Weekly Treats! Fantastic Life

There's a theme of madness running through the releases this week - or is there?  Here's the run-through:

Kevin Mutch's Fantastic Life (Big If) arrives on the wave of some good reviews and was included in the recently published Best American Comics 2011 (HMH).  Sitting somewhere between the works of Daniel Clowes and Charles Burns it tells the story of a young slacker who begins to mentally go off the rails amid booze, drugs and visions of the undead.  It gains points a-plenty for never trying too hard to be cool or outrageous and not shying away from a warts-and-all protagonist.  There's a pretty fair appraisal of the book over at TheComicsJournal (see here).  For more on Mutch he has a website (see here) which includes the first 16 pages in colour (see here) though the book itself is in greyscale.

There's more sanity-questioning in Atmospherics (Avatar), written by Warren Ellis.  Originally published in 2002 in black and white this short graphic novella gets a water coloured update from the artist Ken Meyer Jr.  Inhabitants of a small town in America have been brutally slain, the only survivor is claiming that it was the fault of invading Aliens - the officials that arrest her are understandably sceptical.






Anyone enjoying Animal Man and Frankenstein: Agent of Shade should catch up on Jeff Lemire's post-apocalyptic-style epic: Sweet Tooth vol.4 Endangered Species (DC).  And Batman & Robin: Dark Knight, White Knight (DC) may be non-Morrison but features the likes of Paul Cornell.


Pick of the superhero collections for me though is Daredevil by Mark Waid vol. 1 HC (Marvel) although a mention should go to the glorious work of Paolo Rivera, ably backed-up by Marcos Martin.

And that leads us into the weeklies.  In Fantastic Four #602 Jonathan Hickman & Barry Kitson bring us cosmic battles and a host of guest stars.  Watch out for everyone's favourite planet-eater lurking ominously in the background.  Be sure to check out FF #14 as the companion piece.  Secret Avengers #21.1 presents a new direction for the title written by Rick Remender.  Arriving just in time for the January Justice League #5 finally brings the gang together to line up against no less than Darkseid.  In Justice League Dark #5 our misfits rally against Enchantress though one of them will fall in the process.  And spare a thought for poor old Superman #5 who has the whole world on his back.  Finally, Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred #1 (of 6) sees the return of the title that feels like the old 2000AD fed through a grinder and spewed out backwards.

 

There's a full list of titles under the Features tab.