Reviews of Comics from Wednesday 5/11

4001 A.D.: X-O Manowar #1
Story: Robert Venditti
Art: Clayton Henry

There are many comic with deep messages that make you think. And then there are comics that are just plain action from wall-to-wall and have giant robots. Take a guess which one this is? The first one-shot tying into Valiant's new event mini-series, 4001 A.D., features a story from regular X-O Manowar writer Robert Venditti and original Archer and Armstrong artist Clayton Henry, and provides the backstory for the giant robot from the first issue of the event series, and how it ties into X-O Manowar's armor. The issue provides a lot of backstory for those of us unfamiliar with the future status quo of the Valiant Universe, like why Japan is an island floating in space, and how the rest of the world reacted when that happened; it's not essential for the main series at all, but it makes for an interesting story. I don't think it's spoiling too much to say that the world governments design giant robots to send after New Japan and its controlling artificial intelligence, Father. We follow the American pilot, as he prepares to take his Manowar up into space to fight Father. He's a hero, with a family, and he's doing what he thinks is best. And things go horribly wrong. Venditti provides a platform for Clayton Henry to go to town, drawing giant robots in a Charge of the Light Brigade style suicide mission against Father. Henry is able to not just draw that extremely well, but the reactions from the American pilot, stuck in his hanger, and the American control room as one of Father's agents, the former Armor Hunter known as Helix, makes short work of them, are intense and heart breaking. This is how a crossover issue should be done. It stands alone on its own, inform a bit about the characters and backstory (or fate, in the case of a crossover set in the future) of its native book, and gives nuggets of information that informs the main event. If you're a fan of X-O Manowar and haven't tried this issue because you were worried you'd be lost if you're not reading the main event, have no fear. And if you just like comics about big robots fighting, you should also give this a chance, and really, who doesn't like that?

Batman #52
Story: James Tynion IV
Art: Riley Rossmo, Brian Level, Ivan Plascencia, & Jordan Boyd

Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo wrapped their run on Batman with issue fifty-one, so the final issue of this volume comes from James Tynion IV and Riley Rossmo, who provide a nice companion to the series.The issue follows Batman as he chases a new villain, Crypsis, who has stolen something from a safe deposit box, while we see a series of flashbacks to Bruce's youngest days after the death of his parents, followed by some others of his training across the world. The narrative device that ties it all together is a journal that Bruce is given at the beginning by Leslie Thompkins, a character I have sorely missed since the reboot; she pops up infrequently and with oddly divergent backstory/characterization. Nonetheless, here she gives a journal to Bruce where he can write ideas on "How to Move On,"and we see how he takes those ideas and uses them to forge his training, and how he uses them in his hunt for Crypsis. And while the battle is very cool, and it's really exciting to see Riley Rossmo, one of my favorite artists in comics right now, doing a full issue of Batman, and him hitting it out of the park with a spectacular design for the villain and a great, dynamic Batman, it's the scenes between Bruce and Alfred that are the spine of the comic, as it has been throughout so much of this volume of Batman. Bruce and Alfred are in radio contact the entire time, as we figure out that the safe deposit box is Bruce's, and we see a flashback to Alfred trying to help Bruce along on his grieving, and that while the young Bruce doesn't take kindly to it, the grown Bruce has learned enough to take the words to heart. Alfred has always been more than just Jiminey Cricket to Bruce's Pinocchio, he's been a father figure, confidant, and friend, and this issue's ending ties that aspect of their relationship together nicely. It gives Batman's mission a warm spin,makes it a crusade and not just a dark mission of vengeance. It's a message that Batman is more than what so many think of him as, more the Knight than the Dark, something this series has been exploring since its inception. I'm going to miss this version of Batman, but I'm curious to see what comes next, and hopeful it can keep up this message.

