Clean Room
Writer Gail Simone
Artist/Colorist Jon Davis-Hunt
DC Comics (Vertigo imprint)

Gail Simone is a familiar creator to North Carolina Comicon fans. Two years ago, she sat on panels to discuss women in comics and the representation of lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender characters. Huge crowds showed up to see her, and her unmistakeable warmth and wit infused even her most pointed critiques of the industry. She has written some of the biggest characters for a variety of publishers, including Deadpool, Batgirl, the Birds Of Prey, Red Sonja, and villain team The Secret Six. So when Alan suggested I review her new horror comic, I kind of stopped listening after her name came up.

This issue is very much a set-up for the main series rather than a story all to itself. After a frightening opening scene involving the traumatic injury of a young girl, the book devotes itself to exploring its main character, Chloe. Chloe attempts suicide after her fiance shoots himself, but when she survives, she decides to dedicate her life to avenging Philip’s death. See, before he went for his gun, he read a bizarre self-help book by Astrid Mueller, charismatic leader of something between a cult and a psychology movement. It’s not quite Scientology, but readers of Going Clear will find plenty of unpleasant reminders. As Chloe jumps a series of hurdles to reach her meeting with Mueller, she develops some startling horrific hallucinations, and these seem connected to a mysterious part of the cult involving the Clean Room.

Readers of Gail Simone’s work are going to love this book, even though it’s unlike anything she’s written before. It’s a marvel of restraint and tone, a seventies-style slow-burn thriller with connections to some of the more frightening quasi-religious excesses of the modern world. Characters are nailed in a page or two, becoming unforgettably distinct, and I am genuinely afraid for Chloe as she prepares to move her vendetta forward. This is going to make a great Halloween treat.

Come on down to Ultimate Comics in Chapel Hill or Raleigh to pick this book up, and make sure you get your tickets to next month’s North Carolina Comicon to see who your next favorite writer’s going to be.

Matt Conner for Ultimate Comics

Paper Girls #1
Writer Brian K. Vaughan
Artist Cliff Chiang
Image Comics, Inc

Pop quiz: without Googling, name a single bad story Brian K. Vaughan has written. It’s going to be impossible. From Runaways to Y: The Last Man to Ex Machina to Saga, this man has a grasp on character, setting, and tone that is unbelievable. When I found out his new ongoing series was going to pair him up with Cliff Chiang (coming to next month’s North Carolina Comic Con!), I knew I was going to love this book, whatever it turned out to be.

And man, was it great.

The story is that Erin is a twelve-year old girl delivering papers the day after Halloween in 1988 Ohio. After a run-in with mean teenage boys, she joins three other female paper delivery kids to finish the route. Two of them get attacked by a few strange figures in dark robes, and by the end of the issue, we have set up a gripping Papergirls-versus-Aliens story.

This isn’t Saga. Nothing is Saga. But man, this may edge Runaways out for second place. The writer loves these characters, each efficiently distinuished in a very small page count. Mac is the chain-smoking foul-mouthed protective leader, KJ is the athletic peacemaker, and Tiff is the smart one into finances and technology. They don’t feel like stereotypes or cookie-cutter team roles, and in one of the main action sequences, Tiff swings KJ’s lacrosse stick, showing that Vaughan refuses to limit his leads to one role apiece. Cliff Chiang’s art gorgeously describes these girls as girls, not adult women drawn a little smaller, and his aliens are pretty darn scary.

I loved this book, plain and simple. Get down to Ultimate Comics in Chapel Hill or Raleigh, grab a copy while there’s any left on the shelves, and get a nice Cliff Chiang autograph on it in six weeks.

Matt Conner for Ultimate Comics

Wild’s End: The Enemy Within #1
Written by Dan Abnett
Illustrated and Lettered by I.N.J. Culbard
BOOM! Studios

I heard about Wild’s End when iFanboy.com made the first issue their pick of the week, but I’ve been waiting for the trade (Out next week, according to Amazon). From what I understand, it was a charming story about a world of anthropomorphic animals in the early parts of the 20th Century. Aliens invade a small British village, and a group of brave cats, dogs, and the like banded together to defeat one of the invaders.

