Press Release

Valiant is proud to present your first look inside DIVINITY III: SHADOWMAN AND THE BATTLE OF NEW STALINGRAD #1 – the next essential standalone special torn from the pages of Valiant’s hit comics event! On February 8th, join rising star Scott Bryan Wilson (Batman Annual) and blockbuster artist Robert Gill (Wrath of the Eternal Warrior) as they lead the unshakable Shadowman to the front line of America’s last stand against the global Soviet Union! The Statue of Liberty has fallen and the streets of New York are plagued with Russian forces. Now, the only thing separating the United States from complete Soviet rule is the most unlikely soldier of all: Shadowman!

By Dustin Cabeal

I feel like anytime I post something it's probably not safe for work, but I figured since this one has a gif of a penis going on Drumpf that it might warrant a warning. This is perfectly timed and the exact satire that we need. I look forward to putting dicks on all these presidents.

By Robert Ramos

Why am I still watching this crap? Can someone please try to explain to me why I can’t get myself away from this?  There’s absolutely nothing going on. There have been hints of story, but it is always sidelined by the next episode. You know what? Now that I’m thinking about it, ClassicaLoid reminds me a lot of Dimension W, and we all know how that faired out.

By Dustin Cabeal

I'm not too surprised. Danger Zone, an imprint of Action Lab, has shown that you can do cheesecake in comics still as long as you actually have a story that's not just boobs on the page. I actually just got my Kickstarter copy of this issue and it looks great. I'm going to crack it open after this post and you can beat on an early review.

By Dustin Cabeal

Yay... variants. Themed variants for each month... but only starting in February. This is why I hate variants. Image doesn't need to do this shit. Sure it "sounds" awesome because they aren't known for it, but if you need a reminder of how old this shit gets, look no further than Dark Horse and BOOM!'s celebration last year or Aspen's from two years ago... that shit almost put them out of business. At least it looked that way when they stopped publishing titles. The point is, this seems exactly like the shit that Image publisher Eric Stephenson is always talking about being terrible for the industry. Guess it doesn't matter when you hit 25 years.

By Dustin Cabeal

I have to admit that there's a bit of brilliance to this. A lot of Alterna Comics' titles are in black and white so it would be an easy transition for most. That and I'm curious to see what happens. What do the creators think? Will readers try it? Will other publisher give it a shot? It made me interested because yeah... maybe newsprint is okay for some books. Maybe the generic shit that some of the publishers pump out doesn't need all that detail in their piss poor coloring. I'm curious as hell. Oh, and they got a new logo. I'll be honest, I didn't have the old one committed to memory.

Kitsu, a startup changing the way the community experiences anime, announced today that it has raised six hundred thousand dollars in a seed round between San Francisco, California-based entertainment company VIZ Media, LLC, and Manila, Philippines-based entrepreneur Bernard Chong. Kitsu will use these funds to build out its world-class content discovery platform at kitsu.io, led by Kitsu founder and CEO, Josh Fabian, who started the project under the Hummingbird name. Josh previously was Lead Designer, Groupon Stores, and Lead Designer, oBaz.

By Dustin Cabeal

There’s an air of familiarity to Dauntless that I never could shake. I read it back to back with Exodus which is another title from Tres Calaveras Studios and the two share one very similar component: they each follow super powered humans from outer space.

By Dustin Cabeal

Skuds McKinley’s shared story universe continues in issue two of Red-Eye Comics. You may recall my review for the first issue was glowing and there’s much of the same praise for this issue. I'm a huge mark for McKinley’s work and so getting to read more (and in advance) is a treat for me.

By Dustin Cabeal

As you can imagine, I read a lot of comic books and a lot of indie comics. I have to give it up to Wolf Country because very few indie comics show this much growth over the course of six issues. My first experience with the series was pleasant. Hell, I name an episode of the podcast after it because I enjoyed the book that much. It’s continued to be impressive, but now it’s starting to get great. Better than good… great.

By Dustin Cabeal

The hardest thing to do in a review is not to be mean. Being mean is easy when you don’t like a comic, but it doesn’t inform the reader of the review or help the creator in any way. Not that I’m going to pretend my reviews help creators, but if they get anything out of it, then that’s at least something.

