Originally self-published at the tail end of 2018 but only making it into this critic’s hands now, Brooklyn-based artist George Horner’s Incoherents 2 is as curious an item as its predecessor, and while it plays by the same rules, the end results are a unique experience unto themselves.  But hey — that’s only half the story.

Okay, yeah, there is no “story” here per se, but this is a dual project, with each section of it approached in a singular manner, then presented in the form of an offset-printed comic book on cheap newsprint in a “flipbook” format. Horner’s preferred full title is, then, Incoherents 2/UBU, and as you’ve already no doubt surmised, the UBU portion functions as the de facto “B-side” of the publication. With those particulars out of the way, then —

We present to you even more particulars! Horner’s general modus operandi is that he…

I trust I’m not going out on a limb when I assert that we’re living in absurd times — the evidence is, quite literally, both constant and everywhere. What’s easy to forget in the midst of it all, though, is that absurdity needn’t necessarily have tragic consequences, as is the case all too often now — in fact, absurdity can be downright funny. And while this has probably never seemed further from the truth, the good news is that you don’t need to take my word for it. You can ask Seattle-based cartoonist Brandon Lehmann instead.

Come to think of it, you probably should, because unlike me, he can write and draw a comic that proves it — hell, he already has many times over, and his latest mini, The Werewolf Expert (released under the auspices of his own Bad Publisher Books imprint), is perhaps the most succinct…

Making their publishing debut the last week Diamond was open for business before the COVID-19 shutdown hit was a rough break for AWA (short for Artists, Writers and Artisans) and their Upshot line, but they adjusted on the fly quickly, offering the first issues of their various and sundry titles online for free (albeit in this really annoying, one-panel-at-a-time format) and bumping their release dates down the schedule accordingly — and now that shops are back up and running, so is this new brainchild of former Marvel head honchos Bill Jemas and Axel Alonso. Their slate of offerings has been a mixed bag in terms of quality, no doubt about it, but their professionalism and ability to adjust on the fly — not to mention their comparably deep financial pockets — has shown them to be a resilient new presence in a still-crowded market, and by and large I’m interested…

Granted, it’s early days yet, but at three issues in I’m already prepared to say that writer Johnnie Christmas and artist Jack T. Cole’s ambitious sci-fi/comedy epic Tartarus is my favorite thing coming out from Image Comics at the moment, and perhaps my favorite thing coming out of the mainstream in general. And why wouldn’t it be? It’s got everything you want : compelling characters, breakneck action, smart scripting, a solid premise — and, oh yeah, absolutely gorgeous art.

Cole first came across my radar screen via Boom! Studios’ The Unsound, where his stunning visuals elevated a rather derivative horror script from Cullen Bunn and turned the insane asylum of the book’s setting into a Dante-esque phantasmagoria of despair and delight, revenge and revelation, but to say he’s kicked it into another gear here is to sell his visionary work short — his design work and figure drawings belie…

Decisively proving that you can’t keep a good bad guy down, writer Gerry Duggan and artist John McCrea’s socially-conscious crime series (yes, that’s a thing) from Image Comics,  Dead Rabbit, returned from a cease-and-desist order filed by a bar of the same name (no, I swear I’m not kidding) under the shiny new moniker of Dead Eyes — and not only did the creators not miss a beat, their book has only gotten better.

It also re-introduced itself in a manner entirely accessible to new readers, laying out the premise quick and easy, just as I will here : infamous Boston-area masked stick-up man from the 1990s is now retired and living the quiet life, but he needs to come out of retirement when his disabled wife gets hit with a mountain of medical bills that her insurance won’t cover. Our guy is still pretty good at what…

It takes a lot to maintain a compelling mystery over the course of 22 issues, but writer Jeff Lemire, artist Andrea Sorrentino, and colorist Dave Stewart have managed (with some admitted bumps along the way) to do just that in the pages of their Image Comics series Gideon Falls, a mind-bender set in the small town of its name — that isn’t a small town anymore, but that’s another matter.

And there are, in fact, several “other matters” on offer here, with no end to them in sight, although I imagine we must be at least to the halfway point of this thing by now — but I could be wrong about that. It’s been known to happen. And I’ve been wrong about any number of twists and turns in this saga, which is why it’s so damn much fun, in addition to being reasonably creepy and a tour…

Count me among those who were more than a bit unimpressed with Second Coming, the highly-touted series from writer Mark Russell and artists Richard Pace and Leonard Kirk that was scuttled at Vertigo due to its purported “sacrilegious” content before finding a new home at Ahoy Comics. Far from taking any sort of pot-shots at organized religion, the “Jesus-meets-Superman-analogue” premise actually reinforced tired Christian dogma at the end of the day and Russell’s usually-sharp satirical wit was uncharacteristically blunted by a chickenshit desire to play it safe and offend as few people as possible. Hell, by the time all was said and done, this was such a milquetoast offering that even the most fervent evangelical nutcase wouldn’t find much worth objecting to in it apart from some vaguely liberal “be kind to one another” politics. And let’s remember — evangelicals claim to believe in that sort of thing themselves…

As is generally known, I’m not one of those “too cool for school” types who dismisses out of hand everything produced by the major comics publishers. In fact, until the industry shutdown engendered by COVID-19 took hold, I ran a “Weekly Reading Round-Up” column on this very site that mainly concerned itself with examining whatever mainstream titles this nominal “Wednesday warrior” had picked up during the previous seven-day span — and I imagine I’ll get back to it before too long here. That being said —

Shipping schedules are still pretty light, even though most comic shops are, in fact, open again, and this means that most weeks since “the return” haven’t seen enough interesting stuff hit shelves to warrant me devoting an entire column to reviewing them. It’s just a fact : most recent weeks have seen me leaving the shop with two, maybe three comics, and while…

For the final entry (that being #90) in their latest foursome of Mini Kus! releases, Latvian publisher Kus! turns to the always-reliably-inventive Canadian cartoonist Marc Bell, whose work I’ll go out on a limb and assume most readers of this site are already well-familiar with. Or, at the very least, really should be. And in the pages of Banal Complications, he does what he does best, which is — his own kind of thing altogether.

This is a “meta” narrative, with Bell’s protagonist Chop Salad (always with these names, I tell ya!) pretty clearly standing in for the artist himself, so if that kind of thing annoys you, just check out now — but if you’re down for a fun and inventive take on a premise that really isn’t either one most of the time anymore? Then you’ve come to the right place. Maybe even the only place. Or…

Casting far and wide for both talent and subject matter, Mini Kus! #89 from Latvia’s eclectic “art comics” publishing house Kus! features a Portuguese cartoonist, Joana Estrela, telling a decidedly contemporary version of an ancient Lithuanian fable in Egle And The Snake, which sees the serpent cast in its traditional role as schemer but our woman protagonist, while perhaps a little too polite for her own good (up to a point, at any rate), assuming a great deal more agency and self-determination than, say, the biblical Eve. It’s about time, sure — but there’s also something quite timeless about what this comic has to say about relationships and gender roles and power dynamics.

Egle is young — high-school age, according to the narrative — but wise enough to smell a rat (errr, snake) and to know when to say when. But damn if this story isn’t…