Collecting issues #1-6 of this Avengers relaunch, Breakout deals with the formation of our team of New Avengers. Picking up where Avengers: Disassembled leaves off, our new team of Avengers form during a breakout on the island super-prison The Raft, and come together during a subsequent trip to The Savage Land. Reminded of how the original Avengers were drawn together to fight evil too large for any one superhero, Captain America convinces Iron Man to start up this new team featuring themselves, Spider-woman, Luke Cage, Spider-Man, The Sentry and later on, Wolverine.

As far as stories goes, this one is pretty great. we go from from Manhattan to Helicarriers to The Savage Land and back which is pretty good for a 6-issue run. Bendis takes his usual word-heavy style and uses it to give Finch room to draw great battle scenes that lend themselves really well to his penciling style. I’m big fan of Finch’s art, and my only complaint about this book is that Danny Miki’s inks and Frank D’Armata’s colours are often a little to dark. Understandable since most of the first half of the book takes place at night, but the darkness tends to take away a bit of the lush feeling of the Savage Land.

According to Bendis, the New Avengers run (now at issue #39) is chock full of mysteries and moments that will be explained in Secret Invasion. This is pretty bold and intricate storytelling, and makes clear why Bendis is one of the best writers in the game right now. Breakout was originally published in 2004, and was clearly ahead of the game.

New Avengers is one of the best books on the market right now, and if you haven’t been into it up until this point, there are 5 trades to collect. I would highly recommend any of them. Since jumping on at #26, I have enjoyed every issue of the book, but the stories that preceded that point were just as good, if not better, in trade paperback. The next two volumes deal with The Sentry and Spider-woman respectively, both of whom have become big players in the Marvel U, mainly on the strength of these stories.

I can’t wait to re-read these books in light of Secret Invasion and see what I’ve missed!

Originally published over six issues by Top Cow Productions, Wanted tells the tale of hypochondriac loser Wesley Gibson, a miserable man living a miserable life. Wesley soon discovers that he is in fact the son of the notorious super-villain, The Killer. The Killer is a member of an underground fraternity of supervillains that has secretly been controlling the world since killing off all the superheroes in the mid-1980’s. After The Killer’s untimely death, Wesley is recruited to take his father’s place in The Fraternity by the sexy Fox. Over the course of the novel, Wesley learns the skills to take his father’s mantle, as well as solve the mystery of his murder.

Wanted is a fantastic book. Millar creates a world that is so gritty it makes his work on The Ultimates look like a Saturday morning cartoon. By choosing to publish this story with and smaller company like Top Cow, Millar is given the freedom to paint a violent and dark picture of a world that is run by the bad guys. Working perfectly in tandem with this tone is artist JG Jones. His realistic style is somewhat reminiscent of Millar’s Ultimates partner, Bryan Hitch, and works perfectly to tell this story. His character designs are clearly cribbed from real life, with an Eminem-like Wesley, and a Fox that bears more than a little resemblance to Halle Berry. All this does is make the world of Wanted that much more believable. As you are reading, you will find your mind thinking ”...I wonder if this could happen in real life?” And that is the sign of a great storyteller in both writer and artist.

One of the great things about today’s Graphic Novels, is that publishers are treating them like DVDs. Most newer books, and often reprintings of classing stories, include “extras” that range from script excerpts, to pin ups, to original art or missing scenes and anything else that they can fit in. It’s interesting to see comics treated this way, especially in connection with a writer like Millar, who’s comics are very cinematic in nature.

Wanted’s very detailed extras include pin-ups and character files drawn by the likes, of Marc Silvestri, Jae Lee, Joe Quesada, and Frank Quitely just to name a few. Also included is a complete cover gallery, original character designs, and several script-to-pencils comparisons that note several “replacement” panels.

With the big-screen adaptation starring Angelina Jolie being advertised during this year’s Superbowl, you can expect Wanted to be a blockbuster movie. But I think that to really enjoy an amazing and well-crafted story like this, you need to see where it came from.

