I’ve been enjoying Brandon Graham, Simon Roy, Farel Dalrymple, Ed Brisson, Joseph Bergin III, and Giannis Milonogiannis’s Prophet. And like everything else I enjoy, I’ve been trying to pull it apart to see how it works. There’s a lot to chew on, but one of the many things that’s captivated me is this, from issue 24:

“John Prophet is awake.” Something about that stuck with me, to the point where I went back and reread the series, looking for similarly gripping statements. It made me re-examine and really pay attention to the narration in the book.

Graham’s really blunt style in Prophet works for me. It’s pointed, too, if I can mix meanings for a minute. “John Prophet is awake.” “The Earth Empire is here.” These are statements that sound like threats. They sound like something is lurking around behind the words, or around the edges of the phrase, that’s waiting to jump out and ruin your day. Funnybook Babylon‘s Pedro Tejeda described it as foreboding. He’s right.

Part of why these little phrases keep catching my eye is that I’ve been reading James Ellroy’s Blood’s A Rover for the past two weeks, and thinking about the other two books in the Underworld USA series for a couple years now. Here’s a sample of Ellroy’s prose from Blood’s A Rover:

The boss type looks pissed. The guys fan out. One guy scopes the Brylcreem, three guys walk to the rear. The boss type turns his back and tidies the candy shelf. The Brylcreem guy pulls a silencered revolver and walks straight up. The boss type turns around and goes “Oh.” The Brylcreem guy sticks the barrel in his mouth and blows off the top of his head. Silencer thud, brain and skull spray. No crash—the boss type just slides down the shelf row and dies.

Ellroy’s got a similarly blunt style, and as a result of how the books shake out, that bluntness is harrowing. It’s an indication that danger’s right around the corner, that life is short and mean, and that there’s no safe spaces, not really. It’s the perfect tone for Ellroy’s secret history of the ’50s and ’60s, because the prose crawls up underneath your skin and settles in. Even peaceful scenes are fraught with tension because of this. You’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Ellroy’s books are only ever five short words away from brutal, life-changing violence. (More on Rover later, I figure.)

These two books aren’t connected at all. I asked Brandon if he had read any Ellroy and he said nah. But, that doesn’t stop them from working in concert and feeding off each other inside my head. Both of the books are in my orbit, and they feed off each other accordingly. One work enhances or alters my perception of the other, even though the two books are incredibly different from each other. I mean, it’s Space Conan vs Sleazy History — not a lot of points of comparison there.

But: “The Earth Empire is here.” “One guy scopes the Brylcreem, three guys walk to the rear.” Both of these statements foretell doom. They deliver a shiver before everyone gets down to business. There’s a connection.

This phenomenon isn’t unique to comics, obviously. It’s a product of taking part in any type of culture. But I like when these sorts of things happen, when I find a connection between works I enjoy. Nothing exists in a vacuum, and picking up on parallel paths in books or similar techniques is always interesting. Sometimes all you need to figure something out is to see someone else do something similar, and then you can apply that new knowledge to the problem you’re trying to solve.

I’m going to solve Prophet at some point. Ellroy just provided another tool for the toolbox.

-I’m thinking about quitting floppies for a month and then picking it up when they’re cheaper and keeping up that way. I think paying three and four dollars for digital comics is stupid, and if I skip a month, when I come back, all the comics will be two bucks, which is still stupid, but more tolerable. I mean, these people want three dollars for twenty-six pages of 20+ year old Tank Girls by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin. Really? In what world is that a deal, instead of a ripoff? And I say that as a huge Hewlett fan, from the Gorillaz to Tank Girl and back again. Bleah. I want to support, but I’m not going to be able to support if the prices are this absurd.

-My beloved friend and yours David Wolkin run an organization called Limmud NY. You can read about it here. Long story short, though, it’s about educating people with regard to their own Jewishness, and the broad spectrum of Jewish experience. It’s sorta fascinating, from the outside looking in, because it’s such a great idea. We all grow up in whatever culture or cultures we belong to and are expected to sorta keep up and mostly figure things out for ourselves. A concerted effort to educate people about their culture and how it applies to the modern day is… it’s beautiful, I think is the best word for it. I did those Black History x Comics posts for years for similar reasoning, and as a way to say that we’re here, we’ve always been here, and you don’t have to enjoy it, but please respect it. I did it because no one did it for me, so I’m glad to see Wolkin and Limmud NY doing their part. You can donate to Limmud NY here.

