Featuring Malachi Ward, Matt Sheean, Terry Moore, Rachael Smith, Kirsten ‘Kiwi’ Smith, Kurt Lustfarten, Naomi Franquiz, Fabien Vehlmann, Kerascoet and more!
Expansion (£13-99, Adhouse Books) by Malachi Ward, Matt Sheean…
Back in the mists of time, in an altogether unremarkable part of the Universe, two epic forces collided with such spectacular results that nothing would ever be the same again…
Yes, as the two-page introduction details, back in 2010 Matt and Malachi decided to make comics together…
“Matt drew a whole page that Malachi inked. We liked it enough to try a whole story.
“The first page of Expansion was only the second page we ever drew together.”
As Malachi then hugely understates in the next panel, “Not too bad.”
So, nearly eight billion years ago, in an extremely unusual bit of the Universe, two, well in fact, three elements of temporally very distinct cultures clash, in a pocket-sized science fiction epic that devotees of Arthur C. Clarke in particular will love.
Agents Turner and Briggs, sole survivors of an overwhelming attack on their tiny spacecraft by a huge battlecruiser in the wilds of deep space, only manage to escape by desperately plunging their doomed ship into a strange, black, spherical anomaly. To their surprise they find an ancient, huge arc-like vessel lurking monolithically within. Its peace-loving inhabitants, having sequestered themselves there until such time as the Universe is ripe for repopulating with their non-violent credo, welcome the new arrivals with open arms. Even if that means waiting until everyone else is extinct…
What’s aiding the cult in their peculiar mission is that the black sphere is a temporal distortion, where time is moving at a velocity at many orders of magnitude greater than real space outside. As it gradually begins to dawn on Turner and Briggs that allowing a bunch of religious nutjobs – as banal and well-meaning as they seem to be – a blank canvas to repopulate the entire Universe might not be the best idea for the future of mankind, the agents hatch a plot to foil the fundamentalists. Which takes us up to about the first third of this work, plot-wise. It only gets wonderfully weirder as matters spiral out of anyone’s control on an epic scale.
Fervent fans of Matt and Malachi’s similarly universe-level apocalyptic ANCESTOR, their spectacular alternative history of the space-race collaboration in NOW #1 and Malachi’s equally time-bending FROM NOW ON will find this punches all the right buttons like a bequiffed star-ship Captain frantically trying to fire off a salvo of photon torpedoes to stave off total destruction… or something… As will acolytes of Brandon Graham’s exceptional PROPHET series, to which they both contributed their prodigious artistic talents and story-mashing chops. The art here is amazing too, with some incredibly delicate linework and substantially black and grey inking, quite different from their other works to my mind. In fact, if I wasn’t aware of who had drawn it, I might have been tempted to guess Chester Brown, oddly enough! It would have been a wild guess, I’ll grant you, but there are some similarities in style here.
For a ‘first work’ this is mind-warpingly brilliant. Also, spoiling nothing, but ending a speculative fiction work satisfactorily is a notoriously tricky task, and one not even the greats get it right every time. Here, however, just as they did with so skilfully in ANCESTOR, the boys let the dystopian dream burn itself out to an extremely satisfying conclusion…
JR
Buy Expansion and read the Page 45 review here
Misfit City vol 1 (£13-99, Boom) by Kirsten ‘Kiwi’ Smith, Kurt Lustgarten & Naomi Franquiz.
“Thank you so little for coming. Buh-bye now!”
Once a year someone pops into Page 45 for the first time in a decade, expressing the most enormous relief that we’re still open after 23 years as if we were the dearest thing in their lives, engages in chatter as if we were their best friends in the world, then leaves without even looking at a comic, let alone buying one.
So now I have my new fond farewell!
“Thank you so little for coming. Buh-bye now!”
That’s Macy of the turquoise dreadlocks, the electropunk band with her brother Todd, and the job at the coastal Cannon Cove Film Museum. This houses traditional tribe ceremonial garb of the earliest settlers, the Tillamook, some pretty grim evidence of the fur traders who then came along and stole whatever they could lay their hands on including land, and a costumed mannequin of Black Mary, the late 18th Century pirate whose crew consisted entirely of Tillamook and who therefore took great delight in sinking any ships allied to those pelt-pilferers. I tell you this now because it will prove pivotal to the mystery that follows, so I hope you’re paying more attention than the sort of college-age, rich-kid idiots who turn up in droves interested only in the museum’s scant movie memorabilia from ‘The Gloomies’ which was filmed locally:.
