Forager
Written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti
Illustrated by Steven Cummings
Colored by Challenging Studios
Lettered by Bill Tortolini
Cover by Darwin Cooke
PaperFilms
Release Date: January 2014
Cover Price: $6.99 (Digital)

Humans are a curious species. We continually look to the stars and wonder what else might be out there. In Forager, a broken family not only ponders this concept, but is thrust into a situation that forces them to discover the answer. From Jimmy Palmiotti‘s production company, PaperFilms, comes an extraordinary graphic novel that delves into the heart of human nature and our longing for change and knowledge.

When a young, troubled married couple take their six year-old daughter, Ellie, on an outer-space cruise ship in hopes of working on their relationship as a family, Ellie begins to hear peculiar “singing” within her head. As a massive alien spacecraft — the first new race that humanity has ever encountered — hovers above the cruise ship, all on board soon realize that Ellie has become the vessel for the aliens to speak through. The events that proceed span almost a millennium as a handpicked crew of Earth’s finest travel galaxies in search of a viable new habitat.

Skullkickers #7
Five Funerals and a Bucket of Blood, Part 1
Story by Jim Zub
Art by Edwin Huang, Misty Coates
Cover by Chris Stevens
Variant cover by Steven Cummings and Espen Grundetjern
Image Comics
Price: $2.99
Street Date: May 25, 2011

How could you not love a comic book with a name like Skullkickers? It does bring up images of thick, steel-toed boots bashing in brains, splattering them onto the pavement, doesn’t it?

Well, if that’s what you’re expecting, it’s not what you’re going to get.

Skullkickers is a fantasy series, obviously heavily influenced visually and creatively by World of Warcraft and the Final Fantasy video game series. The story revolves around a pair of monster hunters: an alcoholic dwarf with an axe and a stoic bald warrior with a revolver. In the first six issues, the good Skullkickers are forced to travel from the village of Mudwich to do battle with necromancers, demons, living corpses, and giant primordial demon lords. As Five Funerals and a Bucket of Blood Part 1 opens in Skullkickers #7, the Skullkickers return to Mudwich celebrated heroes only to become wanted fugitives, embroiled in an assassination plot against the city’s nobility by a pointy-eared elfin killer and a pair of murderous fairies.