–Jason Latour’s giving away an art book. He’s got an ill style, and the sketchbook has life drawings and other things. I like how he draws buildings (page 7, 17) and the image on the bottom-right of page 5 is fantastic. He worked on BPRD Hell on Earth: The Pickens County Horror with Dave Stewart, and it was pretty good. Check it here and here. Mushrooms never looked so scary.

And yo, on his website, you see that header Pimp Trick Gangster Clicks? That’s how you know Latour is a real dude. Pimp Trick Gangster Click > Gnarls Barkley.

–I debuted the news that Tyler Crook is illustrating BPRD Hell on Earth: Return of the Master at ComicsAlliance. Crook is a pretty good artist, and it’s nice seeing his style evolve. I’ve got a copy of Petrograd somewhere around here. I need to sit down and read it. It’s high on my to-do list, but I keep getting distracted by old manga (this week it’s Katsuhiro Otomo’s Memories, thanks to Jog.)

–Sean Witzke reviews 25 slashers, and kneecaps Cabin in the Woods in the process.

–Tucker’s Comics of the Weak @ TCJ are always worth reading. In fact, I think CotW and Jog’s column at TCJ are the only comics reviews I read at all these days.

–Giannis Milonogiannis, a dude whose vision of the future is right in line with mine (and Otomo’s and Shirow’s) is giving away comics. Go download OLD CITY BLUES: PROSTHETIC CORPUS PHASE ONE. I liked the original OCB (isn’t that title totally futuristic? Like OCP or something), which you can buy in digital or hardcover format. You can even read it online for free if you want.

-I liked Matthew Brady’s look at Hirohiko Araki’s Rohan at the Louvre. I’ve been meaning to pick it up, but (wait for it) I keep getting distracted. The preview is pretty tight.

-Eric Stephenson’s post about Bergen St Comics deciding not to carry Before Watchmen is a good one. “They’re leaving money on the table!” is a stupid thing to say. Every business makes decisions regarding what to carry and when. That’s their right. No one carries everything, and I think not carrying a book over ethical reasons is way better than not carrying a book because you don’t like Rob Liefeld’s art or something stupid like that.

–This quote from Joss Whedon is stupid. I can barely make sense of it.

–I like Chris Arrant talking about how we (fans, press, whoever) regularly and consistently devalue the artist in comics. I kinda sorta talked about this from another angle when I was talking about Marvel’s habit of ruining good books with rapid-fire art changes. It is an actual problem for these books and a problem for how we talk about comics. The best runs in comics have steady teams — look at the comics we got out of Claremont/Byrne/Austin, Claremont/Smith, Miller/Janson, Miller/Mazzucchelli, Brubaker/Phillips, Brubaker/Rucka/Lark, Bendis/Maleev, Ennis/Dillon, Ennis/Parlov, Nocenti/Romita, and more besides. If you give a team time to stick together and gel, you get better comics than you do when you reduce the artist to the level of an art robot. Having a steady team also changes how we talk about comics. We prioritize whoever is steadily present on a comic. These days, that means a writer. So it’s “Mark Waid’s Daredevil,” even though Paolo Rivera and Marcos Martin had tremendous input on what we all like about that comic. To call it Mark Waid’s Daredevil is disrespectful and inaccurate. It’s stupid. And yes, wah wah wah using multiple names is clunky, but suck it up. If you’re writing about comics, you should be able to do your job well enough to sidestep that issue. Otherwise you’re just a scrub.

-And actually, while I’m complaining about my peers — if you write a review that’s got one paragraph of art discussion toward the end… mannnnnnn. I looked at the eight most recent reviews on CBR and seven out of the eight have a few paragraphs about the writing, one paragraph about the art, and then an outro. Like they’re writing from a template. Boring.

Listen, here’s a challenge to everyone who writes reviews, especially if you do this lazy words-first thing. Find a comic you like. Write a review that’s predominately about the art, and leave one short paragraph toward the end for the writing. Talking about art isn’t hard. You look at it, you examine how it makes you feel and how it portrays the action on the page. Take a close look and find something you like, and then talk about why you like it.

This is simple, and if you’re writing about comics, you should be able to do this. You don’t have to be fluent at art. You just have to be conversational. Comics is a visual medium. There are words, yes, but when you open a page, the first thing you see is the pictures. So how about you pay attention and talk about the pictures in something more than a perfunctory manner?

-Anyway.