Southern Bastards #14
Story: Jason Aaron
Art: Jason Latour

After a bit of a delay, the final part of the third arc of Southern Bastards arrives, giving readers their first real exposure to Roberta Tubb, daughter of Earl Tubb, the protagonist of the first arc, who was brutally murdered by Coach Boss. Roberta gets back to Afghanistan, and immediately heads to Earl's house, despite having been estranged from her father before his death. And as she gets into the deep South of Alabama, things almost immediately go wrong for her, because while Earl might have been white, it seems Roberta's mother was not, so all the locals near Earl's old house just see her as an uppity black girl in their neighborhood. The police are called when she walks into her own father's house. The neighbor advises her to leave, that there are plenty of houses in other places where she would be better off. And when she finds that her father's riding lawnmower has been stolen and retrieves it? Well, it ends with people on the ground in a lot of pain, and a rude lesson that not even the children in the town can escape the racism that runs through it. As we get to learn more about Roberta, we can absolutely see Earl in her; she stands up to those she sees as wrong without thinking about the ramifications, or probably more accurately not caring about them. She's tough, savvy, and nothing is going to stand in her way. It's clear her mother doesn't like the idea of her looking into her father's death, but that isn't stopping Roberta in the least. I want to go back and reread all of the "Homecoming" arc now, to be ready for the next arc. It feels like Roberta is the last puzzle piece this book needed to move forward, the person out to avenge Earl, as things close in around Coach Boss, and her being a deep and nuanced character makes me all the more interested to see what her next move will be.

Star Wars: Darth Vader #20
Story: Kieron Gillen
Art: Salvador Larroca & Edgar Delgado, Mike Norton & David Curiel

I was talking to my friend and former Dewey's co-worker John Bush not too long ago, and he commented how Darth Vader was his favorite of the current Star Wars series, as it treated Vader as a force of nature, moving silently through the book, spotlighting those around him and how they react to him, sort of like what Garth Ennis did in his MAX run on The Punisher. It's an apt comparison, and as the series begins its final arc, Vader as an unstoppable force seems to be the perfect way to describe him. With the Imperial scientist Cylo, who had been designing cyborgs to replace Vader, on the run, Vader is called before Emperor Palpatine, where Palpatine explains how all of this had been part of his plan to break Cylo and strengthen Vader, which Vader knows is only half the story, as Vader observes Palpatine would be making a version of this speech to Cylo had his cyborgs bested Vader. Vader knows that Palpatine is always playing every side. With that taken care of, Vader goes to meet Inspector Thanoth, the Imperial agent sent to investigate a crime Vader perpetrated through his agent, Dr. Aphra, who has seemingly finally discovered the truth. And it's more than seeing, as Thanoth tells Vader he knows the truth, and knows where Aphra is. But he also tells Vader he has not and will not tell the Emperor, as he serves the Empire, and not the Emperor, and he sees the Empire's future in Vader. The power and manipulations are everywhere in this book, with everyone having their own agenda, Vader included, but it's Vader's agenda that is ventral, Vader who will stop at nothing, even killing the man who has provided him the information (a man who goes willingly, since he believes it is for the best). And as Vader heads off to face Cylo, he sends his droids, Triple-Zero and BeeTee to find and remove Aphra, the last evidence of his treachery against the Empire. We get a fun little back-up story of the two of them visiting a droid maker to repair Triple Zero's arm and get them back in proper torturing shape after the events of the "Vader Down" crossover, and we see again that the two droids are as clever and ruthless as their masters. With five issues left, I can only imagine the swath of destruction that Vader will reap across the galaxy.

Reviews of Comics from Wednesday 1/27 Part 2

And we're back with more reviews from last week's comics. Today we have books from Image and IDW...

Atomic Robo & The Ring of Fire #5
Story: Brian Clevinger
Art: Scott Wegener, Anthony Clark, & Jeff Powell

