Sacrifice #1

Written by Sam Humphries
Art by Dalton Rose

I really do shop at one of the best comic stores in North America.  They were one of the handful of stores to sell this comic, which most shops got a couple of weeks ago.  Since we are in Canada, and our shop chose the least expensive shipping method (so they could make money selling the comic at cover price - a crazy notion, no?), it only arrived in time for sale this week, and despite the fact that first prints of this comic are commanding high prices on Ebay, they continued to sell it at cover price.  Decent people.

Anyway, this self-published comic comes from the writer of Our Love is Real, which was one of the biggest surprise comics of 2011, in terms of both its shocking subject matter (people have sex with animals, vegetables, and minerals, but not each other) and its limited press run.  Now Humphries is doing the same thing all over again, but this time with a six-issue mini-series.

Sacrifice opens as Hector escapes from a hospital, and then goes for lunch at a crappy taco joint.  Suddenly, he is transported back into the time of the Aztecs, just prior to the arrival of the Spanish.  He is found by a group of Aztecs, who plan on sacrificing him before they see the intricate tattoo on his back.  They decide they need to take him to Tenochtitlan (modern-day Mexico City) for an audience with Emperor Moctezuma.  Hector becomes the focus of a theological debate between the men who found him, supporters of the god Quetzalcoatl, while the Emperor's adviser supports Huitzilopotchli.

As the story progresses, we learn a few more things.  Hector is epileptic, and has always had a strong interest in the Aztec and their fate at Spanish hands.  Is he really traveling through time, or are these visions merely the product of his disease, a la Joan of Arc and Louis Riel?

Dalton Rose's art is very good.  I see a few influences in his work - Paul Pope, European comics, Michael Allred, and the style of the cartoon King of the Hill all mash together in his art.  The book, coloured by Pete Toms, looks vibrant and bold, with bright backgrounds.

I'm very pleased that I've got the opportunity to collect this series without having to wait for a trade.  These are some very talented people making this comic, and I hope that this fiercely independent approach to doing business is successful for Humphries.

Sweet Tooth #29

by Jeff Lemire

It's been a while since we've last seen Gus, Mr. Jeppard, or the other cast members of this series.  For the last three months, we've been given a story set in Alaska almost one hundred years ago (with guest artist Matt Kindt) which has helped establish a little more of an historical connection between what we know of Gus's world and the past.

Now, Jeff Lemire is back to drawing the book (I do love his art), and we get to find out what has been happening with all of our favourite characters.  It seems that about a month has passed in story time, with Jeppard camping out on his own while waiting for Gus to recover from his injuries and rejoin him with Dr. Singh so they can continue their travels north.

During this time, Lucy has been getting sicker, and keeping it from everyone.  Also, Johnny has been reading the records of Project Evergreen, the group that built the dam facility where everyone has been staying.  The revelations he discovers coincide a little too neatly with the information that Jeppard uncovers when he goes to steal a vehicle from Haggarty's camp.  There is no real surprise in learning that Walter, the man in the dam has been lying to everyone, but I'm very interested in seeing how this is going to play out.

Sweet Tooth has been a very strong monthly comic from Vertigo for a couple of years now, and I like that the quality is not letting up.

iZombie #21

Written by Chris Roberson
Art by J. Bone

I was pretty surprised to find that Michael Allred hadn't drawn this issue of iZombie, and that the art was instead provided by a talented artist from my hometown - J. Bone.  I've been familiar with Bone's work for years, but haven't read much of his output (I've stayed away from the DC 'all-ages' work that he is best known for).  I love the work that Allred does on this title, but also found the change of pace to be welcome.  This is the second issue of this series handled by a guest artist; I hope that everything is going okay for Mr. Allred, and that he's just taking a well-earned month or two off.

Anyway, this series definitely feels like it's moving towards a conclusion, as various long-running plotlines begin to converge even more than they have lately.  Gwen, our zombie protagonist, is in the custody of the Dead Presidents, and she surprises them by informing them that Galatea is active in the area.  This leads the Presidents to track her down, but not before coming face to face with Horatio and his group of monster killers from the Fossor Corporation, who also appear to be working with Amon.  As I said, plots are colliding all over the place.

There's more in this book too - Gwen tries to enjoy a brain smoothie, Ellie gets to dance, and Scott has a chat with a leopard.  Bone's art gives the story a lighter, more cartoon-ish atmosphere than Allred's work, and it doesn't always fit with the subject matter, but this is a fine looking comic.

