New Comic Book Day is here and so is a brand new issue of BLACK PANTHER: LONG LIVE THE KING!
Need suggestions on what to read? Watch our Facebook LIVE stream at 4PM EST to hear our picks for the week!
It’s New Comics Day and we are GO on comixology.com!
(ps: a little book you may have heard of called Hawkeye has a new issue out today.)
(pps: also it’s the finale of the wake, and fatale, and prophet, and if you aren’t reading all three of those you’re making a mistake.)
The beginning of Comic-Con AND New Comics Day? #blessed
#NewComicsDay is here and its a good one!
Stay tuned for some great staff picks including our featured comic of the week The Wicked + The Divine and also Sex Criminals, Thor: God of Thunder, and more!
Every decision you’ve ever made in your life has led to this moment, this Wednesday, this #NewComicsDay!
It’s Wednesday and that means only one thing! #NewComicsDay is here and this week brings you Batman #31, Ms. Marvel #4, Chew/Revival, and more! Click here to see all the New Comics on comiXology!
What’s the first comic you’ll be reading today?
A comiXologist Recommends:
Mike Isenberg recommends The Bunker #4
I love a good time-travel story. Unravelling paradoxes and reversing the expected order of cause and effect means that time-travel stories have the potential for some incredibly suspenseful and clever storytelling. But “clever” can only get a story so far; from Back to the Future to Lost, the best time-travel stories are only ever as good as their characters.
The Bunker (by Joshua Hale Fialkov (joshfialkov) and Joe Infurnari (joeinfurnari) is a time-travel story that is absolutely rooted in its characters. It features a small ensemble of five friends who begin issue #1 spending their final post-college summer together by heading out to the woods to bury a time capsule. When they break ground on their chosen spot, however, they discover their names stenciled onto the buried hatch of an underground bunker.
Like the time capsule the characters had intended to bury, the bunker is full of pictures, letters, records and memories from the time that the bunker was filled. And like the time capsule, all of these things seem to be from the characters themselves. But none of it is from the past; everything in the bunker is from decades in the future.
The letters the characters find are addressed to them from their future selves, and are full of shocking revelations. Some of these are mind-blowing: “You’re going to be president” and “You’re going to cause an apocalypse.” But, importantly, many are smaller and personal: “Your boyfriend is cheating on you.”
The commitment to the characters, their inner lives, their relationships, and their conflicts, is the glue that holds the book together, and it’s what makes the big-picture end-of-the-world part of the story matter at all to me as a reader. And boy, does it matter. I’m absolutely glued to my seat, waiting for the next issue to come out. If you have any interest at all in character-based sci-fi and time-travel stories, I can definitely recommend picking up this book.
For fans of: time travel, dystopia, action, suspense
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:
Eric Rosenfield recommends MediaEntity #06
One of the great things about digital comics is that it gives access to works deserving of a larger audience, including works from outside the United States. MediaEntity is originally a French webcomic now available in both English and French on comiXology. Like Thrillbent, MediaEntity is created specifically for the digital medium and takes full advantage of the elliptical, filmic effects of comiXology’s Guided View Native format.
The story is about a man who is framed for making an outrageous stock trade that ruins the large financial conglomerate he works for to the tune of billions of dollars. On the run from the law, he seeks to unravel the mystery of who framed him, and encounters an underground world of shadow economies and people on the fringes of society, including a homeless man with a magical affinity for pigeons. In this latest installment, our hero has found himself kidnapped to a trailer park full of people who know more than they’re letting on, led by their mysterious ‘guide’ Camille. Meanwhile, a newspaper man desperate for a lead witnessed his abduction and thinks he can find out where he is. Somewhere between a taught crime-thriller and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, MediaEntity is a Guided View Native exploration of what digital comics are capable of.
[Pick up MediaEntity #06 here!]
Eric Rosenfield is an associate product manager at comiXology and has worked there since digital comics were read on tin cans and string.
A comiXologist Recommends:
Leah Wishnia recommends The Package (thepackageogn)
The Package, written by elliotblake with art by Alexis Ziritt (aziritt) is a dark and gripping novel of revenge and retribution that will keep you holding your breath till the last gasp.
