Broke and feeling like a failure, aspiring young writer Nathan Burnett moves from LA back to his parents in smalltown Illinois to regroup and figure out what he’s doing. And then, on a night out with his snarky best bud, they stumble across a blue glowing mini black hole - and Nathan’s world is suddenly changed. Now he’s a superhero: Radiant Black!
A mysterious young woman with golden hair becomes the focus of a cult and a reporter. But what is her connection to the volcanic countryside she can’t seem to escape?
Poison Flowers and Pandemonium is the last book by Richard Sala, published posthumously following his death in March 2020.
Sam is a young chimp who’s been taught American Sign Language and uses it to talk to his handlers: Guy, a young professor, and his girlfriend/assistant, Aimee. But when funding for the chimp project runs out and the group is disbanded, what will happen to Sam?
John Constantine: Hellblazer, Volume 1: Marks of Woe is another really poor Constantine book without any interesting stories. The opening oversized issue and the second one both repeat themselves: Timothy Hunter (the OG Harry Potter) grows up to be evil for some reason. Ok - but that goes nowhere and seems to hint that we need to read the Books of Magic series to find out why, so… that’s unsatisfying. I mean, why have this much space in a Constantine book for what amounts to a trailer for another series?
This edition of Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow collects four of the original ten stories, omitting those standalone tales that don’t have anything to do with the King in Yellow “storyline” (for want of a better word). So the four left - The Repairer of Reputations, The Mask, In the Court of the Dragon, The Yellow Sign - form a kind of linked narrative here.
Garth Ennis predominantly writes two very specific types of comic: war comics (War Stories, Battlefields, World of Tanks) and schoolboy-level humour/violent comics (the Kev books, Section Eight, Jimmy’s Bastards); Adventures in the Rifle Brigade combines the two!
Fingered for a murder he didn’t commit - the death of Maria Hill, another comic book character who “dies” with the regularity that most people get seasonal colds - Taskmaster sets out to clear his name by saving the world from a doomsday machine called The Rubicon Trigger. Except the device can only be disarmed by three specific individuals in the same room at the same time: Phil Coulson, Okoye and Ami Han. But how to gather them? Unless you steal their biometric signatures and one person replicates all three. Enter: Marvel Skeletor!
Craig Thompson recounts his 1980s childhood in the small Wisconsin town of Marathon, famed for its major export, ginseng, in this memoir, Ginseng Roots. As well as telling us how he and his family spent their summers working the farms, making sure the precious plant (called by the locals “shang”) reached harvest, he goes back home to see how the area and people are now, and relates the history of the medicinal root.
An obscure series of books called Incidents in the Night captures David B’s attention and his pursuit in collecting them sends him on a bizarre journey that involves bloodthirsty 19th century oiks, booksellers who dress up as yetis, immortality, and the Angel of Death itself. At the centre of it all? The mysterious Emile Travers and his insane plan to put Napoleon Bonaparte back on the throne!
A Russian journalist is dead and Lois Lane cares for tenuous reasons! Also immigration stuff, someone’s trying to kill her for even murkier reasons, and an English witch, or something. Leviathan too - but mostly Lois and Superman smooching!
Famously old dude Cable’s suddenly a kid for some reason (I don’t follow the X-books religiously so I don’t know why)! And, like new Cable, this book is for kids, basically. He pulls a magic sword out of a giant lion-esque monster, which alerts some alien robot Power Rangers to Earth to get it and nonsense ensues.
SPOILERS
After escaping a nightmarish home life, teenage runaway Jacey meets shape-shifter David and the unlikely pair become wandering vigilantes, hunting down child molesters. Until one day they come across a political campaign, triggering traumatic memories in Jacey. Her brother Jake was abducted years ago by this very politician and never seen again. And now she will have her revenge…
An alien society divided into two warring factions - can the Justice League unite them? Also, alien space parasite devouring the Justice League’s bodies while psychically giving them their hearts’ desires. This is Star Trek with superheroes aka Justice League: Galaxy of Terrors!
Milliken lives with her pa and younger sister in the Trench, a deep ice valley that stretches on indefinitely. But when their settlement is massacred by death incarnate, the Snowman, they must break the one rule they’ve lived by their whole lives: to never leave the Trench. With the Snowman on their trail, will Milli and her family make it out alive - and what’s waiting for them beyond the only world they’ve ever known?
Sophie is the new dog in a house full of dogs, kept by a single owner. She doesn’t remember much about how she got there - until the scent of her former owner from an item of clothing triggers a memory. Her former owner was murdered and Sophie was stolen - is her new owner a serial killer? And if so, how can she and her fellow dogs escape and stop him from killing again?
