I had to snap a picture of my copy of “Radiant Black,” published by Image Comics, because this cover art is exactly what I love about comics. For this comic exclusive variant covers were created for local comic book shops. This was the cover created for my local comic book shop, Things From Another World.

“Radiant Black” was written by Kyle Higgins, with artist Marcelo Costa, and guest writers and artists for various chapters. Fans of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers will love this but even if you don’t know a thing about them like me, you’ll appreciate the story.

Radiant Black follows failed novelist Nathan Burnett, who just turned thirty and moves back home from LA, saddled with impossible credit card debt and no published books to propel him to the fame and fortune of his dreams. Instead he’s back home with his parents, who tell him to be practical, to get a real job, like driving for a rideshare service.

He hangs out with his best friend from high school, Marshall; the two of them used to dream up story ideas together and plan for the future. One night after an evening at a bar, the buddies encounter a strange black orb floating around in the sky that suddenly envelopes around Nathan and encases him in a strange suit with superpowers.

In one of his first acts as a reluctant superhero, Nathan learns there are others with suits like his – only one’s a bank robber. He encounters them and they get in a fight. The bank robber leaves behind a bag of cash. Instead of taking it to pay off his debts, Nathan turns it into the police. Moments like that define a person’s character, and that’s just the kind of person Nathan is.

This was a wonderful, classic superhero tale, fresh and briskly paced. Nathan is the type of protagonist to whom everyone who’s ever had creative dreams can relate. The story isn’t predictable though, and through some dead ends and twists and turns, it takes you on a ride you won’t soon forget.

I really enjoyed the art as well, and its use of light and dark tones to set the atmosphere and mood. All in all, a lovely story and engaging book.

A girl seeking revenge for her father’s death finds refuge in Russian folk tales in “Crimson Flower,” a graphic novel published by Dark Horse Press, written by Matt Kindt, with Matt Lesniewski on art and letters. This was a great premise that ultimately fell short in execution in a few parts for me, but I still enjoyed the story overall. I just wanted more consistency from it.

The book opens following Rodion, a red-haired woman living in Russia who has a single-minded obsession – finding her father’s killer. First we meet her in her father’s study as a child, where she reads Russian folk tales to escape her dreary existence. Then she witnesses her father’s brutal murder. The story then jumps to her life as a pharmaceutical sales rep, a job that conveniently allows her to extort information along the way in search of her father’s murderer. Rodion finally finds the information she is looking for and she embarks on a mad, violent adventure pursuing a disparate crew of retired Russian assassins. 

It is implied that Rodion has some sort of mental illness in which the people she meets are physically manifested as fairy tale creatures, but this is never really fully explained; the fairy tale element was so subtle, and not explored all that much. I wanted it to be linked more prominently to more of the plot. All we get is Rodion telling her Russian folk stories from time to time; when she meets her father’s killer, he too has the same fascination with storytelling. Her enemies and targets sometimes turn into folk tale creatures but mostly just look scary or intense. As it was, the revenge story and its implausible elements took center stage, and the folk tales were kind of an after thought. 

The art for me was a bit of an acquired taste as well. I found the depiction of Rodion to be quite interesting; there was a focus on her wild, free-flowing hair and her teeth were often featured prominently in a somewhat distracting way when she was upset. But the art grew on me and suited the vicious bombastic-ness of the dark, relentless revenge tale. 

Despite these negative comments, I was still entertained in the end. It was different, an interesting premise, a character that had potential. I just wanted the plot to be held together by a bit more than blood and sinew.

I immediately had a soft spot for the main character of “The Black Ghost: Hard Revolution” because she was a cops reporter for the Creighton Courier, and as a former small town newspaper reporter, I always have to root for journalists, especially in this era of fake news and widespread disrespect toward the media. 

You can argue with me all you want about sensationalism, incompetence, ratings and media’s part in influencing politics for the worse, but we need the fourth estate – who else do you think will hold government accountable, Facebook? – and most reporters are there because they want to help people with the power of their words, underneath the usual ambition and self interest and all the rest of the legitimate criticisms. This graphic novel is written by Alex Segura and Monica Gallagher, with art by George Kambadais, and is published by Dark Horse Comics. 

