Alright, by now, everyone must have heard about DC’s “Little-Comic-That-Could,” known as Animal Man. This off-brand 3rd-rate Superhero has found new success in DC’s relaunch. A lot of people, including myself, were very surprised by how well it performed. Personally, I loved the story and the art style, and I’d recommend it to any horror fan who is looking to get into books about “capes.” And that’s the thing. With most of the New DC, it would appear that the majority of the stories skew towards and older “mature” audience. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it makes things a little tougher to break newer and younger readers into the DC mix. But I’m not here to complain about that. After all, there really is something for everyone in this launch… But let’s get back to my point. Animal Man is a great horror story .

As you readers may or may not know, I’m a huge horror fan, but it’s a bit difficult to get that fix in the comics department. And sure, one might say that I’m just not looking hard enough, but at the same time, all horror isn’t created equal. There are some really bad ones out there… I used to work for a few video rental chains, and comics and movies are a lot alike in many ways. And when it comes to horror, they’re almost identical. I used to stock so much garbage back at those rental stores… And I’m not saying that every low-budget horror flick is garbage, but a lot of them tend to be. And the problem isn’t the budget, so much as it is the focus. Likewise, with horror comics, a book could be drawn very well, but it could lack the substance of a decent story… Or it could be a great story, but the art could be committing criminal acts on your eyes, which totally takes you out of the story. And sometimes, it’s just not good. But with Animal Man… Things are different.

For starters, one of the few but consistent complaints that I’ve heard about the series is that folks don’t like the “muted” art direction that artist, Travel Foreman, has chosen to use for the comic. And hey, it might not be your cup of tea, but for the nature of the story, I think it works wonders for setting the tone. For example, in the first issue, our hero Animal Man (Buddy Baker), settles a hostage situation after not having used his powers for heroics for a while. When the dust settles, we find that his eyes are now crying blood. Now, there’s no real way to make crying blood look classy, but when compared to other attempts at showing this effect, Foreman’s art style certainly makes the scene unsettling. Other shining examples include the dream sequence near the end of issue #1 as well as the exploding hippopotamus that birth asymmetric horrors that eat a few dudes in issue #2, not to mention the undead animal pets. But that’s just the art, what about the story?

It’s pretty cool. And yeah, I know that’s very lazy of me, but so far, I have nothing bad to say about Jeff Lemire’s writing on this book, and I hope that it remains that way. I didn’t particularly care for his run on Superboy, and I just can’t get into Sweet Tooth. But with Animal Man? The story focus is very tight on Buddy and his family. There hasn’t really been a lot of superheroics in the first 2 issues, and that’s fine, because at the very least, Lemire has me caring about all the featured characters in this book. And I felt bad for the minor characters that have died, something that I can’t really say for any of the other minor characters that have died in this relaunch… Except for maybe that dude in Birds of Prey #1. Anyway, the writing isn’t something that I feel I could explain in less than a few paragraphs, so I’m not going to attempt. Just know that it clicks with the horror side of my brain, and that’s all that really matters. As of writing this, I know that we still have a few 1st printing #1s in the store… Probably the only store in the St. Louis area… So come on down and check it out, and if you don’t like it, I’m sorry, but if you do, pick up #2.

-Fleet

In recent years, DC has done a pretty fantastic job of releasing their inventory of Jack Kirby comics in nicely produced and fairly affordable (especially when compared to their Archives line) hardcovers. With a catalog as expansive as Kirby’s “Fourth World” work to his issues of the “Losers” to Joe Simon & Jack Kirby’s 1940s collaborations on “Sandman” all in omnibus reprints, Kirby’s apocalyptic adventure series “Kamandi: The Last Boy On Earth” stood out as a glaring omission. Recently, though, the first volume of an omnibus reprinting of the classic series finally has been released.

Here’s the first page of “Kamandi” #1 via the Jack Kirby Museum.