–Brandon Graham blog updates include sketches, snatches of new issues, and dope old manga and comics. Pay attention.

–I’m a fairly recent convert to Meredith Gran’s Octopus Pie. Maybe the middle of last year? I forget when my webcomics readin’ buddy Lauren Davis put me onto it. I haven’t made it through all the archives yet, but it’s good, good stuff.

-Comics comics comics! I’m working out how I feel about comics and comics discusso, if you can’t tell. It’s been a serious year so far. I’ve still got a lot to figure out, including what I write about and where. Pardon the dust and posts about things you don’t care about. I think the schedule I’m working with now, where Mondays have a Reading Comics bit, Wednesdays are variable, and Fridays have these posts, works well. We’ll see.

-Hawks over Celtics tonight! Josh Smith being out is no fun, but we’ll see how it goes.

I said that artist changes due to double-shipping mainstream comics devalues the artist. Not all art changes are evil, though. Sure, some of them are of the Final Crisis variety and result in terrible comics, but every once and a while, people get them right. Artist changes, guest artists, however you want to call them–they can be used tactically, as a way to showcase an artist or add a little extra punch to a storyline.

This may be weird, but follow along for a minute. One of the best examples of the way a guest artist can make something extra dope is a song. It relates to my point about unwanted art changes being like new actors showing up in old roles in a movie or a song changing direction mid-stream. It’s Big Boi’s “Fo Yo Sorrows,” off that Sir Lucious album:

It happens around 0:55. Too $hort, the legendary rapper out of Oakland, pops up to drop four bars and then bounce. That’s a quarter of a verse. It’s a cameo, but it goes deeper than that. At 0:47, Big Boi flips the word “bitch” just like $hort made famous, and then says that $hort was one of his favorite rappers. For Too $hort to pop up on this song for something that’s little more than a cameo is ill. It’s rappers playing around and having some fun. It’s not really a guest spot. It’s something you smile about, because you’re in on the joke.

That’s the feeling that art changes should give you. A little spike of glee, or a chance to explain to everyone you know exactly why what just happened is so good.

The Immortal Iron Fist did it well, for the most part. The flashbacks to adventures of other Iron Fists were drawn by a variety of dope artists, each one tackling a different Iron Fist. David Aja drew the modern pages, and his art served as connective tissue between the flashbacks. He set the tone and stage for the book, and then when the story required that the tone and stage change, Travel Foreman, John Severin, Russ Heath, and Sal Buscema tagged in to get it done. Aja is Big Boi, and John Severin is Too $hort. He brings with him a history and pedigree that people on the inside will get, while others will just go, “Yo, that looked pretty cool.”

Big Boi/Matt Fraction/Ed Brubaker had a good reason for their guests showing up, too. It’s not just a willy-nilly thing. There’s a point. It’s an enhancement, rather than someone just plugging another gear into the mix so that the machine goes faster. It turned Immortal Iron Fist into a jam comic. It provided variety.

There’s a really good example of what I’m talking about coming up later this year. Prophet started life as a Rob Liefeld/Dan Panosian joint. As part of the big Extreme relaunch, it’s currently in the hands of Brandon Graham, Simon Roy, Richard Ballermann, and Ed Brisson. It’s really good, actually, part of the continuously rising wave over at Image. Graham is writing, but working closely with Roy to make the story the best it can be. Sometimes that means layouts, other times it means Roy making sure that Graham’s on point or vice versa. It’s a collaboration. And there’s going to be guests popping in. From Graham’s blog:

So I’d written on here before that Prophet would come out 6 times a year but some cool shit has happened and now it’s going to be 12 issues a year monthly.

So here’s the schedule:

Starting Jan-

#21(number 1 in our hearts) -#23 art by Simon Roy (Jan’s Atomic heart), then #24 &25 are drawn by farel dalrymple (pop gun war) I’m drawing #26 and Giannis Milonogiannis (Old city blues)is doing # 27- 32. I think we’ve come up with a cool way to make this work storywize.

The situation isn’t too dissimilar from Marvel, and I’m sure a lot of people will say it isn’t different at all. There’s a comic, and the people making it want it to come out more frequently, so more artists are joining the team. The original draw of the series was the Graham/Roy/Ballermann/Brisson team, and that’s changing. I think that there’s a difference here, but a very, very fine one. I don’t think the difference is “I like these guys,” either. I like a lot of them dudes who are coming onto books I like, too.

