We’re celebrating Image Comics’ 25th anniversary all this week by breaking down the company’s all-time best 25 series! With so much diversity in its catalog, Image truly has comics for everyone. Check them out for yourself! Leave some of your own favorites in the comments, and come back tomorrow for our final part of this series and 5 more titles!
Chew is the epitome of darkly funny story telling. John Layman crafts an original concept that lends itself well to complex storytelling, but is also hilarious. Each page is filled with brilliant jokes and scenarios that can only work in a comic book like this. Artist Rob Guillory draws this vibrant world that is somehow both wonderful to look at, and yet kind of disgusting. It works well with the material given, and it’s hard to tear your eyes away from the artwork. However, the core of this story is a mystery, and Chew creates one of the most detailed, intriguing mysteries in any medium. One of the greatest comic books Image has ever put on the stands.
As cultural phenomena, Marvel and DC dominate popular culture with television shows and movies. Their multimedia empires have created well-known characters upon which several generations of children have been raised, often overshadowing other publishing houses like Image, Dark Horse, Boom!, and Valiant. This means that word of mouth (or internet) becomes one of the most important resources for determining what books to try.
Over the last few years, some of the most original, most interesting stories on the market have come from Image, Valiant, Skybound, and Dark Horse. If you’re looking for some new, slightly-off-the-beaten-path reads, here are five books to try.
Not to confuse you, but we’re not talking Faith the Slayer here. Faith Herbert, a.k.a. Zephyr, is the geek girl turned superhero. A favorite character in the book Harbinger, Faith got her own mini-series and now an ongoing in 2016. Trying to navigate her new solo life after having been part of a team, Faith struggles to put together a normal career while maintaining a superhero alter ego. Her secret identity self, Summer Smith, works at a gossip blog. However, the secret identity doesn’t last long and soon she has a small cadre of friends/allies helping her. Faith, like its namesake main character, deals with heavy issues while maintaining an optimistic light-hearted quality. The first trade from the original mini-series is available on Comixology and Kindle.
What others would you add to this list? Tell us in the comments!
As has become standard in the age of the internet, Paramount has released their Ghost in the Shell Superbowl LI spot ahead of the game’s broadcast. Although the film has been plagued by controversy as far back as it’s announcement, fans are still excited and anticipation is high.
The thirty-second clip is just a teaser for the new film. Watch it below and tell us what you think in the comments!
Ghost in the Shell is a Japanese anime franchise originally published as a manga series written and illustrated by Masamune Shirow. The manga was first serialized in 1989 under the subtitle The Ghost in the Shell, and later published on its own in volumes. The property has been a massive hit worldwide. The series told the story of the fictional counter-cyberterrorist organization Public Security Section 9, led by protagonist Major Motoko Kusanagi, in the mid 21st century of Japan
The live action adaptation stars Scarlett Johansson, Michael Wincott, Michael Pitt, Juliet Binoche, Takashi Kitano, Rila Fukushima, Pilou Asbaek, Chin Han, Peter Ferdinando, and Joseph Naufahu. The movie is directed by Rubert Saunders from a script by Jonathan Herman and Jaime Moss.
Ghost In The Shell is due in theaters March 31, 2017.
Debuting this Friday on Netflix, Santa Clarita Diet is a well crafted and entertaining look at the repetitiveness of suburban life through an undead lens.
Summary:
Shelia (Drew Barrymore) and Joel (Timothy Olyphant) are high school sweethearts who marry at a young age, have a daughter, and are realtors living the American Dream in Los Angeles. Shelia longs to be more impulsive. Joel wishes that he could handle confrontation well. Their daughter, Abby (Liv Hewson) can’t stand how mundane her parents have become and just wants a car so she can be away from them.
During what appears to be a typical showing off yet another house, Sheila falls ill and proceeds to projectile vomit all over the place (think Exorcist level of vomit). Then if that wasn’t enough, she then continues to cough up what appears to be her heart. Joel immediately takes her to the hospital, but after a long wait, they leave. Shortly after returning home it becomes apparent that something is different about Sheila. Perhaps it’s her desire to eat human flesh? It’s at this point that the show quickly pivots from being your typical martial comedy to an atypical horror comedy with a marital twist.
What I liked:
I loved the way Victor Fresco crafted the narrative of Sheila and Joel. Rather than waste time building up to the moment of her transformation, we see her go through this change at about the ten-minute mark. This dramatic moment immediately takes the focus off their life before she was a zombie and puts the focus where it needs to be on, how the whole family adapts to her new eating habits.
Also, by having her undergo that change so rapidly it allowed the audience to accept this new reality for the couple immediately. Instead of being grossed out by her eating habits, you just nod and say “Of course she’s eating the man’s leg, I hope she gets enough to eat.” Creating an odd reality isn’t anything new for Fresco, he was one of the driving forces behind My Name is Earl and Better off Ted.