Fatale #1

Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Sean Phillips

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, especially when working together, are two of the most lauded and respected creators making comics these days.  Their work on Sleeper, Incognito, and the sublime Criminal has received tons of praise over the last ten years or so, and deservedly so.

I'm not sure what caused them to publish Fatale through Image Comics instead of Marvel's Icon imprint, which is where their last two collaborations were released.  It doesn't matter though, as aside from the logo on the cover, the design and feel of this book is no different from Criminal or Incognito, down to the essay by Jess Nevins at the back of the issue.

Where Criminal was begun as an homage to the crime pulps that preceded comics, and Incognito was the same for adventure pulps, Fatale is their horror book (although it reads like a crime series).  This first issue begins at a funeral for a mystery writer.  His godson and executor meets a beautiful young woman whose grandmother knew the writer.  Later, the godson is at the old man's secluded house when some thugs with guns show up.  The girl is there too, and she helps him escape, although as they flee, they get in a car accident. 

At that point, I started to get a sense of what I expected the series to be - a mystery surrounding the old writer's unpublished first novel.  That's not going to be the case though, as the rest of the book is set back in the 1950s.  There is a reporter (with the same last name as the writer in the introduction) who is interested in a woman who has the same name as the girl at the funeral (or is she the same girl - there is a suggestion that Josephine doesn't age).  There is also a corrupt cop who keeps her as a mistress, and some business involving a cult that was slaughtered in their home.

There's not much to go on with this first issue.  Brubaker is taking his time setting up the story and characters, preferring in this case to dump us into the deep end and let us make our own connections as the story goes.  There is definitely enough to grab the reader's interest, and Phillips's art is lovely - moody and evocative of the atmosphere and time period.  It's good stuff.

The Li'l Depressed Boy #8

Written by S. Steven Struble
Art by Sina Grace

I'm wondering if it's not time to start switching to reading this book in trade.  I like The Li'l Depressed Boy, but I'm getting a little frustrated with how little actually happens in each issue of this comic.

Case in point:  this month, LDB and Drew make their way home from the concert they spent like 3 issues going to.  They have breakfast and car trouble, and talk a little bit about the Jazz situation (should LDB tell her how he feels, or just avoid her?).  LDB finds Jazz sitting on his step; they don't really say anything, and then he goes to bed.

While I continue to find this comic very charming and to have an allure of its own, I think I need a little more going on to keep me coming back month after month.

On the plus side, the Jamie McKelvie cover is lovely.

Cyclops #8

Written by Matz
Art by Gaël de Meyere

I guess there aren't a lot of ways that this series could have ended - even in today's world, let alone the future, it is very difficult to go up against a corporation and get a favourable outcome.  Our hero, Douglas Pistoia and his friends have exposed Multicorps as war criminals, and are on the run when the issue opens.

This issue sags a little, as do many action movies as they get closer and closer to their conclusions; so much time has been spent setting up the big finale that it can't really live up to expectations.  This ending feels a little rushed in a few ways - we see Doug's wife's reaction to the big climax, but not how it affects all of his fans, nor the woman who was manipulating him earlier.  As a reader, I feel a little robbed of an emotional connection with the conclusion.

Still, this has been a very well-executed comic, which has a few things to say about the celebrity and realty TV-focused world we live in today.  The book lost some real steam when original artist Luc Jacamon left the book, and while Gaël de Meyere did a good job, he just wasn't as skilled.  I wonder, now that this is over, if Archaia is going to continue publishing Matz and Jacamon's The Killer.

Bad as Me

by Tom Waits

Basically, you either love Tom Waits, or you don't.  Anyone who has looked over the types of music I usually write about on this site would perhaps be surprised to see that Ol' Tom is one of my favourite musical artists, but there is something so appealing about most of his music, and I've been listening to him for close to twenty years now, having first been introduced to him by a co-worker in retail who often used Waits as a means of clearing the store of lingerers a half hour before closing.


Bad As Me is Tom's newest album, and he plays things safe within the context of his experimental roots/rockabilly/punk/cabaret mash-ups.  It starts off strong - in fact, the first few seconds of 'Chicago', the opening song, sounded more like the beginning of a Michael Nyman piece than Waits.