So, after spending much of his most recent mini-series as not much more than a head, Atomic Robo has a body again and is on a mission, so of course that means only one thing: Fight with a cybernetic Nazi astronaut while trying to save the world. The conclusion of Atomic Robo & The Ring of Fire is the most action oriented issue of this series, as Robo tries to power up a Nazi space weapon to destroy the Biomega Island, a mass of biomatter that if it reaches land will grow to devour and cover all life on Earth, and Majestic-12s Titan mechs fight to destroy the island themselves. The clock is ticking, not just because the Biomega is nearing landfall, but if Robo can't stop the Island himself, Majestic's only answer is nukes, and, well, we all know that's probably not good for Earth. The Titan battle with the Biomega, which began last issue, continues to be impressive work from artist Scott Wegener, not just because he does a great job of keeping what is a massive fight coherent for readers to follow, but because his monster designs are excellent. Robo's plot is equally as exciting and considerably more amusing, as Robo makes his way through the Nazi Longinus satellite while in contact with his team of Action Scientists. The interaction between Robo and his team is one of my favorite aspects of the series, with great banter; Robo's particularly dry sense of humor and delivery as he's fighting a cyber-Nazi and crashing to Earth in a satellite makes the situation, which is still dire, seem like it will all work out in the end (and it does, of course. The comic is named after him, after all). The end of the issue begins to establish a new status quo, for both Robo and the world at large. The last three Robo mini-series ("Savage Sword of Doctor Dinosaur," "Knights of the Golden Circle," and "Ring of Fire") have left Robo is a strange new world, and it seems like he's interested in changing his own life, but there are new threats hinted at and old ones that might not be as gone as he thinks; the last page of the series is a classic last minute horror movie moment. We'll have to wait a while to find out what's next for Robo, as the next series, Atomic Robo & the Temple of Od, moves us back to an earlier adventure in Robo's life, but be it the past or the present, there are few comics as exciting as Atomic Robo.

Cry Havoc #1
Story: Simon Spurrier
Art: Ryan Kelly, Nick Filardi, Lee Loughridge, & Matt Wilson

When I choose a new series from Image to readm it's usually based on the writer. But the ads for Cry Havoc declared, "It's not about a lesbian werewolf going to war. Except it kind of is." And if you've been reading this blog for any amount of time, you know how I feel about werewolves, so I thought Id give it a shot, despite having little to no experience with Simon Spurrier. And it's a very solid debut issue. The issue takes place in three distinct time periods: The first is "The End," the farthest down the timeline, with our lead, Louise Canton, in a cage and partially transformed; "The Beginning" is the farthest back, showing Lou shortly before she was attacked by a werewolf and moves through shortly after the attack;  and "The Middle" shows her arrival in Afghanistan with the military. All are drawn by Ryan Kelly but colored by three different artists that give each section a different feel. That style is one of the things that makes this comic such an engaging read. Not only is the alternating timeline keeping you off kilter and as lost as Lou clearly feels, but those different colorists really bring out different aspects of Kelly's art. It's also easy to keep track of the time periods as the panel borders are a different color for each time zones: red for the end, blue for the beginning, and yellow for the middle. There's a lot going on in this issue, with three plots that are all really one plot all running at once, and Lou is a likable lead, even though I don't feel like we get a whole feel for her as a character yet. Each Lou is different, and part of the series journey to me will be seeing how she moves from one phase to the next. There's not a lot of monster action, but the glimpses we get of Kelly's werewolf design is phenomenal, a large monstrous beast. I also like the way he represents Lou's senses kicking into the heightened werewolf ones, these blue lines that radiate out from her, be they representing sound or scent. There are a lot of questions posed in this first issue, questions about the werewolf that turned Lou, about whether the military will really cure her, what the motive of Lynn Odell, the woman Lou was  brought into a war zone to hunt, are, and I'll definitely be back to see where all these questions lead.

Ghostbusters International #1
Story: Erik Burnham
Art: Dan Schoening & Luis Antonio Delgado

The team of Burnham and Schoening return with the continued adventures of the original Ghostbusters. After the past couple of adventures the team has had, meeting the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and other dimensional versions of themselves, the team is back to fighting ghosts and not gods (so far anyway). A big shaggy werewolf looking ghost is attacking the UN, and what seems like a run of the mill capture job turns into something more as an unrelated haunting pops up at the same time and Egon is injured. The boys are still able to pull it out and stop the ghost, and the additional fees to the UN are paid be mystery industrialist Erland Vinter, who asks to meet with the Ghostbusters to discuss a business proposition. The tile of the series sort of gives away what Vinter's plan is, but we won't learn more about that until next issue. Aside from the initial capture, the issue is filled with little character moments.The Burnham/Scoening Ghostbusters comics have done a really solid job of developing the characters around the Ghostbusters, so a scene with Janine and Jenny Moran, a comics original character who is currently the team's liaison with the city, is as interesting as when Ray, Winston, and Peter go out for a drink to share information about Vinter. And Egon, recuperating from an acid spitting ghost attack, is clearly into something, but it's something he doesn't share with Kylie Griffin, a character from the late-90s Extreme Ghostbusters cartoon who has been a regular in the series for some time now, and who I really like. I'm hoping for more interaction between her and Egon in the future. There's also a two page "Haunted America" short at the back of the issue in the form of a report from FBI agent, ally, and sometime Ghostbuster Melanie Ortiz, about a haunting in Florida; these shorts that have been a regular part of IDW's Ghostbusters comics are a nice bonus, and always mean a little more bang for your buck. There are a lot of seeds for upcoming plots in this issue, lots of little moments. Since Burnham started writing Ghostbusters he's played an almost Claremontian long game, dropping little hints and moments that don't pay off for some time. I'm curious as ever to see where these new threads take us.

