A comiXologist recommends…

Yukito Kishiro’s BATTLE ANGEL ALITA

There are a handful of comic series that had a huge impact on me in my adolescent years. (I’ve written about a few of them already.) The problem with coming back to books like this is that oftentimes you end up disappointed; either they haven’t aged well, or your tastes have matured and you all-of-a-sudden realize that maybe they weren’t as good as you thought they were back when you were fourteen years old.

And then sometimes you go back and realize that the book that you loved so much has not only aged perfectly well, but is still just as impressive and gripping and thought-provoking as the day you picked it up twenty years ago. These are books that have rightfully earned the moniker “classics,” and Battle Angel Alita is absolutely such a series.

More than any other comic, Battle Angel Alita is a series that I have always been a giant nerd over. (We’re talking teenage fan-fiction, a Geocities fan-page, embarrassing cosplay, the works.) And going back to read it as an adult, it still manages to blow me away.

The story begins in a dystopian future city known as The Scrapyard, located in the shadow of a mysterious floating utopia called Zalem. The Scrapyard is built from, well, scrap—which falls from the center of the floating city—and its factories have been put to work producing supplies that are sent up to Zalem via a tube system, but there is otherwise next to zero communication between the two cities. Nobody in The Scrapyard knows what happens in the floating city above.

The Scrapyard is a rough and violent place, and in order to survive there most of its inhabitants have had to replace their bodies with cyborg parts. One day, a cyber-doctor (part surgeon, part mechanic) named Daisuke Ido is searching the scrap pile for spare cyborg parts when he finds the cybernetic head and torso of a young girl. The girl’s brain is intact and alive, but has been in hibernation for centuries and has left her with no memory of her past. Ido gives the girl a new body, and a new name: Alita.

It’s a simple premise for what becomes an epic tale. Alita has no memories of her past, but when she is attacked she finds that she does have incredible martial arts abilities, apparently from a lost cyborg fighting style developed on Mars centuries earlier. With fighting as her only link to discovering who she was, Alita embarks on a journey of self-discovery that is violent and action-packed but often touching and always very, very human. The series features absolutely amazing action sequences, but what elevates it to the level of a true classic is the masterful storytelling and character development as we see Alita mature and learn about herself, her past, and her surroundings from volume to volume.

While I worry that this review may be starting to ramble a bit, it would be a crime not to comment on Yukito Kishiro’s absolutely mind-blowing artwork. The Scrapyard and its surroundings are rendered with beautiful and moody detail; the characters are as expressive as any I have ever seen in any comic, their faces portraying complex and nuanced mixtures of emotion that really make the drama hit home; the action sequences are not only balletically choreographed but also masterfully depicted on the page. Complex series of acrobatic martial arts moves are laid out with amazing clarity, so that every beat of each fight can be followed by even a reader with very little experience with action manga or even comics in general. 

Battle Angel Alita is a series that I have been wholeheartedly recommending, for decades at this point, to anyone expressing even the remotest interest. Even friends who’ve told me that they don’t like manga in general have finished reading the first book and immediately asked me for the second. The printed volumes I picked up years ago have been through so many hands—as I have lent them out to innumerable friends and co-workers—that they are literally falling apart. That the series has been unavailable for so long is a tragedy, but one that finally reached a happy conclusion this week with the comiXology re-release of the first three volumes. Go read this! If you’re a comiXology Unlimited subscriber, you’ve got absolutely nothing to lose. If you aren’t, they’re still more than worth the asking price, or could be a great excuse to finally try out CU.

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Mike Isenberg is a Production Coordinator / Technical Account Manager at comiXology, and the co-writer of First Law Of Mad Science (which is also available on comiXology Unlimited). He lives in Harlem with his cats, Tesla and Edison.

A comiXologist recommends…Best of 2016 Edition! 

Vision Vol. 1: Little Worse Than A Man and Vision Vol. 2: Little Better Than A Beast by Tom King, Gabriel Hernandez Walta, Michael Walsh, and Jordie Bellaire

Early on in the writing process for my own sci-fi book, my co-writer and I were struggling with the core arc for one of our characters, a robotic A.I. teenage girl named R.A.I.Ch.E.L. who had been a recent addition to a rather strange human family.  The clearest path would have been to have her deal with her own sense of humanity and belonging and self, but we dismissed the idea out-of-hand because it seemed like the story had already been done to death.  From Frankenstein to Pinocchio to Not Quite Human, the story of the construct that wished it was human had already been wrung of all its potential.  Or so we thought.

