Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #59 by Drew Barth

Today’s Double Feature

A month ago I wrote about some of the upcoming comics this year that have me most excited. And to my excitement, one of those just released. Tartarus is a new series from Image by Johnnie Christmas and Jack T. Cole. The duo spin a new universe filled to bursting with technology bordering on magic and a family story built on deception and secrets. The first issue hits all of the marks—new worlds, interesting characters from their first panels, and a story that burns slow over its fifty-five pages. But what is most interesting is the way Christmas and Cole build their story.

The first issue of Tartarus is split in two—one story in the past, one story in the future. Both stories center around either imprisoned Surka or her daughter, Tilde. And this dual family narrative is what makes Tartarus so interesting from the beginning—namely since Tilde doesn’t know her lineage. From the first page, Surka is a figure spoken of as a hushed legend. She’s the long shadow cast over the Baxnan empire whose crimes have landed her in a deep, dank pit on a mining colony’s prison. So of course she escapes from prison in this first story. But it is in this first story that we are introduced to her infant daughter, Tilde, and it is where we see Surka die.

And so begins the second part of Tartarus. Seventeen years later, Tilde is in a Baxnan empire military academy and learns that she was lied to about her parents. As a piece of family intrigue, it’s incredibly interesting since the above-mentioned reveal is the kind of thing saved for the end of the first arc. But here, we know that Tilde is Surka’s daughter, and we know that she has been lied to most of her life. Where will the story go? If you’re a team like Christmas and Cole, you can take this story so much deeper. The questions set up in the first issue (namely how did Tilde end up in an academy for the military that killed her mom?) are the kinds of questions series are built around. And with the abundance of world-building on every page, there’s nearly another series worth of characters and story to to build off of.

I don’t know if this dual story structure will continue. The interplay of past and future allows the reader to start piecing together puzzles that characters don’t know exist and creates a different kind of reading experience, one that isn’t seen all that often in monthly comics.

Get excited. Split the story.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #55 by Drew Barth

We All Live in the Shadow

Do you remember when Marvel comics was headed by someone who wasn’t a stooge for Donald Trump? I remember those years fondly—when I could pick up a Marvel book and not worry about my money going to Ike Perlmutter so he could further grind the VA into the ground.

Those were the years that spawned one of the greatest pieces of superhero fiction from Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen: Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. And it’s easy to say that one series is a great piece of superhero fiction—dozens of great stories exist—but Nextwave was something special and is something we all live in the shadow of. And it’s one of the only series with its own theme song.

Nextwave offers a fairly straight-forward story: five heroes defect from H.A.T.E. (Highest Anti-Terrorist Effort) due to it being funded by the Beyond Corporation—itself the remnants of the terrorist organization S.I.L.E.N.T.—and must continually thwart Beyond’s development of bizarre weapons of mass destruction. Massive damage is done to whatever town or city the heroes are in, many things explode, many more people are punched, there’s a giant gorilla dressed like Wolverine, and every single page is like a new revelation in what superhero comics can be when they forget the 80s happened and obstinate realism wasn’t the end goal for every story.

Nextwave is the kind of story that sees a machine man, a woman who can turn herself into particles, a demon hunter, a drunk with super strength, and a teenager who can blow things up with her mind, and realizes that this is a story that needs explosions and jokes. Sometimes all we want to do is give punching a chance.

But then there’s the moments throughout where Ellis’ penchant for the best character work comes through as well. Almost every character has a moment, even if it’s only two panels, that encompasses who they are as people. The Captain has a moment where his mom hangs his bear by its neck when he was a kid; Aaron Stack is called an asshole by The Celestials; Elsa Bloodstone is thrown into a pit of beasts before she can even walk. They’re small moments bookended by punching and exploding, but they’re the kinds of small moments that can make them feel more rounded.

Nextwave is distilled superhero comics, ninety-nine percent proof. There has been very little before that was like Nextwave,and there’s been almost nothing that has come close to the mood and feel of the story. It’s one of those things that’s tough to describe—it’s comedy without parody, satire without spite. Ellis and Immonen crafted a story that will last long into the next century, and we can never escape its shadow.

