This collection of large-scale superhero adventures is powered by over-the-top ideas. Joe Casey and co-writer Brian Holguin set their stories across the cosmos, while Ed McGuinness draws a hugely muscled alien-to-look-up-to hero in Mr. Majestic. The first story features Majestic having to hide our solar system from aliens. Desmond, his super-smart boy inventor friend, is only one of the many scientists that help plan a solution to the problem. It’s refreshing to hear, early on, Majestic disavowing the idea that […]

Jill Thompson brings together Sandman characters and shôjo manga in The Dead Boy Detectives. Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine are two British schoolboys who happen to be ghosts and who love investigating mysteries. They’re asked for help by Annika, a student at a prestigious Chicago boarding school, when her roommate goes missing. There’s a ton of entertainment in this packed original graphic novel, with jokes, character work, clues, and atmospheric illustration. Thompson does a terrific job capturing elements of the […]

Writer Peter Milligan uses human chameleon Christopher Chance to explore the nature of identity. Chance is the world’s best impersonator, and he takes the place of people in danger. In the first story in Human Target: Living in Amerika, he’s pretending to be Father Mike, a priest whose charity work among America’s undesirables — HIV patients, the homeless, immigrants — has made him a target. Next, in the book’s longest story, Chance is required to take the place of someone […]