Over the past year, Tom King has proved both of us dead wrong.  And I could not be happier about it.  Vision (2015-2016) is a brilliant, mature science fiction story that is incredibly human despite (or more likely, because of) its protagonists’ lack of humanity.  It is moving, thoughtful, and at times hilarious. The story follows Vision of the Avengers as he attempts to establish a family in the DC suburbs, and struggles to find a “normal” life.  The Visions are so awkward with one-another and with their neighbors, and of course things start going poorly in a variety of ways, from the chuckle-worthy to the terrifying, leading to a page-turning suspense story that moves the series along at a break-neck speed.

What truly makes the story unique, I think, is not that it focuses on how a robot struggles to find humanity, but why.  Vision finds himself not only working hard to teach his family to behave “normally,” but also doubly-hard to convince them why it’s a worthwhile endeavor.  Striving for human-ness can never truly succeed, the book seems to say, but the attempt itself is, in many ways, more human than anything most actual humans will ever achieve.

Vision (2015-2016)’s creators took a story-trope that, by this point, should have had no more to give.  And they ended up with a masterpiece.  Go read this right now.

Mike Isenberg is a Production Coordinator at comiXology, co-writer of First Law Of Mad Science, and contributor to the New York Times bestselling FUBAR anthology series. He lives in Harlem with his cats, Tesla and Edison.

A comiXologist recommends:
We Can Never Go Home

by: Mike Isenberg

Big news!  Today we’ve launched upstart punk rock comic publisher Black Mask Studios on comiXology!  Lots of great books from them today, and more to come, but there’s one I want to single out that’s definitely worth your time.

Problem is, We Can Never Go Home, is a really difficult book to describe.  Is this a crime story?  An angsty teenage romantic comedy?  A superhero book?  A coming of age tale?  Any of these genre labels would fit the series, but none of them comfortably, which is part of what makes it such a fantastic read.

We Can Never Go Home is written by Matthew Rosenberg and Patrick Kindlon, with art by Josh Hood and Tyler Boss.  The story takes place in 1989, and follows two teenagers—“cool girl” Madison and “weirdo creep” Duncan—as they get to know each other, run away from home, rob a local drug cartel, and accidentally commit the odd murder or two.

The series reads like some sort of mad love-child of TEOTFW and Runaways.  Madison gains super-human strength when she’s anxious, and Duncan claims to be able to kill with a thought, but the “Super Hero” aspect of the book is downplayed in favor of an “awkward teenagers trying to find their place in the world” story that is at times sweet, tense, violent, hilarious, and frightening.

Oh, and the art is gorgeous.  Josh Hood’s linework is stylish, expressive, and kinetic.  And Tyler Boss’s coloring mixes the gloom of late-80’s small-town America with intoxicating glimpses of optimism, bringing the whole thing to life.

Issues #1-4 all launched on comiXology today, and are highly recommended. Check this one out!

[Read We Can Never Go Home on comiXology]

Mike Isenberg is an Associate Production Coordinator at comiXology, co-writer of First Law Of Mad Science, and contributor to the New York Times bestselling FUBAR anthology series.  He lives in Harlem with his cats, Tesla and Edison.

A comiXologist recommends:
Pax Romana

by: Mike Isenberg

“Who is this Jonathan Hickman guy, why haven’t I heard of him, and what else has he written?” – my reaction on first reading Pax Romana #1 back when it released in 2007.

Today, of course, anyone who follows comics knows the name Jonathan Hickman.  Tapped by Marvel to helm some of their biggest series and major events (including the universe-shattering Secret Wars, which launches next week), Hickman has become something of a comic book superstar almost overnight.  And for anyone who had a chance to check out his earlier work, such as Pax Romana, it’s come as no surprise at all.

In Pax Romana, the scientific research wing of the Catholic church discovers the secret of time travel technology. The church decides to use this gift to send a modern military force back to the year 312AD, in order to support Constantine The Great, and make all of history more Catholic.

