Above-the-Board Recommendation: DRACULA, MOTHERF**CKER! It’s a 72-page original graphic novel that’s retailing for $17.  How did it manage to get the top spot for this round of solicitations — even though it’s also advance-solicited for October?  Well, it’s coming from writer Alex De Campi, who has shown she can deliver quality pulp with “Grindhouse” and […]

Above-the-Board Recommendation: X of Swords:  Creation #1 Event season never stops at Marvel Comics these days.  What we’ve got here, however, is a gen-u-ine throwback here.  Not only is this strictly an “X-Men” event, but it’s the kind of inter-title crossover that used to be a staple of the line.  The last one of these […]

Above-the-Board Recommendation Octopath Traveller:  The Complete Guide Yes, I know this isn’t a comic.  It doesn’t even fully qualify as an artbook as the solicitation text and subtitle reveal that it’s also part strategy guide as well.  So what’s it doing here?  For one, it’s an extraordinarily slow September in these solicitations as Dark Horse […]

Well, I can’t call these “Previews Picks” anymore… Above-the-Board Recommendation: Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen:  Who Killed Jimmy Olsen? I think Matt Fraction is a very uneven writer.  His runs on “Invincible Iron Man,” “Uncanny X-Men,” and “Sex Criminals” were marked by parts that were really good, and parts that were really terrible.  The one series […]

David Bowie was a one-of-a-kind artist with an unmistakable style.  So it’s fitting that this biography of his life up through his time as Ziggy Stardust is illustrated and co-written by another one-of-a-kind artist with an unmistakable style:  Mike Allred.  I’ve made no secret of how much I love his work, and he really knocks […]

The Banks family has a long criminal history in the city of Chicago.  From Clara and her husband Melvin in the 70’s & 80’s, to her daughter Cora in the 90’s and 00’s, and her daughter Celia in the present day, they’ve all made money by being smart about who they steal from and never […]

When I saw Robert Kirkman at his solo panel during Comic-Con last year, he talked about the very slight chance that he’d return to the world of “The Walking Dead.”  He was quick to mention that it would be after everything else in his professional life had gone wrong, leaving him desperate for a comeback […]

Garth Ennis has been writing war comics for a couple decades now.  Most of them are very good, with a few ranking right up there with “Preacher” and “Punisher MAX” as some of the best stuff that he’s ever written.  Even with that being the case, there are certain tropes that creep into the majority […]

Justin Jordan is a writer that I typically associate with a “style over substance” approach.  It can certainly be entertaining, as he showed with artist Tradd Moore in the “Luther Strode” series.  Other times it can just be tiring:  See “Dead Body Road” with Matteo Scalera.  “Reaver,” when it was announced had a description that […]