Kabi Nagata published a book about her alcoholism a few years ago called My Alcoholic Escape From Reality and My Pancreas Broke But My Life Got Better (she’s got quite a way with titles) is essentially Part 2 of that book. This one follows her relapses into drinking, dealing with pancreatitis and going in and out of rehabs and hospitals as she fights to get sober.
Young artist Billie Scott receives news that she’s getting her own exhibition - but oh no she’s going blind in 2 weeks and needs to do her 10 paintings before then!
It’s the 19th century and a whaling ship is trapped in the ice. Rations are dwindling, the captain’s slowly going bonkers and there’s a spooky apparition appearing on the ice. Will they escape? Is it really a ghost? … zzz…
A group of chums fooling around on the internet of yore stumble across a level of cyberspace under the regular internet which they imaginatively call: the Undernet. But what’s that they find inhabiting that jolly space? Oogie-boogies! So, after documenting the nasties on a forum called Worldtree (I’m not doing the silly spelling), they somehow seal it away from the rest of the internet. But oh no, 20 years later and it’s back somehow! Did anyone say cyberpunk-flavoured IT? Well, that’s what you got regardless.
A brooch belonging to Selina’s ma pawned for nothing years ago is now being sold at auction for a substantial sum. Selina plots to take back the family heirloom thus, in her eyes, righting the wrongs of the past - but she encounters an unexpected adversary on what will be for her One Bad Day.
In 2022, a fan of Sir Terry’s reached out to his agent, Colin Smythe, to find out more about a comedic fantasy story he had cut out of a newspaper in 1984 called “The Quest for the Keys” - which Smythe had never heard of before. A couple of scholars delved into the newspaper archives, starting in the ‘70s and working their way forwards, and, along the way, unearthed a trove of previously unknown Terry Pratchett stories which he had published in the Western Daily Press under the pseudonym “Patrick Kearns” (“Patrick” sounds like “Pratchett” and “Kearns” was his mother’s maiden name). The 20 unearthed stories are published here - a new Pratchett book 8 years after his death - in A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories.
It’s been a decade since Grant Morrison’s Batman Incorporated and it’s only now that DC has decided to give the series another chance. I’m glad they didn’t let it languish indefinitely - it’s not so terrible a concept as to be written off entirely - but I also think the series needs more of a surer foundation than simply setting it up as another generic superhero team book, which is what we get with Ed Brisson and John Timms’ version of Batman Incorporated in their first volume, No More Teachers.
Image/Skybound saw what Andrews McMeel has been doing for years - publishing the collected strips of popular online cartoonists - and said, I’ll have a piece of that! and now we has Zach M. Stafford’s Good Comics For Bad People: An Extra Fabulous Collection.
Mario Rivera dies and ends up in the afterlife… which turns out to be a waiting room with a lot of magic books and a mysterious castle in the distance. What will Mario do next? You decide!
It’s worth mentioning right at the top that Gilbert Hernandez’s Proof That The Devil Loves You isn’t a totally new comic. The book collects stories that have appeared previously in Love and Rockets: New Stories, Volume 3 #4, #5 and #6, Blubber #1, and Love and Rockets: New Stories, Volume 4 #5. I think if I’d known this beforehand, I wouldn’t have bothered with this book so just a heads up to anyone considering splashing out on this one, especially Beto fans like me who have probably read the aforementioned L&R comics: there’s some new stuff but it’s mostly a clip show unfortunately.
John von Neumann was probably the smartest man of the 20th century. An Austro-Hungarian polymath who made significant contributions to physics, maths, computer science, and one of the defining moments of the century, the creation and deployment of the atomic bomb, he was so unfathomably intelligent that he was referred to by some as an alien. Benjamin Labatut’s The MANIAC is about his life, work and legacy as it is felt today with the emergence and proliferation of artificial intelligence, and where never-ending technological progress may be taking us…
Manga sales are absolutely demolishing traditional superhero comics’ sales right now so DC, knowing they can’t beat them, is attempting to join them by putting their most famous characters into manga. Even in manga form though, DC’s comics stink! Here’s the pitch for One Operation Joker:
David Small is back with a new comic, this time a collection of three short stories: an adaptation of two stories by other writers, The Werewolf at Dusk by Lincoln Michel, and The Tiger in Vogue by Jean Ferry, and an original, A Walk in the Old City. I wish Small had produced a comic only of his own material because his story is easily the best and the others are disappointingly poor.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the most successful film franchise there’s ever been. Starting in 2008, the series turned former B-list characters like Iron Man, the Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America into household names, as famous and iconic as the likes of Spider-Man and the X-Men. It was an unstoppable, money-making juggernaut that only became more and more popular over the years, leading up to the incredible double-whammy finale of Infinity War and Endgame.
Gou Tanabe continues his HP Lovecraft manga adaptations with one of HP’s more famous stories, and the only one that was published in book form in his lifetime, The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
It’s the closing stages of the war in Europe and Hitler’s running out of soldiers. The solution? Reanimating dead soldiers to fight once more - but not if Sgt. Rock and Easy Company has anything to say about it!
Isabel is divorced, a failed artist, and walking dogs for a living in New York when her estranged sister Sophie, a widowed single mother living on Brinkley’s Island, Maine, breaks her leg and needs help. Returning home, the two sisters are confronted with one of many points of contention in their relationship but none more so than their dead father’s beloved, but deeply unprofitable, bookshop. Can they become friends again and turn the shop into a viable business?
Bill Watterson retired Calvin & Hobbes, and seemingly himself, on 31st December 1995 when the last strip was published - and then Watterson published nothing further, Calvin & Hobbes or otherwise! Until now. Nearly 28 years later and Watterson’s follow-up has just been released: The Mysteries.
1961, Gotham City, and Batman’s grandparents, Richard and Constance Wayne, have their baby daughter Helen kidnapped - by Batman?! There’s only one man with a name sillier than Batman who can solve the case: private investigator Slam Bradley!
Elderly widow Penny has a fall in her flat and ends up in a care home. But it’s an unusual place - just four residents and two care workers. Is the manager taking blood samples from the residents without their consent? Why can’t they go outside? Time seems to pass differently here and Penny begins to suspect that bad things are going on in the dark areas of the care home…
I had a bad idea recently and decided to check out Todd McFarlane’s “classic” Spider-Man: Torment - turned out it was as crummy as I’d heard (though I enjoyed the nostalgic artwork)!
A couple of stargazing-loving kids witness a spaceship crash-land into the side of a mountain. Inside? Buncha “dead” robots! What the Shia LaBeef’s going on?!
Wannabe manga creators Mashiro and Takagi are starting to get some recognition for their indie work but decide to change tack by going all-in on mainstream battle manga as their ticket to the big time. Meanwhile, manga prodigy Eiji Nizuma is plowing well ahead of all rivals and even their ladies are starting to overshadow them with their successes in anime voice acting and cell phone novels (ah, Japan!).
Joker’s somehow become superpowered and is on yet another killing spree and Gordon’s been kidnapped. But wait - it’s not the Joker but a small army of superpowered Joker zombie things. Who made them and why? Batman teams up with Joker for some reason to find out.
A crime novelist meets a married woman who tells him about another crime novelist, her ex, who’s been sending her threatening letters and begun stalking her. These crime novelists, eh - they’re everywhere these days, especially in crime novels!