The book focuses on the men and women chosen for the mission, the extremely high-stakes ambition of their cause (shaping and manipulating the development of humanity itself), and the conflicts and temptations they encounter among the way.  The story is very smartly written, featuring a heavy emphasis on philosophy, ethics, and sociology, as the time-travelers debate amongst themselves over the righteousness of their path, and the duty they feel they owe to mankind.

Hickman’s art for the book is also quite stunning, with a consistent design sense permeating each page, and a narrative style that makes bold use of multimedia: besides the standard comic book scenes, the story is also told through the use of maps, timelines, scraps of data from Papal archives, and a handful of important conversations presented in the form of written transcripts.

In lesser hands, these transcripts might feel like lazy comic craft (“Is this just the script? Did you run out of time to draw it?”), but it’s clear a lot of thought has gone into when to use them, and for what sort of content; they break up the pacing in a way that is surprisingly refreshing, and give Hickman the space he needs to really get into the meat of the “Temporal Crusader” thought experiment that is Pax Romana without bogging down the overall story, which tends to move at an exciting, breakneck pace.

Pax Romana is smart, mature science fiction that makes masterful use of the comics medium and is incredibly difficult to put down.  Highly recommended.

[Check out Pax Romana on comiXology]

Mike Isenberg is an Associate Production Coordinator at comiXology, co-writer of First Law Of Mad Science, and contributor to the New York Times bestselling FUBAR anthology series.  He lives in Harlem with his cats, Tesla and Edison.

A comiXologist Recommends:
Mike Isenberg recommends

Revenger #2

Revenger #2 is out!  Charles Forsman’s (charlesforsman) ultra-violent action tale has had me on the edge of my seat since issue #1 came out back in January.

My colleague Harris Smith wrote up a great review of issue #1 when it came out, but if you’re just hearing about Revenger for the first time, let me tell you that you’re in for a treat.  The book follows a badass leather-clad androgynous black woman who “travels a broken United States helping the weak and exploited through the use of extreme violence.”

Revenger takes inspiration from the gritty and violent action films of the early 1980s.  And Forsman’s love of the genre shines through.  There’s some fascinating tension here, though, in that Forsman is clearly delighting in the fun of playing in this style and bringing this sort of story to life, yet “delightful” and “fun” aren’t the sort of adjectives you’re likely to find in the pages of the book itself.  Revenger’s world is dark.  Its characters are compromised and vicious.  Its action is brutal and frightening.  It can be hard to look at.  But it’s also hard to put down.

Issue #2 features our heroine making her escape from captivity in the brothel she had been investigating in the previous issue.  We’re also introduced to some of the villains who run the place, and are treated to some great characterization of some seriously slimy folks.

All-in-all, Revenger is a fantastic crime action story from a wonderfully creative and singular talent.  You need to pick this up!

[Read Revenger #2 on comiXology]

Mike Isenberg is an Associate Production Coordinator at comiXology, co-writer of First Law Of Mad Science, and contributor to the New York Times bestselling FUBAR anthology series.  He lives in Harlem with his cats, Tesla and Edison.

A comiXologist Recommends…
Mike Isenberg recommends:

Descender #1

You know what we don’t get nearly enough of in comics these days?  Old fashioned space opera; with robots and aliens and galactic intrigue and the whole nine yards.  You know what else we need more of?  Gorgeous watercolor illustrations.

If you find yourself agreeing with these statements, then please let me direct your attention to Descender #1, by Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen.  And with its compelling story set in a well-fleshed-out far-future sci-fi setting illustrated with beautiful watercolors, Descender is definitely worthy of your attention.

Ten years in the past, gigantic robots appeared in the sky above each of the nine homeworlds of the United Galactic Council, unleashing a devastating attack on the galaxy’s population before mysteriously vanishing without a trace.  Now, on a derelict mining colony on the edge of the galaxy, a young android boy has awoken confused from a decade-long sleep, to find a world that is more than a little hostile towards all things robotic.

Lemire and Nguyen have done a wonderful job in issue #1 of introducing the setting and the characters, while still making room for a good number of character moments and plenty of mood-building and suspense.  There’s a tense mystery at play here (what exactly is android Tim-21’s connection to the giant death robots?) but also a lot of heart.  And Nguyen’s painted illustrations are not to be missed.

This is definitely a series to keep an eye on.  Can’t wait to see where it’ll be going from here.