Though I came to the sequel with no more knowledge than that, this book was easily accessible. As the book begins, five animals are under house arrest as the British government interrogates them about the alien invasion they fought, and the animals realize that they are suspected of being aliens in disguise. The fox (named Fawkes) loses his crap about the accusations, while the piglet just kind of accepts it and hopes his mum is okay. To aid in the paranoid investigation, the military summons two science fiction writers as consultants. One cannot contain his disdain for the commercial success of the other’s dumbed-down “scientific romance” novels, and the witty repartee is only elevated by the fact that this is a cat hating a histrionic Irish Setter.

The plot in this book is pretty slow, spending most of the time gathering the major players on either side of the house arrest, but the intelligent humor of the dialogue and the whimsy of the art make this a thoroughly enjoyable read. Dan Abnett brings a lot of trust from science fiction successes like Guardians Of The Galaxy and Hypernaturals, and though I have been unfamiliar with Culbard’s work, the team works together smoothly. I recommend folks head down to Ultimate Comics in Raleigh or Durham to get in at the beginning of this blend of cute talking doggies and grim paranoid sci-fi, and maybe ask Al to save you a copy of the first trade.

-Matt Conner

Tokyo Ghost #1
Writer: Rick Remender
Artist: Sean Murphy
Image Comics

I cringed when Alan gave me today’s assignment. My exposure to Rick Remender has generally been with his Marvel work on titles like Uncanny X-Force, Uncanny Avengers, Axis, and the Secret Wars miniseries Hail Hydra. His ideas have been good, but his understanding of the characters he writes… Well, it hasn’t always shown any previous reading he has done about them. I’m looking at you, suddenly-racist-suddenly-all-enraged Rogue. But I just finished Sean Murphy’s gorgeous Chrononauts series, and I remembered Rick Remender wrote that amazing Night Mary series I loved a few years ago, so I swallowed my pride and approached this new Image series with open eyes.

And I have converted.

Tokyo Ghost is a fantastic science fiction dystopia book about the very real-world nature of addiction as it occurs in family systems and social units. If that sounds boring, I will also say there are many pictures of bare breasts and blood, so hey, multiple levels. The setup is that in the future, everyone except Debbie Decay has been implanted with technology that lets them stay in the Internet forever, downloading modifications to simulate actual emotion so they can just sift through their newsfeeds and run pornography in the side of their screens. Debbie and her partner, Led Dent, are enforcers for one of the crimelords, pulling one last job so they can leave the ruins of Los Angeles for the potential paradise of Tokyo. That last job involves racing motorcycles through an amazingly detailed cityscape on the run from the henchmen of gangster Davey Trauma, a lunatic pulling A Clockwork Orange into the Facebook generation.

This book was incredible. The story was engaging, with tons of creative swearing but never to the point of making it unpleasant to read. The curse words were there to provoke but also to set the gritty tone, and I applaud Remender’s restraint. Sean Murphy’s Los Angeles is futuristic and dark, and the team pairs brilliantly when it comes to jokes like a pop-up ad for “Roofies that also make her lose weight instantly” or Tweets like “Remender sucks at riting comix!” The character names pull a sense of noir gang movies without coming across as affected.

The main reason I loved this, though, was the shockingly sensitive way Remender wants to explore addiction. In the back of the book, he writes a letter showing that he is intentionally telling this story as a caution about our addiction to social media and technology, but that’s been done before (See Vaughan’s Public Eye, see Luna’s Alex + Ada). What makes this better is that Remender wants to look at the role of Debbie Decay, working her butt off to support her boyfriend Led. She remembers the great man he was, and she appreciates his role in her partnership, even if he only interacts with her through the foggy lens of his data screen. It would be easy to write her off as codependent, but Remender is looking deeper than that. She loves him. She hates his addiction. She respects herself. She doesn’t see a lot of options. I have no idea how this story is going to end for Debbie, but I trust Remender to help us to understand the complexity of loving an addict.

For fans of science fiction, for people who care about someone in trouble, for people tired of going to dinner and having everyone staring at their phones, for readers who want something honest and new, head on down to Ultimate Comics and pick up this hot new series.