According to a Comics Urban Legends Revealed article, Kirby created “Kamandi” when then-publisher of DC Carmine Infantino asked him to create a title like the movie series “Planet of the Apes.” Kirby’s series of tales featuring a lone boy wandering a ruined landscape dominated by a wide range of animal men certainly certainly fits the bill. He was able to take that derivative premise and use it to create some of the most exciting comics of his career. In part, some of Kirby’s success with the series ability to be as flexible as his imagination. Kamandi was a comic where Kirby could have biker gangs, UFOs, and Tiger Princes all share the same pages. It felt like no idea was too big or too weird for it. Factor in how Kamandi’s story was very much a quintessential apocalyptic road trip story that constantly moved forward to new locales just as Kirby constantly pushed the plot of the story to unpredictable places. I can’t think of a 1970s Kirby work better suited for the restless style of his comics from the decade.

“Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth” is a comic as influential on mainstream comics as it is on the world of alt-comix work like adventure stories of guys like Brian Ralph and Kazimir Strzepek. Anyone with an interest in Kirby’s work or wasteland adventure should check the omnibus out.

-Nick

The hour is late and my companion bottle is dangerously low — let’s dispense with preamble and get right to the comics.

Alpha Flight number 5 makes me question what I’m doing buying this book. This seems to be the norm, however; every other issue reads sorta “meh,” and then the next issue picks up the pace or at least makes more sense to me. Admittedly, some of my confusion arises from the fact that I haven’t been reading any of the Fear Itself books except this one and Herc, so I’m probably missing key developments. In this issue, Puck calls in a favor from his old pal, the Taskmaster, to get him to help train all the Canadian intellectuals Alpha Flight busted out of the re-education camps last month. Train them to do what, you ask? Oh, just to be a powered-armor wearing army that will overthrown the current fascist government of Canada, that’s all. There’s a lot of far-fetched stuff in this one, but you know that, you read the previous sentence. I think I could tolerate the outré turns (Canadian fascists, as if) if there was more forward movement in the characters. For example, we’re almost 20 years past when Northstar came out as gay, and yet all he’s been allowed to do so far is be the arrogant, prickly gay guy. His sister, Aurora, is still battling her various split-personalities, just like it’s 1992 again. Is there nothing else we can do with these characters? Marina’s gone all Hot Topic, Sasquatch is losing his mind, Snowbird’s finally stable emotionally and mentally and Guardian has temporarily lost his wife to extreme craziness — everybody except the twins has moved into new territory. Ah, well. If the pattern holds, I’m really going to like next month’s book.

Demon Knights 2 is a book I didn’t really like last month, despite being a fan of the Demon and also harboring a fondness for the whole swords and sorcery deal. Paul Cornell and Diogenes Neves have our Demon Knights fighting some dinosaurs in a small village while Morgan Le Fey and Mordred try to conquer the world, an effort that the Demon seems committed to obstructing. I admit, issue 2 is a marked improvement. We get the names of all the characters, the Demon gets in a rhyme and Vandal Savage kills and eats a dinosaur (!). There are a couple plot holes here and there, but there’s plenty of action and a stronger sense of who these characters are and why I should care about them. While not great, this is a solid B comic book. I don’t know that DC had to hit the reset button just to create more B comics, but after the thud of last month’s issues, I’ll take the improvements wherever I find ‘em.

Kull: The Cat and the Skull 1 starts a new miniseries for my favorite Robert E. Howard character, with David Lapham and Gabriel Guzman’s adaptation of REH’s short story, “Delcardes’ Cat.” Lapham’s made some structural changes to the story for the sake of bringing more action to it — it’s a weird one, about a cat who talks and tells the future and then bewitches Kull with its prophesying — which I’m all right with in theory. Kull stories are often heavy on atmosphere and low on action, so bumping up the fight quotient is a good idea for a miniseries. And Guzman does a fine job bringing the atmosphere; I really like his depiction of Kull and the great city of Valusia, and his women ain’t bad either. This one’s off to a flying start.

Elric: The Balance Lost 4 seems to be losing its altitude as the series goes on. Chris Roberson’s story brings together four of Michael Moorcock’s iconic fantasy characters (Corum, Hawkmoon, von Bek and Elric), but unfortunately they’re still not actually together, even after four issues — and that’s the problem. Every time you turn the page, you’re jumping into another parallel story centered on one of the four, but the same basic series of events is happening on each page. I get what Roberson’s going for, that these events are playing out simultaneously across the Multiverse, but as a reading experience the entire series has thus far felt like a little kid telling a story, with each turn of the page bringing a new “and then …”. This gives you no time to latch on to any of these guys, effectively keeping you at arm’s length, and I say that as someone who’s read the entirety of these four characters’ published series. The good news is that by the end of this issue, the group has become two sets of two characters fighting evil together, so we’re halfway to some sort of convocation. Let’s hope it doesn’t take four more issues to consecrate this union.