[Read Descender #1 on comiXology]

Mike Isenberg is an Associate Production Coordinator at comiXology, and the co-writer of First Law Of Mad Science.  He lives in Harlem with his cats, Tesla and Edison.

A comiXologist Recommends:
Mike Isenberg recommends The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #2

First Rocket Raccoon gets his own series. And now we have The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. Marvel really seems to be upping the game for rodent-based comics!

With all the powers of a squirrel, and the ability to talk to squirrels, Doreen Green (a.k.a. “Squirrel Girl”) is hardly the most impressive superhero in Marvel’s roster. Yet despite her limited power-set, Squirrel Girl has defeated some of the Marvel Universe’s most dangerous supervillains, including Doctor Doom and the Mad Titan, Thanos himself. Now she faces her deadliest challenge to date: college.

Written by the ever-hilarious Ryan North (writer of the long-running Dinosaur Comics and the award-winning Adventure Time comic), and drawn by Erica Henderson, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is a playful send-up of super-hero comics that manages to give the genre a much-needed ribbing while still maintaining a lot of heart. If you were to take the irreverence of Deadpool, but replace that series’ violent psychopath with an insecure yet endearingly sincere and up-beat college-age girl, you’d probably have something very similar to Squirrel Girl.

Issue #2 sees Doreen facing the perils of Freshman Orientation when she gets word that Galactus is on his way to Earth, and that she’s the only one who can stop him. In order to halt Galactus’s approach, she’ll need a way off the planet, which means stealing– I mean “borrowing” some space-faring Iron Man armor from Stark headquarters. Antics, as they say, ensue.

For anyone looking for a light-hearted and irreverent break from the seriousness of other super-hero titles,

[READ THE UNBEATABLE SQUIRREL GIRL #2 ON COMIXOLOGY]

Mike Isenberg is an Associate Production Coordinator at comiXology, and the co-writer of First Law Of Mad Science. He lives in Harlem with his cats, Tesla and Edison.

A comiXologist Recommends:
Mike Isenberg recommends The Incal

Oh man I don’t even know where to begin.  Today is super exciting.  We’re launching a huge number of awesome books from French publisher Humanoids, in both French and English languages, including several classic books drawn by the legendary French cartoonist Moebius.

Jean “Moebius” Giraud is one of the most influential cartoonists in the history of the medium.  That his comics haven’t been more readily available in English has always really bummed me out.  But now we have them!  And you can read them!  And they’re really reasonably priced!  And I’m worried that I might wear out my exclamation key before the end of this article BECAUSE I AM REALLY SERIOUSLY THAT EXCITED!

The Incal is a collaboration between Moebius and Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky.  If you’ve never seen any of his films, you should know right off the bat that Jodorosky is totally off his rocker crazypants, in the most magnificent way.  His work is brilliantly psychedelic, totally uninhibited, manically imaginative, and (perhaps surprisingly, given everything else) extremely fun and entertaining.

All of those qualities are brought to bear, along with Moebius’s gorgeous artwork, in the manic roller-coaster ride of science fiction psycho-shamanism that is The Incal.  In this comic series you’ll find galactic intrigue, alien invasions, space jellyfish, devious techno-priests, mystical enlightenment, and a wise-talking bird made of concrete.

What more could you possibly want?  Go read this!

[Read The Incal on comiXology]

Mike Isenberg is an Associate Production Coordinator at comiXology, and the co-writer of First Law Of Mad Science.  He lives in Harlem with his cats, Tesla and Edison.

A comiXologist Recommends:
Mike Isenberg recommends
Sanity & Tallulah: Plucky Teen Girl Space Detectives #1

Last year at Small Press Expo, I ran into my co-worker Molly Brooks, who was exhibiting at the show.  I asked her what her comic was about, and she managed to get out about five words, “Plucky Teen Girl Space Detectives,” before I enthusiastically shouted “SOLD!” and shoved some bills across her booth.

If those five words aren’t as instantly exciting for you as they are for me, let me add that Molly is an incredibly talented artist and storyteller.

Sanity and Tallulah, the comic’s titular characters, are two teenage girls on break from school, using their free time to travel around local space, clocking experience on Tallulah’s space-pilot learner’s permit by taking on basic courier jobs, doing some amateur salvage, and generally just exploring the world around them.