“These are the sweatpants worn by Dodge in the infamous “I want my balls back” scene…”
“”That scene changed my life!”
Macy is not what you’d call a careful curator, so when what looks like a treasure chest is bequeathed to the museum by the recently departed Captain Denby, she’s a lot less interested in this additional “box of junk” than his great nephew Luther and great niece Millicent who’d double quite decently for Cruella de Vil. It’s only when Macy’s friends call round that night for a game of cards that she is cajoled into opening the chest not with a key but a cutlass. Note: not a careful curator!
Out rolls a scroll complete with landmarks, tracks, compass points and indecipherable writing that could possibly be in Tillamook but could equally be a cipher of sorts. Also, a picture of a black, rearing horse which Dot duly indentifies as a rebus. Dot also declares the parchment and ink deterioration to be consistent with documents from the late 18th Century – at a single glance!!! Dot, daughter of the local librarian, is the smart one, you see. And I hate to do this, but Macy and her friends do so invite categorisation. Dot’s the learned, astute one; Macy the cynic with biting line in rejoinders; Karma’s the New Age naïf; Ed or Edwina’s the gay gal with a Tillamook ex she’s not entirely over; while local Sheriff’s daughter Wilder is the one with ambition (primarily to leave what she considers the back end of nowhere) and the anti-authoritarian stance on the local ecology (“Frick Off To Fracking!”). They even have a dog called Pip who’s a dab hand at cards and farts on cue every twenty minutes exactly. It’s basically a feminist Famous Five with flatulence.
The map is the mystery catalyst and off they set to solve quite clever clues in search of what they hope will prove pirate treasure. Time is not on their side, however, because the annual festival is imminent, Macy’s band is performing, the two goth siblings are hot on their heels in a mean set of wheels (“I almost got run over by the lead singer of Bauhaus”!), and this brings with it the additional encumbrance of the ever-present long arm of the law.
All the tensions required are present and correct, so this clops along at such a cracking pace that I hadn’t realised that the end was in sight and this is only part one! Noooooooo!
Franquiz’s expressive, gymnastic cartooning is all you could want for a Young Adults adventure of this frantic ilk. This femme five leap about like nobody’s business, in one nocturnal instance from the construction-yard frying pan of death-by-dangerous-driving, right into to the proverbial fire of death-by-internet-indignity when they crash helter-skelter all over each other onto the lanes of the local bowling alley populated by their less pleasant peers. Once again, Franquiz’s expressions are exquisite: Dot is dazed and wide-eyed; Macy is mortified; Ed is nervous and cowed, defensively; Karma anxiously clutches Wilder who has one eye shut, hastily summing up the situation before a ball is bowled at them and “STEEEE-RIIIKE!”
The cool crowd’s cell phones snap-snap into camera-evidence action.
“At least we’re still alive.”
“Not socially.”
SLH
Buy Misfit City vol 1 and read the Page 45 review here
Wired Up Wrong (£10-00, self-published) by Rachael Smith.
“What are you depressed for? You have so much going for you!”
“Why do you have a cold? You have a really nice house.”
“… Huh.”
Succinctly done! If you’re wired up right, there is a cause-and-effect logic to what can drag you down; if wired up wrong, logic and reason doesn’t even enter the equation.
In HYPERBOLE AND A HALF Allie Brosh explains and elucidates on this disconnect and so much more in far greater depth from her personal experience of crippling mental health disorders, and she does so while entertaining. Rachael Smith has evidently taken the efficacy of Brosh’s balanced judgement into account for these four-panel snapshots and one-page cartoons which also capitalise not just on the healing power of comedy, but on its communicative strengths as well.