Get excited. There’s lots more punching.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #54 by Drew Barth

Reaper of Tears

Kelly Sue DeConnick is one of the best writers of this century. Emma Ríos is one of the best artists of this century. Pretty Deadly: The Rat has recently wrapped, and no other series that has come out that has so thoroughly affected the way in which I engage with monthly comics.

Pretty Deadly: The Rat is the third volume of the Pretty Deadly series, but is the first of planned miniseries that will continue the story forward. I discussed the return of Pretty Deadly after a three year hiatus a few months back and having the entire story laid out before me is an experience that has brought me no shortage of tears. As the story centers on the Fields family in 1930s Hollywood, we meet Clara Fields, granddaughter of Sara Fields from earlier in the series and niece to Frank Fields—a man who is looking for the reason his niece had to die.

As a noir-tinged mystery, Pretty Deadly excels in creating a mood and atmosphere that draws readers and characters alike deeper into its world. But as a story of family and the ways in which people are broken by their own obsessions, DeConnick and Ríos bring us a story fraught with such sadness and hope that it is difficult to walk away without feeling overwhelmed by emotions.

There is a particular way that comics approach storytelling that will always be unique to the medium, namely in many of the modern, independent comics. A series can go on hiatus and return to us after a few years—the feeling of those series returning is like coming home to settle into a warm blanket. The characters and story bring such a comfort to the senses. Even in a story like Pretty Deadly centering on death and revenge, seeing the final image of Ginny in the first issue brought a small swell of tears to my eyes. And that is the power of a good story and good characters—the emotional connections we make that persist even after a story ends. However, Ginny’s story isn’t quite over yet. There are still a few more miniseries planned for the future, and I can only imagine the devastation they will bring.

I predict Pretty Deadly is going to remain as one of the greatest pieces of fiction in this century and maintain as a shining example of what comics can do when words meet pictures. It is mythic and massive with its storytelling, but intimate in characters that you want to get closer to throughout. To read Pretty Deadly is to experience the best comics have to offer.

Get excited. Dry those tears.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #53 by Drew Barth

The End of the End of the World

It’s 2020. The end of the world feels like it’s breathing down our necks. Let’s assuage those feelings by talking about a different end of the world: East of West. I’ve talked about the series early last year. Begun in 2013 by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta, East of West was one of those staple Image series. From its impeccable world-building of an America ruled by an apocalypse cult to its characters built so well they could each head their own solo series, East of West was one of the best series Hickman released in the last decade.

How do you talk about the end of a series that has been building toward the end of the world?

In Hickman and Dragotta’s world, the Four Horsemen walk among the people and one of them has a kid. This creates the main driving force at the core of East of West—three of those horsemen will drag the world, kicking and screaming, into the apocalypse while one wishes to prevent it. Ironically, that horseman is Death. And Death is our main focus throughout the series. The close of the story comes with the death of Death and the end of the apocalypse.

What makes Hickman and Dragotta’s apocalypse story so unique is the lack of the apocalypse. Nigh every leader in this America has been chosen by the Message—a series of texts that prophesied the end of the world—to deliver the apocalypse to their world. But in their efforts to do so, these characters only bring about an end to themselves. The Message is like a textual cancer—infecting, spreading, and decimating everything in its path. But the Message is indiscriminate in its destruction as everything dies around it. Until it is stopped. And it is stopped simply by not following it. Veering from the road map to the end times means that end never comes.

An apocalypse built on the backs of hope is what East of West delivers in its final moments. And its hope is not something brought about by some grand power, but by the people who would have to live out the end times if they had truly arrived. As an ending, it feels especially poignant walking into this new decade, but that feels like what we need from the end of the world—hope. Thousands die over the course of East of West and the world is basically teetering on the brink of complete oblivion, but the idea that it can be brought back, that the teetering doesn’t have to tip over the edge, means they didn’t die for the apocalypse. That idea of hope and change and turning the world around through the efforts of people is what is going to make Hickman and Dragotta’s story so poignant well into the future.

Get excited. Stop the end.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #51 by Drew Barth

Another New Year.

It is another new year. Oh god, it is a new decade. And, as always, there’s new comics to get excited about and a new decade of comics to see come into existence. The comics releasing this year are the ones that might establish just how interesting this new comic decade will become. Is all of this positivity about upcoming books a coping mechanism for the rest of the year? Yes.