The story follows Sanity and Tallulah as they discover a distress beacon hidden amongst an asteroid belt.  This leads them on an adventure involving a mysteriously-abandoned derelict warship and its robotic inhabitants.

The characters are wonderfully fleshed out.  Tallulah is gung-ho for adventure and the joy of piloting her little bubble ship, while Sanity is eager for the adult responsibilities that come with the new-found independence they’ve been granted by Tallulah’s learner’s permit.  The excitement that the characters take in their exploration is evident in the very first page, and reminded me perfectly of the summer after my friends and I all got drivers licenses.  But, y'know, in space.

Speaking of space, the setting here is also surprisingly well fleshed out.  Little details about the world are scattered throughout the book, subtly enough not to get in the way of the story while still developing a believable science-fiction setting alive with its own history and rules.

All of these elements join together with Molly’s beautifully expressive art to tell a gripping sci-fi adventure tale with some real peril and emotion.  And really a lot of fun.  Pick this one up!

[Read Sanity & Tallulah: Plucky Teen Girl Space Detectives #1 on comiXology]

Mike Isenberg is an Associate Production Coordinator at comiXology, and the co-writer of First Law Of Mad Science. He lives in Harlem with his cats, Tesla and Edison.

A comiXologist Recommends:
Mike Isenberg recommends Henni

Ever feel like the rules you have to follow are arbitrary, unfair, and unreasonable?  What if you could just run away and find somewhere new

In the fantastical world of Miss Lasko-Gross’s new graphic novel Henni, the titular character is a young girl who asks a lot of questions and isn’t satisfied with the answers she receives.  Raised in an insular, religious village, Henni’s inquisitiveness is less than appreciated by her elders, and she eventually finds herself expelled from her home into the frightening unknown.

The book is gorgeously drawn in a story-book style, but with a slightly mature bent, evoking the tone of Maurice Sendak’s children’s books.  The line art is simple but expressive, and the whole book is beautifully shaded in rich blue and purple watercolors.

Henni herself is one of the most likable protagonists I’ve encountered in comics in years.  She’s plucky, resourceful, inquisitive, and maybe a bit too smart for her own good, and it’s hard not to instantly root for her.  During her adventure she uses her wits to get her out of scrapes both ideological and physical, and as she travels from place to place we get the sense that almost anything could be around the next corner.

Henni is a wonderful read and, in my mind, an instant classic.  Absolutely worth reading.  Check it out.

[Read Henni on comiXology]

Mike Isenberg is an Associate Production Coordinator at comiXology, and the co-writer of First Law Of Mad Science.  He lives in Harlem with his cats, Tesla and Edison.

A comiXologist Recommends:
Mike Isenberg recommends Dayglow #3

A comiXologist Recommends:
Mike Isenberg recommends Escape From New York #1

As I mentioned in my review of Big Trouble In Little China #1, the storytelling method that director John Carpenter applies to his films is one that works just as well in the world of comics.  Carpenter tends to take a “cheesy” genre premise and lavish it with care, talent, high production values, and a clear love for whatever it was that makes the genre fun in the first place.  Like an alchemist with a philosopher’s stone, Carpenter uses his sincerity to transmute “cheese” into “charm,” while avoiding the usual pitfall of “camp.”

Many of the greatest genre comics employ much the same formula, so it’s no surprise that the worlds of Carpenter’s films translate so well between the two media.  The darkly satiric, ultraviolent science-fiction of 1981’s Escape From New York always felt to me like it had more in common with the comics of 2000AD or Heavy Metal magazines than with anything else in the medium of film.  So it makes perfect sense to now see that world on the comic book page.

Written by Christopher Sebela and drawn by Diego Barreto, Escape From New York #1 continues the story of quintessential badass Snake Plissken (played by Kurt Russel in the film).  Like the Big Trouble In Little China comic, Escape picks up right where the movie ended, with page 1 recapping the final moments of the film.  Plissken humiliates the president by swapping tapes and whereas the film fades to black with Snake destroying the real tape (the movie’s MacGuffin, supposedly having the potential to bring about world peace), the comic shows us the immediate consequences of this action.  Namely, Snake is on the run.

His presidential pardon revoked, Plissken heads south, eventually joining up with a small group of occultists making their way to the Free Republic of Florida.  The book introduces some interesting characters and fleshes out the world of the film brilliantly.  A lot of care has clearly been taken to make sure that everything about the comic—from the pacing to the dialogue to the framing of the images—matches the style of the film, and it’s all been pulled off to wonderful effect.