FF 10, however, feels like a return to the Fantastic Four of last year. Jonathan Hickman and Barry Kitson have the old gang coming back together, as Reed returns home in the aftermath of last issue’s epic battle/collapse of all Sue’s hard-won alliances, one of the Evil Reeds heads to Latveria with his prisoner, Victor von Doom, and Spider-Man and Thing return to Avengers Mansion to plot the next move. Hickman plays to his strengths here, finally returning to depicting the relationships of Marvel’s first family and how they shape each character. The second-best part of this book is an extended scene between Reed and Sue in which Sue gently chides Reed for making some dumb decisions in the past few months (assembling a team of supervillian geniuses to do his thinking, headquartering them in the family home, etc.) even as she leads him in the right direction — it’s a married woman trick, don’t try to figure it out if you’re a man, just nod your head and agree, as Reed does here. This is the sort of stuff Hickman does well, and it’s nice to have the soul of the book back as the focus. The first best thing about this issue is, of course, Benjamin J. Grimm making the decision to return to the fold so that he can go about the very important business of pounding some bad guys. I’ve lost track of how many months its been since the Thing has engaged in Clobbering Time in his own book, so this is long overdue as far as I’m concerned. I’m primed to see Ben pointed at a problem that can only be solved with his rocky fists of justice — let’s get this done next month. First Evil Reed, then Doom, ok?

Oh, Amazing Spider-Man 671: Your cover is fanboy pandering of the basest sort, but your insides are the stuff of legend. Dan Slott apparently looked back on the past year of this book and thought to himself, “This has been a pretty good run. You know what would make it better? If I built and detonated a huge bomb of ‘WHAT?’ in the middle of this, and then drowned the whole thing in awesome sauce.” As Peter Parker fights to stop the Jackal from contaminating the entire country with the Spider Virus, the team at Horizon Labs help Reed Richards reverse-engineer a cure for the disease. Slott’s WHAT-bomb comes in the form of finally revealing who the top-secret researcher is in Horizon’s Lab Six — I never would have guessed the answer in six million weeks. The awesome sauce arrives when Reed and Horizon come up with a proven cure, and inadvertently undo something major that happened earlier in Pete’s life — no, not the One More Day thing. This book — THIS BOOK is the reason we all buy comics. Superheroes come in many shapes and sizes, but Dan Slott only writes in one size: Extra-large, gigante fun size.

Northlanders 45 — come on, you know the drill by now. I love Northlanders. Issue 45 features evocative art by Declan Shalvey and the standard, high-quality writing of Brian Wood. There are but five issues left of this series, so there’s little point in telling you how great it is, how distinctive Wood’s characters are or how masterfully he builds a tale from historical fact (the Christian conversion of Iceland) and makes it a powerful work of fiction. Northlanders is the best comic going, but it’s almost gone. I remove it from contention because everything is second place at best compared to this.

So there you have it. Amazing Spider-Man and its ever-unfolding glory is the best thing I read this week that isn’t Northlanders. Long may Dan Slott reign.

-Paul

I recently got a chance to read Adrian Tomine’s “Scenes From an Impending Marriage” and found myself enjoying it more than any other Tomine work to date. A big part of that was the more loosely drawn art in the book. I found the pages coming alive in a way not present in his previous cartooning efforts. I was fond of how elements of Tomine’s normal art style met with these looser qualities as well as nods to elements of cartooning history. When I finished it, I found myself wanting to see more work by Tomine in this vein. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw preview pages for the latest “Optic Nerve” from Drawn & Quarterly presenting similar work.

“Optic Nerve” #12 features two stories. The first, “Hortisculpture,” really embraces this shift in drawing style. The issue’s second tale, “Amber Sweet,” provides much more of a bridge between the style of “Scenes From an Impending Marriage” and his previous work. I found both styles to be strong, though I found myself enjoying the visuals in “Hortisculpture” a bit more. Both stories see Tomine making formalistic experiments. “Hortisculpture” sees Tomine play with the formats of comic strips. Most of the story is comprised of four panel vignettes (with the aid of full page segments every seventh segment) that tie together into a narrative. In “Amber Sweet,” his experimenting doesn’t follow such rigid constraints. In face, the story sees him loosing up a bit as he shifts away a bit from his near-religious dedication to the grid.

