All Time Comics: Atlas #1

"All Time Comics: Atlas" #1 from Fantagraphics Books -

      Years ago, Johnny Rammond, a city planner, stumbled onto ancient technology that gave him anti-matter-based powers beyond his wildest dreams. As Atlas, Earth's mightiest hero, he takes on all threats to keep the people safe, especially those of his beloved home, Optic City. This time, Atlas is on the trail of a beloved congressman, secretly a powerful super-villain, who is planning to funnel city funds into a vile project to help him achieve his own diabolical ends: world domination. When Atlas attacks the congressmen at a political gathering, the people turn against Atlas, which saps his ability to use his powers. While Atlas cools his heels in jail, the wicked congressman's plot steams ahead, and the two people that Atlas loves most in the world, his best friend, Tobey, and the woman he adores, Suzi, end up directly in danger's menacing crosshairs. Can Atlas recover in time to stop this perverse and poisonous politician, or are the lives of his loved ones forfeit and the world doomed forever? 

    Josh Bayer and Ben Marra come together to concoct this very wild, very violent superhero story in "All Time Comics: Atlas" #1. This thrilling little throwback is what would happen if the Silver Age DC Comics Universe had an illicit affair with underground comix of the late 60s and early 70s. What Bayer and Marra have created is a world that resembles Silver Age DC, but here, the villains have gone morals off and no one is safe. It's a place where superheroes don't back down from a fight, nor do they fear to meet deadly force with deadly force. They also have no qualms about serving the bad guys up their just desserts if they deem it right to do so.  At first, you notice all the hokey, silliness in the story that made the Silver Age such good fun, but things get dark and hectic pretty quickly as they story careens wildly out of control. Sometimes the hero fails, sometimes the good guys lose, not every innocent is going to be rescued, and neither the hero nor his inner circle are immune to suffering. Ben Marra pulls double duty as co-writer and artist, and his art does shine. It's got that quirky underground comix feel to it - but when you pair it up with Matt Rota's expert colors, you've got a book that looks great, sitting squarely somewhere between grotesque and brilliant. And, it's all printed on that classic newsprint, sorry, no glossy pages here; however it does have some wild retro ads, and an insane pin-up meant to be taken out of the book and slapped up on a wall. So cool. $3.99 is still the price, even with cheaper materials, but I didn't find that problematic because the first issue is pretty thick, and the story feels complete. "All Time Comics: Atlas" #1 is just a crazy ride and a Ferris wheel of fun. I can't believe I am digging this. Crazy, man, crazy. 

RATING: 9 out of 10 for silly pseudo-Silver Age fun with a dark twist. 

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Normandy Gold #1 Review

"Normandy Gold" #1 from Titan Comics -

    Her name was supposed to be Victory. That's what her mother wanted to call her when she found out that the Invasion of Normandy was a success...But when her father didn't come home from the WWII, her mother named her Normandy instead. Normandy grew up hard. Her family was destitute, her mother wasn't the best role-model, and she had a baby sister that no one could pin on any father in particular. Normandy ran away in her early teens, traveling about, experiencing the best and worst humanity had to offer until she found a home in a small town in Oregon with a kind man who happened to be the sheriff. He taught Normandy all he knew about life, about hunting, and about being self-sufficient - when he died, she honored the only father she ever knew by becoming just what he was: an officer of the law. Years have passed, and now she's the sheriff. One day, out of the blue, she's surprised by a call from her long-lost sister. She's even more surprised when she is forced to listen over the phone as her sister is viciously murdered. Normandy heads to her last known whereabouts, Washington, D.C., to find out what happened to her sister, and to make somebody pay; but, to do this, she'll have to dive into a very dirty world. D.C. is a crazy place - corrupt, powerful men, crooked cops, hustlers, pushers, and pimps...Danger is around every corner, and there is no one she can trust. Can Normandy find out the truth before her sister's killer finds her?

