The New World #1 Review

"True love is a boot in a human face. True love is imposing the will of The State for the benefit of the many. True love, Dear Stella, means allowing the many to benefit from the abuse of the few." -Aleš Kot, The New World

The New World #1 from Image Comics - 

    The old world is dead. In 2037, nuclear weapons exploded over several major cities in what once was The United States of America. Invading forces occupy a large swath of what was once called The Land of the Free and The Home of the Brave, bringing the resistance to heel. But not everywhere. California, allied with neighboring states, has managed to not only repel the invaders but to reestablish order - an order in which The State is the unquestionable, absolute authority. To resist is to invite erasure...Yet, there are still those who try to stand against the system. Kirby Miyazaki, a brilliant hacker, is one such dissident. Stella Maris, on the other hand, is the darling of the system - she is a superstar law enforcement officer with her own rebellious streak and granddaughter of the President of California. Predator and prey. Natural enemies...But what happens when they fall head over heels in love? 

   From brilliant scribe, Aleš Kot (Wolf), comes this post-apocalyptic, dystopian love story, The New World. Just a bit reminiscent of George Orwell's seminal work, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The New World introduces us to a familiar, but futuristic California that seems to have prospered after the bombs exploded and the invaders came. But things change once we discover that militarized police keep the seemingly happy citizenry in line and that a barbaric voting system is used to decide whether criminals, or other specified targets of the state, will live or be executed for the entertainment of the masses on live television. Enter our protagonists, Stella Maris, and Kirby Miyazaki. Stella is one of The State's top law-enforcement officers, one who always gets her man, but refuses to kill any of them. Kirby is a genius hacker with an individualist streak a mile wide - and he's ready to give the system a little pain for the pain it caused him, and his father, years ago when it snatched his mother away. It seems that Stella's rebellious streak may come from a very similar pain. A series of random events bring them together in a whirlwind of a night of passion...After which Stella discovers that her new love is The State's new Public Enemy No. 1! Wow. This book is top-notch. It's slick, gripping, and balances precariously on the thin line between advocating for personal freedoms, justice, and equality, or simply pushing for anarchy. Kot's world is believable - half desirable, half monstrous - a place where sunny neighborhood barbecues and state-sanctioned, televised murder can take place simultaneously. Order through ruthless force. It's summed up quite nicely in a tongue-in-cheek splash:

    Kot has fleshed his protagonists out perfectly, each with their own beautiful idiosyncracies: Kirby Miyazaki is something of a revolutionary, with shades of an anarchist, yet he is as straight-edge as they come in his personal life, coloring inside all his own self-imposed lines; Stella Maris, an agent of order, lives a life of sex, drugs, and parties, with an upscale apartment that looks like a hazardous waste dump. These two have so much in common, yet are worlds apart. I am very interested to see how their love fares, and how their lives change (or end) when The State tightens its grip. Will Kot give love a win, or will he go the same route as Orwell did in Nineteen Eighty-Four? Either way, it should be one hell of a ride, as Kot never disappoints with his observations and deeply reflective social commentaries. Tradd Moore's (The Strange Talent of Luther Strode) pencils pop - clean, dream-like, psychedelic, and strangely oppressive at times - Moore does some of his best work here, backed by Heather Moore's gorgeous colors. The $4.99 cover price may seem a bit steep, but don't let that deter you. Issue #1 is quite oversized with a hefty page count and the added pleasure of a haunting back-up story by Aaron Stewart-Ahn and Sunando C make the price more than a bargain. The New World is pure, engrossing reading bliss. 

RATING: 10 out of 10. 

If you like these articles, PLEASE HIT THE +1 BUTTON below. We are on Google+, follow us and we'll follow you back.  We're also on Facebook. Like our page, and share us with your friends! Help me win one million readers over to the awesome world of comics!

Gasolina #1 Review

Gasolina #1 from the Skybound Imprint of Image Comics -

     Randy and Amalia seem to be sugarcane farmers somewhere near Veracruz, Mexico. However, Randy - an American doctor, and Amalia - a beautiful but lethal Mexican woman, are way more than meets the eye. And they have dangerous a secret that kept them running and hiding for years. Just when it seems that they can stop looking over their shoulders, trouble finds them again. A missing boy. A mysterious pestilence attacking their crops. A weird, vicious death cult. And real, honest-to-goodness monsters. There's a storm coming for Randy and Mal...And there will be blood.