It was refreshing to watch how they were able to take the whole Zombie phenomenon and use it as a vehicle to tell this tale. On the surface, this show looks like any typical zombie themed program. In reality, it’s about how after years of marriage, Sheila and Joel’s marriage is evolving. Before this unfortunate turn of events, it seems that their marriage is stuck in a holding pattern, but now they’re discovering new ways in which they love one another. For example, what better way to say I love you than to help your wife stuff a dead guy in a meat freezer so she can gnaw on his fingers later.
Finally, Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant play the roles of Sheila and Joel to perfection. Seeing Barrymore play off of her syrupy sweet demeanor and proceed to drop F-bombs and devour people on screen was not off-putting, it was charming. Olyphant steps out of the comfort of playing the tough guy and pulls off loving husband and partner in crime wonderfully.
What I didn’t Like:
There is another narrative that’s ongoing throughout the series about the neighbor’s son having a crush on Abby, which at times tended to distract from what I felt worked in the series. It’s obvious that the writers were trying to create a reason for the neighbor’s son to eventually help out Abby’s parents, but rather than having him lust over her, maybe they could have just been friends at school.
I was at times wondering about how Sheila caught the virus that transformed her. They touch on it slightly, but it’s not the primary focus driving the narrative. I would like to see them make some progress towards finding out how she contracted it. My guess is the reason they left it alone is that they are saving some parts of the story for a potential second season.
Review:
Santa Clarita Diet is a thoroughly enjoyable show. The humor may be a bit dark for some, but the timing and execution of the jokes are done well. Netflix in recent years has branched out into original programming and has been behind such binge-worthy hits as Orange is the New Black and House of Cards. Santa Clarita Diet is set to join those ranks as a slew of audience members are going to want to sink their teeth into this one.
Dead Calm introduced American audiences – at least the few who saw it back in 1989 – to blossoming superstar Nicole Kidman. The Aussie actress had been making her way in film and television Down Under for a few years, but Philip Noyce’s terrific, self-contained sea thriller brought her red locks and cold gaze stateside for the first time. The rest is history.
But, Dead Calm also showed us something we’ve unfortunately never quite seen enough of, and that is the animal magnetism and undeniable star power of Billy Zane. For whatever reason, though he’s had his fair share of good roles, Zane has never been the star he should have been after devouring the screen and stealing the show from Kidman and Sam Neill almost three decades ago. Always a little theatrical, impeccably handsome, most of the time barely masking a manic psychosis just under the surface, Billy Zane should have become a superstar. But he never did… not really.
At least we’ll always have Dead Calm.
Noyce’s film takes the most expansive thing our world has to offer, the ocean, and zeroes in on an intimate, claustrophobic thriller dripping with psychosexual energy. Tragedy underlines the story: Rae (Kidman) and her husband, John (Neill), lose their child in a car accident in the prologue, spurring them to set sail and gather themselves in isolation. In the expansive nothingness of the sea, this husband and wife try and find the pieces of their lives and put them back together. It is here where they see another ship, drifting lifelessly in the current.
After being surrounded by nothing but water, the functionality of modern society entirely out of reach, seeing another vessel drifting closer to Rae and John is all the film needs to kickstart the tension. They’re still on earth, but as the two ships drift closer to one another, they may as well be in outer space.
A man, Hughie (Zane), is rowing a lifeboat away from the ship. Frantically. He arrives on Rae and John’s boat and tells a story of food poisoning and death aboard his schooner, which is steadily sinking. He seems desperate and he sells his story, convincing enough to John at least, who rows over to the boat himself to check for any survivors. Not long after John leaves, however, it’s clear Hughie is not an innocent survivor, but the source of all the death aboard the doomed vessel. And now he has Rae.
And so the rest of the film is partly a chase as John tries frantically to get back to his captive wife, and partly a sexually-charged game of cat and mouse between Rae and Hughie. Is Rae playing the twitchy, unhinged madman, exploiting his hormones in order to get free of him? Or has she given in to her worst instincts? Has her grief redirected her to the arms of a psychopath? The plot of Terry Hayes’ screenplay, based on the novel from Charles Williams, is all anxiety and manic energy, a percolating bit of high seas pulp which pushes through its own shortcomings with such vigor that they’re easy to overlook.
There are some silly moments in Dead Calm – namely the fact John leaves his wife with Hughie to investigate a sinking ship – but this exists simply to move the story along. Had John never gone to the other vessel, well, we wouldn’t have a movie. And then there’s the ending (SPOILER: Hughie’s death scene, where he catches a flair right in the kisser), which some may scoff at. Personally, I think it works and it’s the perfect wacko ending to a film which grew increasingly unhinged as its characters grew more desperate.
And at the center of it all is the wonderfully next-level crazy turn from Billy Zane. His nervous energy owns the screen, and he keeps both Rae and the audience on their toes. Dead Calm could have collapsed under illogical choices and convention; it is the work of Billy Zane, forever underrated, that keeps the picture afloat.