She joins so many others like Sarah Burgess in BOYS CLUB in being brave enough to bear her soul and disorientating disorders in order to promote understanding of those suffering from depression and anxiety beyond what is normal. And Smith succeeds: not only are so many of these pages rendered with lateral-thinking wit and so the element of surprise, but they provide insights into daily dysfunctions which those of us lucky enough to be merely maladjusted rather than chemically imbalanced don’t necessarily comprehend at a distance.
Smith is the first to admit – and goes to great lengths to emphasise in her introduction – that she is no trained psychotherapist, so if you have the choice between seeing a doctor to seek counselling and/or remedial medication and reading this as some sort of therapy… please go and see your doctor! Moreover, she is at pains to point out that this is no sign of weakness, but of strength. So many of my friends and relatives have suffered from paralysing mental health problems, but fortunately almost all of them have benefited enormously from counselling and anti-depressants (some of them – everyone reacts differently to different pills) on their road to recovery.
The even better news for us emotional idiots (as opposed to those who are diagnosed as clinically depressed) is that – just like Sarah Andersen’s BIG MUSHY HAPPY LUMP – there is still so much here to relate to, and if you don’t nod at least once or thrice in recognition then, hey, you are just perfect and we are evidently unworthy of your acquaintance.
These nigh-universal experiences include self-consciousness, self-doubt, a wonky internal sleep clock, the worries that whir around you during those early hours all at once, overwhelming anxiety about a task that lies ahead (but which, once started, proves far from problematic), fixations on what you said wrong rather than all you’ve done right, fear of flying (not me – I still thrill to pretending that I’m piloting Thunderbird 1 during take-off!), and postponing the household chores until someone actually threatens to come round see what a state we live in.
My favourite single page follows an earlier one in which Rachael compares the illogicality of her reactions to having a “roulette wheel in my head that two little men spin to see how I’m going to react.”
It’s actually one of those great big glittering Spinning Wheels of Fortune or, as Smith calls it, ‘The Wheel of Feels’! The little man standing at the equivalent of the old-school telephone operator’s switchboard with its spaghetti of criss-crossed wires reports in:
“She’s just watched an advert on TV that has kittens in it.”
The man at The Wheel of Feels gives it a spin. “Um… I’ve got “full of rage”?”
“Huh,” says the first, plugging the connection in. “Ok… this should be interesting.”
One of Smith’s other conceits is of a black dog as an embodiment of depression. Yes, yes, it is such a long-standing tradition that it’s even a synonym (see Dave McKean’s BLACK DOG: THE DREAMS OF PAUL NASH), but where she departs is in having two black dogs with differing demeanours and diverse methods of attack. The bigger black dog stops her point-blank in its tracks from even going out by barricading the door with its substantial body mass. But the smaller, sleeker hound with narrowed, Ancient Egyptian eyes… well, let’s hear Rachel discuss them.
“You know you’ve got these two versions so Barky mixed up on the “cast” page, right? The little black one looks much worse than the big fluffy one!”
“No, that’s the right way round. The big fluffy one is worse.”
“What? Why?”
“Because he’s nice and soft and big. Even though he still represents my depression, it can be comforting to cuddle up with him. Like wallowing I guess. When he tells me things I believe him. I hardly ever stand up to or argue with him. Whereas the smaller black one – I know he’s evil. I know what he tells me is rubbish. I don’t like him at all, so he’s easier to stand up to.”
“Sounds complicated. But at least you’re aware of this stuff. So maybe you’re getting better!”
“Maybe…”
“Although… you are having an imaginary conversation with your cat about two imaginary dogs sooo.. maybe you’re more mental than ever.”
In case it helps anyone make the first move towards therapy (first moves can often prove the most difficult – see STARTING), Rachel takes you through her own experiences both of securing said help and of the sessions themselves. Under the fourth example she even gives you a website address from which to download a v. helpful sheet of unhelpful thinking practices which are ever so common (“textbook even!”) to show that you’re far from alone and perhaps address some of them (though perhaps not on your own but with a trained therapist).
Which brings me to my sole qualm with this publication: the above aside, I’d have preferred pagination to the post-script annotations underneath which cannot help but rob the punchlines of their often considerable power.