    Seam Mackiewicz makes his first foray into comics in this atmospheric take on the drug war, and the influence, and power of the nightmare that has become the drug cartels. Mackiewicz is exploring some potentially combustible subjects here in this genre-bending crime/mystery/supernatural (sci-fi?) thriller, and I am looking forward to seeing how deftly he handles it all. Mackiewicz gives introduces us to his protagonists, Amalia and Randy, by showing us the world they inhabit, and the way that they interact with the people in it - they are kind but guarded, quick to lend a hand, and heroic, yet a lingering isolation and darkness surrounds them, separating them from their world, but never from one another. Though Mackiewicz gives us a wide view into the lives of our protagonist, and their struggles, he manages to keep much about them shrouded in a delicious mystery that will surely get me to buy the next issue. Then Mackiewicz throws in an enigmatic, savage cult/cartel resulting in the kidnapping of someone close to Randy and Mal, and a plague of monsters reminiscent of Ridley Scott's "Alien" and this book starts to feel like an odd, beguiling little rabbit-hole. Niko Walter, an artist with whom I am not in the least familiar, pulls out a strong showing on this first issue. His pencils are clean, precise, and no-frills, but very expressive - even if they seem a bit stiff at times. Mat Lopes' colors add heft to Walter's pencils and lend an oppressive atmosphere to the book which makes the story even more alluring. This comic has "MOVIE" stamped all over it...And strangely, it has the scent of great crime/mystery comics like 100 Bullets, or even mystery/crime thrillers with supernatural bents, like Greek Street. I can't wait for issue #2.

RATING: 9 out of 10. I need to see where this goes.

If you like these articles, PLEASE HIT THE +1 BUTTON below. We are on Google+, follow us and we'll follow you back.  We're also on Facebook. Like our page, and share us with your friends! Help me win one million readers over to the awesome world of comics!

CBCS REVEAL EPISODE 7 (Dell's Lobo)

Hey friends!

   I am glad to be back with my fellow questers with another fun-filled episode of TEX'S BACK-ISSUE QUEST! Today, we churn out episode 6 of the chronicle of my journey through my first slabbing experience with CBCS!!

   More than a year agone, I introduced you to an important obscure Dell western hero named...LOBO!!

   Lobo #1 was printed in 1965, and the world came to know the legend of the Union-soldier-turned-gunslinger-hero...LOBO!! Well. Kinda. Actually, not really at all. Lobo didn't sell very well. Some sources say it may have sold just 10,000 copies - some retailers took one look at the color of the hero on the cover and returned the comics right back to Dell. 

   Unfortunately, it was the world we lived in, then. You can dive into the history of Lobo HERE. Oh, go on and click it. You know you want to. :-)

   Since Lobo was largely forgotten, he languished in obscurity for more than forty years until collectors caught wind that Lobo was a VERY IMPORTANT piece of comicbook history; it featured the VERY FIRST African American to have his own title!! However, it was too little, too late. Lobo comics were scarcer than free money and smart dummies. Me? I just wanted to read it, and as luck would have it, I happened to come across a very nice copy for an incredibly low price. If I recall correctly, I paid about $25 for this comic about 10 years agone. In the past few years, collector demand has soared for Lobo, so I had mine graded and slabbed for posterity (but mostly to keep it out of my grubby hands because I LOVE to read my old comics). Here's what I went and did:

   Oooh-wee!! Lookitdatrightdere!! It's my freshly-slabbed copy of Lobo #1. I had it scoped at an 8.0, but CBCS graded it at a nice 7.5. No complaints here - the thing's been read 20 times or more, so it's fine with me. Comicspriceguide has this book valued at, get this, a whopping $16!! But in the real world, Ebay values it at...Well, I can't rightly say since mine is graded higher than any sold on Ebay in recent months. Sweet. A copy graded at 6.5 sold for $595 and a few days later, a copy graded at 7.0 sold for only $450. You can see the completed listings HERE. There are only 5 for sale on Ebay right now; you can see the asking prices HERE. 

   Whatever the value of my book, I am sure that we can agree that it IS NOT $16. LOL!

   I am really glad to have such an important key in my comics collection. And I am really glad that you took the time to visit with me today. Thank you, fellow Questers...And happy collecting!!

PS. Hey. Wanna see my other CBCS REVEALS? Click one, or click 'em all:

Green Lantern John Stewart; The Falcon; Iron Man; New Teen Titans; Spawn, and Black Panther!

f you like these articles, PLEASE HIT THE +1 BUTTON below. We are on Google+, follow us and we'll follow you back.  We're also on Facebook. Like our page, and share us with your friends! Help me win one million readers over to the awesome world of comics!