Happy New Year! It’s October, I know, but today in Solciting Multiversity we’re going to be looking at what Image Comics has in store for us in January so I might as well wish you all a happy New Year now in case we don’t even make it to 2018.
With a brand new Ales Kot comic on the way and a genuinely experimental graphic novel collection of essays, January is shaping up to be a wild month for Image. Let’s break it down.
As always, you can find Image’s full solicitations on their website.
10. Snotgirl Returns
Next month’s issue of “Snotgirl” (as in, November’s) takes the one-shot approach of exploring the boys before taking a break for December and returning for the beginning of a two-parter in January. One of the things I love about “Snotgirl” is how O’Malley and Hung have been doing these smaller arcs and bite-size storytelling chunks. Delays plague damn near every Image book at one point or another, be it the usual month off here and there between arcs to release a trade or the half years between issues that sometimes crop up. Combatting that with smaller, more self-contained (hopefully) arcs is a smart idea and something that makes “Snotgirl” and really endearing read.
SNOTGIRL #9
STORY: BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY
ART / COVER: LESLIE HUNG
JANUARY 24 / 32 PAGES / FC / T+ / $3.99From bestselling BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY (Scott Pilgrim, Seconds) and superstar LESLIE HUNG, it’s SNOTGIRL! Lottie Person is a beloved blogger who just wants to live her life. Instead, she’s getting engulfed in a messed-up mystery while secretly suffering from alarming allergies. THIS MONTH: Sun and fun at a fashion-influencer fest in the desert. The first part of a two-part adventure! It’s “WEEKEND, PART ONE!” Don’t forget your allergy pills!
9. What IS This Book Even?
Remember when “Sex Criminals” was on top of the world? It was like a century ago back in 2014. Yeah, what happened? Not only has everyone I know pretty much stopped talking about the book, but it seems to be coming out under everyone’s radar. Hell, even the solicit text doesn’t know what’s going on.
I would really like to catch up on “Sex Criminals” because I feel like it’s either really bad right now or even better and no one knows because no one’s reading it anymore.
SEX CRIMINALS #21
STORY: MATT FRACTION
ART / COVER: CHIP ZDARSKY
JANUARY 24 / 32 PAGES / FC / M / $3.99“FIVE-FINGERED DISCOUNT,” Part One
Up is down and black is white and the sex isn’t happening—neither is the crime. WHAT IS THIS BOOK EVEN? After the heartbreaking, albeit totally unsurprising, finale of FOURGY!, our leads find themselves in the arms of others while the fate of the whole universe hangs in the balance…ish!
8. I mean, just look at that title
Riley Rossmo is one of comics’s most underappreciated living artists. Despite having a number of pretty high profile books at Image and some pretty hefty Batman gigs at DC, I feel like he’s continually slept on. Hopefully a deluxe re-issue of “Cowboy Ninja Viking,” one of his earlier works from 2009, will remind people just how great he’s always been.
Oh, yeah, and it’s called “Cowboy Ninja Viking.” It would be included here no matter who illustrated it.
Continued belowCOWBOY NINJA VIKING DELUXE EDITION TP
STORY: A.J. LIEBERMAN
ART / COVER: RILEY ROSSMO
JANUARY 10 / 304 PAGES / FC / M / $19.99This giant, oversized, deluxe trade paperback collects the entire run of the critically acclaimed, fan-favorite series, complete with extensive extras & bonus material.
It started with Dr. Sebastian Ghislain—rogue psychotherapist / covert op / DJ. Tasked with creating a counterintelligence unit, he turned to those long thought useless to society: patients with multiple personality disorder. These agents became known simply as Triplets. Misguided? Yeah. Impractical? Sure. But did it work? Absolutely not!
Now someone has located each Triplet and created a band of ridiculously disturbed but highly effective assassins. Our only hope? A Triplet known as Cowboy Ninja Viking. We are so screwed!
7. Don’t You Dare Close Your Eyes
I could make a really sarky joke about how the real walking dead is the comic itself that’s been shambling from half-baked plot to half-baked plot ever since the success of the TV adaptation meant it had to live on in perpetuity in order to prototype plotlines for the show’s next few seasons. I could make that joke, but I’m not going to.
Instead I’m going to make the Aladdin reference in the title to this entry and move on.
THE WALKING DEAD #175
STORY: ROBERT KIRKMAN
ART: CHARLIE ADLARD, STEFANO GAUDIANO, CLIFF RATHBURN
COVER: CHARLIE ADLARD, DAVE STEWART
JANUARY 03 / 32 PAGES / BW / M / $3.99“NEW WORLD ORDER,” Part One
NEW FRIENDS.
