Deep Thoughts on Sci-Fi Nihilism and Humanity With Roche Limit’s Michael Moreci
Paste Magazine
Held up against some of its more digestible genre contemporaries—thought-provoking gems like Black Science or Descender —Roche Limit is… Well, it’s kind of weird. The comic doesn’t so much provoke your thoughts as much as it demands them. Profound ones, in fact. At this comic’s bedrock lie some of our heaviest philosophical questions concerning souls, consciousness, the hereafter and our place in the universe, and it leaves those questions unsettlingly, if unsurprisingly, unanswered.
Marjorie Liu Raises Dark Questions on War and Slavery for New Image Series Monstress
Paste Magazine
Though you’d expect a book called Monstress to house a few gnarly creatures, writer Marjorie Liu’s new Image series brims with monstrosity of every stripe. Yes, there are colossal behemoths sure to devastate some perfectly good infrastructure, but the metaphorical terrain is far richer.
What Alex + Ada Can Teach Us About Avoiding the Robot Apocalypse
Paste Magazine
In the future, android butlers will dote on you, serving your dinner and wiping up your spills. Cyborg soldiers will replace human troopers on the battlefield, largely unfazed by shrapnel and bullets. Robo-firefighters will brave burning buildings, their vital circuits encased in protective insulation. With robots to tend our bars, drive our cars and do all of our heavy lifting, we’ll enjoy a wonderful world populated by automatons programmed to do our bidding. A whole class of cyber-servants created, more or less, in our image. Which is unfortunate, because we’re a bunch of jerks.
State of the Art: Amy Reeder Builds Place & Personality in Rocket Girl
Paste Magazine
In Rocket Girl, Amy Reeder and writer Brandon Montclare present a very specific view of the future—not as we would imagine it today, but rather how we envisioned it back in the 1980s. Rocket Girl’s future is a darker place.
Special Edition NYC: DMC on the ‘80s, Hypocrisy and Being the Baddest Superhero
Paste Magazine
Long before DMC unlaced his shell-tops and told us how to walk, before the King of Rock crowned himself with a black fedora and certainly before he became a music icon as one third of Run DMC, young Darryl McDaniels was reading comic books.
The Rise of Spider-Gwen
Paste Magazine
For an entire generation of Spider-Man readers, the late Gwen Stacy is mostly a legendary milestone in a winding road of backstory. To readers of a certain age, she may be a traumatic memory, but for many of us, she exists simply as a cautionary tale — that with great power does in fact come great responsibility.
State of the Art with Moon Knight’s Declan Shalvey
Paste Magazine
From his early work on the blood-spattered pages of 28 Days Later to the loping action of his runs on Deadpool and Venom, Declan has always put his artistic focus squarely on storytelling. “The most challenging, and rewarding, part of drawing a comic is taking those words on a page and making them images,” he said. “It’s really frustrating sometimes, and you’re banging your head against a wall to make it work. Those are the bits that keep artists awake at night but also make them want to get up in the morning and figure it out.”
We Watched a Hilarious Burlesque Tribute to The Walking Dead
Paste Magazine
The Dead: they walk, they return, they dawn. And now, they shimmy. Last weekend the good folks at New York’s D20 Burlesque presented “The Shimmying Dead,” a nerdlesque tribute to the wonderfully bleak, downright horrifying zombie saga that is The Walking Dead.
Mike Mignola and Scott Allie Look Back on 20 Years of Hellboy
Paste Magazine
Hellboy has been kicked, punched, clawed and smashed by tentacled beasts. He’s had a nail shoved in his head, a knife thrust in his back and a spear gouged through his chest. He’s killed giants, maimed witches and swung a stone hand like a sledgehammer. He likes pancakes and hates Nazis. He’s the Beast of the Apocalypse, the rightful king of Britain and a current resident of Hell. And that’s just in the character’s first 20 years.
Swedish Cartoonist Kim W. Andersson Embraces Teen Angst in Alena
Paste Magazine
Alena is not a particularly happy girl. She’s the poor kid in an affluent school. She’s the target of a predatory gaggle of bullies, the leader of which is a special kind of terrible.
Glitterbomb Writer Jim Zub on Hollywood and the Dark Mirror of Fame
Paste Magazine
Hollywood is a town of extremes, where the vicissitudes of fame shift with wild indifference. Its actors are either beloved and fawned over or discarded and forgotten—sometimes in the same week. There are the beautiful people, and then there’s everyone else. Superficiality, though often a ticket to the top, can just as easily be a truncheon beating these players down.
State of the Art: Jock Explains the Personal Horror Behind Wytches
Paste Magazine
Jock’s pages, heavily inked and occasionally confusing, evoke a bump-in-the-night sense of the looming Other that provides Wytches’ lasting chill.
Geeks OUT’s Joey Stern Talks Flame Con, Producing NYC’s First LGBTQ Convention
Paste Magazine
For the last five years, Geeks OUT has been a presence at comic conventions across the country where it “rallies, empowers and promotes the queer geek community.” That time spent carving out their niche has paid off and is now culminating in the form of Flame Con, New York’s first LGBTQ comic convention.
Paul Azaceta Perfects Demonic Dread in Outcast
Paste Magazine
Outcast, Image and Skybound’s demonic possession series written by Robert (Walking Dead) Kirkman and drawn by Paul Azaceta, stands apart from its horror brethren by emphasizing the creepy over the gory.