Fans of the film should really enjoy this comic, though having seen the movie isn’t required; this is an all-new adventure for Snake Plissken, and it looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun.  Can’t wait to see where it goes from here.

[Read Escape From New York #1 on comiXology]

Mike Isenberg is an Associate Production Coordinator at comiXology, and the co-writer of First Law Of Mad Science.  He lives in Harlem with his cats, Tesla and Edison.

Comics We're Thankful For:
Mike Isenberg is thankful for Scud: The Disposable Assassin

One day in late 1994, an adolescent Mike Isenberg walked out of his local comic shop with a black-and-white comic that would forever change his life.

The comic was Scud: The Disposable Assassin #4, published by Fireman Press.  It looked neat.  It was neat.  In the pages of that issue I would find a stylish robot fighting alongside cyborg mafiosos against zombie dinosaurs led by voo-doo lord Benjamin Franklin.  Needless to say, my 11-year-old mind was blown wide open.  I scrambled to find the issues I had missed, and made sure from that point on to grab every new issue that hit the shelves.

In the world of Scud: The Disposable Assassin, robotic assassins can be purchased from corner vending-machines as easily as soda or Doritos.  A Scud will pursue any target you assign him and then—as it states on the warning label affixed to his back—he will self-destruct once his target is eliminated.

The comic tells the story of one Scud (serial#: 1373), hired to kill a monster that’s been terrorizing a local mannequin factory.  During the fight, Scud happens to catch sight of his back in a mirror and reads the label that spells out his fate.  Not being too enthused with the idea of self-destruction, he refuses to kill his target; instead, he shoots off the monster’s limbs and brings it to the local hospital.  Medical bills aren’t cheap, however, so he starts taking freelance assassin jobs in order to pay for the creature’s life support.

Created by Rob Schrab, with occasional writing assistance from Mondy Carter  and Dan Harmon  (yes, the same Dan Harmon who went on to create “Community”), Scud is kinetic and exciting and stylish and imaginative and playful, all in a way that I hadn’t realized was even possible for a comic in 1994.  I immediately shared it with all of my friends, including a young Oliver Mertz; our bonding over Scud would become a decades-long shared appreciation of comics in general, eventually leading to our collaboration on an indie comic of our own.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful to Rob Schrab for opening my pre-teen eyes to the potential of the comics medium to surprise and excite, and to really express a creator’s imagination in a totally new way.  I’m thankful that it brought me and my eventual co-writer together.  And, most of all, I’m thankful that Schrab finally freakin’ finished it.

Scud: The Disposable Assassin #20 came out in early 1998 and ended on a serious bummer of a cliffhanger, with Scud agreeing to take on his final job: assassinate the world.  Issue #21 was supposedly right around the corner, but kept getting delayed as Schrab and Harmon were whisked off to Hollywood to work with Oliver Stone, trying to get a Scud film adaptation off the ground.  Months turned to years, Fireman Press closed their doors, and greatest comic of my adolescence seemed destined to fade into obscurity; out of print, forgotten, and unfinished.

Ten years later, working in a comic shop and thumbing through the new Previews catalog, I nearly faint when I see Image[6]  soliciting Scud #21.  In 2008, Schrab finally produced the last four issues of Scud, and then Image reprinted the entire series in Scud: The Disposable Assassin: The Whole Shebang.

I recommend a lot of books here.  Usually a new one each week.  But if there’s one book in the entire comiXology catalog that I’m really thankful for, it’s this one.  I can’t recommend it highly enough.  Pick it up.

A comiXologist Recommends:
Mike Isenberg recommends The Wicked + The Divine Vol.1: The Faust  Act

One day when I was in college, my friends and I drove two hours into Boston to see David Bowie.  As the trip started, we began getting giddy over the fact that we were in the same state as David Bowie.  As we arrived in Boston, excitement grew with the realization that we were in the same city as David Bowie.  Filing into our seats, we were practically ecstatic to be in the same stadium as David Bowie.  And then David Bowie appeared on stage and played some songs for us.  Aladdin Sane, the Goblin King, Ziggy freakin’ Stardust himself.  It was a transcendent experience.

