALIEN NEXT DOOR HC shows us that maybe xenomorphs get a pretty bum wrap and are actually not half bad. Cullen Bunn's Special Ops Hell Extraction team book gets it's first collection in HELLBREAK TP VOL 01. Following the success of the Batman Adventures collections getting released now we can revisit classic animated SUPERMAN ADVENTURES TP VOL 01. More classic 80's team up madness with Tom Scioli's TRANSFORMERS VS GI JOE TP VOL 02. Ales Kot treats us to his take on the paranormal detective genre in WOLF TP VOL 01.
Anything else we can do to help, like helping you filling out a ALL STAR XMAS WISH LIST GIFT REGISTRY,just let us know.
MARVEL
ALL NEW ALL DIFFERENT AVENGERS #1
ALL NEW HAWKEYE #1
ALL NEW WOLVERINE #1
CAPTAIN AMERICA WHITE #4 (OF 5)
CARNAGE #1
CHEWBACCA #3 (OF 5)
DARTH VADER #12
FIGMENT 2 #3 (OF 5)
ILLUMINATI #1
INFINITY GAUNTLET #5 SWA
SECRET WARS #7 (OF 9) SWA
SPIDER-GWEN #2
SPIDER-MAN 2099 #3
SQUADRON SINISTER #4 SWA
THORS #4 SWA
ULTIMATES #1
UNCANNY AVENGERS #2
WEB WARRIORS #1
DC COMICS
BATMAN #46 LOONEY TUNES VAR ED
BATMAN AND ROBIN ETERNAL #6
BATMAN BEYOND #6 LOONEY TUNES VAR ED
BATMAN SUPERMAN #26 LOONEY TUNES VAR ED
CATWOMAN #46 LOONEY TUNES
VAR ED
CONSTANTINE THE HELLBLAZER #6
DC COMICS BOMBSHELLS #4
JUSTICE LEAGUE DARKSEID WAR GREEN LANTERN #1
JUSTICE LEAGUE DARKSEID WAR SHAZAM #1
JUSTICE LEAGUE UNITED #15
RED HOOD ARSENAL #6
STARFIRE #6 LOONEY TUNES VAR ED
SUPERMAN AMERICAN ALIEN #1 (OF 7)
TEEN TITANS #13 MONSTERS VAR ED
VERTIGO
FABLES THE WOLF AMONG US #11
SLASH & BURN #1
TWILIGHT CHILDREN #2 (OF 4)
BOOM
LANTERN CITY #7 (OF 12)
LAST SONS OF AMERICA #1
SLEEPY HOLLOW PROVIDENCE #4 (OF 4)
TYSON HESSE DIESEL #3 (OF 4)
DARK HORSE
ABE SAPIEN #28
HARROW COUNTY #7
KING TIGER #4
MIRRORS EDGE EXORDIUM #3
REBELS #8
ZODIAC STARFORCE #3
DYNAMITE
ALICE COOPER VS CHAOS #3 (OF 6)
GRUMPY CAT #2 (OF 3)
PATHFINDER HOLLOW MOUNTAIN #1 (OF 6)
RED SONJA CONAN #4 (OF 4)
IDW
BACK TO THE FUTURE #2 (OF 4)
D4VE2 #3 (OF 4)
MAXX MAXXIMIZED #25
STRING DIVERS #4 (OF 5)
THE LAST FALL #5 (OF 5)
TMNT AMAZING ADVENTURES #4
TRANSFORMERS ROBOTS IN DISGUISE ANIMATED #4
X-FILES SEASON 11 #4
IMAGE
8HOUSE #5 YORRIS PART TWO
AIRBOY #4 (OF 4)
ASTRONAUTS IN TROUBLE #6
AUTUMNLANDS TOOTH & CLAW #7
BIRTHRIGHT #11
CODENAME BABOUSHKA: CONCLAVE OF DEATH #2
DESCENDER #7
DRIFTER #9
FASTER THAN LIGHT #3
GODDAMNED #1
LIMBO #1
MYTHIC #5
POSTAL FBI DOSSIER #1
SOUTHERN BASTARDS #12
THOUGHT BUBBLE ANTHOLOGY 2015 #5
WALKING DEAD #148
WICKED & DIVINE #16
ONI
HELLBREAK #8
LETTER 44 #21
VALIANT
IMPERIUM #10
UNITY #24
MISC
ASSASSINS CREED #2
CROSSED PLUS 100 #11
HENCHGIRL #1
HEROES VENGEANCE #2 (OF 5)
MENS FEELINGS #2
SPONGEBOB COMICS #50
WAR STORIES #14
MAGAZINES
JUXTAPOZ #179 DEC 2015
TRADES
A-FORCE PRESENTS TP VOL 02
AGE OF ULTRON VS MARVEL ZOMBIES TP
ALIEN NEXT DOOR HC
AMAZING FANTASTIC INCREDIBLE MARVELOUS MEMOIR GN
AMERICAN VAMPIRE TP VOL 07
AVATAR LAST AIRBENDER LEGACY HC
BATMAN RIP UNWRAPPED HC
BTVS SEASON 9 LIBRARY HC VOL 03
CURVEBALL GN
CYANIDE & HAPPINESS STAB FACTORY TP
DJANGO ZORRO HC
DOUBLE D GN BOOK 01
DRONES TP
ELKS RUN 10TH ANNIVERSARY ED HC
EMPTY MAN TP
FATALE DLX ED HC VOL 02
GHOSTBUSTERS ULTIMATE VISUAL HISTORY HC
GOON LIBRARY HC VOL 01
GREEN ARROW TP VOL 07 KINGDOM
HELLBREAK TP VOL 01
LOVE HC VOL 02 THE FOX
MANDALAY HC
MARVEL UNIVERSE ALL NEW AVENGERS ASSEMBLE DIGEST TP VOL
03
All-horror last week, all-SF this week, a week the comics world lost Murphy Anderson, an artist who fittingly drew Buck Rogers for two years before hopping over to DC where he pencilled and inked the biggest and the best characters for that publisher and co-created the enduring and ever-charming Zatanna with the equally legendary writer Gardner Fox. Rest In Peace, Mr Anderson, thank you for your years of hard work.