So, you’re hanging out, minding your own business, doing your thing, and then BAM! You disappear off the face of the earth, drafted by an alien race into a forthcoming war. Placed in a platoon with other draftee’s like the convenience store worker, and the President of the United States. They train you for battle while society on Earth begins to crumble.

Sounds pretty cool, huh? Well, all that and more is contained in the excellent Drafted series by Devil’s Due Press.

Both Ain’t It Cool News and Entertainment Weekly have touted Drafted as the next big comic worth reading outside of the Big Two. Devil’s Due is a company that has relied heavily on it’s licensed comics to this point, but Drafted could change all that. Written by Mark Powers, Drafted is a book the survives on it’s story. Chris Lie’s pencils are well done, but don’t always mesh with the writing. In fact, I think that this misfiring is what holds this book back from a larger audience. The art simply doesn’t jump off the page and pull me in the way the storyline does.

What intrigued me about Drafted (now at Issue #6) and caused me to pick it up off the shelves, was the fact that it is a fresh take on the Alien Invasion story. In fact, it isn’t until issue #3 that we ever see our abductors, and we have yet to come across this supposed enemy that the humans are being trained to fight. This builds a real tension in the book, and makes you feel like you are right there with the people of Earth as their friends and family disappear and society begins to fall apart around them.

I have been hooked on Drafted from the start, and I imagine that it is going to make an excellent graphic novel when Devil’s Due gets around to collecting it. The only problem that I have with this book is that it seems to come out whenever it feels like it. I don’t know if it’s a production issue, or simply missed deadlines, but it seems like a very long time between issues. This makes it hard to follow some of the story without going back and re-reading the previous issues.

Fortunately, they are so good, I was doing that any way.

Two of my favourite comics of all time are the Garth Ennis-written Preacher, and the Darick Robertson-drawn Transmetropolitan. So, naturally when DC announced that Ennis and Robertson would be doing a book for it’s Wildstorm imprint, entitled The Boys, my head somewhat exploded.

Story takes place in present day, and follows The Boys, a team of CIA-type agents led by Billy Butcher, who’s job it is to keep an eye on the superhero community. The Boys are tasked with keeping the “Supes” in line, by any means necessary. Sometimes this means public humiliation, other times, savage beatings. One way or the other, this book promised to “out-Preacher, Preacher” according to Ennis.

When issue #1 hit the stands, I greedily devoured it. Then I was shocked 5 issues later, when DC abruptly canceled the series at issue #6. It seems that the anti-superhero themes of the book weren’t sitting well with the folks at DC, and just like that The Boys were out on their ear. I don’t blame DC for making the move they did. They treated the creators very well, allowing them to retain all the rights for the book, but as a fan, I was crushed.

Enter Dynamite, and a classy move by DC to allow Robertson to continue working on the book in spite of his DC-Exclusive contract. Dynamite picked up the book and quickly re-issued the first 6 issues as a trade paperback, and have published every wonderful off-colour, uncomfortably violent issue since, now numbering 17.

The Boys is all the best parts of Preacher meshed with the best parts of Transmetropolitan, and ground to a fine paste underneath an industry that once followed a “comic’s code.” The stories are violent and funny as only Ennis could write them, and Robertson’s art is so wonderfully disturbing and beautiful that it makes the perfect match to Ennis’ brutal writing style. These two manage to create a world that simultaneously makes the reader squirm with disgust, and laugh out loud. And no matter what, it makes you smile.

The Boys also deals with a lot of Superhero cliche’s like superhero resurrection, marketing strategies, and primarily what might become of a person who did develop superpowers, but not the Kal-El-like moral structure to do what’s right with them. Essentially, the theme of The Boys is “With great power comes great responsibility… and fame and money and women (and men), and all the trappings of super-celebrity.”

The Boys is a look into the seedy underbelly of Superheroing, and it’s one of the best books on the market!

