Kingdom of the Wicked
Written by Ian Edginton
Illustrated by D’Israeli
Lettered by Woodrow Phoenix
Titan Comics
Release Date: January 7, 2015
Cover Price: $19.99

What is real and what is fantasy? In Kingdom of the Wicked, by Ian Edginton and D’Israeli, one man will go to dangerous lengths to understand his personal reality.

Chris has written children stories ever since his youth. One such story, about a world he called Castrovalva, was so detailed and enchanting, that Chris believed he could travel there. Now an adult, Chris is a children’s author and is making it big — much to his chagrin. But as he begins to experience severe headaches and blackouts, Chris unwillingly returns to Castrovalva, though it is hardly the land he left behind.

Warhammer: Condemned By Fire #1
Written by Dan Abnett and Ian Edginton
Art by Rahsan Ekedal
Colors by Fellipe Martins
Letters by Ed Dukeshire
Boom! Studios
Covers by Joe Abraham, Jaime Jones
Cover price: $3.99; Available now

First things first, if you’re a computer gamer waiting for the Warhammer Fantasy MMO, you need to go out and find a copy of this book right now, because each copy comes with the chance to get into the Beta for Age of Reckoning, but if you’ve been looking forward to it, you probably have a couple copies already. And if you’re not into the whole gaming thing, you should still pick this issue up, as a good horror tale, in the vein of a good Conan story.

BOOM! Studios has done a good job with the Warhammer license so far, both on the 40k side, and the Fantasy side, which is where we find ourselves for this series. The series follows one of the Witch Hunters of the Empire (this will make sense to fans of the Warhammer universe) as he tracks a heretic across a harsh landscape. He eventually tracks him to a forsaken village that carries a horrible secret. Inside the village, the story takes a turn towards the horrific, ending with the Witch Hunter moving on to track down the source of the horror.

Angelus: Pilot Season #1
Pilot Season issue
Written by Ian Edington
Art by Stjepan Sejic
Top Cow Productions, Inc.
Release Date: December 12, 2007
Cover price $2.99

Pilot Season is upon us!

Even as you read this, geeks from all over the Internet are flocking to that hub of digital civilization known as MySpace and voting for their favorite Top Cow character to win their very own ongoing series in 2008. And with the long-awaited opening of the MySpace polls comes the fifth and final entry in this exercise in rampant democracy: Angelus.

Written by Warhammer 40,000 scribe, Ian Edginton and illustrated by insanely talented Croatian artist, Stjepan Sejic, Angelus – Pilot Season #1 picks up where Sejic’s previous Top Cow project, First Born, left off. Having left the city and her dark past behind her, we find Celestine, the current host of the Angelus, waiting tables at a grease-trap in Middle-of-Nowhere, Arkansas, under the assumed name of “Tina.” While the simple life suits Tina just fine, she is constantly at odds with the sentient Angelus force within her, which urges her to aspire to greater heights than mere menial labor can offer. The Angelus’s wish for action comes true soon enough when a trio of walking oddities enters the diner, claiming to have connections to Celestine’s secret past.

(…not to be confused with her *dark* past…)

(…well… I mean, her secret past is also pretty dark, but it… it’s a different past from the one that…)

(…)

As the Pilot Season books go, this is one of the better ones in *concept*, but not in execution. There is plenty of bloody action to go around once the Angelus makes its debut, as well as the requisite amount of T&A, but the story itself is a bit of a jumble. An overarching storyline is definitely being built here, and the little tidbits of information littered throughout the book do serve to catch one’s interest, but overall, the plot suffers from a bad case of over-exposure. Too much of a good thing.