-Matt Conner for Ultimate Comics & NCCOMICON

Faster Than Light
Story and Illustration by Brian Haberlin
Image Comics presenting a Shadowline Production

Comics readers tend to have a variety of interests, which is part of what I love about this medium. Walking into Ultimate Comics gives you access to as many genres as Barnes And Noble might. Fans of action can hit the superhero section, fans of crime drama can check out Brubaker and Phillips, and the horror fans can check out the works of Niles or Valiant’s Shadowman book. There are plenty of cerebral science fiction books on the stand, but full disclosure, I generally don’t enjoy them. As a kid, I wasn’t especially taken with space. I didn’t enjoy Star Trek, I stopped reading Heinlein after a couple of books, and at Dragon*Con this year, I steered clear of the Dr. Who cosplayers. Leave it to Ultimate Al to start changing my mind with this week’s selection, Faster Than Light.

The story is pretty cool. A group of astronauts is about to go exploring the universe now that someone has cracked the formula for faster than light travel, and they have heard that a race of alien monsters is headed for Earth, so they need to fly around preparing for that. Before they can get going, they see a new planet in our solar system. They tentatively name it Ouroborous and fly out to check it out, and spoiler alert, there are big scary monster tentacles all over the place. I may not have understood all of the scientific words, but the book was only using those to frame a story about a man taking over control of a team, balancing the fear of the unknown with the desire to see something absolutely novel. He’s navigating the relationship with the former captain of the ship he’s taken over, he’s having tense conversations with the tech people about the safety of the ship itself, he’s running meetings with the international council running these missions. With the exception of the scary tentacles, there’s very little plot movement, but the emotional soup of the issue, everyone scared and excited and distrustful, has me excited to see the next chapter. And man, those tentacles are great.

The best part of the book, though, is that readers can download a free Android of iOS app at experienceanomaly.com/ftl and use the camera to scan certain pages for interactive holograms. When you scan the establishing shot of the space station, for instance, the tablet will show a loading bay hovering between the page and the camera, and if you tap it, it will open and let an image of a spaceship fly out. When you scan the page with the tentacles, tentacles appear in your screen and lash out at you, and you can tap an icon to see a paragraph summarizing what the astronauts know so far. Marvel’s attempts at this augmented reality have been so hard to use that I haven’t even tried since the Avengers Vs. X-Men crossover, but this app was easy to use and made for a fun reading experience. And how cool is it for a book about man and technology to pioneer a new interaction between reader and tech?

I highly recommend you take your Smartphone down to Ultimate Comics in Chapel Hill or Raleigh and give this sci-fi tech experience a spin. Just watch out for monsters.

Matt Conner for Ultimate Comics & the NCComicon

Toil And Trouble (originally solicited as The Third Witch)
Writer: Mairghread Scott
Artists: Kelly and Nichole Matthews
Archaia (Boom Entertainment)

Macbeth was one of my favorite plays in high school. I remember loving the darkness and intrigue, the murder and remorse. But twenty years later, the only parts I recall well are Lady Macbeth washing imaginary bloodspots out, Macbeth’s “Out, brief candle” soliloquy…

… and the witches. I can’t even remember what they did in the story. But I remember absolutely loving that this play, a story of a man who murders his king and suffers for it, opens up with three sisters and “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble” agreeing to meet “when the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won.” The mystery, the supernatural, it was catnip for a teenage geek, and I still love it.

This week, Archaia begins a six-issue limited series telling the story of Macbeth from the point of view of one of the three witch sisters, blending in more of the savage history of the British Isles and the pagan traditions of these warriors. Smertae is a pretty redheaded witch with spikes sticking out of her shoulders and hips, aligned with Cait (an earthy blonde whose image often blends with trees and nearby animals) to carry out subtle manipulations of the Scottish warriors according to the dark plans of grim sister Riata to raise King Duncan’s son up at the expense of Macbeth. Smertae has second thoughts about cursing her own people, and she hints at a grave history with Macbeth himself, so in the last moment, she possesses the Scottish Thane and saves his life, breaking the plan and probably triggering all the tragedy we read in high school.