COMICS OF THE WEEK : AAMA
By Frederik Peeters
Published by Self Made Hero
Technonatural creation processes, to slightly paraphrase Dr Rajeev from Frederik Peeters’ Aama, are at the heart of this week’s comics, stories that take the SF paradigm of informational systems running amok into some new and beautifully terraformed imaginative spaces.
Aama is French writer/artist Peeters’ award-winning four-volume saga that concluded its English translation from Self Made Hero earlier this month. Surely destined to be considered as classic as the work of Moebius, Druillet and others I bang on about every week in the Heavy Metal recaps, Aama has both the heaviness of concept and philosophy as well as the boundlessly inventive world-building you want in your finest far-future Euro SF.
Verloc Nim is a wreck of a man. His marriage has failed, he’s lost custody of his daughter, Lilja, he’s been swindled out of his family’s antique book business and he’s struggling to find meaning in an increasingly bleak and stoned existence. Verloc finds purpose anew, however, in the form of his estranged brother Conrad, who now works as something of a Mr Fixit for the Muy-Tang Corporation, one of numerous corporate entities responsible for a “great crisis.” Conrad’s latest mission sees him off to the planet Ona(ji) to ascertain what’s happened to a group of scientists outposted there to work on the mysterious “Aama” project. Conrad convinces Verloc to accompany both him and his cigar-smoking, simian-styled robot, Churchill, on the mission. And so begins arguably one of the finest cosmic epics ever in comics, certainly of the modern era.
Aama, to simplify, is a form of AI-driven nanotech. Verloc and co arrive on Ona(ji) to find the mission in ruins, Aama on the loose, and the world terraformed in increasingly strange and wondrous ways as they trek across the landscape the find Aama itself, who has for all intents and purposes, become the planet’s (re)creator and god. Over four 80-plus page volumes, Peeters slowly amps up his already impressive visual design; there is a surprise waiting on almost every page once the story truly gets underway, from techno-organic insects, to vaginal Venus fly traps, to lush forests of alien flowers all pulled from Peeters’ fertile mind.
Secrets over the project and the true nature of Aama unfurl, as well as Verloc’s true destiny and the plans Aama has for his daughter, a doppelganger of whom has somehow arrived on Ona(ji). Volumes three and Four, “The Desert of Mirrors” and “You Will Be Glorious, My Daughter” are as enthralling a read as I’ve had in 2015, with Peeters showing complete distain for the laws of nature and physics as well as time and space – both of our reality and comics space -- in ways reminiscent of Morrison and Quitely’s finest collaborations, reminders that there are some things that comics will only ever be able to do, other mediums be damned.
It’s easy to do Cosmic Freakout in comics but it’s a very difficult thing to pull it off with this much heart and this much intelligence with no irony at all and no heavy reliance on the canon of cosmic comics. Peeters manages not only this, but even seamlessly sandwiches in a super-powered punch-up and it’s one such originality and imagination that its city-wide destruction is turned into something beautiful, the landscape modified and warped in the slipstream of the carnage and the godlike power of one of its combatants.
Aama is the product of a singular vision. Beautiful and mad and packed with true emotion and a wonderful take on posthumanity and the endless possibilities of something like nanotech, an already captivating speculative technological concept. Injection by Warren Ellis, Declan Shalvey and Jordie Bellaire, however, reunites a creative team with spectacular creative chemistry and tackles the notion of technonatural creation processes in a very different way.