We get the usual mix of Brawlers and Bawlers, with just a couple Bastards (to use the classification system that Tom introduced for his songs with his triple-album Orphans).  My favourite song is the closer to the first disc (I picked up the 'deluxe edition', which came with a second CD comprised of three songs), 'New Year's Eve', which has Tom paint a scene of urban disaffection, borrowing the chorus from 'Auld Lang Syne'; it's a formula that worked so well for him years ago with 'Tom Traubert's Blues' (aka 'Waltzing Matilda').

It's terrific to see that Waits is still producing new music, and continues to do it the way he always has, with staunch individualism and little regard for radio play or marketability.  This is not Tom's best album, but it's pretty good.

A History of Violence

Written by John Wagner
Art by Vince Locke

It's pretty much impossible for a comics fan to have read everything.  I saw this recent Vertigo Crime reprinting of the old Paradox Press title A History of Violenceand was more than a little surprised to realize I'd never read it before (nor had I seen the moviedirected by David Cronenberg, despite the fact that I went through a huge Cronenberg phase back in my university days).  I figured it was time to address this - for the book at least, if not the movie.

This is a pretty decent book.  I was a big fan of John Wagner's work on Batman (written with Alan Grant), and have long recognized Vince Locke as having an important place in edgy, intelligent comics.

The book opens in some small town, where a couple of petty crooks decide to hold up Tom McKenna's diner, not expecting McKenna to fight back.  When it's all over, McKenna finds himself a local hero, with his story even making national news.  And this leads to some problems, since McKenna has been living under an assumed name for twenty years, and has been hiding from the mob.

It's not long before a trio of mob enforcers come sniffing around, and McKenna has to confront his past, and tell his wife and children about how he used to live his life.  The family drama stuff is handled very nicely, and it's easy to see why this book was chosen for film adaptation; it has all the pacing of a good Hollywood thriller.

Locke's work is nice, but much looser than I would have expected.  Much of the book looks like Guy Davis penciled it without an inker.  This approach works for most of it, but there are a few scenes where things could have been a little clearer.

Harlem in Vogue

The Poetry & Jazz of Langston Hughes

I've been reading Langston Hughes pretty much my whole life.  He's one of the essential poets, and his work is easy to understand when introducing poetry to young people.  I've only rarely been blown away by anything he's written, but I do have a tremendous amount of respect for his place in the American canon, especially his place in the history of African-American literature.


Harlem in Vogueis a collection of recordings that Hughes made in the late 50s.  There are 29 tracks on this disc, divided into four sessions.

The first ten tracks were done with Leonard Feather's All-Star Sextet accompanying Hughes, playing music that attempted to match and augment the poetry.  Then there are eleven tracks where Hughes is joined by Charles Mingus and the Horace Parlan Quintet.  This part is my favourite section of the album, as Mingus understands the themes of the poems, and the music matches them perfectly. 

After that, there are six tracks that have Hughes speaking without musical accompaniment.  These are much longer selections, and most revolve around his character of Simple; most are more prose pieces than poems.  It is in this part of the disc that we get to hear two of Hughes's most famous poems: 'I have known rivers' and 'I too'. 

The disc finishes with two 'jazz interpretations' of Hughes's work by the Bob Dorough Quintet.  These are nice, except that the female vocalist is rather annoying.

In all, this CD is an important historical artifact, and gives listeners the rare chance to hear the actual voice of a poet long dead.  It feels like it's important to own an item like this, even if I find that I rarely want to sit down and listen to it.

Swallow Me Whole

by Nate Powell


Swallow Me Whole is a pretty surprising and powerful book, that leaves itself open to interpretation in a number of ways.  The book revolves around Ruth, an adolescent girl who lives with her mother, stepfather, stepbrother Perry, and her infirm grandmother, who everyone calls Memaw.

Mental illness runs rampant in this family.  Memaw is kind of senile, although she hints at having had some of her problems for her whole life.  Perry sees a little wizard, who commands him to draw for hours on end.  And Ruth has a thing about insects.  She's been stealing bugs preserved in jars from her school for ages, and constantly rearranges them on her shelves and in her room.  They speak to her, and she tries to make it through each day without stepping on any living thing.

Since much of this book is seen from Ruth's perspective, it becomes very hard to gauge where imagination is giving over to compulsion or delusion, which seems to be Powell's intent.  The story progresses in fits and starts, jumping over chunks of time, and leaving much for the reader to puzzle out.