The story follows Lara Dominguez, an alcoholic still recovering from the trauma of her brother’s murder. Dominguez is a talented reporter who has become washed up and obsessed with the Black Ghost, a vigilante masked superhero who fights Creighton’s shady network of crime bosses and corrupt city officials. Her coworkers tease her that she has a crush on him. She abandons all her other assignments to pursue the vigilante in the night. 

Somehow, she also finds time to teach night GED classes, where she meets Ernesto, who becomes her unlikely partner after she saves him from a violent lesson meant for his father who won’t deal with dirty money. But then one day The Black Ghost is killed while Lara is watching, and she has some choices to make to prevent the city from falling to shambles. 

Lara is a superhero in the vein of Jessica Jones or Deadpool, someone who’s a real fuck-up, basically, and you wonder how they still function, but you keep wanting her to get her shit together and fight the bad guys, anyway. This is because the world around her is far more corrupt and evil than she and even hungover or heady with the adrenaline rush of beating a bad guy in a fight, she still knows right from wrong and she sticks with her moral code. 

I found some parts of the writing inconsistent but maybe that’s because it was written as a team; for example, Lara gets blackout drunk every night but still survives another day to fight crime at night, teach GED classes and work her day job. Drunks can certainly be high-functioning and quite often they’re people you don’t suspect, although if she was that much of an alcoholic she would not be getting hangovers anymore. In some ways it felt as if the plot was being developed comic by comic (this book collects comics 1-5) rather than one cohesive arc so maybe that is why I stumbled over some parts. I will give the writing credit for having her job fire her, however, and she is definitely a bumbling, bleary-eyed “hero.” And everyone around her wants Lara to get help except Lara herself, which is definitely realistic.

For a superhero Lara is most decidedly an anti-hero; as she says, “I’m just a reporter, after all. Not a hero.” But she’s not particularly good at either. Further, I sometimes had to re-read parts to figure out which bad guy was still running the show. I liked the setting of Creighton, though; it reminded me of Gotham, filled with colorful crime bosses all vying for power and city officials who roll over for them, until you are left wondering if there are any good guys left, and indeed whom we’ve got is Lara. 

The art was deceptively simple, like pencil sketches; I wanted to see more shadowy tones to depict shifts in mood and time of day, but it was a consistent tone, mood and lighting scheme throughout. But I still liked the art and it suited the story; it put the focus on the characters and all Lara’s many wonderful facial expressions. 

All in all, despite some rough edges, I enjoyed this book because I am partial to dark and gritty stories with flawed people who don’t have any particularly special powers but do the right thing anyway. This really delivered if you like reporters fighting crime, dark themes and unlikely anti-heroes.

Lately I have found myself devouring Gothic literature and haunted house stories, out of a love for the genre and the atmosphere, but also consistently finding myself disappointed. This particular genre is filled with so many tired tropes and common motifs, that eventually, all stories start to seem redundant, like an endless cookie cutter copying the plot from Jane Eyre and The Haunting at Hill House and other mainstays. A young woman with a traumatic past moves into a spooky old house and there are ghosts and sometimes they are evil and sometimes they help heal and sometimes there are unresolved tensions with the supernatural, you’re never sure if it’s the ghost or the trauma. There’s a mysterious brooding man about, there’s fog, there’s a downtrodden countryside in the middle of nowhere. Blah blah blah.

“Home Sick Pilots” breaks that mold in a surprising, refreshing way, splattered with ectoplasm and teenage angst. This graphic novel published by Image Comics is brought to us by writer Dan Watters and artist Caspar Wijngaard. It tells the story of the Home Sick Pilots, which was the brainchild of foster child Ami, a troubled kid who wound up in the foster system after her mother died. She feels lost, unwanted, unmoored, until she meets disaffected stoners Rip and Buzz, who have a begrudging appreciation for her love of the Ramones and bring her in their orbit. With her in the picture, their band becomes something special, the three of them against the world.

One night they go to see a lame band called the Nuclear Bastards. Then Ami gets it in her head to host a gig at the infamous Old James House, said to be so haunted that it trapped the last person who visited it and they were never seen since. That leads them down a dark and twisted path that is part redemption arc with a flavor of Stockholm Syndrome, taking the haunted house trope and morphing it into a superhero thriller with X-Files spice. 