The strips themselves, however, are all gaily drawn in a Graley / Ellerby fashion, sometimes in spite of their contents. Quite right too: in order to help one must first attract, and you don’t attract the already vulnerable by frightening them away in the first place. Similarly the colours are bright and there is optimism in abundance, the final flourish referencing and defiantly putting to bed one prior problem at least – one which may seem comparatively trivial but the liberation from which is actually is among the most empowering things you can do.
SLH
Buy Wired Up Wrong and read the Page 45 review here
Motor Girl vol 2: No Man Left Behind (£14-50, Abstract Studios) by Terry Moore.
“She just wants to help.”
“I don’t need any help! Okay?
“I carry my own load! No one has to help me!
“I help them!
“I’m the strongest person in the room! That’s how it works!”
“Really?”
“Damn straight!”
“Then why am I here?”
You’ll find out precisely why Mike’s in Sam’s mind, and why he is specifically a mountain gorilla.
It involves a young boy in Iraq who was chained with steel braid to a big bundle of explosives, then left in an upstairs window to lure in someone just like Sergeant Samantha Locklear.
It worked.
Terry Moore has made a career out of juxtaposing comedy and tragedy: not combing, but setting them off against each other so that the comedy comes as a blessed relief, yet the tragedy hits you hardest, when least expected.
Over and again he has succeeded to spectacular effect, better than anyone else in comics and especially during STRANGERS IN PARADISE and RACHEL RISING. Here, however, in MOTOR GIRL, the contrast is so extreme that you might fear for his failure.
The comedy is burlesque with an imaginary, sassy gorilla, comedy green aliens, a gum-flapping, four-foot powerhouse of an octogenarian called Libby, ridiculously inept henchmen Larry and Vic, a monstrously ruthless big-business weapons manufacturer and his comically trigger-happy mercenaries, all assembled in the American desert to do battle.
But it’s not the first desert Samantha’s survived, and the sequences in Iraq are halting and horrific, rendered without any of the cartoon galumphing exhibited by Walden’s paid goons.
The stark contrast is bridged by the quiet solemnity of Sam’s current, consequent medical condition when Libby goes silent and Sam and Mike finally begin to address each other seriously. And I found the sincere respect due to veterans so deftly done, for example paid here by a barman after yet another drunken altercation between Sam and Mike – or, to any observer, thin air.
“What’s her problem?”
“Sam? She did three tours in Iraq. Captured, tortured, survived two bomb attacks.”
“Damn.”
“If she wants to come in here and yell at the back wall, I say yes ma’am, thank you for your service and would you like a beer for your ‘friend’.”
I don’t have of the Iraqi pages to show you, but perhaps that’s for the best: they should come out of the blue and blow you to bits. But even during its comedic confrontations MOTOR GIRL is more than just mouth and mania: it’s about the little guys getting trampled on by the big boys with money and clout; about those under threat looking out for each other. Eh, it’s also about slapstick, soap-sudded aliens in your bath.
“I know how the military works, Libby.”
“I know you do. I’m just saying…”
“There’s more to it than duty.”
“Like what?”
“Like caring what happens to people who can’t defend themselves.”
STRANGERS IN PARADISE returns in January 2018 with STRANGERS IN PARADISE XXV #1
SLH
Buy Motor Girl vol 2: No Man Left Behind and read the Page 45 review here
Satania h/c (£22-99, NBM) by Fabien Vehlmann & Kerascoet…
Following on from their deliriously disturbing delight that was BEAUTIFUL DARKNESS, Vehlmann & Kerascoet return with a descent into a surreal netherworld that will scorch your eyeballs out whilst simultaneously chilling you to the bone. And that’s just the art!
Budding young scientist Charlotte fervently believes her brother Christopher is alive and well. He recently disappeared without a trace whilst exploring a notorious local cave system. Christopher was trying to prove his crackpot theory that, according to Darwin’s theories of evolution, Hell must actually exist.