This is because David Bowie is not a man.  David Bowie is a god.

With The Wicked + The Divine, Kieron Gillen (kierongillen) and Jamie McKelvie (mckelvie) have created a world in which the lines between divinity and stardom are similarly blurred, in a very real way.  Every ninety years, in this world, twelve young people are transformed into twelve ancient deities.  These gods then walk among us for two years before granting their hosts an untimely end and disappearing for another ninety years.

With the most recent cycle of divine rebirth happening in the age of instant mass media, the gods now play the role of mega-stars, using unearthly charisma and celestial rock-n-roll to grow their audience and blur the lines between “fan” and “disciple.”

One such super-fan, a young woman named Laura, serves as our viewpoint into this world.  When Lucifer violently foils an assassination attempt, only to then be framed for the murder of a judge, Laura  finds herself making a deal with the devil in order to uncover the truth.

The mystery is compelling, and serves brilliantly as a device for introducing us to the players in this divine tragedy.  Like the gods of ancient myth, as well as the teenagers they inhabit, the modern pop-deities Laura encounters are fickle, impulsive, and ever at one-another’s throats.  The characters are all fascinating, and McKelvie’s crisply-rendered and fashion-conscious art makes them beautifully larger-than-life.

Recommended for fans of modern fantasy comics like The Sandman, or Gillen & McKelvie’s earlier series Phonogram.

Also recommended for anyone who likes to freak out in a moonage daydream. Oh yeah.

[Read The Wicked + The Divine Vol. 1: The Faust Act]

Mike Isenberg is an Associate Production Coordinator at comiXology, and the co-writer of First Law Of Mad Science. He lives in Harlem with his cats, Tesla and Edison.

A comiXologist Recommends:
Mike Isenberg recommends Rocket Raccoon (2014-) #5

From the trailers alone it was pretty clear that this past summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy film was going to launch at least one of its main characters into stardom in a major way. Of course I’m referring to that furry little foul-mouthed ball of violence, Rocket Raccoon. So it came as little surprise when Marvel announced that, a month before the movie’s release, they’d be giving everyone’s soon-to-be-favorite Procyonid his own spin-off comic series.

We’re now five issues into the series, and Rocket Raccoon (2014-) has continued to impress and entertain each month. Drawn and written by the ever-talented Skottie Young (skottieyoung), the book is funny, exciting, and irreverent. Young’s art is dynamic and animated as ever, and gorgeously complimented by Jean-François Beaulieu’s beautiful coloring work. The characters are all lively and lovable, the action sequences are all fluid and intense, and the humor is all just mature enough to give adults some good unexpected chuckles without going so far that kids couldn’t enjoy this book as well. Boiled down to a single word, this book is FUN.

Issue #5 sees Rocket and Groot taking a well-deserved break after the craziness of opening story-arc reached its conclusion last month. The book opens with the two Guardians relaxing around a campfire, telling stories to a group of what appear to be extra-terrestrial cub scouts. The bulk of the issue consists of one such story, as told to the campers by Groot.

Of course, Groot’s three-word vocabulary isn’t particularly well-suited to storytelling. So every word of the story—every line of dialogue, every sign in the background, and even every sound effect—is portrayed as Groot would have said it himself: “I am Groot.” It’s an entertaining conceit that’s executed extremely well; the story is fast paced and exciting, and the fact that Skottie Young and Jake Parker (co-credited with art on this issue) have pulled it off without the gimmick getting stale shows just how much fun it’s possible to have with these characters.

For anyone looking for a book to put a smile on your face, Rocket Racoon (2014-) is pure distilled fun. Full of gorgeous artwork, irreverent humor, and crazy action, this book is definitely recommended.

For more of Skottie Young’s fantastic art, check out his Marvel Oz books, starting with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Also take a look at the Special Edition of Rocket Raccoon #1, which includes full-page thumbnails, inks, and colored versions of every page in the comic. (Have I overused the word “gorgeous” in this review yet? Because it’s gorgeous.)

And if you’re looking for more Rocket Raccoon, you can’t go wrong with the Rocket and Groot Ultimate Collection

[Read Rocket Raccoon (2014-) #5]

Mike Isenberg is an Associate Production Coordinator at comiXology, and the co-writer of First Law Of Mad Science. He lives in Harlem with his cats, Tesla and Edison