Another different aspect of these stories art compared to previous “Optic Nerve” work is both tales including color. The entire tale of “Amber Sweet” is in color and as result sees some stunning results (like the preview page above from BoingBoing’s three page preview of the comic). The coloring in “Hortisculpture” is a bit more dedicated to flat color but looks equally great. “Hortisculpture,” however, limits its color to only its page length segments leaving the rest of the story in black and white. Some solid gray tones and line-based shaping fill out the line work of the stories remaining pages.

If you have noticed, I am three paragraphs in to talking about “Optic Nerve” #12 and I have said very little about the writing. That is mainly due to the artwork strongly outshining the narratives. “Hortisculpture” sees Tomine not only operating outside his artistic comfort zone but sees him telling a story different than much of his previous work. The melancholy story features a middle-aged protagonist chasing a hair-brained scheme of creating art that marries landscaping and sculpture. The comic’s quirky but downbeat story (as well as its formalistic constraints) can’t help but draw comparisons to the work being generated by some of Tomine’s peers like Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, and Seth. While these other cartoonists have been able to find a distinct voices playing similar elements, Tomine’s fail to capture anything as clearly his own.

“Hortisculpture” and its companion “Amber Sweet” both deal with social isolation, but Tomine seems more comfortable with the trappings of “Amber Sweet.” In the latter, Tomine tells a story of a young woman struggling to deal with how looking similar to the titular porn star “Amber Sweet” effects her socially (especially with men). The comic’s twenty-something lead, the more mundane catalyst for the isolation, and the more urban California setting all seem much more in his wheel house. Even with this more traditionally Tomine story, it still feels a little flat.

I just realized that I haven’t said a word about my favorite part of “Optic Nerve” #12. In its last two pages, Tomine produces a mostly autobiographical comic about continuing to release issues of “Optic Nerve” rather than switching to just making graphic novels. It is filled with the liveliness similar to “Scenes From an Impending Marriage” as well as art resembling that release. It reminds me that I am, at the very least, enjoying that Tomine is experimenting with what kind of comics he wants to make at this stage in his career.

-Nick

A few weeks ago, the fourth and final issue of of “Criminal:The Last of the Innocent” hit stands ending my favorite “Criminal” serial to date. Amazingly, the killer tale is crafted out of homages to both teen comics like Archie and 1950’s EC crime comics. With that unlikely combination creators Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips created what is arguably their seediest story yet.

When I went into the latest storyline, there wasn’t much I knew about it. As it’s murderous plot unraveled itself through its greed and sex-filled pages, I found myself completely lost in its narrative. “Last of the Innocent” is a few shades darker than I typically like my crime tales. Brubaker and Phillips, however, seem to hook me the best when they are at their most unseemly as previously proven with the “Criminal” arc “Bad Night.” Part of that enjoyment is seeing just how far into darkness they will drag the story and the unexpected turns that journey will take. Another, though, is Brubaker’s ability to inject humanizing elements into the stories. As vile as things get between each issue’s covers, “Last of the Innocent” possesses a feeling of nostalgia and a desire redemptive change that are hard to resist connecting with.

One of the keys to capturing that longing for days gone by is Phillips’s art. As much as the series feels like one only Brubaker could write, it equally feels like one only Phillips could draw. “Last of the Innocents” is the series that proves that sentiment. The story asks Phillips to push his art in new stylistic directions and he delivers. His work on the flashback sequences not only convey a feeling of innocence and nostalgia felt by the narrator but also generate a bit of those feelings in the reader as well.

It is great to see comics creators continue to push themselves like Brubaker and Phillips have with “Criminal: The Last of the Innocent.” The end results shows why the comic one of the best being serialized today. New readers and old fans of the series should definitely take the time to track down the issues or grab it in trade when it is released later this year.

-Nick

Welcome to October and the second month of DC’s New 52. It’s time to officially stop calling DC’s mishmash relaunch “new”; the bloom is off that rose, and the comics are just DC’s regular line now. And man, a whole ocean of words were written about DC’s newfound love for sex/nudity/Starfire last month — Laura Hudson over at Comic Alliance pretty much set the highwater mark for intelligent comic book criticism with her column on the issue — but there’s something on that same topic that still bothers me. And that something is Dejah Thoris.

