Dark Horse Penguin Picks: May 2025
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
The Stoneshore Register
A couple decades back, writer G. Willow Wilson and artist M.K. Perker broke into DC/Vertigo and the comics industry with the graphic novel “Cairo.” It was a charming story of humans and magical beings interacting within the Egyptian city and it still retains a place on my bookshelf today. While their follow-up series “Air” wasn’t quite on the same level, they’re returning to the idea of what happens when humans and magical creatures mix it up when refugee and aspiring journalist Fadumo arrives in the Pacific Northwest to work at the titular place with a stone giant looking over it. That quickly turns out to be the least remarkable of the things she’ll encounter here, and inspires her to dig deeper into the hamlet’s history. While I haven’t liked everything Wilson has done, “Poison Ivy” has been consistently entertaining and interested in finding new ground for the character to play in. Which is what I’ll be expecting to see when she re-teams with Perker for this new graphic novel.
Tramps of the Apocalypse #1: The year is 2094 and men rule the world. Correction: The year is 2094 and men rule the smoking remains of the world we knew. Characters like Quest Ragnor, King of Males are now ruling the few pockets of civilization left, enslaving all the women they can in order to keep mankind going. Standing in their way are three self-described super bimbos whose bloodlust is only equaled by the violence they’re able to dish out. Darrow may not be a name familiar to me, but I’m getting the feeling she’s delivering some ridiculous trash that’s going to take Our Modern Problems and turn them into something ridiculous and maybe even fun.
The Umbrella Academy: Plan B #1: It’s been over six years since the cliffhanger ending of the previous volume but writer Gerard Way and artist Gabriel Ba are finally here to follow up on its cliffhanger ending. Which, if I recall correctly, involved the release of their other siblings, from imprisonment in Hotel Oblivion. If I got that wrong, you’ll have to forgive me because it’s been over six years. I’m honestly surprised that this is happening at all, but I guess getting the Netflix series out first was more important. Still, as I’ve waited this long to find out what happens next, I can wait a little longer for this miniseries to wrap up and be collected. Which is good because I’ll definitely need to re-read “Hotel Oblivion” before I tackle this.
Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins – Series 1 #1: “Wait a second,” I hear you say, “Isn’t ‘Origins’ already a series of miniseries at Dark Horse? So what’s this?” According to the solicitation text, this is the print edition of the very first Vox Machina “Origins” comic, in time for the tenth anniversary of the popular fantasy role-playing series. Franchise mastermind Matthew Mercer co-writes with Matthew Colville while regular “Origins” artist Olivia Samson illustrates. Should be good fun for people already enjoying the comics, with this first issue spotlighting twins Vax and Vex investigating a curse afflicting the impoverished inhabitants of a port city.
From the World of Minor Threats: Welcome to Twilight #4 (of 4?): There’s no indication that this is the miniseries’ final issue, but no “Minor Threats” series has been longer than four issues so far. This time around we’ve got Gerry Duggan writing about a “cleaner” for superpowered individuals. That’s “cleaner” in the way that he’s the guy you contact when you want to dispose of a dead body. Which can be kind of difficult when you work exclusively with the city’s spandex crowd. Cute idea, let’s see if he and artist Mark Torres can pull it off. While we’re on the subject of “Minor Threats”…
From the World of Minor Threats: Brood: Wherein one of the most feared villains of Twilight City confronts his mortality and has to name a successor to his criminal empire. The catch being that all of his kids hate him and really don’t want anything to do with Napoleon Archimedes. That’s because when faced with the choice between taking over the city and raising a family, Napoleon decided to do both and nobody won. Writer Heath Corson shows us how all this is going to play out at the end of the crimelord’s life, while I.N.J. Culbard gets to make it all look good.
Blue Book Library Edition HC vol. 1: The first two storylines of James Tynion IV and Mike Oeming’s “True Weird” stories about people encountering UFOs get collected in a deluxe hardcover edition. Individually, these two collections will set you back $25 each. Putting them together in a hardcover edition will set you back $50. So there’s no real reason to buy this unless you just like the oversized hardcover format better.
H.P. Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space: Something has fallen from space outside of the Gardner family farm. While it appears to have been disintegrated, its malign influence remains. Crops start coming in bad. The animals become strange. Then the family itself starts to change. You know, the usual for a Lovecraft story. This is another adaptation from mangaka Gou Tanabe who has done a good job crafting solidly entertaining horror stories in manga form. No, I still haven’t read any of the original stories (nor have I checked out the Richard Stanley adaptation of this one with Nicolas Cage), but that won’t stop me from reading this one either.
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! vol. 8: It’s good to see that Dark Horse is sticking with this series, what with the release of vol. 7 due in the very near future. What’s even better – and arguably more surprising – is that they’re sticking with “Innocent” as well. That’s right, the continuation of that series “Innocent: Rouge” has been licensed by the publisher and the first three-in-one omnibus edition will be out in October. That’s great news for anyone who got to the end of the third omnibus and went, “This isn’t an ending!” and it means that I can cross off reading the scanlations for that series from my To Do list for this year.
What about vol. 8 of “Eizouken?” Producer Kanamori finds herself caught between her desire to have Eizouken’s work be sustainable (read: profitable) and still work within the guidelines laid down by the Student Council. Being the smartest character in the series, she’ll find a way, and it’ll most likely be pretty entertaining to see.
Living Hell: Jerome Jarmeel is a family man who tries to keep a low profile while working as a bartender. That’s because he’s actually a demon who has escaped from Hell and come to like his life on Earth. Unfortunately Hell doesn’t forget easily and Jerome finds himself in more trouble than he anticipated after he kills a demonic bounty hunter who came to take him back. Now he’s forced to take the hunter’s place, hunting down his own kind on Earth. It’s a nice setup from creator Caitlin Yarsky, so I think I’ll give this a look when it finally arrives in July.