Southern Bastards #13
Story: Jason Aaron
Art: Jason Latour

OK, this might not be much of a shocking confession, but I'm going to say it up front: I don't care about football. Sports in general don't do much for me, and fiction about sports can be interesting if it's dealing with the personalities, but actually reading/watching the game? Meh. So when I saw this week's Southern Bastards was going to take place during the homecoming game, I got a bit worried. This is one of my favorite comics out there right now, and football is an integral part of it, but I wasn't sure if I could take twenty-four pages of football. I shouldn't have been surprised that Jason Aaron and Jason Latour kept the issue engaging, mixing the football game, which I admit did keep me interested as I didn't know which way it was going to turn out, with Coach Boss before and after the game. This avoided a problem I often find in sports fiction. You know the team of scrappy underdogs you're rooting for is going to pull off a miracle and win in the end. In Jason Aaron's usually dark universe, victory is never quite as assured. The game does not go Craw County's way, as nothing seems to be for Coach Boss, the antagonist of the series who we've frankly spent more time with than the protagonists at this point. It feels like Boss is surrounded by troubles on all sides. The mayor and his wife are coming down on him hard, his longtime friend Coach Big has killed himself, and his team is doing a piss poor job. It's fascinating that you can empathize with a character who was introduced as such a stock, southern-fried villain, but I actually feel for Boss. I don't like him, and he's deserving of this crapstorm he's in, but I can't help feel a pang of sadness for him. But Boss is a guy who goes down swinging, and his post-game confrontation with the gigantic running back from arch rival team Wetumpka County Warriors shows that Boss still has plenty of fight in him. It's a very solid showing from Southern Bastards, and while I might not care about football, I care about what happens to these characters, and the series works like a good game of football, where every hard fought inch gets you closer to a touchdown and the end of the game. And this endgame is going to be bloodier than any ever in a football stadium, I have no doubt.

Reviews of Comics from Wednesday 10/7

Atomic Robo and the Ring of Fire #2
Story: Brian Clevinger
Art: Scott Wegener & Anthony Clark

Atomic Robo is back! Again! After the first issue of the current volume of Atomic Robo, where a few of the action scientists of Tesladyne were able to retrieve the head of Atomic Robo from a warehouse currently controlled by the international super-science secret police, Ultra, we get a return of everyone's favorite super genius robot. Well, his head in a box anyway. The first few volumes of Atomic Robo had our heroes with nearly unlimited resources, but now, on the run from Ultra, they have to make due. I've missed Robo himself all these months, and it was wonderful to see that, as much as I missed him, those who work with him miss him more. I can only imagine what a great boss Robo must be to inspire so much loyalty in his employees, and how much joy in  his return. But there's much more for the team to do, and so they set off for the Disputed Zone, a stretch of the South China Sea that has dubious political ownership, where sales the Vasilia, a ship with the international super science black market (God, I love writing sentences like that), which comes from the remnants of Department Zero, the Soviet Tesladyne-analogue, which just screams for a story of its own. While the team is working on getting together everything they'll need to restore Robo, Ultra continues to prepare for the Biomega threat, which I'm sure will have nothing to do with the plot going on involving Robo, nothing at all... And back with the Tesladyne crew, well, things go well and they're able to put together a temporary body for Robo, only to be raided by Project Zero's security guards, led by... Phil, one of their old coworkers! I love that we're slowly getting the band back together, and I love the genre awareness that Robo has, when he's told that Jenkins, his right hand man of butt-kicking's body wasn't found, and Robo is completely sure he's not dead. This scene also has a great Hackers reference, which every comic should have more of. Oh, and a Biomega attack. Biomega are naturally big scary kaiju things, which are designed incredibly by artist Scott Wegener; they feel right at home in the tradition of kaiju without looking like Godzilla knock offs.  So, two issues into the new volume, we've got more of Tesladyne together, Robo back (well, he doesn't have one, but he is anyway), and giant monsters. Yup, it's Atomic Robo, and it's wonderful.

