As you may have noticed, today is Multiversity’s fourth birthday. For some reason, Matt Meylikhov decided to start this website so he could review the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie, and four years later we’re still kicking around.
Either way, that works to your benefit. To help celebrate our love of comics, we wanted to highlight some of the books our staff editors are all about with a contest with our friends at Image Comics.
Want to win a trade of Morning Glories, Saga and Manhattan Projects? It’s easy: share in the comments your favorite Image book of the past year, including your email address in the process, and one randomly drawn winner will win a prize pack including trades from each of those series. Must enter by Friday at 12 pm EST.
Before you go, Editors Matt Meylikhov, David Harper and Brian Salvatore have a paragraph as to why those three books are their favorites of the past year from Image, with a link to where you can buy the first trade of each if you aren’t lucky enough to win this contest.
Morning Glories (Matt Meylikhov): It should be obvious why I’ve picked this book, right? It’s only one of the main things I cover on this here website.
But, honestly: this is one of the best books on the market today, if not the best. Full of mystery and extremely unpredictable, each new issue of “Morning Glories” shows that Nick and Joe aren’t afraid to take chances and really play with traditional comic book narratives, eschewing the average play-by-play aspect of storytelling and weaving a grandiose story so colossal and mind-fuckingly huge that you need notes to follow along (which, did I mention I provide?). I love that about the book; comics are sometimes so easily satisfied by being able to get in and get out without doing too much to challenge the reader or keep them engaged with the property beyond the fifteen minutes it takes to read them, and not for nothing but even some of my favorite monthly reads are just that: read ’em, bag ’em and board ’em. But “Morning Glories” is so much more — an experience, one that you have to agree to being a part of. And that’s why I always recommend this book, both to new readers and old readers, because you deserve the challenge.
Saga (David Harper): What can I say about this book that we didn’t say during our 2012 in Review write ups, as this won Best Ongoing, Best New Series, Best Writer, Best Artist and every other award we could think of? This series is an absolutely phenomenal series that is of the highest quality from writing and art to production value, lettering and hell, the letters column is the best. This is sci-fi if you want to focus on one thing, but like BKV’s other work, it’s not about the genre but the characters and the world he creates. He has a perfect partner in the form of Fiona Staples, someone who brings so much heart and imagination to the page that she outshines her partner in many ways. In short, this book is nothing less than one of the best books in comics.
Manhattan Projects (Brian Salvatore): Alternate histories can be amazing fun (Inglorious Basterds) or painfully dumb (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), but the real question I ask when encountering an alternate history type story is simple: does this entertain me? And on just about every level, “The Manhattan Projects” succeeds in entertaining. It is a book that is visually stunning, courtesy of Nick Pitarra; his attention to detail is downright Quitely-ian, and there are so many fun, funny Easter eggs hidden throughout the book that it practically demands reading multiple times, just to catch all the little bits that can easily be missed.
But the reason it is the book I use the most digital ink writing about is because of the world that Jonathan Hickman has created since the first issue. What began as a funhouse mirror through which the “real” world was viewed has become something else entirely. This book is hilarious, heartbreaking, clever and exciting, without ever doing what is expected.