Powell's art works well in this book.  He makes good use of negative and empty spaces, letting the art swirl in places like Ruth's thoughts do.  In the end, I'm not sure what this book tells us about obsessive compulsive disorder or schizophrenia, but it does portray these illnesses in a manner much less over-blown than most media.  This is recommended.

Texas Thunder Soul 1968 - 1974

by Kashmere Stage Band

Listening to this stuff, you would never come to the conclusion that you are hearing a high school band, unless you read the liner notes.  The Kashmere Stage Band was the greatest high school band in America for a number of years running starting in 1972, when they started winning national competitions.

The band was directed by Conrad O. 'Prof' Johnson, who passed away a few years ago. Eothen 'Egon' Alapatt, who runs Now-Again Records, met Johnson a few times, and made arrangements to put together this excellent package, which includes two CDs and a DVD made up of a documentary about the band, a live TV performance from the 70s, and some footage of Egon going through mountains of records in Johnson's home, which was scheduled for demolition.

Just as he did with his True Soul albums of this year, Egon has preserved some amazing recordings, and made them available to a wider audience than they ever were before.  This band is fantastic.  They cover a lot of the massive funk pieces of their day - 'Do Your Thing', 'Thank You', 'Shaft', 'Burning Spear', among others, but they really kill it on their own piece, 'Kashmere'.

The first disc consists of recordings that Johnson made, most of which he released through his own label, but there are some previously unreleased gems here too.  The second disc has live recordings, none of which had been released before.

This is the type of project that really appeals to collectors, but the first disc on its own is an excellent window into a time when schools and parents valued musical education (and funded it).  It's a great album.

The Unwritten #32.5

Written by Mike Carey
Art by Peter Gross and Dean Ormston

The .5 issues of this book are being used to tell us something about the Cabal, the group of people who have been shaping and using literature, and literacy, for their own purposes for as long as man has been writing things down.  In the previous .5 comic (they alternate with the whole number issues, which tell the current events surrounding Tom Taylor and his small crew) we saw the Cabal operating in Ancient China, and dealing with Gutenberg at the beginning of the printing press.

This issue is different in that it tells one single story, that of Gilgamesh, the great Sumerian king, and his journey with Utnapishtim, an immortal who wants him to slay a great serpent.  It seems clear that Utnapishtim is Mr. Pullman, a regular in the Unwritten cast, and it seems, the person who sets the direction of the Cabal, if not its actual leader. What we learn is that the serpent, Abaddon, or Leviathan, feeds on human stories, hence the choice to use Gilgamesh, who was then one of the most storied people living.

Carey doesn't give us a whole lot to work with here in terms of connecting what we've learned to the purpose of the Cabal.  We do know that Utnapishtim cannot be killed until people no longer know of him, which is why Gilgamesh has him written into his great epic.  What this means for Pullman I don't really know - he's kind of shadowy and unknown in the modern day issues.

Dean Ormston joins Peter Gross on this issue, and it brings to mind their collaborations on Carey's previous long-running Vertigo series Lucifer.  They are definitely a good team.

Spaceman #3

Written by Brian Azzarello
Art by Eduardo Risso

Now that the characters and situation are established, this series is really starting to take off.

Orson is a 'spaceman', a genetically modified human designed for space exploration who now goes from salvage job to salvage job trying to make enough money to pay for his virtual sessions with a call girl, and to buy drugs.  On his most recent salvage, he came across Tara, a young girl who was kidnapped from her celebrity adoptive parents.

Basically, Tara's parents are Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and their reality show about their large blended family is the most popular thing going, getting more views than any news broadcast.

Now Orson is trying to keep Tara safe, but doesn't really know what to do with her.  Her family are looking for her, and we start to get a better sense of the two police officers assigned to her case.  We also learn that someone who has a fair amount in common with Orson is going to be looking for her too.

This series is set in a fully realized future that is not too pretty.  Azzarello's invented forms of speech work remarkably well (I normally hate that kind of thing), and I've grown to really like Orson and the band of urchins he surrounds himself with.  Risso's work is incredible as always.

DMZ #72

Written by Brian Wood
Art by Riccardo Burchielli

What a perfect way to end a long-running and complex series.  I feel like DMZ didn't receive enough attention over the last few years.  It's been as good as other lionized Vertigo series like Y the Last Man, but has never developed the same sort of vocal, loyal fan base (although we know they are out there - this comic has had remarkably stable, if not stellar, sales).  Now that the series is over, I imagine that people will begin to re-read and re-examine it as a series that, while consisting of speculative fiction set in the future, really captured the zeitgeist of the last six years.

