“We’re #1!” – A Weekly look at new stories in Comics

Welcome back, everyone, to a look at some of the new and exciting voices and stories in the world of comics. Once again, we’ll take a look at some issue No. 1’s hitting the shelves this week, and look for gold among the gristle, so to speak. This week was a good one for powerful female role models in particular, so let’s dive right in.

First up is Fatima: The Blood Spinners by Gilbert Hernandez (Love and Rockets the comic, not the band; Palomar) from Dark Horse Originals. This black and white book with Hernandez’ distinctive simplified style is a tale of a world gone mad. Spin, the most addictive drug ever created, turns out to have a nasty side effect: it turns anyone who uses it – even once – into zombies! The title character, Fatima, is a high-powered femme fatale who may be the only woman who can save a slowly dying world. Her flashbacks in the first issue (after a slew of black and white zombie ass whoopin’) show us a rookie law enforcement officer and her first exposure to the zombie junkies who will one day destroy the world, while also hinting at her inner pain in the present. Fatima is deeply scarred but ultimately strong, and while this is a pretty simplistic character we’ve seen before, it’s nice to see that it’s a woman. Also, the simplified nature of the art makes her inner turmoil something that I don’t really demand to be revealed all at once, if only to watch her keep splattering rotted junkie-zombie brains everywhere. Not a comic I would normally pick up, being a sucker for super polished artwork, but I’m glad I did.

Speaking of strong female characters, get a load of the ladies that appear in the new miniseries Atomic-Robo: The Flying She-Devils of the Pacific No. 1 (of 5).  What a great title! While this is actually the 7^th volume of Atomic Robo stories (not to mention numerous appearances on Free Comic Book Day), this series was too good to pass up. It tells the tale of Atomic Robo (a robot with “automatic intelligence” invented by Nikola Tesla, acting as a hero and soldier since 1923) as he discovers a group of women fighting for freedom in the South Pacific in the days after WWII. These women – including the jet pack flying soldier Hazel, mechanical genius Lauren who’s like a mash-up of Mary Ann AND The Professor from Gilligan’s Island, and their Captain May Carter – have taken the Rosie the Riveter example and decided not to give it up, just because the war “ended”. While Europe is busy rebuilding itself, the South Pacific is awash with mercenaries and pirates, and these ladies, who chipped in on the war effort and found a new lease on their country’s life as well as their own, are not going home until it’s all cleaned up. The book, from Red 5 Comics, is one of the best examples of female empowerment I’ve seen in comics in a while, summed up in Hazels snarky response to Robo’s shock at discovering that she’s a girl, “Yeah. Sometimes that happens.”  These ladies don’t take shit, and Robo will have his hands full with them for a while, thankfully, as the miniseries runs 5 issues. I’ll be giving this one to my teenage step-daughters. Also, Robo thinks words like “Applesauce!” and “Horsefeathers!” are swear words, which is damned funny.

This week’s installment of the Watchmen prequel series Before Watchmen is Nite Owl No.1. Not nearly as engaging as it’s predecessor The Comedian, this series looks to mostly be a Nite Owl origin story, and serves to shed a touch of light on the early relationship (if you can call school boy fawning a relationship) between Nite Owl and the second Silk Spectre. Since we know this comes to fruition, it played as trite foreshadowing with little real value. The Comedian series suckered me into this book, as well as the first two beginnings, Minutemen and Silk Spectre, but I suspect I may find myself regretting it, as straight super-hero fare often bores me. Nite Owl, always viewed as a lesser Batman knockoff, holds little water, despite revelations of an abusive father figure and a quietly victimized mother who finds her inner strength a touch too late. Proof enough that all the installments in this series won’t be winners.

I was pleasantly surprised by the next book, The Hypernaturals No.1 by Dan Abnett (2000 AD) and Andy Lanning (The Sleeze Brothers)  from Boom Studios. This is a tale of super-humans known as Hypernaturals from a very distant human future. The Internet has morphed in to the “Quantinuum” and made self-aware, and now runs the galaxy in a totally Non-Big-Brother sort of way. The Hypernaturals are a pre-chosen team who serve 5 year terms saving the galaxy from, well, whatever, and the latest incarnation has gone missing on it’s first mission. Retired member Bewilder, now a supermodel and the PR face of the super team, puts together a rescue mission, including another female team member known as Halfshell. Bewilder is an interesting character: an older powerful woman, she fears she’s losing a step having fallen for a much younger (and now MIA) superhero, something which seems to frighten her more as an image issue and less as a tug on the heart strings. She’s a woman of power (both literally and metaphorically) who’s put her values in some wrong places, and it’ll be interesting to watch how she got here. Halfshell is a less evolved character but still an interesting one. Not the first to don a skimpy set of Iron Man-ish armor, she reveals that she was initially passed over for selection into the super team for not being thin enough, being “all hips and bits.” When she does appear in the Halfshell armor, she’s most certainly not quite the typical female body type we often see suited up in spandex. The tale itself is an interesting exploration of a universe that’s so full of disaster that it seems par for the course, and fun enough for at least one more issue’s read.

And lastly, we get to another No.1 that really isn’t: the first installment of the third Kick Ass series Hit-Girl No.1. Connecting the dots between Kick-Ass and Kick-Ass 2, this tale of the pint-sized super-vigilante has been much anticipated. The style remains top notch, seamlessly continuing the tale of a little girl with a deeply twisted upbringing as she tries to rediscover a little humanity. Hit-Girl, who can smell a rat in a pile of garbage and knows the streets like the back of her hand, has trouble when it comes to the most nefarious villains of all: the mean girls of 9^th grade. She promises to school her buddy Kick-Ass in the way of the warrior if he agrees to teach her how to “be normal.” This is where we get past all the delicious hyper-violence and get to some humanity, a welcome move for certain. Pick this up for sure, you won’t be sorry.

While this isn’t every No.1 that premiered on comics shelves this week, it’s a pretty fantastic week for new stories, I think. I was sadly unable to get my hands on a copy of Sullivan’s Slugger’s, a baseball/horror comic that was funded by Kickstarter, of all things, but it’s in the works, so keep checking back here.  In the meantime, Happy Reading!