   Megan Abbott and Alison Gaylin pen this hardboiled crime drama, "Normandy Gold" #1. Abbott and Gaylin have created a hardened female protagonist that gives you the sense that she's way more capable and ready for danger than most men. With the story being set in the early 70s, that makes Normandy Gold the perfect weapon - she's a street-smart knockout with guts and gumption. The bad guys won't know what hit them. She reminds me a lot of the heroines that helped to make the blaxploitation genre famous, heroines like Coffy, Foxy Brown, Friday Foster, and Cleopatra Jones. The similarities are obvious. Though blaxploitation is often remembered for its many problems, it cannot be forgotten that blaxploitation was one of the earliest genres (besides Hong Kong action cinema) to make women into double-tough, street-smart action heroes. But I digress. What is most striking about the book is how Abbott and Gaylin use Normandy's narration in the caption boxes to give us her backstory and to reveal her thought processes to the reader. The protagonist's voice is clear and hypnotic, which absolutely sucked me into the story and set me on this gritty journey with her. Even more compelling is Normandy's commitment to finding her sister's killer - she is willing to go as far as she needs to in order to bring her sister's killer to justice. There's no naivete in Normandy; she's willing to do a little wrong in order to do a big right. But why? For justice? For revenge? Because of the guilt of abandoning her, leaving her alone with their mother? Maybe it's a little of all of these. Steve Scott makes this story come alive with pencils that are pretty spectacular - every face tells a story, every look emotes. Scott shows the story perfectly as Abbott and Gaylin tell it superbly; this book simply looks great. "Normandy Gold" #1 is simply GREAT. 

RATING: 10 out of 10. I wouldn't be surprised to see "Normandy Gold" on the big screen one day. 

Caveat: This book is gritty, violent and has nudity and sexual situations. NOT FOR KIDS OR THOSE WITH DELICATE SENSIBILITIES.  

PS - Do yourself a favor and check out some of those blaxploitation films I listed above. You can thank me later. Again...NOT FOR KIDS OR THOSE WITH DELICATE SENSIBILITIES. :-)

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TEX'S Variants, Autographs and Oddities Episode 4 (DC Universe Legacies Variant)

Howdy, fellow QUESTERS!!


    It's me, the one and only T to tha E to tha X, back again to make your head spin with more comic book knowledge that you can't get in college! I hope your day is sauntering along nicely. Mine is fine, just rainy as all get out around these here parts, which gets me to snackin' and a-snoozin', two things that can only lead to weight gain and joint pain, if you smell what I'm cooking. So, I figure, what better thing to do than to hop on this here mean machine and hang out with all of you?

   So here I am. Let's smack this horse's heinie and get to gallopin'!


   Back in 2011, DC Comics began to publish a pretty awesome limited series called DC Universe: Legacies.

  Written by comics legend, Len Wein, This limited series tells the story of the DCU, partially focusing on the life of a man named Paul Jones. The series begins with Paul's early life in the 1940s, as he collects protection money for a local gangster in Metropolis' Suicide Slum. It is then that the Golden Age of Superheroes begins with the appearance of masked vigilantes and Paul's eventual witnessing of The Golden Age Sandman and Atom in action. This inspires Paul to get his act together; in a few years he has worked his way through college and through a chance encounter with The Guardian and The Newsboy Legion, he decides to help fight crime as a police officer.

   The re-written story of the DCU unfolds before us, partially through Paul's eyes as he lives and fights through the 1940s until the Modern Age of Superheroes. With Paul, we experience the emergence of masked vigilantes, and super-powered heroes (and villains), The House Un-American Activities Committee's attack on the JSA and their subsequent disappearance, the reemergence of superheroes in The Silver Age, and nearly every major DC Crossover event (Crisis On Infinite Earths, The Death of Superman, Knightfall, The Final Night, Identity Crisis, etc). Paul Jones carries his badge proudly and helps society through all this as much as he can throughout his life, even once becoming the partner of Officer John Jones who is secretly the alien crimefighter known as The Martian Manhunter. It is a triumphant, but bittersweet story of an unsung hero of the DCU, an everyday hero living in the shadow of gods and monsters while dealing with everyday problems like family drama and illness.