Two new photos of Finn Jones from Iron Fist have been released online. See them both below.
Plot synopsis – Iron Fist: “Returning to New York City after being missing for years, Daniel Rand fights against the criminal element corrupting New York City with his incredible kung-fu mastery and ability to summon the awesome power of the fiery Iron Fist.”
The show is the last on Netflix before Marvel’s The Defenders is finally released. We’ve already been introduced to the other heroes, and Iron Fist acts as the final pillar to merge the characters into one storyline.
Iron Fist hits Netflix on March 17, 2017. Watch the teaser trailer below.
OUR SONGS ARE BETTER Part Two! The band is getting a whole new taste of fame via an intrusive “MISFITS!” reality TV show and it’s pushing on everyone’s most vulnerable buttons – none more so than Stormer — who’s reliving her early days of fame and the nasty things that came with it. How did Stormer not only survive but blossom in the often toxic court of public opinion? And will she be able to do it again?
Writing
Since the beginning of the original Jem comics series by IDW, the main focus of Stormer as a character has primarily been on her relationship with Kimber. This issue takes the time to focus on who she is and examine one of the biggest problems she tackles. It’s one which many can relate with. It’s the concept of the cruel view the world has outside appearances.
The issue focuses on Stormer’s hesitation to sign the contract because she has dealt with negative criticisms based solely on her appearance. Despite her wonderful personality and the beautiful music she writes, the world around her continually reminds her how her appearance doesn’t fit into a stereotypical mold of beauty. Writer Kelly Thompson taps into a feeling of insecurity which is intrinsic to the human nature and finds a way to speak to everyone. After reading it you’ll think back on it because of the powerful emotions it taps into.
Artwork
The issue features art by Jenn St-Onge and colors by M. Victoria Robado. The two keep up the level of quality introduced in the previous issue and don’t falter for a moment. The designs of the younger version of Stormer featured in the flashback are adorable. Her body language at multiple ages throughout the book helps to showcase the vulnerability she often felt from the world judging her.
Conclusion
This issue offers a lot and really will hit close to home for many readers. It’s a story not just for fans of the Jem series but for anyone who has ever felt uncomfortable thanks to the world’s cynicism. It the kind of issue you wish you had multiple copies of so you could distribute them at the right moment because you know there will come a time when someone will be helped by the story inside.
Welcome one and all to the Human Zoo, a place where humans are allowed to run free in their natural environment. As long as their natural environment is a tropical paradise free of disease or strife but you have no choices in what is happening around you. If this sounds like your cup of tea than come aboard.
The episode shows your standard setup for a too good to be true Eden. The humans in the zoo are living simple lives being fed and playing the sun. Each of them is equipped with robot voiced earrings which tell them to engage in any of these activities because residents don’t understand the concept of choosing things for themselves. Ignorance is bliss though because as the zoo humans learn concepts such as pain and lose their immediate reaction is to shut down because they can’t take it anymore. As Greg Universe is quick to point out, “There’s always a catch with these Utopias.”
This was a very entertaining episode. It helps to showcase a lot of interesting characters but is also helps to provide Steven with a new goal. After seeing these beings in captivity he will no doubt try his hardest to find a way to successfully liberate them from where they are. This will be a lot further down the road but still it’s something for him to build towards as a character.
Well Steven has been able to rescue his dad but who will rescue him? They’ll have to pull a plan out of somewhere if they have any hope of being able to escape safely. Hopefully the creative team will find a way to really bring it home and deliver an ending which will really make this five part even something truly worthwhile for fans to talk about.
Love is tearing apart costumed crimefighter Empowered’s city, as the unearthly powers of an embittered “International Magical Girl of Mystery” covertly inflame the superheroic community’s burning passions. But even if a befuddled Emp can puzzle out her shadowy foe’s schemes, can she hope to prevail against the Soldier of Love?
Writing
A magical girl assassin (who comes complete with a her own playlist of love songs which can’t be turned off playing in the background everywhere she goes) is causing all the heroes in the city to go on random hook ups with one another. What? You need more? How is this not the greatest concept you have ever heard? You should be running out to your local comic supplier this instant to pre-order this thing. For those who still aren’t convinced we can go into it a little more.
Writer Adam Warren brings a lot of comedy to this issue and it sticks in a way which really stays with you. The humor on display will have you laughing hours after reading the issue. Even writing this review some of the jokes are causing me to fault and giggle stupidly at some of the events which take place in this issue.
Artwork
Artist Karla Diaz provides some excellent artwork through this issue. She finds a way to make sure the characters have a very distinct look and feel which is synonymous with this series. The different facial expressions helps to sell the humor but still manages to maintain a recognizable style to the characters.
Conclusion
The Empowered series has been hailed as one of the best comics series that people should be reading, and for a very good reason. This series is a very humorous look at superheroes and superhero culture. It is the best answer to all the other books which are trying too hard to be dark and grim. Buy this issue and you are guaranteed to be entertained.