By Dustin Cabeal

Go Home is a familiar story of war and the cost that comes with it. I say familiar because I’ve read comics similar to its theme, it’s style of narration and its visuals. It sucks to be so hard on it right away, but I’m not going to sugar coat this review.

By Chris Tresson

It’s a slow week for comics... There isn’t much up for review and a lot of the books up for review aren’t series I read on a regular basis (I also reviewed a book that won’t be shipping this week before this, but we’ll have more on that next week. If it ships.) When this happens, it usually forces me into grabbing whatever book I can lay my hands on. Having a look through the titles on offer this week, I came across Alex Robinson’s Box Office Poison Color Comics #1 from IDW/Top Shelf.

By Dustin Cabeal

I keep thinking that I’m going to drop this title for review and just read it, but then it’ll entice me just enough that I want to review it. It’s not that it’s the best of the DC’s Young Animal line, but it’s quite possibly one of the best.

By Jonathan Edwards

DC's Rebirth, like all of its reboots, has meant very different things for each of its characters and books. For Flash, it meant the return of Wally West as well as the introduction of his cousin, also named Wally West. For Superman, it meant the New 52 Superman died (although, I'm not wholly convinced he won't pop back up at some point), and the original Superman replaced him. For Batman, it kind of just meant things continued business as usual. And for this book, it meant Ryan Choi is The Atom once again. And, knowing that he was The Atom at some point before marks one of the handful of things I know about The Atom (alongside knowing that Ray Palmer has played human MacGuffin in more than one book). As such, I decided to do some light reading on Ryan to get a little bit better of an idea where this book is coming from and where it might go. But, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. 

By Dustin Cabeal

Zenescope needs to decide if it’s actually trying to get new readers or if this reboot was just for their current crop of supporters because this first issue felt like an attempt at both. I say attempt because it didn’t really succeed at either. There was this overwhelming sense of being nudged while reading the book. As if someone wanted to tell me, “this is a clever throwback to how the first series started.” The problem being, I didn’t read the first series, I’m not going to read it, and I just wanted something to enjoy in this first issue.

By Chris Tresson

It’s Tuesday night as I’m writing this. I’m usually wrapped up and looking at next week’s review copies by this point in the week… but this week has been diabolical for review-worthy material, so I’ve found myself looking for something different, something that might cheer me up... I think I’ve found it in the form of one of IDW’s Artist's Editions.

By Dustin Cabeal

I’ve lost track of how many volumes of G.I. Joe this makes, which is a shame because you need to know for any of it to make sense. IDW refuses for some weird reason to reboot G.I. Joe even when Revolution would have made perfect sense to do so. Instead, we’re left with years and years of history on the series, and none of it is particularly memorable.

By Jonathan Edwards

I'll be forthright; I don't know much about Supergirl. Of course, I know that she was originally the Kryptonian cousin of Superman with more or less all the same powers, and she died during Crisis on Infinite Earths. But beyond that (and knowing she was replaced by a shapeshifting alien or something for a while), I'm a blank slate. And really, that's why I wanted to check out this book. I mean, what better way to learn about a character than with an origin story? Even if it takes the character in a substantially different direction than previous iterations, a good origin story can still generate enough interest in a character to inspire further and continued reading. That's what happened with me and Supergirl's cousin a couple years ago. I don't think I'd been all that interested in Superman since I was a kid. But after reading Superman: Secret Origins, I was intrigued enough to check out Superman: Birthright and then Kurt Busiek's Superman: Secret Identity. Okay, admittedly that last one isn't exactly an origin story, but I only sought it out after reading the other two. So the question becomes, will this book encourage something similar from me for the "Girl of Steel"?

By Dustin Cabeal

It’s a new year and finally the return of the beloved Sherlock. The show has been away so long that it opened with a history lesson which wasn’t as helpful as the producers probably intended it to be. There’s speculation that this is the last season of the BBC’s Sherlock and you can’t blame them. The show has become insanely popular and launched Benedict Cumberbatch’s career and made Martin Freeman a very busy man. Weirdly enough there’s a chance both actors could meet again in the Marvel Cinematic Universe which I’m sure will be a joke and make fans shit their damn pants. We’re not here for that, though.