   This story does re-write DCU history quite a bit. It has to. Of course, Superman and Batman can't appear in the 1940s; however, be that as it may, Wein does an amazing job weaving the comic book ages together and connecting the DCU's major events in a sweeping epic story that is both fun and mesmerizing. If that weren't enough, Wein gathered some of the best living artists in comic book history to work on this series, artists like Bill Sienkiewicz, Joe Kubert, Brian Bolland, George Pérez, Dave Gibbons, Dan Jurgens, and J.G. Jones, to name a few. I was excited to get my hands on one of these:

   Above, you see my copy of DC Universe: Legacies #1, but my copy is the rare Special Ashcan Edition done for Diamond Comic Distributors, INC. This is a sketch variant done by Joe Kubert that was given ONLY to retailers at the 2011 Diamond Retailer Summit held in Chicago, IL. Luckily, I had a friend that hooked me up (YES!). I loved this series so much, I didn't stop there:

   

    Feast your eyes! That's right, above is my published art page found in DC Universe: Legacies #9, page 20. Check out the finished, published page below:

(courtesy of ReadComicOnline.to)

   The page was penciled by Jesus Saiz, and inked by Karl Story who also signed it at the bottom. Way cool! I am proud to have it as a part of my humble collection.

   If you're looking for a great way to spend a couple of hours, read DC Universe: Legacies. You can thank me later. :-)

  Happy trails, pardners!! And remember, reading comics online might be nice, but supporting your local comic shop is even better!! I support mine! See ya!

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The Coldest City GN Review

The Coldest City, a graphic novel from ONI Press -


     The year is 1989, and the world is holding its breath. After long decades of covert aggression, the Cold War is nearing its end. However, for the players in the never-ending spy game, it's business as usual...In fact, the stakes have just been raised astronomically. A British spook has been murdered, and gone along with him is a document so fearful that it not only threatens the lives of every spy in Berlin, but the security of every government running those spies there on both sides of the Berlin Wall. Enter Lorraine Broughton, an accomplished spy, but one with no experience with how the spy game works in Berlin. MI6 sends her to Berlin, deep cover, to retrieve the missing document before the CIA, DGSE, or the KGB get their hands on it and use it for their own covert agendas. Lorraine is an excellent spy, but in Berlin, she's a fish out of water. She's forced to work with an old-guard agent that MI6 is unsure of, while outsmarting enemy agents, creating allies, and avoiding death at every turn. Can Lorraine secure the document, or will she wind up as just another spook dead in the gutters of that cold, cold city?

     From the creative mind of Antony Johnson comes this nail-biting espionage thriller, The Coldest City. In the illustrious company of great novels like, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, The Coldest City takes us back to those dark days when Democracy and Communism vied for world power, fighting each other through proxy wars, and through the daring and ingenuity of covert operatives, men and women that we call spies. Johnston gives us a pretty thrilling protagonist, Lorraine Broughton, a woman in a clandestine world run by powerful, dangerous men. Lorraine is brilliant, calculating and bold - she has to be if she expects to complete the mission and get out alive. Besides Lorraine Broughton, Johnston fills this story with so many interesting characters that are all a bit shady - just like the protagonist, the reader is never quite sure who to trust. Ulterior motives and questionable allegiances abound in this twisty, turny Cold War spy story from the very beginning to the gut-punch of an ending. In The Coldest City, Antony Johnston has made sure to keep the reader on their toes because absolutely nothing is exactly as it seems. This creates a palpable atmosphere of danger and doubt that had me totally absorbed from start to finish. Sam Hart absolutely rocked the art; his panel arrangements give the book a cinematic feel, and his pencils are sketchy and energetic yet very expressive. Done all in black and white, Hart's obscured, and sometimes unfinished faces along with his expert use of shadows definitely make this book seem like a throwback to those classic spy films I used to watch with my grandparents as a kid. If you love spy thrillers, The Coldest City is a real page-turner that you won't want to put down.

RATING: 10 out of 10.