Charlotte has assembled a peculiar group of individuals for her rescue team including an ace spelunker, a devout Catholic priest and errr… a publisher! Before too long they’re hopelessly lost and facing near certain death themselves. Every possible route out only leads our hapless posse deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth. Charlotte, convinced she’s following in her brother’s footsteps, doesn’t mind that ever-downwards detour whatsoever. It’s not too long before they discover that the possibility of a parallel evolutionary system lying beneath our own civilisation isn’t so farfetched at all…
Prepare yourself to be astounded by the journey Vehlmann and Kerascoet will take Charlotte on as she searches for her sibling. I shall reveal no more of the plot for fear of spoilers. Though suffice to say, several extraneous members of the rescue squad prove as disposable as the eponymous red shirts on a Star Trek away mission… Those that manage to stay the treacherous course find their sanity being bent, and indeed in one case, well and truly broken by their apparent descent into the bottomless Pit…
Kerascoet outdoes himself on the artistic front presenting us with endless perturbing creatures and myriad expansive locales that are both dazzling and terrifying in equal measure. He also manages to use every single colour in the visible spectrum to bring these subterranean denizens and satanic domains to vivid, squirming life. And death. And many states of tortured existence in-between.
JR
Buy Satania h/c and read the Page 45 review here
Jazz Maynard vol 1: The Barcelona Trilogy h/c (£17-99, Lion Forge) by Raule & Roger.
“I’m always next in line.
“My aunts liked to poke fun at me at weddings, giving me a little nudge and saying: “You’re next…”
“They stopped when I started doing it to them at funerals!”
Crime in Catalonia, from political corruption and police collusion with a very unpleasant mob boss and sex trafficker, Cebes, to protectionist rackets, stealthy theft and a steady stream of bullets. Throw in the Sons of Kain and their cut-throat katana and you have plenty of slickly drawn slice-and-dice action.
The central chapter is where it comes into its own: three simultaneous stories involving squeaky-clean Captain White set up for slaughter during a hostage situation, the settling in of sleazy Mr Chen at Cebes’ luxury tower block, and Jazz’s infiltration of a remote country mansion in order to steal a very rare golden coin. The wider ramifications of his early use of an EMP are only later revealed in a perfectly positioned flashback which made me grin my head off: it giveth by taking away.
Alas, the third instalment undoes all this carefully controlled intrigue when every individual who survived the previous carnage (Jazz Maynard, fellow former street-thief Teo, fellow former street-thief-turned-criminal / philanthropist Judas, Judas’ girlfriend and crusading journalist Lucia Lopena, Jazz’s sister Laura, Captain White et al) are flung together on an assault on said tower block and they trip over each other not in a thrilling fight-fest but in a jumble of unconvincingly plotted paths.
A bit too free-form, that Jazz, who of course plays jazz, and you just know it’s going to sing itself out in a virtuoso display trumpeting, don’t you?
Lovely pencilled endpapers, though, and sleek figure work throughout.
SLH
Buy Jazz Maynard vol 1: The Barcelona Trilogy h/c and read the Page 45 review here
We Found More Stock!
Adventures Of A Japanese Businessman h/c (£19-00, Nobrow Press) by Jose Domingo.
Okay, let’s start with a bold statement, then slap a couple of caveats on, to thus produce an odd semantic sandwich to chew over whilst we get proceedings started.
This is now my favourite wordless comic ever. Given that puts it in the company of works like Erik Drooker’s BLOOD SONG and Shaun Tan’s THE ARRIVAL, I realise that could raise a few arched eyebrows, but this is quite simply stunning, inventive, ingenious and also absolutely utterly and ridiculously hilarious. So whilst it might not end up being your favourite wordless comic ever (THE ARRIVAL does take some beating, let us be honest about it, in fact I might have to amend that to joint-favourite heh heh) I am pretty confident it could end up being your favourite comedic wordless comic.
Semantics is a good word to invoke around wordless comics, I feel, given one of its usages is in the meaning or interpretation of words, sentences, or other linguistic forms. Comics are one of those other linguistic forms obviously, and wordless comics a very particular subset again which, to truly succeed, need above all for the story to be clear to the reader. Not that events shouldn’t require some interpretation on behalf of the reader, for is that not the sheer beauty of THE ARRIVAL, putting yourself in the place of the émigré, who suddenly finds himself in a literally incomprehensible place, trying to make sense of the unfolding strange, new world around him?