Nailbiter #16
Story: Joshua Williamson
Art: Mike Henderson & Adam Guzowski

After declaring Nailbiter my favorite horror comic on the racks a couple weeks back, how could I not review this excellent one off issue this week? It's Halloween in Backaroo, and you'd think that a town filled with so many day to day horrors wouldn't celebrate Halloween, but I looks like they do it in spades. But being Backaroo, there are certain very specific traditions, as we follow a group of kids who plan to knock on the door of the current local boogeyman, Edward Charles Warren, the Nailbiter. There's a lot of typical and classic kids out on Halloween in a spooky story/urban legend, with the one kid who's kind of reticent and his friends who keep egging him on and teasing him. And when they arrive and knock on Warren's door, they find it... unlocked. And when they go in to investigate, well, they find more than they bargained for, but less than what they might have feared. Warren is such a complicated character. I know he's a monster, a killer of multiple people in the coldest of blood, but it's very hard not to like him. He has his principles, he's a monster with a very particular code, and his kindness to the kid left behind, like telling him how he did he same thing when younger at the home of another the Buckaroo Butcher, the Bookburner, is the kind of thing that makes you hope there's something in Backaroo making people monsters and there's a cure. Of course, Nailbiter is an ensemble book, and we spend a few pages off in the hospital with Sheriff Crane at the bedside of her daughter, Alice, recovering from her stabbing and talking with Morty the Mortician, and Agent Finch runs afoul of the FBI, finding out not only that Carroll, his fiend and the instigator of so much of what has happened, has awakened and disappeared under the auspices of FBI Agent Burke, who we know has been infected with some of Buckaroo's madness. Things aren't looking good for Carroll, and Finch's hot temper has once again gotten him into trouble, which is par for the course for him. But this issue is Warren's, further digging into his mindset, and setting him of on a roadtrip. The final pages look like they're setting up a new Butcher, and the title of the next arc, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," has me already haring fiddle music. Nailbiter is a comic perfect for a Halloween issue, and this one did not disappoint.

Paper Girls #1
Story: Brian K. Vaughan
Art: Cliff Chiang & Matt Wilson

Credit where credit is due, Brian K. Vaughan has range. Paper Girls, his third series currently running through Image Comics, is a completely different animal than either his space opera/love story Saga or his revolutionary tale We Stand On Guard. Set in the '80s, Paper Girls starts on Halloween night, as Erin goes out to deliver her paper route, and quickly runs into three toughs who are scared off when three other paper girls, Mac, Tiffany, and KJ show up. Erin is taken in by this sisterhood so they all have cover on this particularly dangerous night, only to encounter weirdoes in robes who steal from them and lead them to a house with a device that looks alien in the basement, and once it goes off, they find themselves in a world with a strange sky. Even stranger, when they confront the berobed men again, they are something less than human underneath and drop a device with a version of a logo familiar to us but foreign to the 80s. This is Vaughan hearkening back to Runaways, his last teenager coming of age story, but adding in psychedelic prophetic dreams with elements of the Challenger disaster, fewer evil parents, and more weird alien languages. The first issue spends much of its time giving us a feeling for Erin and Mac, who interact the most, but still spends time making more Tiffany and KJ more than cardboard characters. As always, Vaughan is working with an impressive artist, in this case Cliff Chiang, who is a favorite of mine from his work on Wonder Woman, Zatanna, and Human Target. One of the important things about Chiang in relation to this title is when he draws teenage girls, they look like teenage girls, not shrunken adults. They are also wonderfully expressive. But along with the normal stuff, he also draws a great alien machine and freaky guys under robes. And Erin's bedroom has a movie poster from The Monster Squad up in it (Seriously folks, it's around Halloween, and if you haven't seen that movie, or seen it in a while, do yourself a favor and go out and watch it. It holds up). With a wealth of mysteries, well thought out characters, and excellent art, Paper Girls looks like it will sit nicely with Image's current crop of series.

