Comics

Another year has come and gone. 2018 is officially in the rear-view mirror, and we've gone hurtling into 2019 like the Sweet Meteor o' Death.

But before we get too deep into the New Year, we've reached that point where we reflect on all that happened in the previous year that was good and notable, and cast our votes as to what was the best of the best ("of the best, sir!")

So here we go again! It's time to pick the Critical Blast Best of the Year for Movies, Television, Actors, Books, and Comics -- and, of course, to pick our CRITICAL BLAST BOMBSHELL OF THE YEAR! So use the handy form below to pick from this year's nominees -- or suggest one that you think is deserving that we missed (so long as the work happened during 2018). Voting is open through the end of January, and on February 1 we'll start tabulating the results and announcing the winners!

So long, 2018! You gave us some great entertainment!

CONSPIRACY: DOPPELGANGER is an offshoot of Zenescope's CONSPIRACY: THE ILLUMINATI. The nut of this story arc is that The Illuminati replace people with exact duplicates.

This first issue follows two plot threads. The first pertains to the reunion of two high school friends at the funeral of a third -- a funeral brought about because this former friend going off on a shooting rampage after a lifetime of being a peacenik. According to Taylor, this is because the dead man decided to listen to someone who advocated for the Second Amendment. Apparently this means he's programming people for The Illuminati, and it's enough evidence to nearly convince her friend Drew, who remains skeptical of the group's existence.

P:andora has arrived on Earth, and worldwide people ask two questions: Is the combined might of Project: Superpowers enough to stop him? And how the heck do you pronounce a name with a colon in it?

Rob Williams and Sergio Davila weave an action-packed and dynamically-presented superhero yarn that pulls out all the stops and includes all the things we love about the classic comic book story. Where else can you see an 80-story giant get swatted down by The Might Samson by using a skyscraper as a baseball bat? Where else can you find an American Flag with a life of its own that seeks to bind with a human host and become an entity powerful enough to stand against evil? 

Rob Feldman's miniseries, CYKO KO, from Alterna Comics, finishes its three-issue arc with the titular hero facing off against the fiendish foe who killed his father -- the Devil Spider!

CYKO KO is a hero that's part Madman, part Ambush Bug, part Freakazoid, and completely all-ages friendly. The art and coloring are done in a flattened style reminescent of 1970s comics that adapted cartoons from television like SUPER FRIENDS. This actually broadens the appeal to younger readers who will fall in love with the antics and interactions of Cyko, Peachy, and Karate Bot -- and the newly introduced interdimensional uber-fan of Cyko, Blipso Facto aka Cyko Jr, a being from a dimension where everyone has modeled their lives after the adventures of Cyko KO.

Here's more of what you need to know:

I was a huge fan of the FREEDOM FIGHTERS comics in the late 1970s. These books featured the Quality Comics characters acquired by DC -- Uncle Sam, Phantom Lady, Black Condor, Doll Man, The Ray, The Human Bomb, and The Red Bee -- and formed them into a team of heroes, banded together to fight the Nazis on Earth X, a parallel dimension where Germany won World War II and conquered the United States.

There have been various attempts to revive the team with a more modern angle to them. This newest version from Robert Venditti and Eddy Barrows, however, succeeds by sticking the closest to its roots. The book opens in 1963 with what remains of the Freedom Fighters planning an assault on a Nazi robot-making factory. However, their plans are foiled by an infiltration of Plastic Men (or PlaSStic Men, with the SS done in the Nazi SS style), and they are captured and summarily executed. Only Uncle Sam remains, barely escaping the Plasstic Men by pulling a Jedi death.

There's a new hero on the horizon, a mythic figure of folk legend who fights for justice for the common man--the flyover man. His name is Red Rooster, and his is a mantle that passes from generation to generation.

The Red Rooster is the creation of comic book creator Mitch Breitweiser, who, along with his wife, colorist Elizabeth Breitweiser (SKYBOUND), is driving hype for one of the most hotly anticipated crowdfunded comics to come down the pike.

We sat down to talk to Mitch about this project, and what it's like using the crowdfunding vehicle to bring a dream to reality, complete with its triumphs--as well as its surprising adversities.

Click below to listen to the Critical Blast Podblast.

There are all kinds of things that the comic book industry is arguing about right now, (looking at you #comicsgate) but hopefully, they can all agree that insulting women is not okay.

In today's industry, many professionals are looking to fund their own titles to show that readers just want good books; without being inundated with political opinions. There are artists who want to draw "sexy" protagonists and those who feel that style just demeans women. There are writers who want to focus on plot-driven stories and others that want to drive a political narrative. And the only wrong answers are the books that don't sell.

Sales determine who's right and who's wrong as the consumers vote with their dollars.

On Monday, December 10, 2018, Cynthia Naugle took to Twitter to announce she had sent a letter to a man she claimed had sexually abused her on multiple occasions.

While Naugle never went so far as to mention the name of her abuser, she was very clear that they worked together at the same comic shop where he was a manager, and that the abuser went on to become a current writer at DC Vertigo. With that information, coupled with the fact that the evens she described occurred in Tucson, Arizona, it did not take much detective work for the Internet to work out that the mysterious “X” of Naugle’s story was Eric M. Esquivel, currently the writer of DC Vertigo’s much-discussed comic series, BORDER TOWN.

No matter how fastidious you are in maintaining your comic shop pull list in your never-ending battle to make sure you don't miss anything good (or accidentally waste your money on something not so much), it never hurts to do a last minute check on what's coming out this week so you can make those fine-tuned adjustments.

