The Summer Hikaru Died, Volume 1 by Mokumokuren Review

A high school kid goes missing for a week in the mountains near his small rural town - but then reappears, seemingly ok. His best friend notices that something’s wrong with Hikaru - since he’s returned, he’s acting weird. What happened to his friend during that week?

Batman: Fortress Review (Gary Whitta, Darick Robertson)

SPOILERS

Aliens invade Earth because they’ve got beef with Superman - who’s mysteriously vanished. After the Justice League fails to save the day, Batman and an unlikely team decide the only way to defeat the aliens is with alien tech - found in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Which has also mysteriously vanished. Nothing’s ever that easy, eh Bats - well, not if you want to fill eight pointless issues it isn’t!

Fishflies #1 by Jeff Lemire Review

Every summer the small rural town is swarmed by fishflies which blanket everything for a week and then die en masse. Fran, a lonely kid with a permanently running nose, makes a startling discovery in her father’s barn - and a thief gets more than he bargained for.

Damned If I Do by Percival Everett Review

Damned If I Do is a collection of 12 short stories by Percival Everett and the quality balance of the book overall is tipped slightly more towards better than not. The collection is nicely book-ended by the two best stories here: The Fix and Randall Randall.

Impossible People: A Completely Average Recovery Story by Julia Wertz Review

Julia Wertz returns with her first memoir comic in over ten years with Impossible People, about her substance abuse back when she was living in New York making comics like Drinking at the Movies and The Infinite Wait and Other Stories. (She’s since left New York, gotten hitched, had kids, and created the nonfiction comic, Tenements, Towers & Trash.)

Nightwing, Volume 3: The Battle for Blüdhaven's Heart Review (Tom Taylor, Bruno Redondo)

SPOILERS

Dick Grayson opens Haven, an open-air sanctuary for the disadvantaged in society, in the middle of Bludhaven - but soon faces adversity as the corrupt forces-that-be seek to shut it down because they’re corrupt (boo! hiss!). While Nightwing squares off against Blockbuster for The Battle for Bludhaven’s Heart, a new villain - Heartless - is also on the prowl for, quite literally, hearts…

We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets Review

In need of cash, Kayleigh goes to work at Hexa, a subcontractor for a social media giant, where she will be a content moderator, evaluating flagged videos on the site and deciding whether to keep them up or take them down. Nothing bad’s going to come from watching hours and hours of disturbing videos all day every day, right…?

Mother Howl by Craig Clevenger Review

SPOILERS

Lyle’s dad turns out to be a serial killer and the revelation unsurprisingly transforms his life. After enduring all the beatings and horrors of being a social pariah, he leaves home before graduating high school, gets a fake identity and starts fresh in a new town. Years later, Lyle’s married with a newborn and encounters Icarus, a seemingly crazy homeless man who claims to be an immortal celestial - and who knows who Lyle really is.

Slam Dunk, Volume 1 by Takehiko Inoue Review

I’ve wanted to read Slam Dunk for a long time, partly because it’s one of the biggest manga titles ever, partly because Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond was such a banger, and partly because when I visited my cousin in Japan as a kid, he had the full 31 volume series and loved it so much, but I couldn’t read them as they were in Japanese.

The Incredible Hulk: Banner Review (Brian Azzarello, Richard Corben)

Hulk smashes and Bruce Banner feels guilty about it. How can he control the green rage monster within? A mysterious doctor working for the US military has a potential - and permanent - solution…

The Guards by Ken Bruen Review

Jack Taylor is an ex-cop turned sometime private investigator/full-time drunk. Approached by the grieving mother of a young girl who officially offed herself but the mother thinks otherwise, he delves into the girl’s past life and discovers shenanigans aplenty. Jack sets off to right some wrongs - if he can stay off the booze long enough.

Choujin X, Volume 1 by Sui Ishida Review

It’s the late ‘90s for no reason and there are people who get superpowers randomly called Choujin, whatever that means, and some are arbitrarily good and some are bad. Also a drug gives you those powers but few people use it for no reason. Anyway our teenage protagonists take the drug because they’re their town’s protectors for some reason (where are the police?!) and one of them develops a beak on his face. Which makes him a target for evil choujin, why…?

Junkyard Joe, Volume 1 Review (Geoff Johns, Gary Frank)

Morrie “Muddy” Davis’ unit in Vietnam gets a surprise addition: a robot soldier called Joe. After a deadly ambush, Muddy is sent home from the war and told by creepy government men that “Joe” wasn’t real and to never talk about him. It’s now nearly 50 years later and Muddy is retiring his syndicated newspaper strip “Junkyard Joe” - and then Joe himself shows up on his doorstep! As Muddy realises what he experienced in the jungle as a young man really did happen, he also finds out the men who made Joe want him back - and will kill anyone who stands in their way…

Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus: Year One Review (Zeb Wells, Kaare Andrews)

Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus: Year One is a Doc Ock origin story and his and Spidey’s first encounter. And it’s not bad for all that - Zeb Wells did alright given the tone of story he was going for and the characters he’s working with.

Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell Review

Katherine Rundell’s Super-Infinite is a biography on the Elizabethan poet John Donne, most famous for his poem that begins “No man is an island…” and ends with “... for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

The Amazing Spider-Man, Volume 4: Dark Web Review (Zeb Wells, Ed McGuinness)

Madelyne Pryor, the Goblin Queen of Limbo, along with Ben Reilly, infamous Peter Parker clone, make edgy Pepe the Frog memes for the lulz and do illegal things using a VPN bring Limbo, and ensuing chaos, to New York City in Dark Web.

So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men by Claire Keegan Review

Claire Keegan is having quite the moment, inasmuch as literary authors can - deservedly so! Her novel Small Things Like These made it onto last year’s Booker shortlist (and proving its worth by not winning despite being the best book nominated) and is currently being adapted into a Cillian Murphy film. Her previous novel, Foster, is a gem of a book and was also made into a movie. So Keegan is definitely getting recognised as a major talent and her audience is steadily growing.