Alabaster: Wolves #2
Written by Caitlín R. Kiernan
Art and Letters by Steve Lieber
Colors by Rachelle Rosenberg
Cover by Greg Ruth
Designer Amy Arendts
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: May 9, 2012
Cover Price: $3.50

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a strange title pounced out of Dark Horse last month and leaped onto comic review sites (including this very one), causing critics to shout their approval for Alabastor: Wolves. People spoke of the art by Steve Lieber and the writing (the dialogue in particular) by Caitlín R. Kiernan as being strong and fresh and unique. What particularly piqued my interest, however, was just how vague folks were in describing what actually happens in the book. Most reviews I read went something like this: “It’s about a little Albino girl who speaks with a southern drawl, walking a wasteland filled with werewolves and other monsters, who talks to a bird and an angel who tells her who to kill. Oh, and she might be crazy.”

“Heck,” I thought, “I can describe a comic better then that.”

Axe Cop, Vol. 3 TPB
Written by Malachai Nicolle
Drawn by Ethan Nicolle
Colors by Dirk Erik Shulz
Designer Kat Larson
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: March 28, 2012
Cover Price: $14.99

There will never be a comic quite like Calvin and Hobbes. For ten years Bill Watterson worked on an extraordinary ode to the trials and tribulations and joy that comes with being an imaginative 6 year old. It was arguably the greatest newspaper comic strip this side of the twentieth century. In part that’s because its main character was allowed to be as selfish and destructive as he was sweet and imaginative, in other words, he was allowed to feel like an actual 6 year old.

Then one day the strip was gone and comics have been trying to fill that void ever since. Other artists and storytellers have tackled friendship and growing pains, but one comic, Axe Cop, has emerged that really captures the sense of play that kids have. The make-the-story-up-as-you-go-along sensibility where dinosaurs, robots, and aliens are casually thrown into a plot. And unlike Watterson who would usually pull back to his real world in the last panel, Axe Cop digs deeper and deeper into its world of make-believe.

Flash Gordon Archives, Vol. 5
Written by John Warner, Bruce Jones, George Kashdan
Art by Carlos Garzon, Gene Fawcette, Al Williamson, Frank Bolle, Al McWilliams
Introduction by Michael T. Gilbert
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: December 14th, 2011
Cover Price: $49.99

Collected in Flash Gordon Archives, Vol. 5 are 10 issues of the Whitman Flash Gordon series (28-37) including issues 31-33 which were an adaptation of the 1980 Flash Gordon movie. Talk about a treasure trove of excitement! Nearly 300 pages of classic comics reprinted and restored, and believe me, the book is totally worth the price.

These are, obviously, stories from another time. Comics were written a lot different then. There were no suck thing as “story arcs.” A comic was either a story told in one issue or a story that simply never really stopped, just continued from issue to issue.