This pulsating, blood-soaked slow-burn romance from writer Duggan (the Deadpool series) and artist Brown (the Massive series) joyfully remixes tropes from the samurai and western genres. Amid vigorous head-loppings, brain-splattering six-shooter action, and sword-and-spear clashes against zombie hordes, each staged and colored with sickening power, this series kickoff favors pared-down storytelling and archetypal characterization. In 1877, on opposite ends of the earth, a revenge-driven male cowboy and a defeated but incapable-of-surrender female samurai fight their doomed battles to the death, linked by smart cross-cutting and twilight imagery. Both awake with the “corpse tide” on a deserted island where other dead warriors assemble each night to fend off ravenous ghouls. As the protagonists acclimate to the afterlife and slowly discover each other’s elemental powers, Brown’s nimble, inventive layouts capture the passage of otherworldly time. Amid the plethora of battles, every decapitation is an event. Notably, though, some grindhouse conventions are upended, such as a scene of attempted rape in which the woman saves the man. More familiar are new agey hints about the mysteries of the island—perhaps inevitably, redemption is a theme. This gritty-but-heartfelt genre mash-up embraces the medium’s freedoms and possibilities without pretension. It’s perfect for readers who favor red meat and formal rigor. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 02/14/2025 | Details & Permalink

Cannibalistic body horror meets cosmic terror in this juicy feast of fear from Walker (The Last Siege) and Greenwood (the Stumptown series). Six bickering friends in search of an offbeat vacation pull up to a sleepy western town that was terrorized 100 years ago by a serial killer called the Butcher of the Silver Mines. (“It’s folk horror. Very popular right now,” the most online member of the group assures the gang.) After sampling the local diner’s burgers, they experience hunger, hallucinations, and worse. In classic horror fashion, when they try to escape, their car won’t start. Flashbacks fill in the characters’ backstories, while in the present, their relationships, minds, and bodies disintegrate. As the terror ratchets up from cannibalistic killers to vaster and stranger threats, Walker’s script draws from H.P. Lovecraft and his acolytes, including Laird Barron, while Greenwood’s dynamic, character-focused art has an off-kilter edge reminiscent of ’90s indie artists like Sam Kieth. Deep shadows and close-ups of meat and teeth create a menacing mood from the start. Readers with an appetite for splatter will be satisfied. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 02/14/2025 | Details & Permalink

This brutal battle manga, Yoshioka’s English-language debut, plunges readers into the icy waters of Norse adventure. In the year 1002, Viking raids terrorize an English village and flush out a feral “wolf child” from the forest, who is adopted by the village priest and given the name Luke. After Luke’s peaceful new life is torn apart by another Viking attack, he seeks revenge against the leader of the raid, the handsome and ruthless “White-Haired” Einarr. Fighting ferociously with two wolf companions by his side, Luke spark rumors that he may be an incarnation of the god Odin. Meanwhile, Einarr pursues his own secret agenda as he carries out the unhinged orders of the Danish king Sweyn Fork-Beard. “Only amongst the flames of vengeance can we beasts live,” he warns as Luke closes in on him. The action is hewn in rough linework reminiscent of samurai manga like Blade of the Immortal, with blood and tears flying across the page. Yoshioka conjures the 11th-century setting with evocative drawings of European wilderness, medieval architecture, and Norse design, then fills it with sex, drugs (King Sven likes to get high on henbane), and violence. It’s a worthy voyage for devotees of gritty historical fantasy. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/14/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this taut thriller, Thomas (the Skin Police series) pits a hard man against the British mob as he tears through the hometown he left long ago in search of his kidnapped niece. John Bannon, self-described bastard, snoops, punches, and gouges his way across 2008 Brighton’s criminal underworld. In the process, he uncovers devious plots that could result in an all-out gang war and encounters precious few allies and plenty of old enemies. While he’s nasty enough to his foes, the story’s arc proves him to be an admirable gray knight battling against worse characters. The violence culminates in a final bloody battle and the shocking truth behind the kidnapping. Snarky, pitch-perfect dialogue peppers the nifty mod art by Matthews, which gives fast-paced action sequences a stylish glide. The ending sets the hook for a sequel, which would be most welcome. Fans of action flicks like Get Carter and Taken will find this right up their alley. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/14/2025 | Details & Permalink

This introspective offering from Rubín (Cosmic Detective) unpacks an existential crisis in a visually stunning sci-fi narrative. With a massive meteorite headed toward Earth, the brilliant, egotistical architect Alexander Yorba takes the lead role designing a lunar colony to ensure the survival of humanity, or at least the portion that can afford it. After his arrival on the moon, he’s diagnosed with terminal cancer, giving him roughly the same amount of time left as those on Earth. He returns to take a stand against the elites who employ him, but his protest, though cathartic, has unintended consequences: a ubiquitous media smear campaign against him, and invasive surveillance that thwarts his plan to spend his final days with his neglected wife and child. With the dawning awareness that he too was a member of the privileged class, he wanders a doomed planet, visiting old friends and lovers, whose dissonant recollections topple the “house of cards” of his self-mythology. Rubín’s expressive artwork recalls his sometimes-collaborators Jeff Lemire and Paul Pope, with its real-world grit, dreamlike wordless sequences, and dramatic spreads. This contemplative tale of a self-styled hero with feet of clay will resonate with any reader who has fallen short of their grand ambitions. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/14/2025 | Details & Permalink