INJECTION
By Warren Ellis, Declan Shalvey & Jordie Bellaire
Published Image Comics
It’s the near future. Five strange and brilliant people add something let’s call magic to something let’s call A.I and “inject” the resulting “non biological consciousness emulator ”into the internet to keep the wheels of human innovation spinning ever-faster. The Injection is an amphetamine shot to the slowing of human progress, if you will; what could possibly go wrong with that? Quite a bit, it turns out, as The Injection, cheekily stretching its parameters, bends physics and alters reality in sinister and unexpected ways. The world now “poisoned”, The Injection’s brainy, eclectic and damaged creators battle their guilt and the phenomena their creation manifests all while The Injection finds new and startling way to communicate with its parents.
Back when I was lucky enough to preview the first issue of this new series, of which five volumes of five issues are planned, I wrote that the series feels very much like an updated British spin on writer Warren Ellis’ very own Planetary, steeped in the myth and history of the Isles instead of mining the rich pulp fields of America. One volume down and this remains largely true, excepting that Ellis’ more recent concerns with the relationship between magic, science and technology, “Haunted Technology” if you will, are more clearly at the fore and his trust in his readership more apparent.
Like Aama, The Injection is fond of creation – that is, after all, what both of these technologies were designed to do in one form or another. Twisting the laws of nature and physics, The Injection too terraforms the world, but in more supernatural ways, ways drawn from folklore, myth and history (in keeping with its magical origins) and giving them a decidedly sinister bent. Like Verloc, Conrad, Churchill and the team of mentally fraying scientists who worked on Aama, Kilbride and co. walk through a world threating to become increasingly strange and alien, thanks largely to their own inventiveness and hubris.
Fans of this creative team’s all-too short, mic-drop of a stint on Marvel’s Moon Knight (six masterclasses in done-in-one comics storytelling) will love seeing Ellis, Shalvey and Bellaire work on something far more subtle and expansive. Don’t get the idea that this is a slow book however, for it’s jammed full of mad Ellisian techno ideas, biting dialogue and blackly humoured gags, and also an action sequence that equals Moon Knight at his most violent, as well as some superbly atmospheric and creepy scenes.
Injection is a patient, complex comic with Ellis slowly unfurling his plot over the first five issues and taking his time introducing and developing the personalities of his cast, the Cultural Cross-Contamination unit of Maria Kilbride, Robin Morel, Simeon Winters, Vivek Headland and Brigid Roth. Each character has his/her own speciality, from tech, to magic, to strategic ultra-violence, to deduction, and each had a hand in The Injection’s creation and a role in attempting to clean up their messes. Injection is episodic in the very best way – drawing readers in as it slowly expands, puts more flesh on its bones, rather than relying solely on the cheap hook of a last page cliffhanger. Ellis expertly combines his SF premise with dollops of horror and espionage and I get the feeling that, as
the series progresses, Injection may well become more and more unclassifiable, as much of a odd mash-up as the world the characters find themselves now living in.
Shalvey’s panels are cinematic, super-detailed and his diverse cast is each unique and realistic. He has come such a tremendous way as an artist in such a short period of time. I recently borrowed The Graphic Canon (2013, although I suspect the strip was drawn well before that) from the library and Shalvey’s work adapting Frankenstein for that project is barely recognisable in comparison to Injection. Bellaire’s subtle and moody palate perfectly matches Shalvey’s crisp lines and bring his autumnal trees, intricately-patterned knitted jumpers (!), glowing LCD computer screens, leafy, folkloric creatures and ejecting brain matter to vivid life. How does she find the time to pump out so much high-quality work? There can be no sleep in the Shalvey-Bellaire household, methinks.
Injection is a must for the patient reader who likes a little heft to their conspiracies and some narrative meat on their genre comics. Make yourself a sanga or two in solidarity with this wonderful, ever sandwich-hungry cast, chomp along with them and get drawn into this gleefully shadowy and paranoid comic. Between Injection and Aama, you’ll have enough fresh SF ideas to mull over for quite some time, assuming you can put the books down long enough to do so.
WEBCOMIC OF THE WEEK : SONGS ILLUSTRATED: BEAR IN HEAVEN’S “DEMON” BY TULA LOTAY
The last time we checked in with Paste Magazine’s “Songs Illustrated” feature, it was for Emily Carroll’s startling take on Neko Case’s “Wild Creatures.” Equalling that effort is Tula Lotay, whose comic based on Bear In Heaven’s “Demon” went up a fortnight back.
Lotay’s work is perhaps the dreamiest in comics, a quality any regular readers might recognise that I prize highly. Her work with Warren Ellis on Supreme: Blue Rose produced one of the year’s most visually striking collections, overhauling Rob Liefeld’s frankly ridiculous character with elegance and beauty. She’s a natural choice for “Songs Illustrated,” as there is something quintessentially pop music about her work. Perhaps it’s her colours, vivid and lively and frequently pink, perhaps it’s the effortless fashion of her Film Noir-posed femmes in their patterned, modified kimonos or pastel summer dresses.