Instead of just slipping new dudes into the rotation to boost the schedule, editor Eric Stephenson and writer Graham have found artists to work with and crafted the story around them. My understanding is that each artist will be working on a story tailored for them, rather than simply being used to keep the ship on track. All of the artists are doing covers, too, I suppose as a type of introduction. There’s a creative reason here, and I think that has more value than the purely economical reasons Marvel has to have artists playing musical chairs.

Here’s the covers for Prophet 22-24 and 26. The covers are by Simon Roy, Farel Dalrymple, Giannis Milonogiannis, and Brandon Graham, in that order.

They have absolutely distinct styles, right? Roy & Ballermann’s palette is dusty and soft, Dalrymple’s muted and night time-y, Milonogiannis’s is aged, and Graham’s is soft, but in a different way than Ballermann’s. Firmer, maybe. Roy & Ballermann’s art is rough and loose. Dalrymple is detailed and gloomy. Milonogiannis is… I don’t even know the right word for it right now. Majestic? Ominous? I get the feeling of mankind making contact with an entirely alien and apathetic intelligence, something that sees us as being beneath its notice. And Graham’s cover for 26 reminds me of nothing so much as the passage of a lot of time.

Things like this make art changes into events. It’s not just “Oh, we want to make people buy this book sixteen times a year instead of twelve.” It’s “We want this book to be the best it can be.”

I think it’ll work. I’m looking forward to finding out.

Yeah, I don’t know what happened to that title up there. Sorry. I’ll try harder next time.

I just remembered that Brandon Graham’s King City drops in about a month. 03/20! Preorders right now are sitting at around ten bucks for 400+ pages of one of my favorite comics. It’s a steal at twice the price. edit: King City is out in brick & mortar stores as of 03/07!

If you don’t know what King City is… man. I wrote a lot about it. Here’s twelve posts, here’s another post, one mo’ gin, and one mo’ one mo’ gin.

That’s a lot of words spilled over one book. I’m trying to think of a better way to sell you on this book…

If you like any or all of the below:
-Puns
-Jokes
-Fights
-Cats
-Cleverness
-Sharp dialogue
-Sex
-A realistic approach to relationships
-Fantasy
-Romance
-Butts
-Kickflips
-Knives
-Drugs
-Sex
-A drugknife you can have sex with

Then King City is probably for you. If you don’t like any of those, then you should read King City anyway, because it will make you like them.

Seriously though, ten bucks. Four hundred and some pages of one of the freshest books to hit comics in years. I don’t wanna overhype it, but it’s really good, y’all.

Mindless Ones interview Grant Morrison:

Bobsy: So obviously you can’t walk down the high street without seeing someone in a Batman t-shirt or a Superman t-shirt , but why are there no domino masks? Why no capes? Why no trunks on the outside? What is it that’s topping the fashion world from being hungry enough to go that extra mile?

Grant: I don’t know, because I thought super-fashion would look more like Zenith: Fashion clothes but with a little mask on. But that hasn’t happened. It’s just really hard to say where all this is going. The Internet offers up the idea that everyone is a superhero, every life story is a saga, everyone has a style, every love story is a magnificent adventure. We’ve all got our pages of our likes and dislikes. There’s osmething about the symbol of the superhero and what it represents… Clearly something is happening. People are trying to unite the imaginary and the real in a way using the Internet, so we might yet see the masks.

I just like the idea of this, how the internet is infecting real life with the idea that everyone is a superhero and important. Superhero as seductive meme, right?

I also like how it contrasts with this from Morrison’s DisInfo speech from around 2000:

“Beyond that, I find that we’re deluding ourselves in the worst way of all by believing in the individual. Stay with me on this. Kafka, Orwell, Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, everyone told us the individual is the most important thing you can be. Everyone is fucking quirky these days. Every shit in the window of MTV is quirky. Everyone’s cool, everyone’s smart… it’s not true.”

My main man Sean Witzke interviews Brandon Graham:

SW: When you talk about the idea of comics that haven’t been done – that’s kind of hard to actually achieve. Branching out of the moves you know work , and the idea that everything has been done – is it possible to actually make something new in comics? Not just in the “webcomics are the future” way, but just in paper comics – from page layouts to subject matter – is it possible to keep finding new ground?

BG: I can’t say with certainty what has and hasn’t been done since there’s so much unseen out there but there’s a hell of a lot that I’ve never seen tried in comics.

