Marvel Digital Originals Are Hard to Keep Track Of

Various publishers have smartly created digital comics to tie into popular movies or video games. In addition to providing obvious starting points (sometimes a huge problem for superheroes with decades of history and multiple titles), they also mean a better chance of getting a hit when someone is randomly...

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Marvel Promotes Creators But Forgets to Name Them

It’s always a great thing when a corporate comic company remembers that its works are built on the effort of talented creators. So I was impressed to see Marvel announce that they would “celebrate some of the most influential comic creators in Marvel history with a line of Marvel’s Greatest Creators...

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Justice League vs. The Fatal Five

I had high hopes for the newest DC original animated movie, Justice League vs. The Fatal Five. It has two of my favorite DC things: the Legion of Super-Heroes and Jessica Cruz, Green Lantern. Plus, it had an intriguing theme, that of mental health and struggling with invisible illness. (The studio provided...

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Angel Returns in a Surprise Release

Boom! Studios, trying to make the most of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer license, released the first issue of an Angel series. Only they did it in unusual fashion. They announced Angel #0 on April 9 for release April 17 as the beginning of a new monthly series. Since most comics in the direct market system...

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Alice: From Dream to Dream

Giulio Macaione makes his US comic debut in Alice: From Dream to Dream, a beautifully illustrated graphic novel about forced empathy, having to learn more about others whether we want to or not. That’s a skill that needs more emphasis these days. Alice and her family have moved back to Cincinnati from...

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Science Comics: Wild Weather: Storms, Meteorology, and Climate

The local news team is preparing viewers for a coming snow storm. When meteorologist Storming’ Norman gets fed up with the vapid host and his “joke” about cold weather disproving global warming, he lets loose a ton of knowledge about how weather works. Science Comics: Wild Weather: Storms, Meteorology,...

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Giant Days #48-49

Giant Days remains one of my favorite ongoing comics, and these days, that’s bittersweet. I want Susan, Esther, and Daisy to keep having college adventures for a long, long time, but time won’t stand still for them. Creator John Allison has them growing up and preparing to venture into the “real world”...

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The Art of the Graphic Memoir: Tell Your Story, Change Your Life

The Art of the Graphic Memoir: Tell Your Story, Change Your Life sets out to be instructional, but the part I found most fascinating was when author Tom Hart talked about the choices he made for his own book, Rosalie Lightning. (Hart has previously written The Sequential Artists Workshop Guide to Creating...

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TCAF a Month Away, With Tons of Guests

It’s spring, so it’s time for TCAF, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, one of the high points of the comic convention season. One of the many things that makes this such a terrific show is that they incorporate mainstream comics, art works, independent releases, international input, and manga, covering...

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Science Comics: The Brain: The Ultimate Thinking Machine

The Science Comics line is a wonderful marker for quality educational comics, and who better to teach about The Brain than a mad scientist? Science Comics: The Brain: The Ultimate Thinking Machine is written by Tory Woollcott and illustrated by Alex Graudins. Fahama is helping her crazily determined...

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Hicotea: A Nightlights Story

Lorena Alvarez has followed up her beautiful Nightlights with this sequel. Hicotea: A Nightlights Story goes with Sandy, the young artist in the first book, on a school field trip. To what’s almost a literal field — they’re in nature, down by the river in the wetlands. There, Sandy has a fantastic journey...

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Ao Haru Ride Volume 4

Now that the series has some longevity to it, we get the dramatic flashback. The premise of the series is that Futaba and Kou were interested, then separated, then reunited. When they meet again, Kou behaves differently, and in Io Sakisaka’s Ao Haru Ride volume 4, we finally find out why. Family flashbacks...

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Kahlo’s Koalas

Kahlo’s Koalas by Grace Helmer is a fun introduction to some artists with popular styles able to be easily evoked. As this small board book counts from one to ten, we see the same number of creatures in two-page spreads, from “1 Picasso Panda” to “10 Monet Mice”. Other artists include Matisse, Pollock,...

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Kodansha Announces Much-Anticipated Manga Coming Digitally This Month

Kodansha has a robust digital-first manga program. (They emphasize calling them “digital-first”, instead of “digital-only”, since a few of the more popular titles have later been released in print.) Their newest announcement, of a title coming to their various digital outlets on April 23, stunned me,...

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Aquicorn Cove

Katie O’Neill, author of The Tea Dragon Society, returns with a graphic novel bound to satisfy her audience. Aquicorn Cove has the same beautifully colored images, the same confident, sometimes wordless storytelling, similar relationships with unusual creatures, and a corresponding message about the...

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Sheets

In Sheets, Marjorie is trying to keep the family business, a laundromat, together. Her mother passed away, and Dad has mostly checked out. She has to cope with self-centered customers and a pushy, smarmy neighborhood businessman. Then the ghosts appear. The spirits all look like the classic children’s...

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