But perhaps not, as most of that is jettisoned (aside from her love of pink) here for her interpretation of “Demon,” replaced with a fever dream of space, lost love, forever-goodbyes and the neon-saturated supernatural. The perfect accompaniment to the bouncy synth, spacy vibe and spurned lyrics of Bear In Heaven’s tune, it’s also possibly a hint at the moodiness in store for us when Lotay and Ellis team up once more for the forthcoming Heartless, where I suspect pink is a colour we won’t see much of at all.
If, like me, you don’t have Spotify, here’s a YouTube linkto a live version of the song to open in another window while you read.
COUNTDOWN TO MOZ METAL: HEAVY METAL MAY 1978
“It’s corrupt! This whole society is corrupt…” so says Tiffo, the head of a prosperous South American development firm before storming out to live his dream, free from concrete, in the legendary city of El Dorado. The strip is Serge Le Tendre and Dominique He’s “Fed Up,” an incongruously realistic (for this mag) story that’s stunningly illustrated by He in hyper-detailed black and white. Befriending some natives during his arduous jungle trek, Tiffo tries to persuade them to take him to El Dorado, but the natives refuse, only acquiescing once Tiffo’s suffered a fatal snakebite and has three days left to live. Carrying a stretcher-bound Tiffo through the jungle, the last thing the former developer will ever see is The El Dorado Hilton, a massive structure carved out of the jungle and built in Tiffo’s honour by his former partners. “Fed Up” is great stuff, with its jungles awash with shadowy leafiness and its characters created with realism. Capped off by its near-EC level ironic conclusion it’s a true palate cleanser for a magazine than can get a little too full of its own cosmic headiness from time to time. Yes, even for me.
But wait! Here comes more cosmic headiness as Druillet’s “Urm The Mad” sadly concludes with Urm being informed that he’s a mere pawn in a grand demonic game and has actually been transported to the very land of the dead itself. Druillet’s ability to make his pages, even his ubiquitous double-page spreads, seem even more immense than they actually are is quite the feat of comics magic, as are his layouts with their circular inset panels overlaying his larger images, expertly leading the potentially overwhelmed, overstimulated reader around the page space. Fighting himself free and becoming something of a hero in the process, Urm is returned to the desert, alone, where an ignominious death awaits him in the form of poison from a creature he attempts to befriend. It’s a sudden, shrewdly anti-climactic ending undercutting not only all the demonic grandiosity of the preceding pages, but also reinforcing the uselessness of the whole endeavour. Dying a painful solitary death under a black moon, “Urm The Mad’ recalls Tardi and Picaret’s remarkably nihilistic “Polonius” (see previous Countdowns) in its total subversion of the expectations inherent in the hero’s journey. Druillet’s story is a masterpiece of cosmic horror filled with rejected Gods, satanic underworlds, and a prideful, hubris-packed protagonist. Existential comics at its finest.
Alex Nino comes armed and ready to blow minds with his “Dancing On A Tender Cerebellum,” a nightmarish journey into the fracturing psyche of a cartoonist splintering under the pressure of both deadlines and output as he tries to create his latest, weirdest fictional world. It’s lovely stuff, coloured in lysergic bursts as its visuals alternate between bad trip and worse.
There’s more quirky, bouncily-cartooned “Barbarella,” sumptuously drawn “Airtight Garage” and grim “1996” in this issue too, but as signalled by his commanding cover, this issue belongs to Druillet.
COMICS VIDEO OF THE WEEK : DRUILLET – LONE SLOANE DELIRIUS
Coming next month from Titan, in English for the first time in over two decades (but first published in the mid ‘60s), is Philippe Druillet’s Lone Sloane: Delirius. Titan did a wonderful job with the preceding volume, The 6 Voyages of Lone Sloane (although I do miss the hand lettering) presenting Druillet’s bold and expansive artwork in a generously oversized volume so we can all pore over the ridiculous detail of his double-page spreads. Delirius is where things really pick up, however, with Druillet bringing writer Jacques Lob (Snowpiercer, Ulysses) along for this most freaked-out of space rides.
I bang on about Druillet too much, I know, so I’ll shut up now and leave you with this, the whole of Delirius with Klaus Schulze’s Trancefer as a fittingly ambient, cosmic soundtrack.
Cameron Ashley spends a lot of time writing comics and other things you’ll likely never read. He’s the chief editor and co-publisher of Crime Factory (www.thecrimefactory.com). You can reach him @cjamesashley on Twitter.
Coming down from the sugar, back issue and free comic high that was our Halloween Comicfest celebration on Saturday was hard. Although looking over the new comic list for some reason makes it seem all ok.