Dejah Thoris 7 is the second chapter in the new Pirates of Mars story arc, and like the preceding six issues, this one balances exposition and action — and a whole lot of cheesecake. I would count myself a fan of all three of Dynamite’s Mars titles, but after reading Hudson’s impassioned and clearly-reasoned explanation of what’s wrong with the sexualization of women in comic books (bottom line: It exists at all, and it’s way too pervasive), I’m wondering if I should like this book so much. Hudson makes the point that much of the art in DC’s big offenders (Red Hood and Catwoman) is about pleasing the male viewer in a rather prurient fashion; it’s not about characterization or the character being a sex-positive woman or even story related. It’s just wish fulfillment for adolescent males. Dejah spends some tied up, and she still wears her double nickels and a hanky outfit, and there are some questionable poses in this.

However, her dinky outfit is more than what her creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs, envisioned her wearing, and on Barsoom what’s good for the goose is good for the gander: All the dudes are buff musclemen who wear Speedos and jewelry and that’s about it. More importantly, Dejah really is the hero of her own book, regularly saving men through her courage, intelligence and skill with a blade. I’d like to believe the clothing equality and Dejah’s own heroic nature makes this book not oppressive — but I don’t know that I’m the one to determine that. I think it’s a solid comic, always entertaining and true to the best parts of the original source material, and I don’t feel like a creep for reading it. I hope that’s the right answer.

Speaking of DC (we were, like 8.000 words ago), Static Shock 2 by Scott McDaniel and John Rozum builds greatly on the groundwork laid in the first issue. Static continues his fight against Virule (a sorta alien-looking assassin) and the Slate Gang (a bunch of teens on Tron’s LightCycles), he exhibits more of his trademark intelligence and problem solving and we discover that in his civilian life, he has a sister who has an exact duplicate of herself that lives with the family because no one can determine which one is the genuine article and which one is the copy. Honestly, I liked the action and Static’s whole super-smart internal monologue, but the bit with his sister hooked me in a huge way. I’m dying to find out more about that whole deal. I don’t want to jinx this, so let’s just say I’m starting to think Static is going to appear regularly in these reviews.

I’m totally throwing caution to the wind with OMAC, however; Keith Giffen and Dan Didio’s take on Jack Kirby’s classic sci-fi super soldier is one of the best new books of the year. Much of my enthusiasm is rooted in Giffen’s art, which is the Kirbyiest looking his work has ever been — I approve whole-heartedly. This issue sees Kevin Kho learning more about what OMAC is (a computer virus that allows him to transform into the super-powerful blue guy with mohawk also called OMAC), who Brother Eye is (a more-than-slightly-menacing AI that infected him with the OMAC and is now using him to further its own ends) and what OMAC stands for (One Machine Attack Construct). This things a thrill ride from start to finish, delving into conspiracy theory, having OMAC brawl with Amazing Man and delivering a surprise on the last page. This is exactly what I want from an OMAC comic. I’m shocked and thrilled that I like this so much.

Turok Son of Stone 4 is also a great comic, but nobody’s reading it. And after this month you can’t read it, because it’s been canceled like all of the other Gold Key revival books Dark Horse was publishing. Ah, well. It was fun while it lasted.

Fun and then some also describes Snarked 1, written and drawn by Roger Langridge. If you missed the 0 issue of this, don’t worry. Everything you need to know is contained within this book. The King is missing, his children Princess Scarlett and Prince Rusty are determined to find him, the King’s advisors are determined to steal power for themselves, and Wilberforce J. Walrus and his pal McDunk are bound and determined to just steal whatever gets them by. Langridge draws his inspiration from the works of Lewis Carrol (there’s a certain smiling cat who appears this month) as well as the great comedians of yore (W.J. Walrus bears more than a passing resemblance to W.C. Fields, and Dudley Moore & Peter Cook make a cameo as well). There’s more than a whiff of classic E.C. Segar to Langridge’s art; Langridge has a more cartoony style, but the resemblance is unmistakable. So to sum up, Snarked is a witty, funny, smart adventure story in the style of the Golden Age of Sunday funnies — I don’t know that it gets much better than that.