This was a gorgeous book, the kind readers have come to expect from the Archaia publications. The dialogue floats along a dreamy path through Shakespeare’s original language and a broader, older element from the pagan histories, all to a lilting cadence that’s not quite iambic pentameter but suggests it. I couldn’t follow all of what the witches said to each other, but much like in Shakespeare plays, the thrust of the story is more about tone and character than recognizing every vocabulary word. The art is ethereal and compelling even when representing the brutality of the battle scenes, keeping the focus steadily on Smertae’s inner conflict.

If you haven’t read any Archaia titles yet, this issue is a great introduction to an intelligent, cultured example of the line. Come on down to Ultimate Comics in Chapel Hill or Raleigh to pick a copy up before they’re gone, or risk having to wait for reprints When The Hurly-Burly’s Done.

Matt Conner for Ultimate Comics & NC Comicon

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
Adapted by David and Scott Tiption from Nicholas Meyer
Art by Ron Josheph
IDW Publishing

When Alan gave me this week’s assignment, I will admit to giggling. I had never heard of the particular Sherlock Holmes story adapted here, but the cover promised “the astounding joint adventure of Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud.” In my day job, I am a psychiatrist practicing psychodynamic psychotherapy, and I have a fondness for the Holmes stories, especially the classic Young Sherlock Holmes. This seemed perfect for me.

The book surprised me. In the framing sequence, Watson says that decades after publishing the stories recounting the death of Holmes’s nemesis, Professor Moriarty, and the three-year disappearance of the legendary detective, he needs to come clean about some lies in the text. This confessional tale spends the opening issue establishing Holmes as a man gone paranoid from excessive injections of cocaine (in the titular 7% solution). As he is lost further down the drain of his addiction, Holmes spouts frightening delusional stories about Professor Moriarty as a sinister genius crimelord, and Watson decides to take him to see Sigmund Freud to work on rehabilitation.

The story is setting up a significant tone and environment, so it’s light on plot. But the tone is top-notch. The refined dialogue reads like something out of Arthur Conan Doyle’s original tales, but the subject matter is incongruously dark. As a man who works with a number of people in addictions, I recognized the fears Watson and his wife have for their friend, the shock that a man they used to respect is now sending threatening letters to an apparently innocent math teacher and refusing to speak to his assistant without asking three security questions to verify his identity. Watson is shaken by Holmes’s skin infections from using dirty needles, by the weight he has lost and the change in his eyes.

Fans of Sherlock Holmes will probably feel a little cheated that he doesn’t pull any dramatic deductive reasoning tricks out in this first issue. But those fans will also feel grateful that this book doesn’t gloss over the cocaine like Doyle did originally, and anyone who has ever cared for a person with addictive issues will wait breathlessly for the next issue, hoping this story has a happy ending. I hope this book empowers family members to talk openly about substance abuse. Picking this issue up at one of your Ultimate Comics locations can start this conversation for you.

If you are a friend or family member of someone with substance abuse, there is help. Look into http://www.al-anon.org to learn more. If you yourself struggle with the use of drugs or alcohol, talk to your doctor or look into http://www.addiction.com or http://www.aa.org to begin getting help.

-Matt Conner for Ultimate Comics & NCComicon

Archie #2
Writer: Mark Waid
Artist: Fiona Staples
Archie Comics

The Archie relaunch made huge waves last month. A staple for young readers for over fifty years, Archie has become associated with an outdated conservative worldview where teenagers barely even kiss each other and would give a kidney to snag the good booth at the malt shoppe. Over the last couple of years, the line has expanded by places analogues of the classic Americana characters into thought-provoking mature horror lines like the zombie survival title Afterlife With Archie and the seventies-style occult series Chilling Tales Of Sabrina. Fevered interest in these respectful reinterpretations of beloved childhood memories has boosted sales and inspired a significant relaunch by Mark Waid (on the tail end of one of the best Daredevil relaunches Marvel comics has ever seen) and Fiona Staples (whose art in Saga has set the industry aflame). Last issue introduced Archie and Betty as a teen couple together since elementary school who just broke up under mysterious circumstances. Their friends, unable to process this sea change, went into overdrive trying to force them back together, leading to legitimate humor that’s appropriate for children and emotionally real to adults.

