New this week from Black Mask – THE SKEPTICS #1, by Tini Howard, Devaki Neogi, and Jen Hickman
A stylish, political adventure about a pair of hip, clever teens who fool the world into believing they have superpowers. Like X-Men: First Class meets Project Alpha. It is the 1960s. The Russians have the A bomb, the H bomb, and now the most terrifying weapon of all: a pair of psychically superpowered young people. Terrified and desperate, the US top brass scours from coast to coast in search of psychic Americans. Enter Dr. Isobel Santaclara, an eccentric illusionist and grifter who has recruited two teenagers and trained them to trick the US government, the Russians, and the whole world into believing they are dangerous psychics. The Skeptics is a pre-punk period piece, a sort of honest, unfuzzy, non-nostalgic look at the Cold War in DC. Like a cross between Kill Your Boyfriend and Hard Day’s Night, but about politics and ethics and how punk rock it is to be the smartest person in the room.
A comiXologist Recommends:
Dane Cypel recommends The Dead #4
The Dead #4 is a comiXology Submit title by James Maddox (jamescmaddox) and Jen Hickman (umicorms), featuring an atypical afterlife story. Instead of the overt tropes one would find in a story about the deceased, The Dead is like having the Ghostbusters in Wonderland.
I went to graduate school with the illustrator of The Dead, Jen Hickman, and I can remember her working on several of the pages from issue #1. Though I liked the art, I had no idea about the story. Seeing her name on the cover made me want to read the story and see how the book, and her pages, turned out.
The Dead is a fun albeit different read. A book with a title like The Dead left a lot to the imagination- and it took several issues to really understand the world. Luckily, by issue #4 the story came together. The characters in the book are deceased, though they live in a new, somewhat hostile world called “The House” - imagine it like the Matrix, but with monsters.
The art compliments the story by creating a fantastical, yet believable environment. The designs of the monsters really take center stage and are excellent. On top of the line art, the colors are vivid and superb- which make me want to see more.
The Dead is a fun combination of monsters, hunters and intrigue. Questions are raised that have yet to be answered. Characters are introduced with mysterious pasts. These aspects and more come together to make The Dead a book I will continue to read and recommend.
[Read The Dead #4 on comiXology]
Dane Cypel is a digital editor at comiXology and freelance illustrator.