ADVENTURES OF A JAPANESE BUSINESSMAN is not that dissimilar, as the poor unfortunate and unsuspecting salaryman, who we first meet quietly waiting to cross the road, is about to embark upon an unwilling expedition to weird and wonderful (plus several not-so-wonderful) realms, and various states of being, not to mention existence, which together will all make for the ultimate bad day at the office!
Things start off not relatively implausibly to begin with, partly to lull us into a false sense of security, I’m sure, as he gets caught in the crossfire of two Yakuza trading lead at each other from limousines on opposing sides of the road, and barely makes it past them intact. Unfortunately he walks straight into some sort of incident involving a raging customer at a sushi stand who promptly gets flattened by the giant sushi roll which falls off the roof when he starts shaking it, cue much panic and hysteria as passers-by frantically leap out of the way. As the businessman ducks to one side he inhales some escaping fumes from a nearby Biotech company and promptly starts hulking out into some weird blue monster and then goes on the rampage. And so on, and so forth… And if you think that sounds surreal, believe me, it’s the absolute powder-coated tip of the iceberg!
So, what makes this truly nonsensical adventure shine then? Well quite simply, it’s the construction of the work itself and Jose Domingo’s art. It’s done in a strict 2 x 2 grid, aside from the occasional whole-page splash. The book being a lovely outsize edition, by the way, so each individual panel is pretty huge in and of itself. Which is fantastic because they are all positively crammed with detail, and each page forms a little, well, gag strip in itself, I suppose, with the businessman frequently extricating himself from his current predicament only to be immediately dragged into the next situation in the final panel of each and almost every page. (I did wonder if the format was a little nod to the Japanese pre-modern-manga tradition, when comics in Japan were pretty much just that, just one-page gag strips, before people such as Tatsumi started producing ‘gegika’ like BLACK BLIZZARD, proper stories composed of literally ‘dramatic pictures’. )
The art itself put me in mind of a neat and tidy Marc Bell, but rendered in beautiful full colour. (I have included a few interior pages for you to have a look at.) You may also see hints of others like Jim (CONGRESS OF THE ANIMALS) Woodring and Jason (ISLE OF 100,000 GRAVES) in there, though, not least because of the surreal nature of the tale puts them in mind. Each panel typically has the same viewpoint, perspective-wise, so the story really just seamlessly flow on from absurd scenario to even more absurd scenario, and just when you think you’ve reached the zenith, or nauseous nadir from the point of the businessman, something even more truly bizarre occurs. And yet, it always does make creditability-stretching sense in the context of what has immediately gone before, which is another genius element of this work.
The businessman does get a few brief moments of respite and false hope along the way to catch his breath, but they always turn out to be false dawns before the next nightmare swiftly commences! As absurdist fiction goes, I can’t think of anything comparable in terms of such a smooth, flowing read as this. The artwork is truly gorgeous as you would expect from a Nobrow book, of course, they really do seem to be managing to maintain a very high standard of output.
There’s even a hilarious little epilogue just to round things off nicely. Initially the businessman is firmly clenching his briefcase for dear life like a protective shield or talisman, but eventually he is parted from it. Just as I was finishing the story I was found myself wondering what had happened to it, and so was greatly amused to find its ultimate fate is revealed in said epilogue! Near perfection, this for me, which when it’s your wider comics debut, is clearly going to take some following up.
JR
Buy Adventures Of A Japanese Businessman h/c and read the Page 45 review here
Hulk: World War Hulk h/c (£19-99, Marvel) by Greg Pak, Peter David & John Romita Jr., various.
The first thing you’ll notice is the size of the panels (or maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll just sit, jaw agape at Romita’s massive and magnificent art, but trust me, the size of the panels is important). Unlike the wretched gimmick employed during THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN whereby one panel per page was removed in the countdown until the final issue was composed entirely of full-page spreads thereby turning it into a static slide show with absolutely no flexibility, fluidity or power, John knows how to tell a story with nuance and power.
That story is the return of The Hulk to Earth, hell-bent on revenge against the Illuminati (Iron Man, Professor Xavier, Black Bolt, Reed Richards, Namor, Doctor Strange) who flung him into space and – he believes – did so using a duff spaceship which ultimately exploded, destroying everything he had struggled to build in exile, and slaughtering all those he’d come to love there.
