The Many Languages of Celestial Sarcophagi
Comic Pilot Season 2024: June Week 3 New Comic Book Roundup
This past week had a six new series, including a villain with impeccable style, dual-minded marriages, lots and lots of Venom, and the literal Sword of Moses. The Book of the Week is a high-minded sci-fi tale with a deep investment in archaeology, the language of the universe, and space drugs. Enjoy this week’s comics, and as always, let me know what books you picked up.
Weekly Roundup | Below are this week’s new series — enjoy! You can find the scorecard explanation and glossary here.
Destro #1
Recommendation: Pilot Pickup if you’ve previously enjoyed G.I. Joe and/or the Energon books. It’s a real testament to these Energon books that, despite having no knowledge of Scarlet, Duke, or Cobra Commander, they have all felt perfectly accessible. Destro is no exception — you quickly understand him to be an antisocial despot who dresses like a 1980s sci-fi b-movie villain and deliriously wants to be important. I enjoy the world they’re playing in, where the victims of the plot are fellow warmongers and tyrants — their demise doesn’t engender sympathy, just curiosity as to which snake will take their place.
Galaxy of Madness #1 — Book of the Week
Recommendation: Pilot Pickup. This is perhaps too-dense science fiction, showcasing writer Magdalene Visaggio’s both impressive knowledge and obvious curiosity about a wide variety of sciences — physics, astronomy, biology, archaeology, geology, engineering, and so on. The jargon is likely nonsense, but the kind of Star Trek nonsense that works; this is a ship of experts in fields far beyond our ken, so don’t try to understand it — feel it. This only works when the characters are strong, and Visaggio delivers. The relationships are complicated and messy between the stoic captain/archaeologist, his adopted daughter/scientific outcast partner, their battle witch, and the constantly stoned, cloned alien pilot. However, it’s the art that carriers this book above and beyond thanks to Michael Avon Oeming, whose praises I recently sang for Book of the Week William of Newbury. It’s got a Flash Gordon aesthetic, mixed with influences from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Green Lantern, and Black Hammer, softening the intensity of the sci-fi in favor of delicious coloring and compact-yet-expressive lines.
Joy Operations 2 #1
Recommendation: Pass unless you’ve read the first Joy Operations. It’s not a pass due to quality — I enjoy both Stephen Byrne’s art and Brian Michael Bendis’s modern work. This is simply a sequel that requires it’s predecessor. I was lost as to who these characters are, and what world they inhabit.
Misery #1
Recommendation: Pass. I’m officially 0 for 3 on Spawn books, which tells me it’s time to put it to rest. This book in particular felt cheap — speech bubbles from responding characters are misplaced, the art was inconsistent, and the stakes are empty. This line of books is not for me.
Venomverse Reborn #1
Recommendation: Pilot Pickup if you’re interested in this goopy guy. This is an ongoing anthology book, which I’ve come to enjoy as a way to see a variety of artists and writers. I don’t have a particular affinity for Venom, but the Tales from the Crypt framing device worked well. It’s definitely the best place to start for no-context, given Knull’s use in the first story (as far as I can tell, he’s Venom Dracula?), but it’s more about the reveals than the backstory.
The Writer #1
Recommendation: Pilot Pickup. This is a messy book, with strange jumps in time and place and overly-simplified dialogue. But the art! I am not familiar with Ariel Olivetti’s work, and this has convinced me to rectify that situation. It reminds me of Alex Ross’s interior work on Kingdom Come in the best way. The Jewish mythology is interesting and deeper than what is usually presented (golem books are a dime a dozen at this point), and Olivetti presents it with a fantastical bend that works wonders. I included my favorite page below, in no small part because it made me gasp.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s Pilot Season Comics Weekly Roundup. If you do pick up any of these books, definitely let me know what you think in the comments.
If you’ve enjoyed these roundups thus far, I would love it if you could share with friends who also enjoy comics, or maybe those who have yet to try their first book and are looking for somewhere to start.
Enjoy your weekend, and see you next NCBD (New Comic Book Day)!