Any long-time comic book reader knows the feeling — “I’m probably not gonna like this, but I’m buying it anyway.” And by all accounts I really probably shouldn’t like Gutter Magic, the brainchild of creator/writer Rich Douek, who hails from an advertising background, artist Brett Barkley, and colorist Jules Rivera. For one thing, it’s an “urban fantasy,” a YA-ish subgenre of sword-and-sorcery that I like even less than sword-and-sorcery. For another, the title character has the fingernails-on-a-blackboard name of, I shit you not, Cinder Byrnes. And finally, Byrnes is —yawn! stretch! — a “lovable rouge,” and if there’s one thing I’m bored to the fucking eyeteeth with, in both fiction and reality, it’s “lovable rouges.”

Still, this whole Comics Experience/IDW co-publishing venture is something I really do want to support with my dollars. Comics Experience is doing great work helping aspiring creators “workshop” their ideas into shape and then…