And yet, I find myself shocked to admit that OMAC is the best thing I read this week. It pays homage to Kirby’s original creation while charting its own course, and it really and truly is a fantastic superhero comic book — and no women are denigrated within its pages.

-Paul

Earlier this week I wrote a mid-size essay concerning how I feel so far about DC’s “New 52.” I re-read it the next morning, cleaned it up a bit and then threw the whole thing away. There were two reasons for this. One, everybody with an internet connection and a vested interest in comic books is writing about the New 52 — there’s not much that hasn’t been said. Two, I wrote a lot of argle-bargle and fooferall, but at the very end of the piece I finally stumbled across what it was I really feel about this whole deal, and it was concise enough to fit in a few sentences, not a big honking post.

Dear DC: I don’t care how great your sales are right now — anybody can sell issue number one. But if you don’t have life-altering stories in the pipeline for later this year — I’m talking specifically about comics on the order of the O’Neil/Adams Green Lantern & Green Arrow, Miller’s Dark Knight Returns or Moore’s Swamp Thing — your current huge audience is going to evaporate by issue seven. Because nothing I’ve seen so far has justified the “new, different, better” stuff that’s being thrown around. It’s all the same stuff, with new creative teams moving the pieces around to their liking.

Case in point is the only New 52 I bought this week, Legion of Super-Heroes 1 by Paul Levitz and Francis Portela. After years of missing the boat on LSH, I finally caught on in a big way in 2011. How does the Legion fare in their brand new beginning? Well, the surviving Legion members are still licking their wounds from their battle with Saturn Queen, the team is still split by time and space, Mon-El is still trying to get everything under control while simultaneously adjusting to the loss of his Green Lantern Power Ring, Brainiac still wants to wrest the leadership away from Mon-El — this is issue 17 of the series they just cancelled as far as I can tell. Levitz wrote the previous 16, and this just continues many of the plots he already had in motion. This is great news for me — I was really enjoying Levitz’s run — but it proves that there was no reason to pull the plug on the prior incarnation other than it’s more fun to market the New 52 than the New 51 plus LSH. With that in mind, this is the best of the New 52 as far as I’m concerned, because Levitz is focused on telling a story, not wiping the slate and starting over with LSH: Year One in the Year 3000.

Another number one this week? Game of Thrones 1, by Daniel Abraham and Tommy Patterson (Dynamite Entertainment). I’ve read the book but haven’t seen the show, your honor, so I feel qualified to say I didn’t picture some of these scenes the way Patterson drew them. Maybe this is more like the HBO show, but I thought the lands beyond the Wall weren’t primal or grim enough and Eddard Stark’s sword, Ice, is in no way representative of what a greatsword should look like — too short, too puny. Another cavil is with the pacing; a lot of ground is covered in this one issue, so some elements seem glossed over, or worse, missing entirely. I want to like this — a rising fantasy tide carries all fantasy comic books, you know — but I fear the density of George R.R. Martin’s prose is going to be gutted by the austerity of 22 pages plus ads.

The Ape/Human war that’s been brewing through five issues of Planet of the Apes (Boom) finally blossoms into full-on war between the species. The humans of Skin Town have split up to attack on several fronts, and hoo-boy, pregnant lady Sullivan procured a Rocket Propelled Grenade Launcher from Brother Kale. Following Chekhov’s law, that RPG goes off before the end, and it means bad news for the humans. We also get the backstory on the slaughter at Delphi, when the Apes really gave it to the humans, as seen through the eyes of Bako, who was there. Daryl Gregory has plotted a mean and taut little story that continues to ratchet up the tension these past six months, and Carlos Magno’s art serves that story well. POTA has turned into one of the better sci-fi action comics out there, and it’s stayed on-schedule. If you’re a fan of post-apocalyptic dystopian fantasy — and as an American, it’s your birthright — POTA is definitely worth checking out. This one just keeps ascending.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is also on the rise. In issue 2 we discover more about Raphael’s mysterious absence from the rest of the guys (touch of amnesia, doesn’t remember ‘em) we get another sizable chunk of the Turtles’ origin and we witness Raphael and Casey Jones meeting for the first time. That’s the best part of this book for me. Their original meeting was a brief “good guys fight one another because they misunderstand each other’s intentions and then team up,” while this is a more heroic first encounter; Raph saves Casey from a beating, then Casey reveals his masked vigilante persona to Raph and the two make plans to go beat up bad guys. Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz and Dan Duncan have done a fine job recapturing the spirit of the original B&W series while mixing things up enough that I’m not certain what’s going to happen next. Surprise (and relieved) hit of the summer for me; this could have been depressing and terrible, but instead it’s fun and exciting.