Life Sucks.

Especially for Dave Miller. You see, Dave is stuck working the night shift at a convenience store. His boss is a bit of a hardass, the cute Goth girl he has a crush on is dating his psychotic surfer-nemesis Wes, he has no money, no life, and has only an eternity of the same to look forward to.

Oh yeah, Dave is also a vampire.

So is Wes, Dave’s boss and Dave’s best friend Jerome.

Dave refuses to suck the blood of humans, and thus doesn’t have the supernatural powers of most vampires (superstrength, turning to mist, hypnotic eyes, etc). This makes him an easy target to be pushed around by his Master, Radu, an old-school vamp from Romania, and for Wes, his “brother” who also calls Radu “Master.” Radu makes Dave work in the convenience store he owns, and Dave falls head over heels for Rosa, a local Goth girl who frequents the store. Along with his friend Jerome, Dave tries his hardest to win Rosa’s heart, and the respect of the people around him.

I have read a LOT of graphic novels in my time, and Life Sucks positively screams to be made into a movie. Jessica Abel and Gabe Soria have written a story that is set in a world that is one part Clerks, one part Buffy, one part Garden State, and all parts funny. It’s a pre-made romantic comedy that not only ups the stakes (no pun intended) of the genre, but of Vampire lore itself. I love how the vampric powers are handled, and the scene in which Rosa tells Dave of her longing to be a vampire, and Dave’s subsequent defense of the mortal life is wonderfully written.

Warren Pleece provides the art in Life Sucks, and the only complaint I have about it is that some of his nighttime panels are a bit to dark. There are a couple of scenes that take place in a club, which is somewhat naturally dark, but the way it’s printed makes it a bit hard to tell what’s going on. Aside from that, which arguably Pleece had no control over, I thought that the art moved the story along at exactly the right pace, and lent itself perfectly to the tone of the book.

I was lucky enough to stumble across Life Sucks by accident. Hopefully someone in the movie industry will do the same. Life Sucks is one of those books that is perfectly laid out as-is to be a movie, but until principle photography begins, the graphic novel will have to do. Go get it. Life Sucks is not a book to be missed.

Good Lord, I am Scott Pilgrim.

OK, there are some difference like I don’t have hair, and I’m not in a band but there are lots of other similarities.

Let me start off by saying that I cannot believe that I have slept on this book for 4 years. I think what had kept me away for so long was the artwork. It’s a little anime inspired, which I never usually gravitate towards, but it works.

The story follows Scott Pilgrim; useless unemployed Toronto’ite band member as he dates high school girls, dreams of cute delivery girls, rock’s out, and battles evil ex-boyfriends to the death. So what’s amazing about it? Everything.

The black and white anime inspired art fits really well with the light hearted flighty tone of hapless Scott Pilgrim as he proves to readers that you are just like him. Pilgrim is lazy, girl crazy, terrible at picking up, and most importantly a huge dork. He wears terrible “Canadian girls kick ass” T-shirts, openly admits to being into the whole school girl fetish thing to his younger sister, and rocks a self made X-Men patch on his winter jacket.

The story is really something else. It gives me the same special feeling I got after reading Craig Thompson’s Blankets or the first time I discovered something done by Jim Mahfood. It’s something you can curl up with and really relate to for the most part. The story focus is on Pilgrim’s social life, but things get wicked when you realize that Pilgrim does not inhabit the same world as you. After all this is a comic book.

No, no, no in Pilgrim’s world bands are able to decimate whole crowds into the morgue with their wickedness, girls fall for really bad honest dialog, and to win the heart of your dream girl you have to destroy her previous Evil Ex-boyfriends in hand to hand Capcom-esque 64 hit combos that end with the enemy evaporating into golden coins, in this case Canadian loonies.

I absolutely love this book and have added anything that artist/ writer Bryan Lee O’Malley does to my must get list. I demand you do the same thing.

-Questy.