Another long list of All Different Marvel titles to check out starting with DRAX #1 written by Cullen Bunn and wrestling nice guy CM Punk, a new start of sorts for a very different group of mutants with Lemire and Ramos in EXTRAORDINARY X-MEN #1and no doubt a bunch of "What is life" fro the MU's favourite android in VISION #1. DC starts their month of LOONEY TUNES covers. SENSATION COMICS FEATURING WONDER WOMAN #16features a very important LGBT story told by ex-pat Jason Badower. UNFOLLOW #1 in next of Vertigo's new line about greed, social media and murder. Grant Morrison gets festive with his Santa Claus Year One story from BOOM, KLAUS #1. The Mignola-verse expands yet again with the arrival of the gothic detective JOE GOLEM OCCULT DETECTIVE #1. It was only a matter of time before the popularity of MMA found it's way to comics with TMNT's Kevin Eastman co-creating the first of superhero mixed martial artists in CAGE HERO #1. JAMES BOND #1 by Warren Ellis, BOOM! Nothing more to say about that one! Sam Humphries runs with an thought we've all had at one stage, a politician with a demon in his corner helping him along in his rise to power in CITIZEN JACK #1. NovelistMarjorie M. Liu and stunning art from Sana Takeda tell a the tale of girl and her monster in Image's MONSTRESS #1. Of course we'll need to keep the kaiju's and giant robots apart on the shelves with PACIFIC RIM TALES FROM THE DRIFT #1out as well. Space Western adventuring continues in Jay Faerber fantastic new series, COPPERHEAD TP VOL 02. A wonderful idea of creating false histories and backstories to an old found school photo with CLASS PHOTO GN. Another Lemire bullseye with a look back into Clint's childhood collected in HAWKEYE TP VOL 05 ALL NEW HAWKEYE. The next chapter of JoJo's crazed adventures begins in the new hardcover, JOJOS BIZARRE ADV BATTLE TENDENCY HC VOL 01. Continue the journey to the Force Awakens with the origin story of TV Rebels lead in STAR WARS KANAN TP VOL 01 LAST PADAWAN and Leia's first mission after the battle of Yavin with Waid's STAR WARS PRINCESS LEIA TP . And now that the long wait for all the singles to be released is over you can finally devour Gaiman's return to Endless in a extremely pretty SANDMAN OVERTURE DELUXE ED HC.
Plenty to get you buzzed for the week. Anything else you need us to stash just let us know!
MARVEL
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #3
AVENGERS VS INFINITY #1
CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS #2
DEADPOOL #1
DOCTOR STRANGE #2
DRAX #1
EXTRAORDINARY X-MEN #1
HERCULES #1
HOWARD THE DUCK #1
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #3
MARVEL UNIVERSE GUARDIANS OF GALAXY #2
MAX RIDE #1 (OF 5) ULTIMATE FLIGHT
MIRACLEMAN BY GAIMAN AND BUCKINGHAM #4 (MR)
NOVA #1
SPIDER-GWEN #0
STAR WARS #11
UNCANNY X-MEN #600
VISION #1
DC COMICS
BAT MITE #6 (OF 6)
BATMAN AND ROBIN ETERNAL #5
BATMAN ARKHAM KNIGHT #10
DETECTIVE COMICS #46 LOONEY TUNES VAR ED
GREEN ARROW #46 LOONEY TUNES VAR ED
GREEN LANTERN #46 LOONEY TUNES VAR ED
HARLEY QUINN & POWER GIRL #5 (OF 6)
JUSTICE LEAGUE DARKSEID WAR FLASH #1
JUSTICE LEAGUE DARKSEID WAR SUPERMAN #1
LOBO #12
MIDNIGHTER #6
MORTAL KOMBAT X #12
SCOOBY DOO TEAM UP #13
SENSATION COMICS FEATURING WONDER WOMAN #16
VERTIGO
SURVIVORS CLUB #2
UNFOLLOW #1
BOOM
ADVENTURE TIME 2015 SPOOOKTACULAR #1
JOHN FLOOD #4
KLAUS #1
OVER THE GARDEN WALL #3
ROWANS RUIN #2
TOIL & TROUBLE #3 (OF 6)
WOODS #17
DARK HORSE
ANGEL AND FAITH SEASON 10 #20
BARB WIRE #5
CALL OF DUTY BLACK OPS III #1 (OF 6)
DEAD VENGEANCE #2 (OF 4)
JOE GOLEM OCCULT DETECTIVE #1
LARA CROFT FROZEN OMEN #2 (OF 5)
THIS DAMNED BAND #4 (OF 6)
DYNAMITE
ALIENS VAMPIRELLA #3 (OF 6)
BOBS BURGERS ONGOING #5
CAGE HERO #1 (OF 4)
JAMES BOND #1
TRAIN CALLED LOVE #2 (OF 10)
IDW
ATOMIC ROBO & THE RING OF FIRE #3 (OF 5)
DONALD DUCK #7
MICKEY MOUSE #6
MY LITTLE PONY FRIENDS FOREVER #22
OCTOBER FACTION #10
STAR TREK NEW VISIONS HOLLOW MAN
TRANSFORMERS MORE THAN MEETS EYE #46
