How Loathsome

The cover of How Loathsome features an attractive, androgynous figure naked from the waist up with arms wrapped around him/herself. S/he’s wearing black PVC pants, suggesting fetish culture, and appears to be comforting or protecting him/herself from prying gazes. It’s a great summation of the material contained within. The stories by Ted Naifeh and Tristan Crane explore queer life, drug use, goth clubs, and gender experimentation in San Francisco. In the first chapter, Catherine, the narrator, meets Chloe, a “tall […]

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Scene of the Crime: A Little Piece of Goodnight

Before Gotham Central, Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark worked together on the mystery Scene of the Crime. Jack Herriman is a private eye hired by a woman to find her missing younger sister, who may have become involved with a strange commune-like group. Both she and Jack turn out to have father issues in common; when he was a teenager, Jack was raised by his uncle, a crime scene photographer who helps out on cases. Now, he’s fallen into something […]

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Dead West

The team behind the critically praised Teenagers From Mars, writer Rick Spears and artist Rob G., return with a zombie Western, Dead West. While the men of a Native American tribe are out hunting, a group of whites massacre their village to enforce their claim to the property. A young brave survives and years later takes his revenge on the town, Lazarus, built on the site. Through a ritual sacrifice, he raises the town’s dead, an unthinking mob of zombies […]

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Teenagers From Mars

Mars is your typical Southern town. One group of kids are digging up a coffin. When they find a sword, they wind up reenacting fight scenes from Star Wars. Another guy’s ripping off the copy shop with the aid of an underutilized employee. They get away with it because the boss is convinced the kid’s on drugs; aren’t all teens? At the local Mallmart, an employee’s getting chewed out for selling a kid a comic with too much violence; who […]

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Sgt. Rock’s Combat Tales

Sgt. Rock’s Combat Tales provides a compact look at a once-popular, now-mostly-forgotten genre: the war comic. These classics from the late 50s were written by Robert Kanigher with art by Joe Kubert, Jerry Grandenetti, Irv Novick, and Russ Heath. The digest-sized book opens with Rock’s “origin story”, a tale of who he was (a boxer) and his determination, the quality that defined him as a person and a soldier. Other stories deal with what it’s like to be a grunt […]

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Maria’s Wedding

A year ago, Joseph and Matthew’s wedding split Joseph’s large Italian family. At the ceremony, Joseph’s brother Frankie spoke his mind about the situation, condemning those family members who refused to attend. Now, it’s the next big family gathering, as their cousin Maria is getting married. Frankie’s afraid of the reception he’ll get, but he has to attend to support Maria. Everyone’s warning him not to make another scene. It’s typical of families never to forget incidents like that one, […]

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Top 10: The Forty-Niners

The city of Neopolis, the setting of Alan Moore’s Top 10, is populated only by superheroes. This prequel to the series explores how that city was established and why. The Forty-Niners is written by Alan Moore with art by Gene Ha. In 1949, the war is over, and the “science-heroes” and other powered people have been sent to the new city. Jetlad, an air pilot hero even though he’s only 16, provides the viewpoint of the innocent, fresh in the […]

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Hawaiian Dick: Byrd of Paradise

There are so many hooks to Hawaiian Dick: Byrd of Paradise by B. Clay Moore I hardly know where to start talking about it. It’s been variously described as tropical noir, a hardboiled supernatural thriller with a tiki-influenced setting, and a retro island take on Sam Spade. (Younger folks might see it as Thomas Magnum as written by Raymond Chandler.) It’s 1953 in Hawaii. Byrd was a mainland police officer until a mysterious shooting drove him to semi-retirement. He works […]

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