NEW ENEMIES.
NEW THREATS.
IT’S A WHOLE NEW WORLD.
6. As It Turns Out, Pretty Vincable
I’ve mentioned “Invincible” a couple of times in my tenure on this column and I think every time it’s come up, I’ve prefaced by saying I haven’t read a single panel of “Invincible.” The book is entirely a blank spot for me and while at one point it may have seemed like the coolest thing in the world to me (A fully fledged superhero universe contained in one book with horrific body horror and gore? Yeah!), but years of seeing people try to draw blood from the storytelling stone that is “superheroes, but dark” has kind of soured me on the whole thing.
Still, Kirkman and crew got a pretty serviceable 144 issues out of the series and while it’s still overshadowed by “The Walking Dead” and it’s merchandising nightmare, it’s probably the Kirkman series I’d be most interested in revisiting. Especially now I can do it in one go now that it’s over.
INVINCIBLE #144
STORY: ROBERT KIRKMAN
ART: RYAN OTTLEY, CORY WALKER, NATHAN FAIRBAIRN
COVER / VARIANT COVER: RYAN OTTLEY, NATHAN FAIRBAIRN
JANUARY 24 / 56 PAGES / FC / M / $5.99“THE END OF ALL THINGS,” Conclusion
Final issue.
Everything since issue one has been building to this. Nothing can prepare you.
5. God, Please Don’t Be Another “Airboy”
As you might be able to infer from this entry’s title, I’m somewhat trepidatious of this one. For one, it sounds like the kind of story that twists the super out of superhero to cast a washed up stoner in the role of a former superhero to likely make fun of how superheroes are for kids and the real world is full of assholes and pain. For two, that same thing happened to disastrous effects in Image’s own “Airboy” which I still harbour a lot of resentment for.
I’m not exactly looking forward to reading Pineapple Express where Seth Rogan used to be able to fly. That’s an assumption, I know, but I’ve been burned before by the kind of books that focus on how schluby their main character is and how much weed they smoke.
Continued belowTHE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF NICK WILSON #1 (OF 5)
STORY: EDDIE GORODETSKY& MARC ANDREYKO
ART: STEVE SADOWSKI
COVER: PETE WOODS
VARIANT COVER: IAN CHURCHILL
JANUARY 17 / 32 PAGES / FC / M / $3.99“THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF NICK WILSON” From Eisner and Emmy-winning writers! For a few years in his early 20s, Nick Wilson had super powers and all the acclaim associated with them. When those powers vanished, so did his fame, sending him from national hero to late-night punchline. By the time we pick up his story, he is not yet 30 and barely an answer in a trivia contest. Faced with a life in a rear-view mirror full of lost powers, faded glory, former enemies, ex-girlfriends, and forgotten grudges, Nick struggles to figure out who he is today. Packing on an extra 20 pounds and peering through a medicinal marijuana haze, he is trying to build a future when all that’s left is just a man who hasn’t been super for a very long time. These are THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF NICK WILSON.
4. Genuinely Unique Sci-Fi
If I had a pound for every time I’d been sold on a “sci-fi world unlike any other” that turned out to have the same five main influences from Blade Runner, Alien, E.T. Close Encounters and Star Wars that was just the recycled childhoods of any nerdy kid in the 80s, I’d have enough to know never to buy another comic like that again.
Thing is, those claims are generally made in Western comics by white male creators who think their take on their own childhood influences are unique. “Dissonance,” however, genuinely sounds like a sci-fi world unlike any other and while I may end up eating my words come January, I’m very interested in this blend of science fiction and fantasy.
DISSONANCE #1
STORY: SINGGIH NUGROHO
ART: SAMI BASRI
COVER: VARSAM KURNIA
JANUARY 10 / 32 PAGES / FC / M / $3.99In an alternate world where Earth is populated with powerful human-spirit hybrids called Fantasmen, Folke and Roisia Herviett, two siblings with opposing worldviews, are challenged to prove their worth and take up their parents’ positions in a devious group who secretly run the world. Meanwhile, Seraphim, a Fantasmen warrior guard, is sent to prevent a catastrophic event from affecting the Earth and its own universe.
From designer MELITA CURPHY, writer SINGGIH NUGROHO, and featuring the art of SAMI BASRI (Power Girl, WITCHBLADE), comes a fantasy drama set in a sci-fi world unlike any other.