Emily Carrol just put out a set of zines with each one showing one page moments from a different member of a family’s life leading up to a big fire. and you get different sides and different clues deepening on which zine you read. Or there’s that Pat McEwan short in the back of Weasle #1 where each panel is a room and you don’t read left to right — you follow individual characters. I think that idea could be pushed even farther. — you could combine both those ideas and have choose your own adventures that read what direction the reader chooses to look and have it jump books or have pages fold out like posters in it.

I had this idea for a book that starts as a Scott McCloud how to draw comics or how to do perspective or draw manga book– hosted by a guy and his beautiful assistant. 3 chapters in to a standard how book to the assistant is found dead and then the learning comics part gets dropped and it switches to a murder mystery.

Or like, I’ve never seen a serious comic showing the life cycle of a fungus

Even if stories come from the old roots I think doing them in new ways creates something bigger than just the root idea. plus as a reader or an artist I feel like you have to have hope for undiscovered country. You can’t be an explorer that already expects every mountain to have a flag planted on it– there are still mountains on mars.

Longer quote than I wanted to post, but I wanted to get Sean’s question in there, too. There’s plenty more to read, including a great bonus round.

“There are still mountains are mars” is so good, because it then makes you wonder why so many comics are content with climbing Everest over and over again at best. Other than Morrison’s Batman & Robin (specifically the Irving/Stewart/Quitely trinity), which has definitely had its share of crap art, are there any visually challenging major books at Marvel or DC? Brian Bendis got Chris Bachalo for an Avengers comic and wasted him on a bunch of talking heads. Sure, Bachalo draws great heads, but is that really what you want him to do? I mean… that’s like getting Brendan McCarthy to draw your crime noir story, or Jack Kirby to do an adaptation of High & Low. I mean, sure, it’d look nice, but seriously: who cares? Who wants that? Work to these people’s strengths and show us something new instead of throwing all these square pegs into round holes. Figure out a new way to do talking heads or Batman standing on a gargoyle or Daredevil crying about his crappy life like a big fat baby on a rooftop in the rain.

Eric Wallace on DC’s upcoming Mr. Terrific:

Michael’s entire supporting cast will be new. One of the most important figures in his life is ALEEKA OKAFUR. Black and brilliant, Aleeka keeps Michael on the straight and narrow while running a billion dollar corporation, Holt Industries. When Michael makes mistakes and everyone else is afraid to speak up, she’ll be the one who tells it like it is. She’s the “heart” to Michael’s “head” when it comes to business affairs, and together they make quite a team. Another new character I’m excited about is JAMAAL, a sixteen-year-old intern at Holt Industries, who also just happens to have an I.Q. of 192. Needless to say, Michael sees a lot of himself when he was a boy in Jamaal, which makes Jamaal’s life really tough, really fast. Yes, he might be a genius, but Jamaal still has a lot of growing up to do. The problem is that Michael often forgets this fact.

I like the sound of Mr. Terrific the more I hear about it, and Eric Wallace acquits himself well in this interview, some bizarre phrasing featuring the word “diverse” aside. I mean, you’ve got a cape comic with a high tech angle, a supersmart protagonist who’s going to be going on dates, and what sounds like an actual supporting cast, a rare creature in modern cape comics. A black lady, too! How rare is THAT, I ask you?

The setup, what little info we’ve been given thus far, puts me in mind of McDuffie and Cowan’s Hardware, which in turn made me realize that Hardware and Terrific are basically perfect rivals. Brilliant and idealistic vs Brilliant and gruff? Easy conflict right there. Wallace teases a surprise cameo in issue one, and it’s probably Steel, but Hardware would be fun, too.

Not to mention their approaches to technology. Holt always struck me as a soft, sensitive dude–he can speak to electronics and finesse his way to innovation. He’s got a subtle touch, like a three pointer with half a second left, nothing but net. Hardware is rougher, with armor that looks cobbled together and is clearly a weapon. You turn the corner and run into Hardware and you aren’t even scared. You’re in awe, and then you’re scared when you realize exactly how many different ways he has to kill you. Hardware is that slam dunk that ends the game and posterizes somebody for eternity.

Like, basically, after you and your crew go up against Hardware, your grandkids would come at you like “I saw that picture of the time you got away from Hardware, granddad, and that’s what you call winning?”

“I’d hate to see what you call losing.”

Mr Terrific looks good, though. DC just needs to tighten up its PR game.

Merry Christmas, you filthy animals. Buy King City.