Six years ago, America was embroiled in two costly, and poorly defined, foreign wars, vigorously pursued by its evangelical neoconservative president.  Its housing market hadn't burst yet.  Right-wing church-goers, racists, and crazies hadn't formed the Tea Party.  Wall Street hadn't been occupied.  The military-industrial complex was only ever gaining in influence and power.  Journalism was beginning its decline towards irrelevance in the lives of the common man and woman.  Income disparity was growing, and the country was increasingly split along ideological lines.  Ground Zero was a fresh wound.

DMZ grew out of the sense that, for the first time in a very long time, Americans recognized that their future was not as bright as it used to be.  It was, therefore, easy to accept a not-so-distant future where the country was split in a second civil war.  It also wasn't hard to accept that the country's greatest city would become an epicentre of conflict, tactically advantageous to both sides, but impossible to hold on to, and populated by some of the toughest, most recalcitrant people in the country.

Into this trashed out city, Brian Wood parachuted Matty Roth, a naive and ignorant kid with dreams of becoming a great journalist.  Over the last six years, we watched Matty grow to love and understand his adopted city, as he tried to use his unique position as a celebrity journalist to try to better things for the people of Manhattan.  He screwed up.  A lot.  There were a number of times where I didn't like, or understand Matty.  It's a good thing he wasn't really the main character of the comic; the city was.

As the series evolved and grew, it continued to reflect the times it was being written in.  Parco Delgado, the New York-born man who became mayor and took the political process hostage emerged out of the optimism and excitement that developed while Barack Obama ran for, and became, President.  The Free States was explained and understood in the wake of the national attention given to the Tea Party.  I always felt that Wood was using this series to, very subtly, inform us of the issues of our day.

Through it all though, he told a good story.  As I said, I didn't always like Matty, but I loved characters like Zee (Matty's on-again off-again girlfriend and medic), Wilson (the leader/saviour of Chinatown), DJ Random Fire, the graffiti artist Decade Later, and Amina, the would-be suicide bomber.  And of course, the city.  I've only visited New York a few times, but I feel like I've gotten a better sense of its neighbourhoods and its people through this comic.

This brings me, finally, to this last issue.  Matty narrates it through the introduction to the 15th anniversary edition of his book.  As we read along with a young woman, she travels through the re-built and redeveloped parts of Manhattan that were relevant to the comic.  We see the shrine to Wilson, and the memorial to the victims of the Day 204 Massacre.  It is a very fitting epilogue to the series, and I found it to be an emotional farewell to characters and places I grew to understand.

Riccardo Burchielli has been a huge part of this series's success.  His art has increasingly grown on me over the years, to the point where I am going to miss my monthly dose of his work, but I have to say that the fourteenth page, which is a splash panel of the young woman sitting on the steps of a building at the Day 204 site, is one of the most beautiful things he's ever drawn.

Wood, Burchielli, and the assorted guest artists and editors who have worked on this book over the years should be immensely proud of it.  It addressed some difficult issues, and became a lens through which we could look at our own world.  It also told some damn exciting and gripping stories.

American Vampire #22

Written by Scott Snyder
Art by Rafael Albuquerque

It's great to see Rafael Albuquerque back on American Vampire.  I enjoyed Jordi Bernet's recent work on the title, but Albuquerque is the artist who caused this book to catch my eye in the first place, and things feel right when he's working on it.

With this new arc, 'Death Race', we move into the 1950s, and we meet Travis Kidd, a young and unaffiliated vampire hunter.  We don't learn a whole lot about him, except that he's hunting for the vampire who ruined his life (sounds like Mike Mignola's Baltimore), and takes out any other vampires he comes across in his search.  He has some sort of prior dealings with the Vassals, the vampire-hunting group who we often see in this title and its spin-off, and in this issue, Agent Hobbes (looking a lot like Agent Graves from 100 Bullets) tries to get him to join up with them again.

This issue starts off with an excellent sequence involving Travis's girlfriend and her parents, and it also embraces the teenage 50s, with leather jackets and drag racing in the desert.  Scott Snyder has done a wonderful job of capturing the anxieties and concerns of each era he's set his story in, and that continues to be the case here.

Albuquerque's work is, of course, wonderful.  I look forward to learning how this story ties in with Skinner Sweet's, or with Pearl and Henry's.