Rowan's Ruin #1
Story: Mike Carey
Art: Mike Perkins & Andy Troy

Mike Carey's comics work usually has a touch of horror; Lucifer had it's share of monsters, as did The Unwritten, and even his run on X-Men had a giant consciousness eating monster. But Rowan's Ruin is the first time in a while Carey has dived in to pure horror. Opening with a young woman being pursued by some sort of revenant, we flash back to see the woman as Katie, who has just agreed to swap houses with a British girl, Emily, so Emily can see the States and Katie can see England. Arriving at Rowan's Rise, the house she will be living in, Katie gets a bad feeling, but she ignores it, and goes about seeing the local landscape. But things are off, and Katie's bad feelings about the house get worse; it seems to eat electricity, for one, and is old and lonely. Most of this first issue is dedicated to getting to know Katie. Narrated by her blog, we get inside her head, and even see her starting to get involved with a local constable, James Hallam. But there's a pall hanging over Rowan's Rise. Inside Emily's bedroom, locked but suddenly mysteriously opened after a fuse blows, we see the room of someone disturbed; not necessarily insane disturbed but haunted disturbed. Mike Perkins is a great artist, but the scene that really sent gooseflesh up my arms was Emily's room. Festooned in horseshoes hanging from the ceiling, with a circle of salt around her bed, and a booby trap of nails under the window, this is the room of someone who is trying to protect herself from something. More disturbed than ever by this, Kaie confides in Hallam that as a child she had feelings about places, and after years of therapy she got past it, but now those feelings are creeping back. Carey plays with atmosphere, contrasting the beautiful English countryside near Stratford with the dark foreboding of Rowan's Rise. Even without the opening flashforward this would all have the feeling of a classic haunted house tale, but with that it takes on the drumbeat of the inevitable, moving inexorably, horribly towards the monster's coming. Tension is the key to a good scary story, and Rowan's Ruin #1 sets up the tension for the remaining issues perfectly.

Southern Bastards #11
Story: Jason Aaron
Art: Jason Latour

One of the best parts of any of Jason Aaron's books, and especially his crime comics, is the depth and ambiguity of his characters even the blackest of villains has a side that is not so dark, and nearly all his heroes are far from spotless. The new issue of Aaron and Jason Latour's southern crime epic Southern Bastards introduces a new character, and one who I found absolutely fascinating, a character I couldn't take my eyes off of. Boone is a southern man, a woodsman. He is a bow hunter, but not for sport. He kills to eat. He's a self professed holy roller and snakehandler. He is a man of faith, who goes to church, but who kills a man because that man committed an unspeakable crime, and this is what God would want him to do. He might be the first character we've met in this entire series who can't stand football. And he hates Coach Boss, the series' principal antagonist. Listen, I'll be up front if you haven't figured it out yet: I'm about as much the stereotypical Yankee intellectual as you can get. But this issue so deeply dives into Boone's mind that I get a real feeling for the man. In one issue, Aaron has found a way to define a completely different southern man than any other we've seen, a study in contradictions in many ways, but a man who is confident in what he's doing, because he has his faith. Jason Latour's art is stellar as always, crafting the world of Craw County, and this issue really drew my attention to the colors he's using. I wouldn't say the color pallet is muted, but it's unique to the book, really setting it apart from everything else on the racks. The scenes of Boone in the woods, of him facing down some of Boss's men as they encounter each other on boats travelling along the river, and of snakes crawling all over him at his church are indelibly grafted onto my memory. Aaron and Latour are setting up a board with many different pieces in place, and this new one, Boone, strikes me as far more than a pawn. He's a knight, maybe a tarnished one, but an important piece that will be making his move against Coach Boss soon enough, and I can' wait to see what that move is.


And Dan Grote brings two reviews for two of this week's most anticipated launches...

Jughead #1

Story by Chip Zdarsky

Art by Erica Henderson

When I found out Chip Zdarsky (Sex Criminals) and Erica Henderson (Unbeatable Squirrel Girl) were going to be teaming up on the all-new, all-different adventures of Archie’s be-crowned best friend, I pretty much yelled “Shut up and take my money” at my phone.

I was not wrong.

