Welcome back, kids, I hope you all enjoyed the long weekend, ate lots of food, spent time with your family, and fell asleep on the couch with some good comics.
Great news! The Project-Nerd Publishing web store is now up and running. There, you can pre-order a bunch of our upcoming titles, and soon enough you’ll be able to purchase other merch like T-shirts and prints. Go check it out and support independent comics!
In other Pro-Nerd Publishing news, there’s still 10 days to back C.W. Cooke and Bryan Timmins’ Barrens, our second title to be released. We’re close to our second stretch goal (less than $300 away!) and can’t wait to get this book out to you folks.
Now, let’s get into some comics.
Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: Dragons #1 (Boom! Studios/Archaia)
story and art by Daniel Bayliss; script by Fabian Rangel Jr.
If you’re unfamiliar with Jim Henson’s The Storyteller, it was a puppet-driven, Emmy award-winning TV show that Henson produced for HBO in the late 80’s that retold obscure European folk tales. Boom Studios/Archaia have been running the series in comic book format since 2011, with each installment centered around a theme—the current one being Dragons—and running stories by some of the best up-and-coming talent in comics. So, readers, what we have to look forward to in the next few months is a bunch of comics about Dragons by some top notch creative talent, and the first issue by Daniel Bayliss and Fabian Rangel Jr. is absolutely stellar work. Bayliss and Rangel, both extremely talented yet relatively unknown to me, bring us the tale of the Horned Serpent, a giant, stag-horned serpent that exists across the folklore of many Native American tribes. It’s a pretty compact story about a father and son who encounter the serpent while fishing, get separated on different deserted islands as a result, and have to find their way back to each other.
Bayliss knocks this book out of the park. Through exaggerated body acting, his style evokes the emotional weight of Will Eisner in his later years—look at Eisner’s Fagin The Jew, A Contract With God, or New York: Life In The Big City, and you’ll see exactly what I mean—and an aesthetic that is clearly informed by Native American artwork (look at the design of the Thunderbirds on page 5) really drives the book in the right direction. For such a dark, emotional story, every page is packed with beautifully drawn scenes and brightly colored characters, carrying an animated energy that’s rare to find in a medium based on reading a series of static images. That’s not discounting Rangel’s script, either. As a reader of comics, it’s often impossible to know where the art begins and the script ends, or which element is responsible for carrying the weight. In the best comics, the two feel so seamlessly interwoven that it’s just understood that the two are equal partners in telling a great story. The Horned Serpent falls into this latter category.
After this, I’ll read anything with Bayliss or Rangel’s names on it.
The Woods #18 (Boom! Studios)
created by James Tynion IV and Michael Dialynas; written by James Tynion IV; illustrated by Michael Dialynas; colors by Jason Gonzales
I’m so happy to see Calder MacReady, whom I think of as the story’s Luke Skywalker, back in the spotlight. While undercover to figure out his brother’s nefarious plans, Calder struggles with his loyalty to his friends and his bond with his largely shitty brother Casey—a bond forged by a terrible childhood trauma involving the death of their parents. It’s one of the most personal stories in the whole series, because the truth is that we want to believe in the people we love, even when we know they can’t be saved. This aspect of the story is so well told by Tynion and Dialynas that it almost completely overshadows the fact that Taisho’s massive army of monsters, tanks, and soldiers have effectively taken over New London. I can’t say enough good things about this book—every issue has been a home run—but this one really set a high water mark for the remaining issues.
James Bond #2 (Dynamite)
written by Warren Ellis; art by Jason Masters; colors by Guy Major
When Dynamite throws some support behind the right creators, they sure do put out some quality books. Granted, the first issue didn’t make the list—it wasn’t bad, but there were too many other books that resonated with me that week—but this issue cemented the Ellis and Masters’ Bond series spot on my monthly reading list. Suave, calculating, resourceful, lethal, light-hearted, and refined, Warren Ellis’ Bond is an amalgamated composite of all the big screen Bonds that we know and love. Add Jason Masters’ subtly effective character acting—there’s a great bit in the beginning of the issue when Bond outsmarts a would-be assassin before they even make their attempt, and Masters uses some really well-crafted facial expressions to let you know—and this book is a slam dunk. I’ll be back next month for sure.
Tet #4 (IDW) ** Final Issue **
written and lettered by Paul Allor; art by Paul Tucker
This was a heartbreakingly engaging series by Allor and Tucker that started out as a whodunnit murder mystery set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and ended up as love story that took a turn in the third issue that you never saw coming. What’s also impressive about it, and I just noticed this with the final issue, is that it’s published as part of editor Andy Schmidt’s Comics Experience initiative, which you may want to check out if you’re interested in making comics. Comics Experience is a site that provides a number of educational courses taught by industry professionals at a pretty reasonable price. Taking education a step further, Comics Experience also fosters promising new talent by publishing their work through IDW, which is how I assume artist Paul Tucker came to be involved with Tet, and if he’s the kind of talent they’re turning out, count me in. Tucker’s artwork, while typically less refined than what you’ll see in anything from the Big Two, has a really cool old-school aesthetic that set the perfect tone for the book, and you can check out more of his work here. This book was a pleasure to read—if you haven’t been keeping up with it, you can either get them all on ComiXology or wait for the inevitable collected edition. Great work, guys.
Atomic Robo and the Ring of Fire #4 (IDW)
words by Brian Clevinger; art by Scott Wegener; colors by Anthony Clark; letters and design by Jeff Powell
You know the third act in a sci-fi or heist adventure movie where all the parts of the big plan are in motion and everything appears like it’s going according to plan, but you know that some terrible monkey wrench is right around the corner? That’s where we’re at in Atomic Robo and the Ring of Fire right now. Capturing that sort of energy on the page is a difficult task and team Clevinger/Wegener pull it off incredibly well. What I’ve loved about this particular installment of Robo is the pacing of it. The story has a lot of moving parts to juggle—from getting the gang back together, finding and rebuilding Robo, infiltrating the tech black market, getting into hot water with the Chinese military, all while trying to find a way to destroy giant sea monsters that threaten the existence of humanity—it keeps moving, yet never stops being smart amidst all the action. There’s always the feeling that the only man with the master plan to save the world is Robo, whose off-the-cuff thinking stems from the idea that, with science, nothing is impossible. You need to be reading this book, and you can get caught up here.
Also available this week:
Boom! — Garfield’s Cheesy Holiday Special #1, John Flood #5, Regular Show #30, Rowan’s Ruin #3, Toil and Trouble #4
Dark Horse – Angel and Faith Season 10 #21, Barb Wire #6, Call of Duty: Black Ops III #1, Dead Vengeance #3, Joe Golem: Occult Detective #2, Lara Croft and the Frozen Omen #3, Mystery Girl #1, This Damned Band #5
Dynamite — Aliens/Vampirella #4, Bob’s Burgers #6, Cage Hero #2, Doc Savage: Spider’s Web #1, Seduction of the Innocent #1, A Train Called Love #3
IDW — Super Angry Birds #4, D4VE 2 #4, Haunted Horror #20, Insufferable #8, Maxx Maxximized #26, My Little Pony: Friends Forever #23, The October Faction #11, Skylanders Superchargers #2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Color Classics Vol. 3 #12, Transformers #48, X-Files Season 11 #5, Zombies vs. Robots #10
Project-Nerd is a press partner of BOOM! Studios, Dark Horse Comics, Dynamite Entertainment, and IDW Publishing. If you would like to see your studios’ content included in our weekly release article, please contact our editors.
