The third issue of Liberator by Miner & Aranda hit shelves on Wednesday, September 11th, 2013. Issue #3 opens with Damon and Jeanette surrounded by police officers on the Broughton University campus, liberated fuzzy bunnies in hand. Miner’s series has been excellent thus far in providing excellent hooks and jaw-dropping cliff-hangers that leave the reader craving that next issue, and unfortunately for this great series we’re now three quarters of the way to the conclusion.
Building on the clout Miner has generated with his for charity series about animal liberation, issue #2 allows readers to jump back into the world of Liberator and builds upon the tension between Damon and Randy we saw glimpses of in issue 1. Liberator #2 opens with Randy bullying Damon with feminine jeers and the owner of the coffee shop having to intervene. Call me crazy but I think somethin’s a-brewin’ here.
I love fresh comics though. By fresh I mean something that makes me step outside my comfort zone, broaden my paradigm and engage with something new. A lifestyle I haven’t encountered before in my day-to-day, a character I would never befriend in real life, or sometimes, something that’s altogether too familiar to me but reimagined in a way I’ve never seen before. Matt Miner’s Liberator mini-series from Black Mask Studios gave me everything I could ask for: its counter-culture, heavily liberal in its ideology, horrific and disgusting but wonderful at the same time.
The interior art is what has really sold me on this series. Millar is a great writer, sure, but I hadn’t previously encountered much of Quitely’s pencils and inks outside of a few issues of The Invisibles and his symbiosis with Peter Doherty on the interiors is really a spectacle to behold. The 1932 pages of the story at the start called to mind that nostalgic feeling of an awesome adventure I just couldn’t wait to dive in to. Doherty and Quitely then demonstrate their adaptability and transplant us to the glitz and glam of the red carpet in modern day, March 2013.
Ferals #8 begins with some good ole fashioned werewolfing and hard-core sex. We as readers have come to expect nothing less than the best in violence, sex and gore from David Lapham and Gabriel Andrade over these past 8 issues. As Dale Chestnutt is balls deep in his FBI partner and has her bent over the kitchen table, a knock at the door from the local ferals interrupts Dale’s passionate romp much to everybody’s chagrin.
When we last saw Dale Chestnutt, he was in a pretty rough state from the events of the first Ferals arc (see issues #1-6; previously reviewed) which culminated in a Mexican stand-off and shoot out free-for-all between Dale, Christopher Ingebritsen and the Ferals clan as well as the FBI agents.
We can see the progression of our protagonist from yellow-bellied grade-A pussy to the burgeoning possibilities of Edmund being a hero (this is the same dude that hid in a barrel as his mom, dad and brother were violently raped by Crossed geeks). Edmund puts his foot down in this issue – the crossed geeks will no longer violently fuck and kill their way across his community!
The issue opens with Edmund having returned home from the carnival and confessing to his mother and a police officer the brutality he witnessed while at the carnival with his father and brother (both now dead; having fallen victim to the Crossed in issue 10).
Minutemen #2 begins with a diner scene involving the original Nite Owl (Hollis Mason) discussing the possibility of his yet to be published expose, Under the Hood. The tag line DC pumped for this issue occurs in one of the last panels when a character states, “It’s strictly dynamite, Hollis. This isn’t a book. It’s a bloody confession.”
Following the six issue “Homo Superior” 6 issue arc by Jamie Delano, David Lapham take reigns as the writer of Crossed: Badlands with issue #10. Returning from his previous run on Badlands, artist Jacen Burrows gets back at things with some disgustingly good depictions of the carnival of horrors David Lapham has in sore for his 4 issue “Yellow Belly” arc.
David Lapham (Stray Bullets, Crossed 3D, Crossed Badlands #10-14) teams up with killer artist Gabriel Andrade for a tale of debauchery that involves rather hairy circumstances; that of a werewolf nature. These two pair up for David Lapham’s creator-owned series Ferals which is sure to knock the socks off any true horror fan.
Last Wednesday marked the end of Jamie Delano’s genius run on Avatar’s Crossed: Badlands with the conclusion of his “Homo Superior” storyline. Crossed: Badlands #9 brings to a close the events that have been culminating in the Florida Everglades.
Whether you’re for it or against it, DC’s prequel to Watchmen – Before Watchmen – is here. I realize a lot of hardcore Alan Moore fans are quite miffed that DC opted to launch a prequel series written by other creators after Moore turned down the option to write the prequels himself. DC owns the rights to Watchmen and I’ll be the first to say I was pissed off when I heard they were doing a prequel series without Moore’s input.
I decided to create this Top 10 because I’m frustrated when people ask me, “What’s your favourite comic book?” Usually I ramble for forty, fifty minutes before the boys in blue arrive and escort me away for harassment.
Jamie Delano (Hellblazer, Dr. Who, and Captain Britain) and Leandro Rizzo produced my favourite comic last week and I’m itching for the next issue. For all you Walking Dead fans out there I would be so bold as to say Crossed kicks Walking Dead’s ass pretty hard, even with Walking Dead’s #100 coming up. Why?