The phenomenal Who is Jake Ellis? has finally been collected. If you missed it while it was coming out in single issues, it’s time to rectify that grievous mistake. The first 6 pages of Nathan Edmondson and Tonči Zonjić’s spy thriller might be the best opening sequence of the entire year. There’s some hyperbole mixed into that sentence, but not enough to make me feel uncomfortable opening with it. Jon Moore is on the deck of a cruise ship off the coast of Barcelona, presumably cutting a deal with some shady criminal types. The proceedings quickly go south as Moore…
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I always thought Haunt was a weird title to come out of Image. Alright, maybe not weird that it was coming out of Image, but weird that it was coming out of Image at this point in its history. In the last few years Image has proven itself as the place to go to find innovative and challenging creator owned books such as The Walking Dead, I Kill Giants, and Chew after growing up from its original incarnation as a sort of skater punk artist studio. Original Image titles such as Spawn and Savage Dragon are being published (and depending who…
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“As I step into the cage… I hear my opponent’s family booing me. I look forward to ruining their night.” That line perfectly sets the tone before the fists and knees start flying in this fantastic debut issue from writer Blair Butler, who many will know from Attack of the Show’s Fresh Ink segments. To sum it up, Heart #1 is the tale of Oren “Rooster” Redmond, a tatted up, fanged MMA newbie. Readers are thrown straight into the octagon with Rooster and get a healthy dose of backstory while they’re at it. Butler’s script is sparse and simple, and…
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The greatest thing about being a comic book reader is that there is so much great stuff out there just waiting for you to read it. The worst thing about being a comic book reader is that there is so much great stuff out there just waiting for you to read it. A lot of that great stuff is from independent publishers and can be next to impossible to find once their printing run ends.  Such was the case of Tales from the Bully Pulpit, a graphic novel put out by Image comics in 2004 created by Benito Cereno and…
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For hundreds, if not thousands of years humans have wondered “Are we alone in the universe?” There have been hundreds of incident reports over the last fifty years of seemingly normal men and woman claiming to be abducted. With that many people coming forward isn’t it possible that aliens may be real? And just maybe that they’re also a bunch of pricks? That is the question that Image Comics newest book Xenoholics seeks to answer.  Whereas other books might tackle this by focusing on a X-Files type government task force, Xenoholics focuses on the people who truly want to believe…
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What a great title. It really begs you to read the comic. What talent? Why strange?  The cover only helps to mystify. A rather butch man, head swathed in bandages has a mass of blood dripping from his clenched fist. Clearly, Luther Strode is no ordinary comic book hero. Like many of Image’s publications, The Strange Talent of Luther Strode is a debut by relatively unknown authors and artists. Neither the author, Justin Jordan, nor artist Tradd Moore nor colourist Felipe Sobreiro are particularly well known to mainstream comic book audiences. However, I predict that if their work continues in…
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Anyone who follows Ben McCool and Nate Cosby on Twitter know them to be a pair of irrepressible larrikins. When it was announced that they would be collaboratively writing a new comic series, people were intrigued as to what this pair would bring. Would they write a black comedy with a hint of the bizarre? Would it be a satire that commented on both societal and political issues? When I first heard the comic’s name, I envisaged a mini-series about anthropomorphised porcine soldiers. Whatever the case may be, I don’t think many expected what the end-result would be. PIGS, a new ongoing series…
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I don’t know anything about Kevin McCarthy or Paolo Pantalena and a quick internet search didn’t reveal much either. I’m guessing, although correct me if I’m wrong, that Epoch is the first major work by the author or artist. Epoch is that age-old tale of Angels versus Demons. You come to realise this after a couple of pages, and my gut reaction, to be honest, was “not again!” How can they make this original, or interesting, or not just a comic-book rip-off of Supernatural? What McCarthy has done is to make it appear like a police procedural story. I’m not…
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The titular empire in question is Afghanistan. Why I hear you ask? It is known as the Graveyard of Empires as no occupying power has ever won an armed conflict on Afghan soil. The current war between Allied Forces and the Taliban is not an easy subject to write about and shouldn’t be broached lightly, and perhaps an even harder subject for a horror comic. The fighting, which started in 2001 with Operation Enduring Freedom, is on-going and people from both sides are still dying. Is this too soon for fiction to comment on the hell of war? Mark Sable…
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In an age when major comics publishers like DC Comics are cutting pages from books in order to have more space for advertising, it’s refreshing to open up a new title by Image Comics. A company that takes partner Robert Kirkman’s manifesto on creator-owned comics quite seriously, Image always gives readers more bang for their buck, packing 32 pages of comics action without ads into every issue they produce.  Unfortunately, the 32 pages of story by creators Harold Sipe and Hector Casanova — despite containing a funny take on a classic whodunnit — contain too much exposition to be greatly…
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