In this issue, Archie needs money to fix his crappy car, so his friends try to keep him from killing his accident-prone self on the construction crew for the new Lodge Manor. Betty is trying to learn how to go from tomboy to couture queen in time for her birthday party, but she’s willing to ruin a manicure if it means secretly repairing her still-beloved ex-boyfriend’s jalopy when he’s not looking. Scenes of Archie ruining a series of after-school jobs (like standing in front of a burning ice cream stand shrugging, “I don’t have much luck” as the manager in the background screams, “How? HOW?”) brought actual laughs from me, and when he accidentally causes a cataclysm on the construction site, it comes across as a funny anxiety nightmare rather than a cheeky Kids-On-Our-Focus-Groups-Like-Destruction editorial note. Betty’s half-smile at seeing Archie happy with his car repair but not knowing she helped him is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. I don’t know if I want these kids to get back together. But I dearly love them both in ways I haven’t since I was ten, and I want them both to be okay.

This is a great book for kids in the same way Pixar makes great movies for kids – all-ages entertainment should never mean simple or dumb or broad. We should show our children well-created, intelligent art that appeals to their expectations about friendship and school and first jobs and growing up, and this should inspire them to make their own art. If you love comics, come to Ultimate Comics and pick the first two issues up for yourself. And if you love children, these will make excellent back-to-school gifts or donations to local elementary classrooms.

-Matt Conner for Ultimate Comics & NCComicon

DC Bombshells #1
Writer: Marguerite Bennett
Artist: Marguerite Sauvage
DC Comics

The Bombshells were a popular theme of recent variant covers for DC Comics, a reimagining of major women in the line as 40’s pin-up girls. Sexy women are common on covers, occasionally crossing major lines of taste and stirring up controversy, like the recent hypersexual Spider-Woman variant. This theme, though, depicted the women as playful, confident, and empowered. Men and women alike have appreciated the sexuality but also the creativity and the callback to history, leading to a proliferation of these images onto statues, T-shirts, and pint glasses (many for sale at Ultimate Comics in the Chapel Hill and Raleigh locations!). This week, that popularity goes deeper, with a comic book to give character to the ladies in the pictures.

Marguerite Bennett was an excellent choice for this book given her involvement in books like A-Force, Years Of Future Past, and Angela, all celebrating the diverse ways in which women can be themselves in a male-dominated genre. To tell the story of DC heroines shining during World War II, she initially follows Batwoman, one of the line’s most prominent lesbian characters. Kate Kane cheekily stops a mugging in Crime Alley, then wins a Women’s Baseball League game (because BATS, right?) before going to home to her girlfriend, Maggie to bemoan how useless she feels. It’s the same message as Captain America’s first movie but a million times less whiny. Next, Bennett flexes her writing with a harrowing aerial battle scene introducing Steve Trevor to Wonder Woman and her Amazons, as gripping as any war story you’ve read. Finally, she takes us to Moscow for alternate versions of Supergirl and Stargirl who are training as pilots but are forced to reveal their superpowers during a terrible crash. All of this is told with stunning, rich art by Sauvage that lines up with the pin-ups but anchors them in a detailed historic presence.

This book is terrific. I love female characters, and I love when they are celebrated for their qualities rather than pitted rabidly against caricatures of the evil men who oppress. This book nails all the gender beats that made A-Force a must-have, and it’s one of the best things I’ve read out of DC in months. This book would be good enough to launch a line of licensed T-shirts and pint glasses all on its own, and it seems impossible that a story like this came from trying to connect a few pretty pictures. Well done, DC. Congratulations.

If you have an inspiration to cosplay any of these stunning looks, consider taking your skills to this weekend’s Oak City Comic And Toy Show, Sunday from 10 to 5 at the Hilton, 3415 Wke Forest Road in Raleigh. If that’s too soon, get ready for the North Carolina Comicon the second weekend of November in Durham!

Matt Conner for Ultimate Comics & NCComicon