Comics (2241)
Murder. Gruesome. London. Despite the mystery surrounding such butchering, it’s undeniable how even a few words can automatically resemble one notorious being: Jack the Ripper.
IDW Publishing brings Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell back to the newly released category as it’s introduced with a new hardcover. Colored with scattered red lines to resemble the sky connecting to the bright red city of London. The exterior foretells the bloody sequences that the reader will soon become familiar with during the journey of Whitechapel’s infamous serial killer.
Keiron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie's The Wicked + The Divine has been a massive hit throughout the twenty-two-issue run of the series thus far, and the story of the Gods that come back to life every ninety years has been some of the best in creative storytelling I've seen in a long time. With the book now on a break to get back to the normal release schedule, Gillen has teamed with artist Stephanie Hans to tell a new tale about these beloved characters during another time in their long and storied lives.
Adamant is about a superhero who’s suddenly flung into a strange and unfamiliar future. In the first issue, we saw our titular hero arrive in this new world, completely bewildered by his surroundings (which included a human-sized talking frog, along with a very interesting evolution of slang). In this issue, we get to see a little more of this world and get a slightly better idea of just what’s going on.
To the top of the roof, to the top of the wall…
Myths are an incredibly important part of the human condition. We weave tales into our collective consciousness that become the foundation of our shared experience. With the incredible increase of content outlets in the last decade, people are becoming much more fragmented in their entertainment options and the stories that bind us together, but myths are deeper than that. They envelope and transcend television, internet, and radio. The mythos of Santa Claus is one such, and though the holiday that’s associated with his story is Christian in nature, I’m a firm believer that it has spun away from that context to be its own unique, non-denominational entity, where the traditions that predate Christianity within his tale are coming to the fore every now and again. Jim Butcher has done it with a wonderfully joyful and sinister approach, and then there’s Action Lab’s Sleigher which is ridiculawesome, but Grant Morrison approaches this paragon of goodness and giving in his own way, putting his own unique touch on a story that lives within a large part of people.
There are some comic book characters that are always recognizable, and Dark Horse Comics has one that’s just that. There’s a good chance you have heard of Hellboy, and there’s also a good chance you know that he’s red, has shaved-off horns, and sports a noticeably long tail.
Fol rol de ol rol.
I first read Neil Gaiman’s Troll Bridge in his short story collection, Smoke and Mirrors. In typical Gaiman fashion, it’s a story that is both familiar and disquieting, one where you feel like you’ve heard it before but you’re still surprised by events. In that way I’ve always found his writing to be a little like a nightmare, but one that I can’t stop myself from wanting more of. I’m not sure that this entirely makes sense, but it does convey the fact that I’m already familiar with the tale and that I find the original work terribly moving and upsetting (again, in a good way. It’s so hard to accurately describe this without the weight of word connotation misconstruing my meaning. Gaiman makes me have to redefine language.).
Listen up, Tomb Raider fans! We have less than a month before Rise of the Tomb Raider - a video game originally released for the Xbox One platform - will be available for PlayStation 4 on October 11th.
In the meantime, us Crofties (I new term I coined for any fan of Lara Croft) at least have Dark Horse Comics’ ongoing Tomb Raider comic book series to help keep our eyes unglued from the PlayStation store in hopes that the DLC version might arrive early. It won't. I already checked.
At a glance, The Battles of Bridget Lee: Invasion of Farfall appears to be another in a long line of post-apocalyptic alien invasion comics, albeit one aimed at younger readers, but to dismiss it as unremarkable wouldn’t be giving it enough credit. There’s something truly charming in Bridget Lee, and arguably something rather important, too, and in that, it manages to surprise. This is a comic I want to see go places.
The latest in John Byrne’s ongoing tales of the voyages of the USS Enterprise is also one of the best to date. “Swarm” – not to be confused with the similarly-named Voyager episode – is in many ways the epitome of the New Visions concept, bringing together classic Star Trek storytelling with effects the show would never have been able to afford. In this case, those effects are the massive swarm of alien vessels that seem to be making stars go supernova – and only the Enterprise stands between them and a disaster that could claim billions of lives.
I did it, you guys! I didn't skip a month!
Naturally, I'm talking about being all caught up with our ongoing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comic book series, written by the legends themselves Kevin Eastman, Bobby Curnow, and Tom Waltz. If you haven't been reading this series, now is an excellent time to start, because I feel like last month started us on a whole new adventure.
