Womanthology: Space
Written by Bonnie Burton, Sandy King Carpenter, Alison Ross and Stephanie Hans, Ming Doyle, Stacie Ponder, Blair Butler, Joelle Sellner, Ellise Heiskell, Robin Furth, Rachel Edidin, Jennifer de Guzman, Jody Houser, Devin Grayson, Christine Ellis, Barbara Randall Kesel, Allison Pang, Laura Morley, Cecil Castellucci, and Kiala Kazebee

Illustrated by Jessica Hickman, Tanja Wooten, Stephanie Hans, Jordie Bellaire, Stacie Ponder, Alicia Fernandez, Jean Kang, Maarta Laiho, Carli Idhe, Sophia Foster-Dimino, Leigh Dragoon, Sally Thompson and Kathryn Layno, Lindsay Walker, Elva Wang, Diana Nock, Chrissie Zullo, Sara Richard, Kel McDonald, and Isabelle Melancon

Colored by Jordie Bellaire and Ronda Pattison

Lettered by Rachel Deering, Robbie Robbins, Amauri Osorio, and Isabelle Melancon

Cover by Renae DeLiz
Series Edited by Mariah Huehner
Collection Edited by Justin Eisinger and Alonzo Simon
IDW Publishing
Release Date: June 5, 2013
Cover Price: $24.99

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that women receive enough of the limelight within the comic book industry; thankfully, artist Renae DeLiz (The Last Unicorn) came up with a fantastic way to showcase a variety of fantastic female talent and IDW jumped on board. Womanthology: Space is the collected addition of the first five issues of the monthly ongoing series of the same name. Building off of the success of DeLiz’s first venture with the graphic novel Womanthology: Heroic, Womanthology: Space is an amalgamation of short comics with the overarching theme of “space” created solely by established and up-and-coming female creators. Check out my impressions of some of the best and worst that this anthology has to offer!

Womanthology: Space #3
Written by Robin Furth, Rachel Edidin, Jennifer DeGuzman, and Trina Robbins
Art by Carli Idhe, Sophia Foster-Dimino, Leigh Dragoon
Cover by Mengtian Zhang and Hanie Mohd
IDW Publishing
Release Date: December 5th, 2012
Cover Price: $3.99

This is the first issue of IDW’s Womanthology: Space series that I have read, which is a shame on my part. Womanthology was born out of a successful Kickstarter campaign, originating as a longer graphic novel, and now spinning off into the Space anthology series. The big deal of the series is that all of the stories in the series were created by, as you could guess from the title, women. This shouldn’t be a big deal, but given the how hard it is for women to get material published in the comics world, it is. The Space series takes the general entry point of “women in comics” and focuses on stories somehow dealing with space, or space travel, or some kind of outer-space stuff. What you end up with in this issue is a collection of three charming stories and an interesting look at one of the golden age of comics female pioneers.

The first story in this issue is titled “Centipede.” It’s basically a riff on Aliens, with a smuggler bringing a dangerous creature onto a normal space ship. It’s a little too short to build any real suspense, but that’s no fault of the creators, who do a decent job given the page count.

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.