Talking Deep-South Noir with Southern Bastards’ Jason Latour
Paste Magazine
It took some time, but the South is rising again. From the backwoods of Justified to the swamp horrors of True Detective, there is surely a dixie-noir wave on the surge. Fueled by football, ribs and rage — lots and lots of rage — Southern Bastards is a violent odyssey through rural Alabama.
Nostalgia Drunk at New York Comic Con
Paste Magazine
If you’ve never been to New York Comic Con, you should really fix that…unless you’re a geek with poor impulse control, in which case you may end up leaving with a life-sized cutout of Colm Meaney, from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and all the Funko POP! vinyl figures you can carry. And probably a sword. The sheer scale of things you’ll want — and, oh, how you’ll want them! — can be a lot to take in all at once. A sensory overload of costumes and collectibles that must be what Vegas is like for lovers of inexpensive buffets and nickel waterfalls.
B for Burlesque: A Nerdlesque Tribute to Alan Moore
Paste Magazine
A hush crawled through the crowd as a familiar “hurm” growled from the speakers and Moe Cheezmo stepped on stage, an ink-blotted white stocking stretched across his face. He broke from his Rorschach grumblings and into the steady baritone of a disc jockey to welcome everyone to “Who Strips the Strippers?” Excelsior Burlesque’s tribute to Alan Moore. “I assume everybody’s here because you love the work of Alan Moore…” he announced.
The Best Cosplay of New York Comic Con 2016
Paste Magazine
Last weekend’s New York Comic Con had its own distinct flavor that transcended polyester and plastic. The cosplaying population may not match that of its competing cousin in southern California, but for those who do indulge, the innovation and ornamentation go above and beyond.
No Superheroes or Zombies: Joe Keatinge and Leila del Duca Talk Shutter
Paste Magazine
In Shutter, their upcoming series for Image Comics, writer Joe Keatinge and artist Leila del Duca set out to create a universe where nothing is off limits — except superheroes and zombies. The series follows Kate Kristopher, a former child adventurer and the last in a long line of explorers, as she tries to live a normal life. For a yet unknown reason, she turned her back on adventure and excitement, preferring to embrace anonymity. But secrets won’t stay hidden and before she knows it, Kate finds herself once again dodging peril and plumbing into the depths of her family’s mysterious past.
NYCC: Talking Rat Queens With Roc Upchurch
Paste Magazine
A rowdy fantasy series that feels like Tank Girl tossing a 20-sided die, Rat Queens has been enthusiastically embraced by the comics fandom.
NYCC: Talking Gotham Academy With Becky Cloonan, Brenden Fletcher & Karl Kerschl
Paste Magazine
The creative trio inject elements of Scooby-Doo and Hogwarts into the Bat-mythology to produce an immediately relatable coming-of-age tale that promises to uncover some of the city’s deepest history.
After the Adventure Ends: Joshua Williamson Subverts Classic Fantasy Tropes in Birthright
Paste Magazine
Whether it’s Peter Pan taking Wendy to Neverland, Alice tumbling through the rabbit hole or Labyrinth’s Goblin King kidnapping babies, it’s a familiar setup. With Birthright, however, writer Joshua Williamson and artist Andrei Bressan break dramatically from that template.
Declan Shalvey Talks Injection, and the Utter Madness Therein
Paste Magazine
Injection is a techno-gothic thriller riddled with impending doom. When a group of specialists from disparate fields—hacker, spy, wizard, etc.—are charged with predicting the future of innovation, what they create may spell the end of everything. It’s a slow-smoldering story in a comic landscape in love with explosions.
State of the Art: Skottie Young Devastates Kids Fantasy Tropes in I Hate Fairyland
Paste Magazine
I Hate Fairyland is chock full of candy-colored visuals, and even puke and entrails look like tons of fun. Young takes the familiar tropes of children’s fantasy, shakes them up violently and creates a dark, sarcastic and downright hilarious variation.
Comic Relief with Black Science Creator Rick Remender
Paste Magazine
Rick Remender is the sort of guy who really digs ray guns. And rocket ships. He’s in the business of creating worlds — far-flung macrocosms teeming with twisted mutants as wild and electric as he can muster. The writer, illustrator, and animator ran amok through the tropes of classic Sci-fi with Fear Agent, delivering evil robots, insatiable tentacle-monsters, and time travel from the first arc alone. He dodged the constraints of writing a character whose mythos casts a long shadow when he recently hurled Captain America into Dimension Z for a 12-year odyssey of grit and heartbreak.
State of the Art: Dustin Nguyen on the Humanizing Art Behind Descender
Paste Magazine
Unlike his previous Big Two work, Dustin Nguyen became a one-man art team for Descender by sketching, painting and coloring it all himself. The result is nothing short of beautiful.
Vanesa R. Del Rey Styles a Noir Underworld in Hit 1957
Paste Magazine
While Hit 1957’s characters are unflinching purveyors of brutality, the unquestionable truth remains that they look so damn good doing it. That praise, of course, belongs to Del Rey’s stylized pencils and inks, and Niko Guardia’s vividly dark color palette. Del Rey’s characters move seamlessly from slick to grotesque, sultry to savage, and back again.