Comics Picks of The Week 13.11.2013

Managed to read a handful of more comics this week, since there were a lot of titles released that I was really interested in, and a couple from previous weeks that I hadn’t been able to get around to at the time. As usual, it was all a mixed reading experience, with some really good comics mixed in with some bad ones and a few that straddle the fence between the two extremes. More positive ones than negative ones.

No graphic novels this week sadly, since this week was a real slog in reading, again, and I was struggling for time in general with everything else too. Perhaps this coming week can be different!

In the meantime, here’s another edition of this new feature. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

Hinterkind #2 by Ian Edginton (Comics Review)

Vertigo’s Hinterkind is one of those out-there kind of comics that the publisher loves to put out. They are different from the norm, often bend conventions a certain way, and they all have a very unique flavour. Ian Edginton proved that with last month’s first issue, in which he told a post-apocalyptic story wherein mankind is almost extinct, nature has taken over the world, and there are creatures from mythologies and urban legends running around all over.

He continues in the same vein with the new issue, building on the things he introduced in the previous issue, adding to the world, and giving you more reasons to care about it. But at the same point, things feel a little too slow. But, this was still an interesting issue because we get to see the other side of the conflict, much as with the bookend final scenes of the first issue, and we get to find out what the Hinterkind think of humans and what their goals are.

Comics Picks of The Week 02.10.2013

This week was filled with reading a lot more than just the regular DC books. I read a fair amount of Marvel stuff this time, and also other titles from other publishers, particularly Vertigo, which is a DC imprint. A lot of these comics were really good, some not so much, and that’s pretty much normal really. Never a full week of solid comics. An impossibility I think.

I wasn’t able to get around to reading any graphic novels this time around, sadly, mostly because I was caught up reading a really big fat military space opera novel. It was written by a favourite author so that helped get over that a little bit but the book still took too much time. Not to mention that I was generally short on time so had to make do with reading single issues.

Perhaps this week I can get a couple graphic novels down!

In the meantime, here’s another edition of this new feature. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

Hinterkind #1 by Ian Edginton (Comics Review)

As I’ve said before elsewhere, Vertigo Comics puts out some of the best stuff in the industry and their biggest selling point is how diverse each title, how different it is to the next. Vertigo’s various settings all have a different vibe, different feel to them, as you can see from Jeff Lemire’s Trillium or Scott Snyder and Sean Murphy’s The Wake or Bill WIllingham’s Fables. These are very much non-traditional comics and they are executed brilliantly.

Joining this stellar line-up is the latest by Ian Edginton, Hinterkind, a post-apocalyptic story in which humanity is now the endangered species and nature has run wild all over the world. Just the description of the setting itself intrigued me and made me want to read the comic ASAP. And I would have, as soon as New Comic Book Day came, if it wasn’t or some other reading commitments and plans that intervened. Might be reading this “late” but its sure been one hell of an experience.