The exhilarating latest entry in Hernandez’s sprawling Locas saga, first serialized in Love and Rockets, meditates on old regrets and new beginnings. Tonta, a teenager with a chaotic family life who hops “from trash house to trash house,” signs up for an art class. There, she meets—and immediately fights with—the older Maggie, who eventually becomes her sounding board and “crazy aunt.” At middle age, bisexual Maggie lives with a kind man but still carries a torch for her estranged best friend, Hopey. Tonta’s romantic dramas with her geeky friends are simpler, yet similar; while Tonta cuddles with her new girlfriend, Maggie fumes over Hopey rejecting a reconciliation to hook up with a “low-budget trash version of me.” Hernandez has built his characters’ Southern California town into a richly detailed milieu. Layers added in this volume include the subculture of indie comics fandom (Tonta cosplays as Cheetah Torpeda, a superhero who exists elsewhere in the Love and Rockets universe), a lake monster, and a wedding crowded with familiar characters past and present. Hernandez’s jaw-droppingly clean line and mastery of the subtly caricatured human form make the most mundane moments vibrate with life. Longtime fans will be moved by weight of the older generation’s relationships, but the focus on a younger generation of characters makes this an excellent starting point for newcomers. It’s not to be missed. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/14/2025 | Details & Permalink

Meyer explores what it means to be truly good in her vibrant, if occasionally clunky, graphic novel debut. Catherine grew up in a strict Irish Catholic household in which going to Sunday mass was imperative. As an adult, it’s her guilt (and texts from her mom) rather than faith that drives her to church. Her life transforms when she agrees to skip Sunday mass for the first time ever, in order to explore an abandoned church with her boyfriend, Manolo. After nearly falling off the broken dais, Catherine becomes possessed by Vassago, the demon prince of hell (“Nice to meet you,” he says, a floating black blob resembling a larger Totoro soot sprite). As her constant companion, Vassago pesters Catherine with questions about faith and morality: “What about that time... you lied on your résumé... do Catholics even read the Bible?” While the demon’s influence is at times cathartic for Catherine, encouraging her to take control over her own decisions, the scrutiny leads her to the brink of self-destruction. Despite some abrupt scene transitions, Meyer’s attractive, accessible character art lends emotion and energy to the layouts. The creepy yet endearing dark demon jumps out of the otherwise light color palette. It’s a playful approach to a thorny topic, on par with For the Love of God, Marie! (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/07/2025 | Details & Permalink

Spanish cartoonist Medem’s poetic, cryptic, and hyperhued graphic novel debut unfolds like a dream. Antonia inhabits a land that has been abandoned for unexplained reasons. She passes her days tending to an alien-looking flower that seems perfectly in tune with her own feelings and movements. One day, a woman from another land appears. She and Antonia speak different languages, but find ways to communicate. Together they journey to the newcomer’s homeland, a place where donkeys build mazes and humans collect sounds (e.g., chickens clucking) the way mockingbirds do. Because the people are sonic sponges, mirrors are sacred tools: “We realized something, by accident: mirrors could bring us back. We’d see our reflection, and remember.” The motif of mirrors and the introduction of a character named Narciso all allude to the Narcissus myth; Medem also pulls from flamenco lyrics, which are listed in back matter. The characters can feel like cyphers, or metaphors, as the story meanders and puzzles through bright gradient backgrounds, vines that drape across panels, and reflections that melt into water and sky. Along the way, Medem effectively conveys themes of loneliness, intimacy, and communal consciousness. This evocative mood piece will appeal to fans of art comics. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/07/2025 | Details & Permalink

This viscerally horrifying vintage manga by the late Koga, best known for the Japanese manga and film series Eko Eko Azarak, marks his long-awaited English-language debut. Hideo is a lonely young man who only keeps company with his insect menagerie. One day, he finds himself going through a metamorphosis similar to his beloved caterpillars. A cottonlike substance emerges from a cut on his leg, then from his pores, to imprison him in a cocoon. After his home catches on fire, he emerges from the ashes in a wraithlike shape and begins to attack and turn other townspeople into insect-human hybrids. A young boy who picks up Hideo’s gnarled hand, which resembles a tree root, starts aging at an impossibly fast rate; another boy, Goichi, realizes that his father, who was presumed dead, has also been turned into a monster. Koga’s stark black and white artwork walks a fine line between overwrought and perfectly gruesome as he pushes the conceit to glorious, gory extremes, combining the ick factor of insects with body horror and social critique. “Human society is so stupid and cruel. I see that clearly now that I’m an insect,” opines Goichi’s father. Admirers of Junji Ito and Kazuo Umezz will revel in this. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 02/07/2025 | Details & Permalink

Thompson revisits the setting of his Eisner-winning graphic novel Blankets in this bighearted examination of ginseng farming in rural Wisconsin. Growing up in Marathon, Wis. (population “barely 1,200”), Thompson worked alongside his siblings on nearby ginseng farms. Rising early to weed and pick rocks under a haze of pesticides, at age 10 he earned a dollar an hour, which he used to buy comic books—thus cultivating a passion that would provide his ticket out of his working-class, fundamentalist Christian upbringing. Fast forward to decades later, when Thompson, now a celebrated graphic novelist, encounters ginseng again while treating an aggressive fibromatosis plaguing his drawing hand. He begins asking questions about the herb, a mainstay of Eastern traditional medicine that grows prodigiously in Wisconsin. He interviews farmers he worked for as a kid, the president of a multinational ginseng concern (who vows to “Make American ginseng great again” in a speech), Hmong growers, and his own parents, gathering family histories while discussing America’s shift toward industrialized agriculture. These conversations reveal subtle class divides, but also shared values tied to duty and family. As Thompson roves from the Wisconsin Ginseng Festival to a Korean wholesale auction and wild ginseng boutiques in China, his supple, brushy ink lines render the scenes in poignant detail. A feat of generous observation, this stands with Thompson’s very best work. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/07/2025 | Details & Permalink