IMAGE
AXCEND #2
BLACK SCIENCE #17
CITIZEN JACK #1
DARK CORRIDOR #4
HUMANS #9
LAZARUS #20
MONSTRESS #1
NAILBITER #17
PAPER GIRLS #2
RASPUTIN #10
SAINTS #2
SEX #25
STRAY BULLETS SUNSHINE & ROSES #9
VELVET #12
WE STAND ON GUARD #5
ONI
EXODUS LIFE AFTER #1
RICK & MORTY #7
VALIANT
NINJAK #9
MISC
DOCTOR WHO 11TH YEAR TWO #2
DOCTOR WHO 8TH #1 (OF 5)
GRANT MORRISONS 18 DAYS #5
HANGMAN #1
JOHNNY RED #1 (OF 8)
KUNG FU PANDA #2 (OF 4)
MEANWHILE #4
PACIFIC RIM TALES FROM THE DRIFT #1
TITAN #2
WELCOME TO SHOWSIDE #1
TRADES
AGE OF APOCALYPSE TP WARZONES
ANIBAL 5 HC
ARCHIE VS PREDATOR HC
BATMAN ARKHAM TWO FACE TP
BATMAN LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT TP VOL 05
BATMAN THE DARK KNIGHT SAGA HC
BIRDS OF PREY TP VOL 01
BLADE UNDEAD BY DAYLIGHT TP
BLANKETS GN (D&Q ED)
BOBS BURGERS MEDIUM RARE TP
CLASS PHOTO GN
COPPERHEAD TP VOL 02
CROSSED TP VOL 14
GANTZ TP VOL 37
GEORGE ROMEROS EMPIRE OF DEAD TP ACT THREE
GHETTO KLOWN GN
HAWKEYE TP VOL 05 ALL NEW HAWKEYE
IMPERIUM TP VOL 02 BROKEN ANGELS
INVINCIBLE HC VOL 10 ULTIMATE COLL
JESSICA JONES TP VOL 02 ALIAS
JOHN CARPENTERS TALES FOR HALLOWEEN NIGHT GN
JOJOS BIZARRE ADV BATTLE TENDENCY HC VOL 01
LUTHOR TP
MISTER X RAZED TP
MOUSE GUARD LEGENDS OF GUARD HC VOL 03
NEW AVENGERS BY JONATHAN HICKMAN HC VOL 02
ORDER OF THE FORGE TP
PUPPETMASTER TP VOL 01 OFFERING
ROBIN TP VOL 01 REBORN
SANDMAN OVERTURE DELUXE ED HC
SESAME STREET ANOTHER SUNNY DAY
SHAPER TP
SIP (STRANGERS IN PARADISE) KIDS COLLECTED ED TP
SIXTH GUN DLX HC VOL 03
STAR TREK NEW ADVENTURES TP VOL 02
STAR WARS KANAN TP VOL 01 LAST PADAWAN
STAR WARS PRINCESS LEIA TP
SUICIDERS HC VOL 01
SURFACE TP VOL 01
WINNERS GN
MERCH
BATMAN BLACK & WHITE HARLEY QUINN STATUE BY DINI
DC UNIVERSE GREEN LANTERN CLASSIC COSTUME ARTFX+ S
I was pulled from my mother’s birthing bits feet first early one Halloween morning eons ago, clearly difficult even from the very start. This week I hope you’ll allow this Halloween baby an extra indulgence as I go all-horror with one of my favourite comics stories ever – the classic “Love and Death” from Saga of The Swamp Thing, present a webcomic displaying the ultimate in culinary nastiness, include the first ever episode of the Tales From The Crypt TV show and, for this week only, skip ahead in the Heavy Metal recaps to October 1979 for a self-contained, all-H.P. Lovecraft issue of HM.
So stock up on comics instead of candies this Halloween and feel free to share the seasonal joy and let me know some of your favourite ever horror comics!
COMIC OF THE WEEK : SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING BOOK TWO
By Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, John Totleben, Alfredo Alcala & Friends
Published By DC Comics
Saga of The Swamp Thing #21, “The Anatomy Lesson,” was Alan Moore’s total re-writing of Swamp Thing’s origin and may be the most famous story in the decades-long Swamp Thing mythos, but for my money, “Love and Death” is the best. Technically, the story, spanning Saga of The Swamp Thing #29-31 and Annual #2, along with its beautiful coda, issue 34 (“Rites of Spring,”) has no real title but collected and recollected across a variety of formats and editions over the years (Saga of The Swamp Thing Book 2 being the most recent), “Love and Death” is the most appropriate.
We open to find that Swamp Thing is now just Swamp Thing. Having learned that he never was Alec Holland, our sentient plant man ironically finds himself more in touch with nature than ever before, but stripped of all personal identity. Abby Cable, the great unrequited love of his life, is repairing her marriage and Swamp Thing’s buried the bones of the man he long thought he was. Abby’s disturbed, alcoholic husband, Matt, has a new job and has bought them a beautiful home, but Abby’s suspicious rather than relieved by this turn of good fortune and frequent flashes of insects and corpses and horrors from beyond greatly unsettle her.
