Black Orchid

Writer: Neil Gaiman
Art: Dave McKean
Letters: Todd Klein

What's it about?
Published under DC's Vertigo imprint, this is a book for mature readers.  Historically, Black Orchid is a superhero, but this is not really a superhero book.  Black Orchid is a plant/human hybrid and within the first few pages she dies.  Then we meet the new Black Orchid.  This new version is unaware of her origin, the previous Orchid's history and is totally ignorant of her place in the world.

This book chronicles her life from the moment of consciousness to the moment where she experiences acceptance and knowledge of herself.  Along the way she comes across a lot or nasty characters, yet manages each situation with grace and gentle control.

Catwoman- Crooked Little Town

Writer: Ed Brubaker
Main Story Pencils: Brad Rader
Main Story Inks: Cameron Stewart
Additional Art: Michael Avon Oeming, Rick Burchett,
Mike Manley, Eric Shanover and Michael Lark
Colourists: Matt Hollingsworth, Lee Loughridge and Tom McCraw
Letters: Sean Konot and Willie Schubert
Publisher: DC Comics

What’s It About?
Selina Kyle, Catwoman: sometime villain, sometime hero, she came from the gutter, stole a fortune and bought herself into high society. Now she’s back where she started: Gotham City’s rough east end, acting as its guardian angel with a little help from private eye Slam Bradley and former streetkid Holly Robinson. Its comic book noir complete with dirty cops, honest cops, gangsters, backstreet doctors, “respectable” figures playing the system and a few good-hearted people trying to make a difference. One of those good-hearted people just happens to be a costumed career criminal, that’s all…

xkcd

A webcomic written and drawn by Randall Munroe

What’s It About?The following disclaimer appears on the xkcd website:

“This comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humour (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).”

xkcd is a mainly storyline-free joke strip with an intellectual bent. The author-artist is a scientist by trade and often plays on scientific theory and practice for his jokes. He draws in a very simple, self-consciously basic style that relies on the words and ideas to carry the humour.v Nevertheless, the unique art style gives the strip a real quality of its own.

Green Arrow Black Canary: For Better Or For Worse

Writers:  Various, but includes Alan Moore, Denny O'Neil, Mike Grell, Chuck Dixon and Kevin Smith
Artists: Various, but includes Mike Grell and Dick Giordano
Inkers: Various, but includes Dick Giordano
Letterer: Various, but includes Todd Klein
Publisher: DC Comics

What's it about?
Green Arrow, Oliver Queen, and Black Canary, Dinah Lance, are one of DC's most enduring couples.

Green Arrow is a non powered superhero who's skills lie in archery.  He was a millionaire playboy who got shipwrecked on a remote island and had to develop his archery and survival skills, along with his common sense, in order to survive.  Eventually he was rescued but not until after he'd broken up a drug business operating from the island.  Once back to civilisation he took up nighttime crime fighting, decking himself out in a Robin Hood style costume.

Black Canary is superpowered.  She has a canary cry - basically a sonic scream which she can use to incapacitate evil doers.  Now I've just written that I feel I should add that this ability is not remotely related to stereotypes of shrill nagging women and is never, ever, presented as such.  As well as her canary cry, she is an expert in many types of martial arts, in recent years she has become one of the best practitioners of martial arts in the DC Universe.  She was inspired to start crime fighting by her mother who was the first Black Canary.

Incognegro

Incognegro

Writer: Mat Johnson
Artist: Warren Pleece
Publisher: Vertigo

What’s It About?
It’s the early twentieth century and Zane Pinchback is a reporter for the New Holland Herald, an African-American newspaper operating out of New York. Born with skin pale enough to pass as white, he works undercover to infiltrate lynchings and under the pen name Incognegro he works to expose the murderers who commit them.

His brother, his significantly darker-skinned brother, has been accused of murder. The murder of a white woman and in Mississippi, no less. The evidence is slight but the mob is ready and Zane knows its only a matter of time.

Superman: Last Son

Writers: Geoff Johns and Richard Donner
Artist: Adam Kubert
Colorists: Dave Stewart and Edgar Delgado
Letterer: Rob Leigh
Publisher: DC Comics

What's it about?
This is what's known as a trade - a collection of 5 issues from the Action Comics title.  It's a fully self contained story arc, so you don't need to have read previous issues for it make sense.  This arc introduces a new Kryptonian to Earth. a little boy who crashlands into Metropolis one day.

Who is he?  How did he get here?  How did he survive Krypton's explosion?  And who are these strange people that showed up shortly after he did?

The book features lots of familiar faces: a now married Lois and Clark Kent, Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, Zod, Ursa and Non.

Tank Girl: The Odyssey

Writer: Peter Milligan
Artist: Jamie Hewlett
Publisher: Titan Books

What's it about?
It's rude, it's crude, it's very very lewd.

Have you ever seen the 1995 Tank Girl movie?  Well, the comics aren't like that.  Speaking as someone who loved the film, that isn't a criticism.  The comic includes boozing, shagging, farting, vomiting and eyes of God able to fight off evil cannibalistic movie producer types.  You'll see a couple of familiar faces from the film - Booga the humanoid Kangaroo and Jet Girl, the girl with a jet.  There is however no water shortage, no post apocalyptic waste land and nothing futuristic about it.

So what is it about?  It's about a modern day Australian, boozing, smoking and abusing her way through life.  And it's all tightly woven around the plot of Homer's Odyssey and James Joyce's Ullysees.  For those of you not familiar with Homer's poem, it deals with the hero Odysseus and his journey home from the Trojan War.  It takes him ten years to get home and while he is away his wife Penelope and son Telemachus must deal with a hoard of suitors, wanting to wed Penelope.