3. We All Scream For Ice Cream
I don’t really know where to start with this one because it’s hard to pin down what exactly we’re being sold on here. It seems like a sort of The Twilight Zone slash Black Mirror style anthology series that follows the lives of various characters and “their own special sundae of suffering” with the connective tissue being the titular Ice Cream Man.
That’s the kind of series that’s either going to work really well or really not at all. I don’t know if any of you remember the Twilight Zone comics, but… yeah. I hope this works.
ICE CREAM MAN #1
STORY: W. MAXWELL PRINCE
ART / COVER: MARTIN MORAZZO, CHRIS O’HALLORAN
VARIANT COVER: FRAZER IRVING
JANUARY 17 / 40 PAGES / FC / M / $3.99OVERSIZED FIRST ISSUE!
Chocolate, vanilla, existential horror, drug addiction, musical fantasy…there’s a flavor for everyone’s misery.
ICE CREAM MAN is a genre-defying comic book series featuring disparate “one-shot” tales of sorrow, wonder, and redemption. Each installment features its own cast of strange characters, dealing with their own special sundae of suffering. And on the periphery of all of them, like the twinkly music of his colorful truck, is the Ice Cream Man—a weaver of stories, a purveyor of sweet treats. Friend. Foe. God. Demon. The man who, with a snap of his fingers—lickety split!—can change the course of your life forever.
2. Strip Graphic Novel Naked
Never in my life did I expect to read a comic solicitation by Image Comics that opened with “In the spirit of essayist David Sedaris and monologist Spalding Grey.” Honestly, that’s like Marvel announcing a new series inspired by the works of Mark Z. Danielewski. The idea of bringing comic book storytelling to the world of graphic essays and, in reverse, bringing graphic essays to the world of comic book readers is a fascinating one and Seagle’s aptitude for the graphic memoir will certainly bring a revealing edge to this collection.
This is the kind of genre- and industry-defying projects that I want Image to be putting forth, not just yet another gritty supernatural crime drama.
Continued belowGET NAKED OGN
STORY: STEVEN T. SEAGLE
ART: EMEI OLIVIA BURELL, TINA BURHOLT, PATRICIA AMALIE ECKERLE, CHRISTOFFER HAMMER, ANDRADA-AURORA HANSEN, REBEKKA DAVIDSEN HESTBÆK, HOPE HJORT, ANGELICA INIGO JØRGENSEN, BOB LUNDGREEN KRISTIANSEN, SILJA LIN, SIM MAU, INGVILD MARIE METHI, THORBJØRN PETERSEN, ASKE SCHMIDT ROSE, ERLEND HJORTLAND SANDØY, MADS ELLEGÅRD SKOVBAKKE, CECILIE “Q” MAINTZ THORSEN, FRED TORNAGER, THOMAS VIUM
COVER: MADS ELLEGÅRD SKOVBAKKE
FEBRUARY 07 / 280 PAGES / FC / M / $24.99In the spirit of essayist David Sedaris and monologist Spalding Grey, SEAGLE and 19 emerging global cartoonists take drawn storytelling into the world of the “graphic essay.” 19 stories of global attitudes about the naked body balance raw comedy, raw emotions, and raw cartooning. SEAGLE honestly chronicles his place as an undressed metaphorical fish out of water on different continents—from not recognizing a famous naked celeb in Hollywood to being naked and eaten by actual fish in Tokyo.
1. Love In 2017
Ales Kot is one of my favourite living comic book writers and his work with Jordie Bellaire, Tom Muller and a slew of visual artists on “Zero” was a turning point for myself as a reader and critic of comics. Despite “Zero” coming to a close, there’s something that feels oddly reminiscent of that title in “Days Of Hate.” Maybe it’s the monochrome cover design with large, blocky typeface by Muller and Bellaire. Maybe I’m just desperate to re-experience a series like “Zero.” Maybe it’s Maybelline, I don’t know. Regardless, “Days Of Hate” seems like a title I’m very excited to check out.
DAYS OF HATE #1 (OF 12)
STORY: ALES KOT
ART: DANIJEL ZEZELJ
COLORS: JORDIE BELLAIRE
COVER: DANIJEL ZEZELJ, TOM MULLER
JANUARY 17 / 32 PAGES / FC / M / $3.99The United States of America, 2022.
The loss that ripped them apart drove one into the arms of the police state and the other towards a guerrilla war against the white supremacy. Now they meet again. This is a story of a war.
