A number of recent Image launches have done a terrific job setting up killer first-issue premises, but I find myself wondering how much I’ll enjoy the series. Take, for example, Eclipse #1 by Zack Kaplan and Giovanni Timpano. It’s a world much like ours but in a future where the sun will literally kill you. Ten years ago, a solar flare wiped out billions of people, and now, the environment and culture has permanently changed. People interact at night and […]

The next major storyline of The Fuse begins here, with a promise to reveal why Ralph Dietrich came to the Homicide division of the police force on the space station. It’s something to do with a political group, the Fuse Liberation Front, but all we’ve had so far are hints and suspicions. Since the FLF is considered a terrorist group, that’s a significant problem for his role. Meanwhile, his partner Klem, the best character in the book — she’s a […]

I was surprised to find that the series was over already. I’ve been a bit confused by Starve since it began, and this second storyline (by Brian Wood, Danijel Zezelj, and Dave Stewart) didn’t help. It was a good feeling of being off-balance, though, mimicking the way the lead character careened from one moment of self-destructive excitement to another. Why I’m talking about this issue, the final one, though, is that it seemed to me more like a letter to […]

Now that the first storyline of The Beauty has concluded, creators Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley have decided to tell some single-issue stories “to explore the wider world” of their premise. That’s a great idea, since the strongest part of this series is the concept, of a world where a sexually transmitted disease makes you more conventionally attractive, and I’d welcome learning more about how people react. These stories are set before the events of the first arc, before […]

The previous issue, The Wicked + the Divine #18, began a new storyline they’re calling “Rising Action”. It’s a more straightforward approach, where two groups of the reincarnated gods finally directly face off against each other. There’s a lot more action, and frankly, for someone not completely indoctrinated into the cult of the title, it’s a lot easier to follow. I feel horrible saying that, because I feel like it’s an indictment of my lack of willingness to participate actively […]

The psychological horror series by Alex de Campi and Carla Speed McNeil concludes its second arc with the most powerful issue yet. It’s also a great starting point, if you’re curious, since it’s a flashback issue focusing on a single one of the doomed teens. (If you’re looking for a more chronological starting point, the first four issues of No Mercy have been collected at a discount price.) Back in issue #6, we saw how poorly siblings Chad and Charlene […]

Now that The Fuse issue #18 is out, I can talk about the entire The Fuse: Perihelion storyline. If you want to read the entire thing (and you haven’t been intrigued enough to start reading with the first two mysteries, The Russia Shift and Gridlock), the collection comes out at the end of April in comic shops, early May in bookstores. It reprints issues #13-18, and I’ve previously talked about issue #13, issue #14, and issue #17, so I will […]

Writer Nick Spencer and artist Steve Lieber worked well together on The Superior Foes of Spider-Man during their 17-issue run from 2013-2015. Under them, a villain team-up book became a wacky heist series with a sardonic tone and imaginatively outrageous occurrences for its team of losers. However, that kind of thing doesn’t last forever when dealing with other people’s character property in a shared universe, so now Lieber and Spencer are doing something similar on their own turf. The Fix […]