Image Previews Picks: March 2015
“Rat Queens” is getting a new artist after its current one, John “Roc” Upchurch, has left the title amidst allegations of domestic abuse. This would be bad news for the title, except that it already has a new (temporary?) artist in the form of Stjepan Sejic. Having worked at Top Cow and on “Witchblade” for most of his career means that I’ve been safely able to ignore his superhero work. However, he does some great superhero comedy art on his Deviantart page and there are two projects of his that I’m interested in picking up. There’s his fantasy series “Death Vigil” and his BDSM-themed romance “Sunstone,” the latter of which is due out in comic shops next week. Just in time for Christmas! He also illustrated one of the “Tavern Tales” in the most recent volume of “Skullkickers” and that showed he can handle fantasy comedy too. So while the series is in good artistic hands now, we just need to see if the writing can turn its four leads into proper characters as well.
Also, “East of West” joins the New Year’s Stragglers the week after next when issue #16 arrives. With seven covers to hype the start of its new storyline, which is restrained compared to what’s going on with the new “Star Wars” series from Marvel. The seven combine to form a poster-worthy image; so, even though I’m not going to buy any of these individual covers, I would be willing to put down money for the poster they combine to make.
Chrononauts #1: It’s a bromance about two scientific geniuses whose research leads them to a time-traveling adventure! Will they use it to benefit mankind or for their own ends? Sounds like a decent setup for a sci-fi adventure series, right? Well it’s also being written by Mark Millar, so I’m betting his idea of “bromance” has these guys being total dudebros going on about how awesome they are. Given that the idea of using time travel for good or evil is being teased here, I’m betting that one of them is going to be the good dudebro and the other will be the bad dudebro with a violent, tragic, and heartbreaking clash between them at the book’s climax. You’re welcome to imagine the sounds of me gagging at all this. The worst part? It’s being illustrated by the phenomenally talented Sean Murphy, so this awful-sounding story is going to have some incredible art attached to it. I have no intention of reading this, but at least Murphy deserves all of the money he’ll be making when this title is inevitably optioned by Hollywood.
Descender #1: In this universe, all robots have been outlawed. Now, one young robot has to stay alive in this cosmos that wants him dead. I’ll be interested to see how this series portrays “young robots” as the whole “form dictates function” approach didn’t work for me in “Pluto,” but makes more sense when you consider how it was done in the film “A.I.” It comes to us courtesy of Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen. I’ve followed Nguyen’s work for years across various “Batman” titles, so I’m interested in seeing what he can do on a non-superhero project. As for Lemire, his “Animal Man” work was a mixed bag, but I recently finished reading “Sweet Tooth” which showed that he’s got the skills to enliven familiar material. Certainly one to watch.
Invisible Republic #1: A legendary freedom fighter’s regime has fallen and the diary of his cousin promises to tell a reporter the whole sordid truth of the man’s life. From the creative team behind “Star Wars: Legacy vol. II,” Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman. I realize that the traditional plan for most creators is to work on corporate-owned titles and build up a fanbase that will follow them to their creator-owned work. Given how consistently underwhelming “Legacy vol. II” turned out to be, you can imagine how inclined I am to follow Bechko and Hardman to this new title of theirs.
Big Man Plans #1 (of 4): “The Goon’s” Eric Powell provides the art and co-writes with Tim Weisch, who used to be a bricklayer, for a brutal crime drama about how the most marginalized in society get revenge. Powell has shown that he can do serious on “The Goon,” but I still love that title’s comedic side more. Now that he’s working on a new project, I can put those preconceptions aside and hopefully enjoy his more brutal side on its own terms.
Red One #1: A serialization of a French graphic novel about an American superhero in the late 70’s. While that in itself isn’t noteworthy, the fact that she’s a Russian spy is. While I’ve never heard of the writer, Xavier Dorson, the art is coming from the incredible husband and wife team of Terry and Rachel Dodson. Yeah, it’s safe to say that their involvement makes me interested in picking this up at some point.
Invincible #118: Only twenty-five cents as Invincible and Atom Eve take off on their greatest adventure yet: Parenthood! They’ve also taken leave of planet Earth and headed off to the stars, which, given the events of the current volume (review forthcoming), sounds like the best idea anyone in this title has had in a long while. Also, the series has a new colorist: Jean Francois Beaulieau. So I’m looking forward to seeing if his work is an improvement from what we’ve been getting on the book for the past few years.
The Manhattan Projects: The Sun Beyond the Stars #1: The series gets a new #1 with stories being told in a “new format.” I thought this meant “series of miniseries,” but there’s no official indication that’s the case. Oh well. I’ll still buy the collections when they come out regardless of what this “new format” is.
Skullkickers #31: In which “the beginning of the end” is promised. If this is going to be the last volume, then six volumes is a good run.
Lazarus vol. 3: Conclave: The sixteen ruling families of the world gather together in order to defuse the tensions between Families Carlyle and Hock before they erupt into all-out war. Collects six issues of the ongoing series. Which is interesting because the issue count has now increased by one for the first three volumes. A corresponding increase in quality, like the one from vol. 1 to vol. 2 would be even better for this one too.
Sex vol. 3: Broken Toys: Because life is just that much better with “Sex” in it. I was starting to wonder when we’d get more “Sex” and Image delivers! Will this be the last “Sex” we’ll get? Given that artist Piotr Kowalski seems to be doing more Marvel work these days, that’s a distinct possibility. In fact, I’m not sure if the series has been solicited past the issues collected here. So there may be a distinct lack of “Sex” in these solicitations for the foreseeable future.