There’s something he doesn’t know. Before he finds out, though, it’s one long rampage of monumental destruction as he takes on The Inhumans, The Avengers both Mighty and New, the Fantastic Four and anyone else who gets in the way, like Rick Jones.
Whether this will rock your boat depends on how much more you require than that. Because, to be honest, there ain’t that much more on offer. Best-selling HULK collection we’ve ever experienced, that’s for sure.
SLH
Buy Hulk: World War Hulk h/c and read the Page 45 review here
Arrived, Online & Ready To Buy!
New reviews to follow, but if they’re new formats of previous books, reviews may already be up; others will retain their Diamond previews information we receive displayed as ‘Publisher Blurb’.
Love And Rockets (Locas vol 6): Angels And Magpies (£17-99, Fantagraphics) by Jaime Hernandez
Alone Forever: The Singles Collection (£8-99, Top Shelf) by Liz Prince
Black Hammer vol 2: The Event s/c (£17-99, Dark Horse) by Jeff Lemire & Dean Ormston
Deadly Class vol 6: This Is Not The End s/c (£14-99, Image) by Rick Remender & Wesley Craig
Fifty Freakin’ Years With The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers (£8-99, Knockabout) by Gilbert Shelton
Rick And Morty (UK Edition) vol 6: Some Morty To Love (£14-99, Titan) by Kyle Starks, Sean Vanaman, Olly Moss & CJ Cannon, Marc Ellerby, Benjamin various, CJ Cannon, Katy Farina
Batman Arkham: Joker’s Daughter s/c (£17-99, DC) by Bob Rozakis, Geoff Johns, J. Torres, Ann Nocenti, Marguerite Bennett & Irv Novick, Juan Ortiz, Paco Medina, George Jeanty, various
Batman vol 4: The War Of Jokes And Riddles s/c (Rebirth) (£17-99, DC) by Tom King & Mikel Janin, Clay Mann, others
Batman: Detective Comics vol 4: Deus Ex Machina s/c (£14-99, DC) by James Tynion IV, Christopher Sebela & Alvaro Martinez, Carmen Carnero
Justice League Vs. Suicide Squad s/c (£22-99, DC) by Joshua Williamson, Tim Seeley, Rob Williams, Si Spurrier & various
Wonder Woman: The True Amazon s/c (£14-99, DC) by Jill Thompson
Generations (UK Edition) s/c (£22-50, Marvel) by various
Hawkeye: Kate Bishop vol 2: Masks s/c (£15-99, Marvel) by Kelly Thompson & Leonardo Romero, Michael Walsh
Unbelievable Gwenpool vol 4: Beyond The Fourth Wall s/c (£14-50, Marvel) by Christopher Hastings & Gurihiru
The Ancient Magus Bride vol 5 (£11-99, Seven Seas) by Kore Yamazaki
The Ancient Magus Bride vol 6 (£11-99, Seven Seas) by Kore Yamazaki
The Ancient Magus Bride vol 7 (£11-99, Seven Seas) by Kore Yamazaki
Assassination Classroom vol 19 (£6-99, Viz) by Yusei Matsui
Attack On Titan vol 23 (£9-99, Kodansha) by Hajime Isayama
Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card vol 1 (£9-99, Kodansha) by Clamp
Happiness vol 2 (£10-99, Kodansha) by Shuzo Oshimi
Happiness vol 3 (£10-99, Kodansha) by Shuzo Oshimi
Happiness vol 4 (£10-99, Kodansha) by Shuzo Oshimi
Happiness vol 5 (£10-99, Kodansha) by Shuzo Oshimi
Happiness vol 6 (£10-99, Kodansha) by Shuzo Oshimi
Platinum End vol 4 (£6-99, Viz) by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata
The Promised Neverland vol 1 (£6-99, Viz) by Kaiu Shirai & Posuka Demizu
Shiver h/c (£15-99, Viz) by Junji Ito
Tokyo Ghoul re: vol 2 (£8-99, Viz) by Sui Ishida