The Last Days Of American Crime
Hardcover | Kindle
Written by Rick Remender
Illustrated by Greg Tocchini
Lettered by Rus Wooton
Cover by Alex Maleev
Radical Comics
Release Date: September 17, 2015

The future is bleak and deadly, at least that’s what The Last Days Of American Crime tosses directly into our face on the first page. And it continues to do so for the entirety of the book. And while we are definitely dealing with a post-contemporary setting, nothing is really so far-fetched that you cannot imagine it being possible. There’s a sense of lawlessness that seems like it verges on anarchy, though we are routinely given to know that the government and police forces are still standing by. Everything seems to be hinging on an event that’s taking place a fortnight from now.

The Last Days of American Crime #2
Written by: Rick Remender
Art by: Greg Tocchini
Cover by: Alex Maleev
Letters by: Rus Wooton
Radical Comics
Price: $4.99
Release Date: April 28, 2010

The Last Days of American Crime is another Rick Remender creator-owned book that is riddled with his originality and twists. Best described as a Science Fiction and Crime book, the basic premise is, what if the government announced that in a few days it would be sending a transmission that made it impossible to commit a crime through a type of mind control. As if that was not enough we are thrust into a world that no longer has a use for paper money.

This story shows that two genres that generally do not mix are compatible and interesting when meshed together with great skill and great art. Plus, how could you not feel like you’re getting your money’s worth when you are only paying two dollars more and you’re getting three times the content as a normal comic? The issue is like a mini trade paperback.

FVZA #1-2
Written by David Hine
Conceived by Beau Flynn and Tripp Vinson
Illustrated by Roy Allen Martinez
Painted by Kinsun Loh and Jerry Cho
Lettered by Richard Starkings and ComicCrafts’ Jimmy Betancourt
Radical Publishers
Release date: December 2009

Alternate histories are always a fun concept to play with in fiction. Imagining a world where the Axis won WW2 like Philip K. Dick’s Man in a High Castle, or Allan Moore’s and Kevin O’Neill’s Victorian speculative and adventure fiction comics The League of Extraordinary Gentleman are great exercises in creative speculation.

Radical Comics, writer David Hine, and artist Roy Allen Martinez brings forward their own altered world where vampires and zombies are very real, and their presence has permanently altered the history of the human race in FVZA. The FVZA, or the Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency, was assembled to hunt down and destroy the infected. When a working vampire vaccine was discovered in the 1960s, President Kennedy announced that the FVZA was to be disbanded. A former scientist and operative of the FVZA has isolated and trained his granddaughter and grandson to take up the battle if the undead return. When a surviving vampire plans to overthrow the human rule and create the United Vampire States of America, the FVZA is reformed to tackle the emerging menace.

Radical Publishing has halted production on its American Manga series Incarnate while they investigate claims of plagiarism against the series’ creator Nick Simmons, son of KISS founder Gene Simmons.

Radical Comics launched the series, which Simmons wrote and penciled, back in August and released three single issues, which were to be sold later this year in a collected volume. Read their full official statement regarding the allegations here below.

Earlier this week, accusations arose against Simmons on the GameFAQ forum stating that his artwork on Incarnate was copied from popular manga titles like Tite Kubo’s Bleach, which has sold over 50 million volumes worldwide. The Bleachness fan site posted side-by-side comparisons of the artwork from both titles to show similarities, and even superimposed the images. There’s also word balloons that show similar dialogue between the new comics.

The image at top is one of the examples from the Bleachness site [note, we do not have either source material to verify the claims]: on the left is a panel from Bleach; the center is a panel from Incarnate; the image on the right is a both of these images superimposed.

Hotwire; Requiem for the Dead
#3 of 4
Written, Illustrated and lettered by Steve Pugh
Created by Warren Ellis and Steve Pugh
Radical Publishing, Inc.
Cover price: $2.99; On-sale date: May 2009

“Blue-Lights have started to penetrate the suppressor fields into the cities and are possessing the living. The living are being turned into “Ghost-Bombs,” capable of enormous damage. When the dead threaten the living, you call the police and they have a department of One to take care of the problem. The Detective Exorcist, Alice Hotwire.”

This is the foreword on this Warren Ellis and Steve Pugh created miniseries. Newcomer Radical Publishing is producing this comic, based on a story by Warren Ellis, which, judging by the intense, strange, vivid world and equally traited characters, is not hard to believe. Steve Pugh is handling the rest of the series though, by writing, illustrating and even lettering this futuristic/technological ghost/zombie story.

It’s tough picking up what’s going on at the beginning of the book without having read the first two issues of the miniseries, so I recommend you do so before reading this ish. The scene does slowly evolve and it shines on some very unconventional future ghosts. Or are they the dead that have been brought back to life through artificial intelligence? That may be a fine line no matter what.