I am so tempted to give spoilers, but man, that ending is something else. It just keeps taking you down corridors you don’t expect. The lost, traumatized girl becomes a badass piloting her own destiny, but she still wants the band back together, the thread that binds her back to a reality that she thought she wanted to leave behind forever, despite reality turning its back on her.

The art was really well done, complete with an interesting technique when the scenes segued into new chapters; taking a completely black background, interspersing the absolute negative space with black-on-white thought bubbles exploring Ami’s successive psychological transformations. It had a wonderful dark, moody vibe throughout. 

Loved this book so much that I already pre-ordered Volume 2, and I hardly ever continue on in a series – too many good books out there to stick with one author or creative team. But I wanted more of this universe; it sunk its spectral teeth into me and pulled me along for the ride.

“Pirouette,” published by Black Mask Studios, LLC, is an understated little gem of a book about a girl named Pirouette and the two-faced clowns who raise her in a shabby old-timey circus. Clowns and circuses are fertile ground for fright, as well as beautiful art. 

This was a lovely book, light on story and heavy on art. The art was done in very dark tones, with some simply gorgeous character work by artist Carlos Granda. This kind of horror is not the kind of in-your-face body horror with cheap scare tactics. In fact, most of the violence happens “off-screen,” as it were, leaving the darkest scenes to the reader’s imagination. 

This is, instead, slow-burn psychological horror; I wasn’t exactly scared per se, but it did a good job of building a sinister whiff of desperation. Pirouette always thought she was abandoned at the circus as a baby and the circus life, with the abusive clowns who look after her, was her own personal hell that she’d be trapped in forever. Until one day, when the traveling circus arrives in the town of Lima, Ohio, a clown tells her a tale about her parents, and she goes on a wild goose chase, chasing after a strand of hope for some reason from clowns who have lied to her all her life. 

But in a twist, Pirouette’s dreams of a better life, a comfortable suburban life with a family who cares for her, are a fragile veneer; she knows the circus life is hers, and she has to make it work for her in the end. 

I liked this book because sometimes the scariest moments aren’t when the monsters attack you, but living with the monsters inside our head, instead. This is quiet horror, my favorite kind; a comforting kind of creep factor. This was an enjoyable little ride down the dark side of the circus. 

I haven’t blogged in so long! I haven’t been writing much so I don’t have much to report on my writing process. I plan to change up my reviews to only review graphic novels and indie books on this blog, and quick recaps of all books on my Goodreads. I am trying to read more comics so get ready for more comic book reviews! Without further ado…

“Odessa,” written and drawn by Jonathan Hill, published by Oni Press, is a lovely book. An epic, but understated; a heartwarming family story, except in a dark, dystopian setting. Comic books are usually produced by teams and this is a remarkable achievement by just one writer/artist. 

But, I almost DNF’ed it at first, so I am glad I stuck it through. This is not the kind of story that is packed with action and high stakes at the beginning. It is quite slow paced to start and then it is a slow burn mystery quest story as it unfolds. Eight years ago an earthquake, the Big One, hit the Cascadia fault line, wreaking disaster. Now America is a land pocked by bloodthirsty street gangs and strange new plants and animals, like jinx root, which heals injuries but also turns humans into cannibalistic creatures. 

With the backdrop of this landscape comes Ginny and her family – her two bratty younger brothers, Wes and Harry, and their distant but loving father. They’ve lived without their mother for years, so Ginny becomes the mother figure for the boys, whether she likes it or not. But one day on her seventeenth birthday, a mysterious package arrives from her mother, and Ginny is consumed by an obsession that she is alive. Driven by this urge, she embarks on a journey across the hellscape of the dystopian frontier on an impossible journey to find her mother. 

But Wes and Harry, unknown to her, tag along, and soon they are one family on a strange trip, full of adventure and bonding moments. This is book one of a series, and it certainly doesn’t end where you think it might, but I won’t give any spoilers. 

The art is interesting, it’s done in a two-tone style with a predominantly pink theme. It’s charmingly simple. The storytelling is stronger than the art, but the art drives the story, too. I liked the pink element because it was symbolic of the heart of the story being a family tale, and it was a nice contrast to the dark, dystopian wasteland. Even as violent gangs kidnapped and murdered people, the pink tones were a soothing contrast and made the reader focus on the family story, instead.

All in all, this is a lovely book. It’s quite long, so get ready to dig in, but it’s worth the journey.