Abby has good reason to be unsettled – her husband has been possessed by the spirit of her deceased, evil uncle Anton Arcane, Swamp Thing’s greatest enemy. Arcane orchestrated a jailbreak from hell for both himself and a number of murderers and evildoers and has taken up residency inside Matt Cable to orchestrate his horrific revenge. When Swamp Thing arrives at the Cable home to find Arcane/Cable in full horrific glory, vomiting out a torrent of flies, Swamp Thing also finds that Abby is dead and that Arcane has consigned her soul to hell.
So begins Swamp Thing’s journey to the underworld, releasing his consciousness from its elemental, plant-based cocoon and travelling “beyond life itself” to hell in order to free his love’s soul and return her to life. Along the way, he encounters dead enemies, old allies and new acquaintances drawn from the rich pantheon of DC’s supernatural stable, punches demons, has one more showdown with Arcane and rages against the judgement of God (via The Spectre) in order to bring Abby back to life.
It’s the most romantic thing ever.
December 1984’s Issue #31 was my very first issue of the series, given to me in 1987 by a school friend who found it at a local fete, and it changed my comics reading permanently and profoundly, acting as something of a gateway drug to the wider world of comics lying outside what I could find on the racks of the suburban newsagent. Little wonder it proved so formative – the world slowly going mad under the strain of Arcane’s release from hell and his corruptive powers, Swamp Thing cradling a dead Abby as he removes her from the tainted, demonic atmosphere of the Cables’ gothic New Orleans home, the look on Swamp Thing’s face as he is given a flicker of vain hope at Abby’s survival only to have it snatched away, Arcane-Matt’s grotesqueness, Matt’s final attempt at redemption and all those disgusting insects, it is – to my mind – a modern classic; creeping in its horror, crushing in its climax and pretty epic when you consider just how expertly all of that and more was pulled off in just twenty-four pages.
Frequent guest Rick Veitch (who would eventually helm the boom full-time, even succeeding Moore as scripter) fills in for regular penciller Stephen Bissette for this issue, with Bissette chafing against deadlines and getting a head start on the double-sized conclusion in Annual #2. It’s Totleben who proves to be the artistic glue of the team, however, inking both Bissette and Veitch with such cohesion and detail you’d likely never know two different pencillers worked on the overall story. The same cannot be said for Alfredo Alcala – a wonderful artist in his own right – whose heavy inks similarly dominate Bissette’s pencils in Issue #30 when Totleben needed a breather, making that particular issue his own. The work of both Totleben and Alcala over the course of this story are as sure a reminder as any of the power and influence a good inker has over the pencils they work on top of. Anyone cramming in some final Inktober lessons should study these comics well.
Featured in Annual #2, Bissette and Totleben’s hell is a filthy, disgusting landscape, a wasteland ripped from the Golden Age of Weird Fiction with insectoid horrors and hybrid demon creatures coloured in a fittingly nauseating palate of browns, purples and blues by Tatjana Wood. It’s a place of such unending horror that when a desperate, fraying Arcane asks Swamp Thing, “Huh-how many years have I buh-been here?” and is answered with “Since yesterday,” you may actually feel a stab of sympathy for Abby’s disgustingly vile uncle as he lets loose a shriek of total despair.
Bissette and Totleben draw with such confidence that they even give Jack Kirby’s Etrigan The Demon a cosmetic makeover. Their limber, feline Etrigan stands in stark contrast to the brick shithouse version envisioned by his creator, but he’s far scarier, squatting and drooling in the darkness before loosing a burst of flame from his mouth to incinerate some hell spawn far less powerful than he.
These are classic comics, filled with evil portends, undead villains, good men corrupted, monsters, demons and, of course, love and psychedelics. This is no mere “comic book death” stunt, it’s an organic result of the stories Moore was telling. This storyline shattered the final remnants of the “old” Swamp Thing, moving the character and his lover into ever denser, more sophisticated territory. If you’ve never read “Love and Death,” I urge you to and if you have them on your shelf already, give them a re-read as, like me, you might find them to be one of the absolute highlights of not only Moore, Bissette, Totleben and friends’ legendary run with this character, but also of ‘80s comics as a whole.
WEBCOMIC OF THE WEEK : FINAL MEAL
By Christopher Sebela and Zack Soto
Once again we raid the Study Group vault for webcomics excellence – this week with Christopher (High Crimes) Sebela and Zack Soto’s ingenious little short, Final Meal.
The tale of a man whose palate craves not the varieties of the flavour spectrum, but the spice of cruelty itself, Final Meal builds with the inevitability that the title implies. However, with writing as strong as Sebela’s and art as moody and crisp as Soto’s, the almost anti-climactic nature of the story’s conclusion should not affect your overall reading pleasure.
Taken to a mysterious, exclusive restaurant to experience the ultimate in his cruelty “food fetish,” out narrator relates his strange journey all over the globe to find the food that has suffered the most in its preparation. Soto’s moody, lively cartooning brings to life the insanity and desperation of this character’s quest and his flesh-based meals are rendered with appropriate grotesqueness.