Umma’s Table by Yeon-sik Hong—The next graphic novel from the author of Uncomfortably, Happily is a meditation on family and food. After moving to the countryside and learning of his parent’s situation—living in a basement apartment, suffering from illness and alcoholism—Madang’s life is split in half. Pulled between his new life and worrying for his parent’s, Madang frequently remembers the meals of his childhood, notably his mother’s kimchi. Told in a black and white, anthropomorphized style, Hong’s newest story is something that promises a story of heartbreak and home that will resonate well into the next decade.

The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud by Kuniko Tsurita—After over fifty years, the short work of Kuniko Tsurita is finally going to be made available in English. As a collection of short works throughout her life, The Sky is Blue is essential reading that spotlights a creator often overlooked in literary manga circles of the time. Showcasing her work chronologically, readers will be able to see the development and shifts of Tsurita’s work throughout her lifetime.

An Embarrassment of Witches by Sophie Goldstein and Jenn Jordan—A fantasy Bildungsroman that feels hauntingly familiar in its examination of the magical and mundane. Centered around two friends, Rory and Angela, as they navigate the rest of their lives. Goldstein and Jordan craft a fantastic world filled to bursting with color and character that parallels the real world in all its everyday annoyances and anxieties. An Embarrassment of Witches looks like it is going to be one of the most fun books of the next year.

Rascal by Jean-Luc Deglin—We can all enjoy an adorable cat and that is what Rascal promises us. A collection of the original Crapule comics in Spirou magazine, Rascal is naps, scratches, and everything a cat promises in-between. Told in a two-tone style, Deglin is able to capture all of the odd frustrations of cat ownership and the love cat owners still extend to their pets even after all of the bites and blood.

November, Vol. II by Matt Fraction and Elsa Charretier—The second volume of Fraction and Charretier’s graphic novel trilogy, this volume promises a continuation of the mysterious crime story we had talked about previously. Anticipation for this particular graphic novel is high as the first volume set the bar so high, so to see what Fraction and Charretier can accomplish here is already getting me excited to get more of their story.

Tartarus by Johnnie Christmas and Jack T. Cole—From the writer of Excellence and the artist of The Unsoundis a new space epic from Image. Centered on Tilde and her framing as a war criminal due to her mother’s warlord past, this new series is one of the most interesting coming out next year. With a fascinating aesthetic and a plot that draws a reader in just from the synopsis alone, Christmas and Cole have created a new series to really look forward to.

Pulp by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips—How much do I have to say here? It’s Brubaker and Phillips! The team returns with a new graphic novel, this time delving deeper into the past after their previous work on The Fade Out, Pulp centers on a pulp writer in the 30s and the stories he has become drawn into. Anticipation is high, but the quality always matches what Brubaker and Phillips bring us.

The Flapper Queens: Women Cartoonists of the Jazz Age edited by Trina Robbins—There is always an era of comics we are missing, artists unknown to us, and stories that we simply don’t see. Thanks to Trina Robbins, the stories told by the women cartoonists of the 20s are finally available in one, full-color volume for readers to enjoy. From Ethel Hays to Nell Brinkley to Eleanor Schorer, this volume is expansive in its scope and complete in its content. As far as historical compilations go, The Flapper Queens already promises to be one of the best of the year already.

Ghost Writer by Rayco Pulido—Available in English for the first time, Pulido’s noir dark comedy already looks like one of the most interesting, and stylish, graphic novels to release this year. Set in 40s Barcelona, the story revolves around Laia, her husband’s disappearance, and the hypnosis she undergoes to deal with her life suddenly shattering. Pulido’s linework is one of the most immediate things to jump out just from looking at the cover, the cross-hatched shadows especially give off a menacing aura, and only heightens the anticipation for this superb graphic novel.

Cowboy by Rikke Villadsen—The best westerns always have that tinge of the surreal to them, and with Rikke Villadsen’s Cowboy, that surreality goes further than ever before. From flight to fading from reality, Villadsen’s western pays tribute to the spaghetti westerns of old while examining the masculinity that has come to define them. Releasing this March from Fantagraphics, it already looks like it is going to be a full-color splendor that will resonate well into the decade.

Get excited. We’re in the future.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.