Jughead’s solo sojourn fits perfectly in the retooled Archieverse but also stands perfectly on its own. Whereas the main Archie book by Mark Waid and, until recently, Fiona Staples, is more teen soap, Jughead is quirky teen comedy, hence the creative team, which specializes in quirky characters and generally laugh-out-loud comics. There’ll be no talk of the Lipstick Incident here, but there will be plenty of talk about hamburgers.

With the new series comes a shakeup in Riverdale’s status quo. Longtime Principal Weatherbee is out, clearly not of his own volition, and a younger, leaner, angrier-looking Principal Stanger is in. Stanger is immediately positioned as Jughead’s nemesis when he changes the cafeteria menu, replacing lasagna Mondays with a high-nutrition gruel. As someone whose one true love is food, this will not stand.

This leads into a terrific parody of Game of Thrones, complete with a dragon, an incest reference and football player Moose in the Hodor role. Such dream sequences and other flights of fancy appear to be a regular part of the book, as next issue teases the return of Jughead’s Time Police.

The thing to remember about Jughead is that he appears lazy, but he can be quite resourceful when compelled to action (which we saw in Archie #1 when he set about his own plan to reunite Archie and Betty). The book opens with him spending an entire night killing people in a video game, then, upon arriving at school, mocking Betty for protesting the clear-cutting of trees by Veronica’s developer father. Once Stanger implements the new food policy, Jughead makes his own protest sign, has the home ec teacher show him how to make his own burgers, then bypasses Stanger’s rules by selling burgers for charity in the cafeteria, piggybacking on Betty’s open-space initiative and turning the new principal’s face new shades of red.

Also, he dispenses this nugget of wisdom by which I will now live my life: “Teach a man to fish, and he’ll bring home fish, which are gross. Teach a man to make burgers, and he’ll be the hero Gotham deserves, or something.”

Doctor Strange #1

Story: Jason Aaron

Art: Chris Bachalo and Tim Townsend

Stephen Strange has an odd place in Marvel’s pantheon. As the Sorcerer Supreme, he’s arguably one of the most powerful people in the universe. As a member of the Illuminati, he’s helped manipulate events over decades. Heck, in this summer’s Secret Wars, he was literally the right hand of God (till, you know, God killed him).

Yet the one thing he hasn’t been able to do, at least in the past few years, is carry his own book.

But with a movie coming out next year, Marvel can’t afford to let its top mystic ride the bench anymore. And so, in the first week of the All-New, All-Different age of Marvel, we get Doctor Strange by Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo.

First of all, how has Chris Bachalo never drawn Doctor Strange before? His dark, psychedelic, heavily inked style is a perfect fit for the doctor. Artwise, this book is all giant-mouthed soul-eaters, tentacle porn, mystical bacteria, and floating teddy bears. Everything is in constant, swirling motion, even Strange’s cloak, which he can ride like a magic carpet or tie around his neck like a hipster scarf. (His tunic also transforms into a sleek denim jacket when he’s on the street).

Storywise, Aaron is creating a Doctor Strange for new readers, much the same as he’s done with Thor in the past couple years. An intro page quickly retells his origin, reprinting classic Steve Ditko art, but that’s all the continuity you need for this book. Baron Mordo, Clea, Dormammu, Wong and the rest of his normal supporting cast are all on the shelf, at least for now. This Strange is too busy making house calls, casting interdimensional bogeymen from children’s nightmares, wrestling soul-sucking leeches on the streets of Brooklyn, hitting on women of all planes of reality, and showing up late for drinks with his fellow Marvel mages.

Aaron’s Strange eschews shadowy meetings with Namor, Black Panther and Reed Richards in favor of pub crawling with Doctor Voodoo, Shaman of Alpha Flight, and the Scarlet Witch, all of whom take pot-shots at Strange as if he were their version of Andre from The League. I quite like this unexpected circle of friends, both for its diversity and the fact that no one is treating Wanda like the delicate continuity wormhole she’s been for the past decade.

The book’s long game appears to involve some sort of interdimensional migration (there should probably be a blanket ban on the word incursion after Hickman’s Avengers run/Secret Wars), with all sorts of be-fanged nasties fleeing other realms ahead of a coming slaughter (“Great. Another one of those,” Wanda says casually). There’s also some talk about keeping the cosmic balance by sacrificing a life for every life saved through magic. As of right now, I plan on sticking around to see how these themes play out.