FUN FACT 1 - On July 28, 2017, Charlize Theron and James McEvoy will star in Atomic Blonde, David Leitch's film based on Johnston's and Hart's graphic novel, The Coldest City. Here is the trailer:

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Eternal Empire #1 Review

"Eternal Empire" #1 from Image Comics -

    In a harsh, unforgiving world, war has raged for over one hundred and forty years. The Eternal Empress, powerful spawn of a mystical beast and a woman, has trodden nearly all her enemies underfoot in her quest to unify the planet under her totalitarian rule. Only one kingdom remains to resist the Empress' domination. It seems all power is just within the Empress' reach...But within the vanquished Kingdom of Essia, a slave-girl, devotee of an ancient religion, has begun to have visions, seemingly sent from her gods, The Sacred Suns, the three fiery stars that that rule the planet by day. It seems the Suns are speaking with her, drawing her out of captivity, down a road she doesn't understand - one that just might end her life. Can this one young woman be the hope of an entire world or is she just another hopeful cultist destined for a cold death on the lonely, frozen plains of Essia?

    Sarah Vaughn and Jonathan Luna team up again to bring us this sci-fi/fantasy story, "Eternal Empire." Vaughn and Luna work great together usually; their comic book series, "Alex + Ada" was really good and received critical acclaim. They are also pretty great separately; The Luna Brothers brought us the AMAZING comic series, "The Sword" (this should be a movie NOW!), and Vaughn knocked it out of the park with DC Comics' "Deadman: Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love." However, I have to confess that I am a bit disappointed with "Eternal Empire." While the story itself seems to offer an adventure that may EVENTUALLY turn out to be quite interesting, the characters didn't offer enough of themselves to really hook me into to this journey. The unnamed protagonist, an albino slave-girl called only "snow hair," is very bland, and doesn't do much but muse on her plight, and look very put-upon in almost every situation. When she finally decides to act on her vision, the story begins to pick up, but by then, the book is nearly over. Also, the backstory is very sparse, as is the story itself. We get an airy peek at the antagonist's origin (Eternal Empress), but then we are hurled over 140 years into the future and start traveling with a nondescript slave-girl. It's jarring. The story just feels a bit bland and incomplete. When it comes to the artwork, Jonathan Luna didn't really pull out any stops here - the art is sometimes overly simple, and much of the time, repetitive panels are frustrating. For example, the slave-girl (snow hair) carries the same open-mouthed expression through much of the book.  While this story may become interesting in the future, issue #1 just did not give me much to work with, it did not get me to invest emotionally in the character, nor in the story, so much so that I am not really interested in going any further on this journey. Vaughn and J. Luna are the bee's knees, but they seriously missed me on this one. Bummer.

RATING: 5 out of 10.

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Amazing Age #1 Review

"Amazing Age" #1 from Alterna Comics -

    Sam Charleston was a kid who loved comics. He spent his days enjoying his family, school and spending time with his best friends, Violet and Mike. Sam loved comics so much he began to draw them, making elaborate adventures, all involving J.E.T. (The Justice Enforcement Team), a trio of superheroes based on Sam, Violet, and Mike. But one day, it all changed. When Sam's father died tragically, Sam's world was torn apart. Five years later, Sam has become a rebel, and he is estranged from his childhood friends; but through the anger and pain, Sam's childhood dreams are calling out to him once more. When Sam, Violet, and Mike all find a copy of "Amazing Age," the comic Sam created as a young boy, they end up whisked away into a world of adventure, superheroes, and danger far above anything they could ever have dreamed.