Here are our looks at this week's upcoming comics, and our hot takes on whether they're a pick or a pan. Your mileage may vary.

The Vaude-villains are a group of criminals unlike anything existing in comics. Created by a person or persons unknown in TAP DANCE KILLER #1, they were an innocent group of actors hired to play roles in a horror musical, transformed through chemical means into being psychologically traped in their roles. While on-stage, they performed the deed they were programmed to -- the elimination of members of the Vitalli mob family.

No matter how fastidious you are in maintaining your comic shop pull list in your never-ending battle to make sure you don't miss anything good (or accidentally waste your money on something not so much), it never hurts to do a last minute check on what's coming out this week so you can make those fine-tuned adjustments.

Here are our looks at this week's upcoming comics, and our hot takes on whether they're a pick or a pan. Your mileage may vary.

The schedule must be getting tight on the 20-page comic (remember when they were 22 pages?) HEROES IN CRISIS, because the former lead artist, Clay Mann, was only able to turn in the first page and the last page of this issue, which were basically the confidential confessional pages. Lee Weeks picks up the rest of the in-between, where Tom King's plot doesn't move the action forward from the previous issue (or even the issue before that).

That's because this issue is done entirely in flashback, to fill in the gaps and answer some of the questions about what Sanctuary was and how it operated.

I’ve gotta say, the Joker of the future is looking pretty spry for a (very) white guy.

The Clown Prince of Crime has been hinted to still be alive during the time of the BATMAN BEYOND comic book series, which has this reviewer questioning whether or not the animated movie BATMAN BEYOND: RETURN OF THE JOKER has any bearing on the comic book canon, which seems to be an anchor-point in actual DC Comics future history. At the end of the previous issue, he brought down a high-rise owned by Bruce Wayne, although nobody as yet knows he’s responsible. He only took credit for it when he confronted Barbara Gordon, surprising her in her office and narrowly missing her with a bullet.

My first exposure to the tradition of Krampus came through Brom's exquisite horror novel, KRAMPUS: THE YULE LORD. Since then, I've seen Krampus headline a film and appear in a few other media outlets.

The horned devil appears in this issue of TAROT, WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE, doing that thing he does: kidnapping naughty children to be taken away and whipped with a switch. But he stands opposed by Tarot, who seeks him out each year in her attempts to stop him. Unfortunately, he is more powerful than most magical-based entities she battles. Her magic doesn't affect him, but his magic -- a very unusual magic for the task he has at hand -- certainly has an impact on Tarot. (Take the plot of Milo Manara's SWITCH and instill it into a magic bell, and you'll figure it out.)

No matter how fastidious you are in maintaining your comic shop pull list in your never-ending battle to make sure you don't miss anything good (or accidentally waste your money on something not so much), it never hurts to do a last minute check on what's coming out this week so you can make those fine-tuned adjustments.

Here are our looks at this week's upcoming comics, and our hot takes on whether they're a pick or a pan. Your mileage may vary.

I've expressed previously my love for the old DC horror titles like GHOSTS and HOUSE OF SECRETS, or Charlton's MIDNIGHT TALES (featuring the Midnight Philospher and his hot little niece, Arachne), and how disappointing it is that such titles don't exist in the market these days.

I stand corrected. There is at least one title out there that captures the twist-ending, twisted-horror that these older books did so well, albeit with a touch more mature language. Zenescope's GRIMM TALES OF TERROR continues to bring the Twilight Zone-esque feel with stories that have endings you simply don't see coming.

"Don't Flash Your Lights" builds on an urban legend about gang initiations that involve random killings.

Click to enlarge.

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” 
― George Orwell, 1984

We communicate with words. We may communicate crudely or eloquently, but nevertheless we do it with words. And as we mature, we learn there are words that are better than others, and there are words that are not spoken in polite society.

And then there are words that are not only looked down upon, but they are controlled. They can be said, but only by certain people. This act of protectionism embues a word with power, ideally to remove the power of hate from it when used by those who would use it thusly.

We know the most prominent of these words by their first letters. The F-word. The N-word. Say them in the wrong place, or be the wrong person, and your environment can quickly change.

Which is why it was such a shocking moment when X-Man Kitty Pryde dropped one of these bombs in the classic X-Men graphic novel, GOD LOVES, MAN KILLS.

People can't get enough of MARS ATTACKS, as the big-brained aliens seem to re-attack us every couple of years now.

This viewpoint of the alien invasion is grounded by the story of a man and his elderly father. It's a contentious relationship, as the older man is a conservative retired U.S. Marine with a cantanerous attitude, while the younger one is more of a pacifist who has never lived up to his old man's expectations.

The two of them find themselves on the run for survival when the Martians attack the nursing home, leaving the entire landscape charred. Now with the son pushing the father in a wheelbarrow -- the only mode of transportation they could find -- the two encounter a militia group ready to take on the invaders. They're armed to the teeth with all kinds of guns, and one of them even has a bazooka.

Adventure in the fashionable fifties continue as Bettie Page finally gets her own ongoing series, after a few minis and a Halloween One-Shot. The pin-up queen, who came to comic book prominence largely thanks to the tireless efforts of the late Dave Stevens, now leads her own series as a special agent, working a division that deals with U.F.O.s and extra-dimensional threats.

No matter how fastidious you are in maintaining your comic shop pull list in your never-ending battle to make sure you don't miss anything good (or accidentally waste your money on something not so much), it never hurts to do a last minute check on what's coming out this week so you can make those fine-tuned adjustments.

Here are our looks at this week's upcoming comics, and our hot takes on whether they're a pick or a pan. Your mileage may vary.