You would be hard pressed to find anyone who has spent time on the net and is into comics and gaming that doesn’t know Penny Arcade. For almost a decade, Gabe and Tycho have entertained, reviewed, and poked fun at just about every aspect of gaming, comics, and life in general.

In 2006, Dark Horse began publishing long-awaited “analog” collections of Penny Arcade, starting with Vol. 1: Attack of The Bacon Robots.

In the subsequent volumes, we have seen the evolution of Penny Arcade from a side project by gamers Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, into a monster company and webcomics institution.

This month, Dark Horse has released Volume 5 in the Penny Arcade library, titled The Case of The Mummy’s Gold. This installment collects all the Penny Arcade strips from 2004, as well as the Christmas tale, “The Last Christmas.” It also features the debut of characters Twisp and Catsby, and another installment of the adventures of the Carboard Tube Samurai.

I love Penny Arcade. It’s hard to find someone that doesn’t, but they were a huge inspiration to me when it came time to start up No Reason. Krahulik and Holkins have almost perfected the 3-panel story and though I am not at gamer, I can usually get what they are poking fun at, even when it traverses the most inside of gamer jokes.

The art in Penny Arcade is always spot-on, and over the course of the 5 volumes we see it grow and evolve into the sharp stylized strips we see today. With Volume 5, the art really hits it’s peak and the momentum and quality of the strip takes an even bigger jump forward, as “Mummy’s Gold” takes place at a time in the strips history where it is the authors sole focus.

My favourite part of these collections though is the titles. From Volume 2’s Epic Legends of The Magic Sword Kings to Volume 4’s simple Birds Are Weird the titles are as funny as the comics. They have NOTHING to do with the strips themselves, but they certainly make the books leap off the shelf and the accompanying art has such drama to it that you can’t help but wish they would tell those stories in full-length comics.

With the success of these books, the yearly Penny Arcade expo, and now a video game based on their work, Krahulik and Holkins have created a New Arcadian Empire, and here’s hoping that it lasts another 10 years.

It may seem strange to start a review of a book with Volume 8, but when it comes to The Walking Dead, quite often strange is normal.

I have been a fan of this Zombie epic since I bought Issue # 1 when it came out a few years ago. Robert Kirkman writes an incredible tale, and Charlie Adlard’s black and white art adds to not only the creepiness of Kirkman’s world, but also the starkness of it all.

But again, why start here with Volume 8? Because much like the previous volumes, nothing will ever be the same again in the world of The Walking Dead.

Collecting issues 43-48 of the Image Comics series, Made To Suffer follows the continuing struggles of former police office Rick, his wife Lori and their children as they, and a band of survivors try and make a life for themselves in a prison. The prison is the only secure facility in their world that is overrun by Zombies.

Not far away is the town of Woodbury, run by a sadistic man they call The Governor. Rick and his prison folk have had a few tussles with The Governor, so he launches and all out attack on their prison. Shots are fired, people killed, and at the risk of dishing out major spoilers, I’ll leave it at that. Trust me though when I say all hell breaks loose, and things will never be the same.

Normally, saying that “things will never be the same” in a comic book carries about as much weight as saying “he’ll stay dead this time.” That is one of the major differences in The Walking Dead. People who die, stay dead (figuratively speaking) and the consequences are very real for the survivors.

Kirkman weaves a tale that is equal parts horror story and study in human behaviours. The social interactions between the people left to rebuild humanity amongst rotting zombies is the heart of the story. This is not to knock the creep-factor of the book, as it is one of the few horror stories out there that can actually be taken seriously, but it’s the human factor that is really the draw.

Adlard’s black and white art is wonderfully simplistic, which is excellent because the story moves so fast, you don’t need to get bogged down in overly complicated panels. It’s key to controlling the flow of the story, and on top of that his rotting zombies look great when compared to their ragged human counterparts.

The Walking Dead is one of the best stories being told in comics today, and hopefully with Robert Kirkman’s new position at Image, it will be around for a long, long time.