The first scene takes place in the desert of Mexico, at a hideaway resort called “Vista Del Sol.” We are introduced to two foul-mouthed, violent, and misogynist gang members who are given a mission to pick up a mysterious package. At this point I wonder if we’ll have to spend the whole narrative following these two bums around, enduring their sexist remarks and over-the-top Machismo-driven egos. I am then delighted to find that a twist in events reveals that Paz, a beautiful and cunning young Mexican woman with an unassuming role as a cook at the resort is the true protagonist of this story. WIth a dark past and a specific vision for the future, she reveals herself as a modern-day Bonnie with a mission to avenge her father’s death and the loss of her own childhood and innocence. She picks out her Clyde, the sole-surviving man of a shoot-out, and together they prepare to seek out the one who wreaked havoc on their lives.
Further heightening the hard-boiled yet striking nature of the story is Ziritt’s black and white brushwork, which evokes raw emotion, passion, and energy, never missing its mark. Fans of the Hernandez brothers’ Love and Rockets may find resonance with the work as well as any readers of more gritty crime novels and comics, such as Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight or From Hell. I must issue a warning, however, that there are scenes of sexual abuse and violence that may not sit well with all, and reader discretion is advised. Otherwise, I highly recommend checking out the fresh and bold take on contemporary crime in The Package, and get your heart rate thumping with it.
For fans of: crime, gangster, action, drama
Leah Wishnia is an independent cartoonist and publisher who holds the position of Digital Assets Lead at ComiXology.
A comiXologist Recommends:
Jen Keith recommends Saga #19
From the series that brought us Lying Cat comes the next installment of the abundantly award-winning Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and fionastaples. If you haven’t been following along, it is my duty to direct you back to issue #1; you can thank me later. For those of you keeping up with your required reading, then you already know Saga #19 will be a comic treat.
Saga is your standard boy and girl meet, fall in love, betray their own species during an inter-planetary war, and run off to have what might be the cutest child that side of the universe. Narrating this space romp through lushly designed alien worlds and cultures is said cutest child, Hazel, whose impish personality shines through the re-telling of her own childhood. In Saga #19, we find our besotted heroes/haggard parents in domestic bliss – if you can call juggling a rigid mother-in-law, a messy house pet, and a live-in ghostly baby-sitter the calming, everyday life of domesticity. Work may be tough, but your kid is cute, your spouse is gorgeous, and hopefully no assassins and/or robot princes will end up on your front lawn today.
The aptly named Saga enraptures its audience with Brian K. Vaughan’s perfect balance of poignant and comedic writing and Fiona Staples’ rich, expressive artwork. If you’re all caught up on Saga and aching for more from these two wildly talented creators, Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man and Staples’ work in The Mystery Society will hopefully hold you for now.
As in every issue, Saga and its captivating cast continues the journey across the galaxy and into our hearts.
For fans of: sci-fi, diverse characters, POC leads, female leads, romance, action
Jen Keith is a Digital Editor at comiXology, comic creator, music addict, and shamelessly unapologetic Green Arrow enthusiast.
A comiXologist Recommends:
Jonah Chuang recommends United States of Murder, Inc. #1
I don’t want to sound hyperbolic, but almost everything I believe about what makes a hero comes from Brian Michael Bendis (brianmichaelbendis). His portrayal of Peter Parker in Ultimate Spider-Man helped shape my views on what a hero should be, and, indirectly, what kind of person I want to be. And it’s not because he writes the most powerful or the slyest heroes but because he writes some of the most real and complex characters who struggle with the mundane problems we all struggle with. (He also knows how to milk the hell out of dramatic moments to really make you feel those emotional highs and lows.)
In Powers (if you don’t know Powers and its fourteen year run with its original creative team, you should), Bendis and artist Michael Avon Oeming (oeming) bring that same relatability to the grittier, edgier, and more ethically ambiguous characters, Detective Christian Walker and his partner Deena Pilgrim. Their stories have less to do with super heroics than with the crappy personal issues that adults have to deal with as they schlep their way through bureaucracies as small, seemingly-powerless cogs caught up in the intricate and burdensome machine known as society (but yes, there are also a lot of super heroics).
With United States of Murder, Inc., Bendis teams up with Oeming again to tell the story of an America run by gangsters. The story follows one mobster as he attempts to uncover the secrets of the organization he works for. Though this sounds like quite a departure from the superhero stories I just praised Bendis for, it still possesses the same complexity, intrigue, and dynamic/relatable characters for which Bendis has come to be known, with even more shades of gray. If all that’s not enough to sway you, then just know it’s twice the amount of comic from two of today’s greatest talents for regular price.
[Pick up United States of Murder, Inc. #1 here!]
For fans of: action, crime, mystery
Jonah Chuang is a Production Coordinator Assistant and 1:1 time traveler. He’s just trying to get to 88 MPH.