The Mysterious Murder of a Soviet New Year
Comic Pilot Season 2024: May Week 3 New Comic Book Roundup
This is a week behind, so hopefully you can find these still in your shop. Week four's roundup will drop later this weekend, so think of it as two for the price of one (this doesn’t make sense, but just go with it for my sake.)
This (last?) week saw eight new series, including everyone’s favorite Morbius, a shlocky super spy, Frankenstein with a killer hand, a monster hunter hunted by monsters, Venom with attachment issues, and an excellent superhero satire. The Book of the Week is a Soviet era crime book that uses a familiar premise to draw you in to something complex and evil. Enjoy this week’s comics, and as always, let me know what you think.
Weekly Roundup | Below are this week’s new series — enjoy! You can find the scorecard explanation and glossary here.
Book of the Week
Sanction #1
Recommendation: Series Pickup. It’s been a great year for crime books, and Sanction joins the ranks of Crocodile Black and Mugshots as lean, mean books represented by unique art styles and all the darkness of the human soul you can eat. Here, Ray Fawkes and Antonio Fuso tell a fairly classic story, of a dirty, lazy cop who hands off a case that carries no chance of prestige to his good hearted partner. The murder has strange similarities to a long-cold case, and the good cop is sticking his nose in places that the higher ups wish he wouldn’t. What makes the familiar premise unique here is 1. Fuso’s rigid, sketchy, geometric art style, along with colorist Emilio Lecce’s appropriately washed out, limited color palette and 2. it’s set in 1987’s Leningrad. That, on its face, was interesting, as I can’t say I’ve seen or read modern stories set in the late days of the USSR (with the exception of Tetris, I suppose). It does make me wonder as to its accuracy, but frankly, how different can justice systems in bloated, dying empires be?
It’s a strong start, the best part of which is the taste of what is to come at the end. The potential, probable killer is hinted at, given just a slice of a panel for you to identify. I won’t spoil it, but I was delighted by this, because somewhere else, this book puts the killer right in front of you, as clear as can be.
This Week’s Other New Series
The Amazing Spider-Man: Blood Hunt #1
Recommendation: Pass unless you’ve read Blood Hunt and you’re a big fan of Spidey. Same as last week, without having read the event beginning, it’s just not a great place to start. Morbius feels shoved in there, and very little showcases the characters in a way that inspires more.
Gun Honey: Collision Course #1
Recommendation: Pilot Pickup for fans of pulpy shlock. The previous volume of this story, the only one I have read, was inaccessible and confusing to a new reader. I was surprised to find this was far more welcoming, acting as an introduction to the major characters and dropping you into an over arching story and a major plot with ease. The back matter includes a huge summary of the story so far, allowing this to be the first book you engage in and go forward, or interest you enough to go back and find the previous books. The actual content is exactly what the cover suggests (I picked the, if you can believe it, least explicit cover), so if dime novels or cheap titillating stories are your thing, then go for it.
The Gunhand #1
Recommendation: Pass. The story is clearly a passion project, serving as a fanfic sequel to the original Frankenstein, but now he’s in New York, has a hand of glory situation, and becomes a gunslinger. This is the foundational obstacle the book faces — it’s got too much going on. Frankenstein(‘s Monster for you nerds) in NYC decades after the original could have been story enough. Frankenstein in the Old West as a gunslinger, ditto. Either of these with a cursed hand, sure, got to have that Macguffin. But all three is a bit stuffed, and it comes through — he finds his cowboy outfit in a bin of hats and guns in a morgue, but doesn’t seem to make a conscious decision to wear them (I suppose it could be the hand?). Actions don’t follow panel to panel always, creating a “skipping” feeling. With all this aside, my biggest issue is the production errors — in the first half of the book, there’s a page which has panels re-printed across the previous page, complete with covered up dialogue boxes that you can match perfectly. These things happen, but it doesn’t make me confident in American Mythology’s books going forward.
Heartpiercer #1
Recommendation: Pilot Pickup for fans of mythology and monster huntin’. Rich Douek brings the same relentless pace from Drive Like Hell, brought to life by Favin Smith’s cruel, twisting art style. Yet I found myself wanting more from a book that was mostly setup for the story to come. I imagine it will play really well when collected in the trade paperback.
Monolith #1
Recommendation: Pass unless you’re a Spawn completionist (I assume). The first Spawn book I’ve ever read was two weeks ago or so, and I was confused. I remained so here. The identity doesn’t come through — I’m not clear what separates this from any other cape book. The main Spawn (I hope I’m using that right), Monolith, is seen above — he’s a mostly featureless orange block of muscle that is most reminiscent of Doomsday or Steppenwolf or Darkseid from Zack Snyder’s DC movies. If this book excited, let me know, because I’d genuinely like to know why.
My Bad: Escape from Peculiar Island #1
Recommendation: Series Pickup. Not to be dramatic, but this is a perfect first issue. It accomplishes exactly what you’d want it to. Not only is the product itself strong satire with a personal voice, it also included the little details that made me want more. I found out through the back matter that this was a new series set in an existing world, but that never felt like an obstacle. It made me very excited to find the rest, which is exactly what new series should be doing. Special shout out to John J. Hill’s desin, one of my favorite part of the books.
The Scale Trade #1
Recommendation: Pass. This is a Law & Order-style fake DEA story mixed with How to Train Your Dragon, but also it’s mostly about poaching exotic animals. It’s cute, and I think there’s a foundation being laid for something more complex, but for now it’s an easily digestable grown up Dragon Tales. The art on the dragons works, but on the humans I found it wanting. It has a webcomic style about it, which can work, but here looks unfinished.
Venom: Separation Anxiety #1
Recommendation: Pilot Pickup if you’re a fan of everyone’s favorite symbiote. This is another retro-story from Marvel, but unlike the previous Spider-Man books in this vein, Venom: Separation Anxiety does not require any context. The story is a little clumsy, but at the end of the day it’s just fun to see Venom go around and bite people he thinks are bad.
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)!