Also surprising this month is Conan: Road of Kings 8. Last month I was whining about Roy Thomas saddling Conan with a child (not his, don’t worry) and lamenting how many ways that could turn to crap. This month, it didn’t turn to crap. Thomas has the little ankle-biter be more help than hindrance to the Cimmerian (look at her distract those guards!), which is kinda stupid and unbelievable — most kids under 9 don’t talk this easily to adults or spontaneously demonstrate a gift for lateral thinking that wasn’t present last month — but, well, this was at least a good read. I’ll accept a child generating an impromptu and successful strategy for getting past guards if you give me enough Conan slashing and head-crushing giant insects in a catacomb. Mike Hawthorne’s art however, ehhhhh, it’s not growing on me, but I can successfully ignore it in favor of the words.

Tiny Titans 44 is thankfully unaffected by the New 52 stuff, because it’s a DC Kids book. Beast Boy is terrified of the crossing guards, who happen to be the members of the Doom Patrol. There are some good laughs in this, but it seemed a little one dimensional. I know, griping about kids comics not having enough symbolism and deeper meanings is petty and stupid, but Tiny Titans usually has a couple of jokes that are there just for adults — I couldn’t find ‘em this issue. That’s OK, they can’t all be the issue in which Baltazar and Franco poop all over Red Hood (metaphorically).

The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror 17 is maybe the scariest comic I’ve read this year. Zander Cannon and Gene Ha craft an homage to the silent vampire film Nosferatu that is visually beautiful and delightfully eerie, and then Jim Woodring delivers a throwback EC Comics-style horror story that is stomach-churning and quite high-brow. My only complaint is that neither story is shticky enough to really feel like a Simpsons’ story, but they’re both fantastic examples of two different approaches to horror comics. This is a $5 comic (!), but it’s worth it.

Dark Horse Presents 4 costs $8, and it’s also worth it. There’s a terrific Evan Dorkin & Jill Thompson Beasts of Burden story in here, Carla Speed McNeil continues the very good Finder series, Chuck Parker and Sanford Greene get down to giant octopus fighting in their new chapter of Rotten Apple, and Steve Niles and Christopher Mitten give us a new serial to enjoy, Criminal Macabre, which is about a hardboiled detective who’s just recently risen from the grave. How hard-boiled is apparent when he brawls with his undead mentor and destroys his office, just because he likes a dust-up. DHP has gone monthly as of this issue, which is a blessing and a curse. If you want to keep up with it that’s $100 a year just for one book; however, the book in question is the best anthology going in terms of stories, variety and packaging, so the $8 seems like a deal.

Northlanders 44 is less of a steal and more of a gift. Brian Wood continues Northlander’s victory lap with this third installment of the tale of Iceland’s settling by violent Norwegian immigrants. Ulf Hauksson continues to consolidate his power — that means slaughtering anyone in Iceland who looks at him askance, particularly if they’re affiliated with the Belgarsson family — and trying to beget an heir on his wife, Una, recently freed from slavery. Like every issue of Northlanders to date, this one depicts hard people doing terrible things to each other for the right reasons and for the wrong reasons. And then in the middle, Brian Wood sets a scene between Ulf and Una that makes you question whether Ulf is sociopathic by nature, or if the price of an ambitious man’s dreams is simply always paid in blood. While you’re pondering that, Ulf lays bare his heart to his wife and reveals that he may indeed be insane with bloodlust, but he’s also a romantic and a dreamer, as well as being revenge’s number one fan in the whole world. No other comic on the racks attempts to depict the interior life of its characters — or to humanize them, for good or ill — as Northlanders well as does. I’m going to miss this book so hard in six months.

Yeah, Northlanders is the best thing I read this week. I toyed with the idea of removing it from contention since it’s dead in the water (and because it’s always the best thing I read, except for that one time), but as long as Northlanders exists I’ll chose to celebrate it.

-Paul