Liable to nudge guilty meat-eaters (like me) or lapsed vegetarians (again like me) further towards plant-based diets, Final Meal packs an EC-esque irony that’s just perfect for the season.
Yes, thanks to the magic of living in the present, we are fast-forwarding a year and a half this week to a special Halloween issue of Heavy Metal, the Lovecraft-inspired stand-alone issue published in October 1979. Normal service will resume next issue, as (among other things) Philippe Druillet’s “Urm The Mad” concludes, and if you think I’m done drooling over Druillet, you couldn’t be more wrong.
As usual, the October 1979 issue is beautiful to look at, playing host to a number of incredible European creators. Sadly, however, the substance just isn’t there overall, with most of the material ending up as either narrative throwaways or curios, Lovecraftian only in name rather than execution. The editorial notes the diversity of the stories within and wisely tries to offer some cohesion to the issue by suggesting the focus is on “two of HPL’s most characteristic obsessions…the fear of something huge and powerful that is outside but wants to get in and the awful attraction effected by dark and smelly holes. You witness, Dr. Freud.”
The absolute star of the show is Alberto Breccia, who skilfully and beautifully adapts HPL’s “The Dunwich Horror” with his none-more-black, charcoal-smeared art and heavy use of captioning. It’s a perfectly moody and evocative fit for HPL’s lengthy 1928 classic which, like last week’s Rat God by Richard Corben, moves the cosmic terror to a slightly more rural setting.
“Good day, Lovecraft, I am the President and I wish to hunt the Ktulu!” And with that goes any hopes that the mighty Moebius might take this assignment – to which he seems indelibly suited – with any seriousness. Instead, the artist delivers “Ktulu,” a story still stunning in its visuals even if it falters as an examination of the work of Lovecraft. This story of a group of politicians entering a “gigantic cavern,” interdimensional in nature, to hunt “Ktulu” like big game still carries that trademark Moebius dreaminess and gorgeousness, yet unfortunately it has not the space nor the seriousness of intent to follow up on just how cool that premise actually sounds. An Elder God safari hunt. I’d write the shit out of that. I suspect most of you would too.
Terrance Lindall’s “Xeno Meets Doctor Fear And Is Consumed” continues the surreal dreaminess established by Moebius, but similarly offers little and I’m actually beginning to wonder if it’s a page count restraint rather than an imaginative laxness that’s the issue here, for like “Ktulu,” “Xeno…” feels as though twenty-odd pages have been somehow hacked from it.
Alain Voss’ “The Thing,” is striking in its Rick Geary-goes-Pointillist inkiness. It captures the overwrought verbosity of much of Lovecraft, but pastiches it in this tale of an interdimensional portal accessed via catacomb…and telephone. It’s a pretty and enthusiastic piece though and ending with the madness that afflicts so many a Lovecraft protagonist who plunges into the unknown it gets the thumbs up for both being an attractive comic and actually meeting the brief somewhat.
All hail Druillet (again)! His “Excerpts From The Necronomicon” proves a highlight from the issue and thankfully at that, as HPL is one of Druillet’s most profound influences. Presented as though torn from the Necronomicon itself, Druillet’s inky, scratchy pages have the look of deliberate, spontaneous haste about them, the look of the work of a man detailing indescribable horror and sketching the creatures that lay beyond the realms of our perception. Perfect in their rushed, scrawled appeal, their indecipherable cursive script, they have the vague look of pages from the Necronomicon Ex Mortis; the book of the dead featured in the Evil Dead. Many more pages would’ve been appreciated, particularly as they were actually drawn but not included, such as:
While this issue is pretty hit and miss and as such will be a bit of disappointment for any serious Lovecraft fan, any doubts over whether or not it’s worth even the most cursory of flip-throughs should be dispelled with this, a Walt Simonson drawing of Cthulhu. Truly, I am your Halloween fairy:
COMICS VIDEO OF THE WEEK : TALES FROM THE CRYPT: THE MAN WHO WAS DEATH
Rounding us out this week is the first ever episode from the ‘90s HBO Tales From The Crypt series, inspired (of course) by the notorious EC comics of the same name. Still one of the most highly-regarded instalments of the series, “The Man Who Was Death” finds Bill Sadler playing Niles Talbot, an executioner forced into unemployment when the death penalty is repealed. Instead of finding a 9 to 5 like a regular Joe, the justice-dispensing Talbot hits the streets, arranging electrocutions for those who escape the courts justice. In true EC style, the results of his actions are deliciously ironic.
Directed and co-written by The Warriors’ Walter Hill and acted with total relish by Sadler, “The Man Who Was Death” is a fine way to spend a lazy 25 Halloween minutes as you await potential trick or treaters.
Cameron Ashley spends a lot of time writing comics and other things you’ll likely never read. He’s the chief editor and co-publisher of Crime Factory (www.thecrimefactory.com). You can reach him @cjamesashley on Twitter.
