The Wicked and the Divine: Fandemonium

Writer: Keiron Gillen
Artist: Jamie McKelvie
Colourist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Flatter: Dee Cuniffe
Publisher: Image Comics

What's it about?
Every 90 years 12 Gods return as young people.  They live for two years.  Then they are dead, until the next cycle.

In this cycle they are pop stars.  Rock gods.  Choose the descriptor that gets you the most excited.  Everyone is a fan.

Ganesha's Sweet Tooth

Writer: Sanjay Patel and Emily Haynes
Art: Sanjay Patel
Publisher: Chronicle Books

What's it about?
Ganesha is a Hindu god. He's very important and powerful.  And a tad chubby.
But when he was a kid, he was just like any other kid...
except that he had an elephant's head and cruised around on a magical mouse collecting fruit, rice, sweet, and other gifts from the temples in his neighbourhood.

This is a retelling of the Hindu legend about how Ganesha came to write the Mahabharata.

It's sold as a picture book, not a comic, but as Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics says, if a story is told through sequential art it can be considered a comic.

Comixology's submit - stuff that didn't fit anywhere else.

This the last of the books from the Comixology: Submit sale we talked about in March.  This bundle isn't available anymore but the books in it are, and are well worth looking at.  Here are the remaining five that we think are worthy of note.

Smut Peddlar - short anthology of smutty stories.  Clearly for adults only and not safe to read at work. This may not have been in the bundle, but is an indie book and is good sexy fun.  It's got a mix of pairings - male/male, female/female and male/female.
Writers and artists: various
Publisher: Iron Circus Comics

Dumbing of Age - excellent book about a home schooled Christian woman starting university and meeting people from different backgrounds.  It's smart and funny. It's not mean about Christian homeschooling - it doesn't insult anyone for being who they are.  It's got a great cast who interact really well.  This made me smile a lot, when not much else did.  It started off as a webcomic, which you can read here. Start at the bottom of the page.  Includes LGBT characters and characters of colour.
Writing and art: David Willis
Publisher: Self published

Rock Star Scientists - in this world, scientists are treated like rockstars.  They get the fans, the glory and the clothes. There are 2 stories in this comic, which is split into two section called Side A and Side B.  Side A is an introduction to this world and Side B is a rather short story. Nonetheless it's worth the money.
Writing and letters: Kenny Jeffery
Art: Jordan Cutler
Pencils and inks: George Zapata
Colours: Armit Ghadge
Publisher: Angry Fruit Salad

After Twilight - this has nothing to do with sparkling vampires.  It's 2022 and Texas is in a civil war with the rest of the States to become independent.  Government and laws are based on biblical faith.  The protagonist is a librarian who finds herself involved in the struggle between the underground resistance and the theocractic leaders
Writing: Richard Alvarez, Gary L Watson, Sandra Yates
Art: Douglas Brown
Colours: Chandran and Meagan Tanner
Publisher: Nu-Classic Publishing

Legend of Oz - it's the story of Oz done as a Western.  Dorothy is a gun toting cowgirl and Toto is her horse.  The colours are rather brassy and the faces are a bit plasticky, but the story is good enough.  There is some violence so this won't be good for kids.
Writing: Tom Hutchinson
Pencils: Alisson Borges
Colours: Kate Finnegan
Publisher: Big Dog Ink

The Last Tape In Hell

Normally at New Readers... we review trade paperback editions of comics.  This works well with comics from the big publishers, but doesn't work so well for independent or self published comics. Back at the start of December I did a quick post about Thought Bubble 2012, a UK comics convention happening in Leeds.  A lot of  comics on sale at Thought Bubble are of the self published, single issue type, and I didn't want my readers to miss out on the fantastic stuff in the UK independent comics scene.  So, I will be spending a little while going over the very best of the ones that I bought.

These words will be culled from/inspired by short reviews I did on my other blog, Pai.  Depending on the sense of the original blog, they are likely to be edited to make more sense to new readers of comics.

Onwards...

The Last Tape in Hell

Writer and artist: Sarah Gordon

What's it about?
This is a short, glossy comic with few words but the most amazing colours.

It's set in Hell.  Satan is hard at work doing administrative, hellish type things.  His old cassette player is spewing out the sounds of hell (which turn out to be Dooom....Dooom...Dooom).  The cassette player suddenly breaks, and the tape becomes chewed up.

Characters of Colour in superhero comics - the men (part five)

This is the more independent edition, where we look at a few of the male characters of colour who sit outside of the mainstream superhero comics published by Marvel and DC.

Blankets

Writer/Illustrator: Craig Thompson
Publisher: Top Shelf

What's it about?
In an autobiographical tale, Craig Thompson tells the story of his childhood and adolescence, focused through the lens of first teenage love. In many ways, it is a very typical and relatable story of growing up.

Growing up in a fundamentalist Christian family in Wisconsin, Craig struggles with his relationship with his brother, with God, and the other people in his life. Plagued by feelings of inadequacy heaped on him by his parents and other adults, and rejected by his peers at school, Craig is a loner who isn't quite sure where he fits in this unpleasant, trying world.

Final Crisis: Revelations

Writer: Greg Rucka
Pencils: Philip Tan
Inks: Jonathan Glapion, Jeff de los Santos, Walden Wong
Color: Ian Hannin, Nei Rufino
Letters: John J. Hill
Publisher: DC

What's it about?
The world is in the midst of a Crisis.  The New Gods are coming to earth, the anti life equation is spreading among humanity claiming civilians and superheros alike.  It heralds the arrival of Darkseid and his subordinates, dedicated to evil, corruption and violence.

Supergirl: Wings

Writer: J.M DeMatteis
Artist: Jamie Tolagson
Colourist: Sherilyn Van Valkenburgh
Letterer: Ken Lopez
Seperator: Digital Chameleon
Publisher: DC

What's it about?
Linda..
A human so self willed.. so drawn to darkness..
                              that her soul stands on the brink of damnation...

Matrix..
It is her purpose to life rebels up..
               to bring them to the light...
      If only she didn't hate them so....

So states the blurb on the back of the book.

This is one of DC's Elseworld's titles.  The term Elseworlds refers to books where the characters are "taken from their usual settings and put into strange times and places, some that have existed, and others that can't, couldn't or shouldn't exist".

This is the story of a Supergirl - not Clark Kent's younger cousin, but a character called Linda Danvers who bonded with a creature called Matrix.

The Fallen Angel Omnibus volume 0

written by Peter David
pencils by David Lopez
inks Fernando Blanco
colours by Nathan Eyring
Publisher: IDW

What's It About?
In the dark and terrible city of Bete Noire, in a booth at the back of Dolf's bar sits a woman dressed all in red, a woman people call the Fallen Angel. People come to the bar to talk to her, to tell her their problems. Sometimes she helps them, sometimes she tells them to go to hell and sometimes they wish she hadn't agreed to help them. Surrounded by a city of criminals and moral corruption the Fallen Angel is still finding her place in the world.

Fallen Angel was a series launched by DC Comics as part of an initiative to create new comics with female leads. The series was praised as inventive, creative and unpredictable... by the critics. Sadly the readers at the time weren't as willing to try something new as DC hoped and after twenty issues the series was cancelled. Years later Peter David was invited to continue the series with a new company, IDW, who have now published the full DC run for the first time ever in a handsome omnibus edition.