   Matthew D. Smith takes us back to those halcyon days when the good guys were good, the bad guys were bad, and comic books were for everyone to enjoy. "Amazing Age" is definitely a throwback to simpler times when comics were just good, clean, fun - you won't find political drama, over accentuated, scantily-clad super folks, or sexual situations - "Amazing Age" is just an old-fashioned childhood adventure, which will probably develop into a cool bildungsroman by the time it is over. Sam, the protagonist, is the type of kid most of us were (if you're over forty): he passes his time outside after school, hanging with his friends, and roaming the neighborhood totally unsupervised. It's easy to relate to him and feel for him when tragedy strikes his life. We've all either known that kid, or BEEN that kid, whose life was changed forever, whose innocence was lost when adulthood came knocking too soon and began to block the sunlight that flowed freely into the windows of our young soul. The writer, Matt Smith, is indeed writing an all ages adventure comic, but I really get the sense that he's also working towards some sort of personal catharsis in this tale. And that is VERY interesting indeed. While "Amazing Age" is short on flash, it's got heart - it reminds me just a bit of one of my childhood favorites, "The Neverending Story," where a reader is whisked away to a fantasy world for an amazing adventure; however, in this case, the world where Sam and his friends find themselves is one of Sam's own creation. Jeremy Massie is the artist here, and he chose a simple, cartoony art style to tell this story, which turned out to be a good decision. It looks like Alterna Comics wants to revive the use of the classic newsprint paper...While it's not as pretty as the glossy pages or today's comics, "Amazing Age" #1 only cost $1.50! Imagine buying comics on newprint packed with great stories at low prices. Imagine buying 10, 15 or 20 titles a month to enjoy without breaking the bank. I can get behind that!

   "Amazing Age" is a fun comic, but it won't be for everyone. Some are going to need glossy pages. Some will need a politically charged, socially relevant, intellectually stimulating, complex story to enjoy themselves. In truth, I like those things as well...But sometimes, it is okay to just kick back, put your feet up, and go soaring on a childlike flight of fancy, and "Amazing Age" is Matt D. Smith's way of helping us do that all for the low-low price of $1.50. VERY cool.

RATING: 8 out of 10 for good, clean, fantasy fun.

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Bug! The Adventures of Forager #1 Review

"Bug! The Adventures of the Forager" #1 from DC Comics' Young Animal imprint

    Forager was one of the Bugs of New Genesis, a sub-species that lived, literally and figuratively, below the New Gods. However, the heroic Forager eventually earned the respect of The New Gods and Earth's heroes when he selflessly gave his life to save Earth from the Anti-Life Equation. Imagine his surprise when he awakes and emerges from a cocoon in a wacky world of glaring little girls and talking teddy bears. Desperate to discover where he is, he soon encounters the strange Sandman, a colorful character that claims to have the task of ensuring that nightmares never enter the real world. Soon they are hesitantly thrust into forming a team to stop the nightmarish villain, General Electric, who dreams of using, er...Dreams to conquer the world. Is Forager awake or dreaming, alive or dead, none of the above, or all of the above?

   Lee and Mike Allred take on this very weird tale starring two of Jack Kirby's Bronze Age creations, Forager and Sandman! And when I say this story is weird, that is exactly what I mean. It is a twisty, turn-y tale filled with (possible) figments of someone's imagination in a bizarre place where the regular laws of physics do not apply. I got the sense that Forager and Sandman weren't the real story... But more like the protagonists that just happen to be necessary for the weirdness to move forward. In other words, the story's the star, the stars aren't the story. The reader never really gets a foothold in the place; it's almost as if it's a drama told from the perception of a silent, unreliable narrator. It's impossible to know what's real, or whose perception is trustworthy. Is Forager alive, or dead? Is this all born of his imagination, the last spark of existence a dying hero, or is Forager himself just a character playing a role in someone else's (something else's) dream? Lee and Allred ask some REALLY philosophical questions in this book, questions all based in a haunting uncertainty in the nature of reality and existence. At first glance, this book seems to be all weirdness in a whacked-out world with two second-string Bronze Age heroes, but if you dig a little deeper, the Allreds are feeling about for some answers to some VERY serious questions. Now THAT is art. Speaking of art, The Allreds make this book absolutely pop with seemingly simplistic, gorgeous, colorful art that works perfect for the book, and hides the complexity of its creation. Simply put, the Allreds make it look easy. Now, this book isn't going to be for everyone. The story seems to meander, the heroes may not be very well-known by younger fans, and they aren't earthshakingly interesting at this point, but the story sure is. I am a sucker for journeys that ask questions about the nature of existence, and reality. Rock on Allreds, do rock on.

RATING: 9 out of 10.

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