Sex Criminals, Vol.1-3

Picked up the third installment of the excellent Image Comics series SEX CRIMINALS "The Hard Way"  but decided to re-read the first two books again first to refresh my memory!

Black Hole

As a huge fan of Charles Burns' excellent EL BORBAH stories, I've always been meaning to check out Black Hole, and now that I've started reading it, i'm happily surprised to find it is a mesmerizing and intriguing tale indeed!

Welcome Back, Vol.1: Help, I'm Alive

Sorry Greg, I just didn't like this one. Well, it was better than We Can Never Go Home, but the manic shift in art style really put me off. Enough of these hipster misfit kids with guns. They're Not Like Us already has the lock on that genre and they ROCK it.

We Can Never Go Home

Argh, man how I hated slogging through this series. Another recommendation from Gerg, this comic was written by the same guy who wrote that "4 Kids Go into A Bank"comic (also recommended by Gerg) which I hated, and I think by now it's safe to say that I just don't like this guy's writing.

Injection, Vol.2

Just finished up part two of Wallen Ellis/Declan Shalvey's moody and atmospheric sci-fi/supernatural mystery INJECTION. I first began collecting this series as monthly comics, but the flow of this strip really doesn't suit an issue-by-monthly-issue structure, so after the first arc ended with issue 5, I decided to wait for the trade paperbacks to come out instead from that point on.
Seems to work better because I really enjoyed reading through this second installment! I mentioned in an earlier post about how similar this series was to Ellis' previous work "FreakAngels", where a bunch of gifted Youths "broke" the world with their powers and then spent the rest of their lives trying to fix it, in INJECTION, five brilliant scientists created an A.I. computer program that now is setting about trying to invade the Physical world with making nightmares come true! Actually, it's a lot more complicated then that, but you get the gist. A Solid Series!!!
PS: On excellent colorist Jordie Bellaire's blog, she lamented the lack of respect colorists tend to get for their work: the writers and artists get all the glory, but the colorist is an integral part of the team.
And with her colors in both INJECTION and my other fave strip THEY'RE NOT LIKE US, she really shows what she mean, GREAT, atmospheric colors that really set the mood and tone for each scene. In light of her declaration of the importance of colorists, I'm going to start tagging colorists along with Artists and Writers in this blog when I can...I deeply agree they should be lauded just as much!

East Of West, Vol.4-5

My GOSH, this series just keeps getting better and BETTER! Usually I read a little bit of a comic each day as I have my coffee or have my lunch, but EAST of WEST is one book that I just HAVE to take into the reading room, sit back in a chair, and take my time reading it all the way through!
The Image Comcis site says the next installment of the series, Vol.6 is due to release in October, oohh man, can I stand the suspense??!

East Of West, Vol.3: There Is No Us

Continuing on with and Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta's awesome Series EAST OF WEST with the third Trade paperback in the series, THERE IS NO US. Can't believe my friend Gerg dropped this comic from his monthly pulls because he thought it moved "too slow",don't know how he arrived at that conclusion, Holy CRAP, these chapters are just EXPLODING with excitement!!!
Really love the intricate and dialog heavy style of this series; some comics take me less than 10 minutes to read as they're mostly splash pages with minimal talking, but East Of West really draws yo in to the story and when I reach the conclusion of a chapter, i'm always amazed to say "wow, that last chapter was only ONE issue?" So dense story-wise!
And the art is so rich and beautiful, the illustrations by Nick Dragotta are some of the best ever, lush and ambient landscapes, powerful action sequences and most of all the wonderful characters with so much detall put into their features, they're just bursting with charisma and coolness!
And speaking of art, this cover may be my favorite East Of West yet, featuring an awesomely alluring Crow!

East Of West, Vol.2: We Are All One

After trying out the East of West series by buying the fist volume, I was so floored by the intricate story, intriguing characters and beautiful, beautiful art, that I KNEW I had to continue reading this one, and just this week the second book in the series arrived, "We Are All One", damn, so good!!!

The Wicked+The Divine, Vol.2: Fandemonium

Picked up the trade paperback of The Wicked+The Divine "Fandemonium" and only when  began to read it did I realize I had every individual issue in it and that i'd read it all before!

D'oh, somehow i thought this trade was starting the next arc (which i didn't pick up monthly)...looks like I'll have to get the third volume!

Nowhere Men, Vol.1: Fates Worse Than Death

Right now my second favorite running series is the Eric Stephenson/Simon Gane title THEY'RE NOT LIKE US (right behind the Vaughan/Staples title SAGA. of course) but the series has been on extended hiatus since April and it doesn't look like anything new scheduled in the near future.
So, to get my fix I decided to turn to a title that features at least 3/4ths of the team from They're Not Like Us, (Eric Stephenson (Story),  Jordie Bellaire(Colors) and Fonographiks (Letters), with Nate Bellegarde doing the illustrations), the series NOWHERE MEN.
So far, the story of four genius scientists who created World Corp, and the subsequent inventions and events they created that changed the world for better or worse is a interesting read, and almost perfect timing since the follow-up trade paperback is due for release in a few months!