Another reason why King City is so vibrant is that it’s just full to bursting with content. This panel is simple–Joe walks up a stairwell past some goons and into a hideout. It’s the sort of panel where you don’t have to do a lot. Just show some stairs, some goons, and bam, done. Instead, though, Graham loads it with information. Tons of graffiti, characters with real personality and style, the couple making out over in the corner… it’s a panel that your eye should sprint past, but it’s got so much to it that you have to pay attention.

Sittin’ in the mornin’ sun, I’ll be sittin’ when the evenin’ come
created: Oh yes, we’re still going strong with this Digital December ish on CA.

–DC Comics! IDW launching something new! Marvel Comics and their vault! I also contributed #s 7 and 4 to the Best of the Year over there. King City and The Outfit, of course. Who loves you, baby?

-Anyone notice which question almost everyone skipped? Pay attention. There will be a quiz, and after the quiz comes beatings.

-Over at TFO’s Best Music countdown, I chipped in number 14 (Gorillaz, “Stylo”), definitely one of my favorites this year. I’ve got another song coming and I’m really happy with how that review turned out, plus a bigger piece that I’m collabing with somebody on. Yes.

Watching the ships roll in
consumed: I’m about to consume a bunch of burgers, hot dogs, corn on the cob, and steaks, but I gotta cook them first, right? So pardon if these are short. I’ve got 4th of July BBQ for Christmas Eve Eve Eve to get to.

-Warren Ellis’s Supergod: Sucks, manages to combine several of Ellis’s worst tics into one terrible, poorly paced, and clunky story.

-I played some more Persona 4. I’m back burnering it for a couple months, though, since I think I’m close to the end.

–Boardwalk Empire is good!

-Newsarama’s poll probably should’ve been better thought out.

-Paul Cornell and Gail Simone have both done some pretty net-pleasing things lately. Using “mansplaining” like that’s a word people should say out loud, getting revenge for Ryan Choi. Ehhh. I’m not down with all the pandering. Just do good stories, that’ll please us plenty. Those of us that aren’t insane, anyway. Cheap pop is just that, so don’t be that guy.

-I listened to a lot of Dungeon Family apparently.

-New music and books are on pause while I work this Digital December thing, not counting new Rock Band songs for extracurricular activities. Plus, next week, Amazon should have some crazy music deals for me to indulge in, so I don’t need to be buying new stuff anyway.

-With that said, I bought the new Ghostface for five bucks and reread Darwyn Cooke’s The Outfit and Graham’s King City (three or four times on that last one, actually).

-Marty’s review of Gil Scott-Heron’s new album is great.

-Spurgeon has interviewed Matt Seneca and Joe Casey. These are always worth a read.

-Dirk Deppey has been laid off from TCJ, and he was kind enough to mention us in his outgoing post. I really do appreciate that, because when I was first getting into blogging, it was Dirk and Tom and Graeme and Heidi who I learned the most from. Curious to see what he does after taking a couple weeks off.

-These burgers ain’t gonna grill themselves, so let me see what I can do to wrap this up real quick…

-[Generic dismissive thought about Marvel’s upcoming Fear Itself event]

-[Clarification that I love Stuart Immonen and that I hope it makes him eleventy million bucks]

-[But on the real, you’re sick if you think I’m buying a seven part event at four bones a pop]

-[CEOutro]

And then I watch ’em roll away again, yeah
David: Batman, Inc. 2, Hellblazer 274
Esther: Batman/Superman #79, Batman Incorporated #2 Possible: Batman Annual #28, Green Lantern: Larfleeze Christmas Special
Gavin: Azrael 15, Batman Incorporated 2, Green Lantern Corps 55, Green Lantern Larfleeze Christmas Special 1, Justice League Generation Lost 16, Chaos War Dead Avengers 2, Deadpool 30, Deadpool Pulp 4, Incredible Hulks 619, Namor First Mutant 5, Punisher In Blood 2, Secret Avengers 8, What If Dark Reign, Incorruptible 13

A story can’t just maintain one tone and expect that to be fulfilling. Switching things up, introducing conflict, telling jokes… good stories are versatile. I like that Graham can drop a quick little punch of sadness into a book like this, which isn’t necessarily a mopey work. It adds to the overall realism of the work, where the characters all have traits that we recognize in ourselves or our friends. Everybody knows what a big dollop of despair dropped into the middle of your day feels like, right?

When you pick up King City, you’re getting a comic that’s been stuffed with content. Every single page features some fresh joke or great action. And the back cover? Same thing.