Image Previews Picks: March 2020
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
Outer Darkness/Chew #1 (of 3)
“Chew” is no stranger to odd crossovers, having already done one with supernatural rural noir “Revival.” The catch this time is that the series is crossing over space, time, and genre to mash up in some way with creator John Layman’s current series “Outer Darkness.” As to how this is going to happen… it’s likely going to involve the cyborg badass murder machine chicken known as Poyo. I mean, he’s on the cover along with the regular cast after all, and he’s already crossed over with “The Walking Dead” though I don’t think that was canon.
I’m hoping this does well and brings a lot more attention to “Outer Darkness. It’s apparently not doing as well as it should be or else Layman wouldn’t be doing this and we’d already be halfway into the solicits for vol. 3 at this point. So pick up a copy of this when it comes out, or wait for the trade like I do. Just buy enough copies of this miniseries to make sure “Outer Darkness” can continue on its own terms without having to resort to stunts like this in the future!
Decorum #1: A new Image series from Jonathan Hickman? With art by Mike Huddleston? SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!… is what I’d like to say about this series. “Decorum” looks to be taking lots of cues from what is arguably the best game in the “Assassin’s Creed” series, “Black Flag.” It’s sci-fi meets Age of Exploration aesthetic looks wonderful while its premise revolves around the most well-mannered of assassins. Imagine Edward Kenway if he were actually polite, in other words. So what’s the catch here? Hickman’s last couple of Image launches were — how do you say it — troubled. “The Dead and the Dying” coughed out three sporadically published issues before it went on hiatus only to return a couple years later, cough out a few more, and then go right back on hiatus. That’s still better than “Frontier” which was supposed to be his return to writing and drawing comics, was featured on the cover of Diamond’s Previews and was then subsequently cancelled by Hickman himself. So yeah, I’m a little worried that this series may not even see the light of day. Which is too bad because it sounds pretty cool.
Mirka Andolfo’s Mercy #1 (of 6): It’s a bad time to be an inhabitant of the quaint mining village of Woodsburgh this winter as two events are causing them great unrest. One is a series of brutal murders. The other is the arrival of a woman in black. One of these things seems to be far more capable of generating unrest than the other, but as this series is set in the Victorian era it’s possible that a village’s inhabitants would be bent out of shape by a single woman. Why, she might even be divorced! While a creator’s name in the title doesn’t always guarantee that they’ll actually be involved with its production, rest assured that Mirka Andolfo is writing and illustrating this miniseries. Which brings us to…
Stealth #1 (of 6): I think this series was originally created by Robert Kirkman and Marc Silvestri for Top Cow’s long-forgotten “Pilot Season” series of one-shots. That’s why they’re getting a “created by” credit on this title even though the actual work is being done by writer Mike Costa and artist Nate Bellegrade. Credits aside, this miniseries does have an interesting hook to it. After years of waging a one-man war on crime in Detroit with the aid of his super-suit, Stealth has finally taken things way too far. The thing is that it’s not because he’s fed up with the war he’s been fighting, it’s because the man inside the suit is now suffering from alzheimer’s. Now it’s up to his son to get through to his father before his enemies and the police permanently retire him. And while we’re on the subject of Kirkman…
DIE!DIE!DIE! #9: The comic where the level of political discourse tops out at “enthusiastically dumb” returns! Senator Connie “Not Elizabeth Warren” Lipschitz assumed full control of the cabal at the end of vol. 1. Now she’s hell-bent on making the world a better place — regardless of how many people have to die in the process. Meanwhile, the former senator Barnaby “Not Mitch McConnell” Smith” is still out there. Hopefully not for long. Scott Gimple and Kirkman return to write this series while Chris Burnham is back to draw it, something I’m taking as a clear sign that he’s having as much fun drawing this ridiculousness as the writers are writing it.
Deadly Class vol. 9: Bone Machine: I swear, if no one in the series makes a penis joke involving the title of this volume, I’m going to be SO DISAPPOINTED! Not only is it right there, but it’d be appropriate for the overall maturity of the core cast. Assassin training and all. That said, “Bone Machine” may not be a sexual euphemism. It could be the kind of machine that grinds up people, bones and all, into a nasty pulp. Kind of what the yearly exams at King’s Dominion are meant to do. The sophomore final is drawing near. Time to see if Marcus has a better plan than “dying” to survive this year’s exam.
Oblivion Song by Kirkman and De Felici vol. 4: In which the solicitation text just says, “Who are the Faceless Men? Finally… some answers.” I like that answers are being promised here. Given the title’s progress so far, it’s also likely that the creators will be able to actually deliver on them. Now we just have to see if the Faceless Men’s human lackey can turn down the hammy villain act from a 10 to a 7, maybe a six just to be sure. I get what they’re trying to do with that character, but it just wasn’t working based on what we saw of him in vol. 3.
Trees vol. 3: Two Fates: The third and I believe final volume of Warren Ellis and Jason Howard’s series about life on Earth post-invasion by giant alien pillars. Where the first volume followed a lot of different characters to diminished effect, vol. 2 pared things back to two separate plots and fared better for it. Now vol. 3 focuses things even further, on the investigation into a dead body that was found next to a Tree in a remote Russian village. Police sergeant Klara Voranova remembers when the Trees fell and investigating this body is going to bring back nothing but bad ones, I’m sure of it.