A New Podcast for NRW’s Comic Fans
NewRetroWave’s Comic Book Editor just launched the first episode of NRW’s Comic Podcast. You can listen to the episode at the link below and read an abridged version of our editors thoughts here!
The Plot #3
The Plot has been one of the most pleasant surprises as a horror comic fan in late 2019. Written by Tim Daniel and Michael Moreci and drawn by Joshua Hixson, The Plot marries the aesthetics of 70’s horror with an intense gothic atmosphere and surreal sense of dread and tension. The truth of the family at the center of the comic slowly becomes unveiled, revealing a dark secret that has been looming over the family for generations. Dialogue and scenery itself add to the tone of this stand out book as you find yourself returning to a line one of the people in the town say midway through the comic in regards to the central family.
Everything they touch turns to gold. Everyone they touch turns to ash.
Ruby Falls #2
While Ruby Falls writer Ann Nocenti tends to be known for a certain kind of headiness in her writing — this is, after all, the same writer who made direct Noam Chomsky references in a Marvel book, and her recent title The Seeds is similarly steeped in critical theory — Ruby Falls has spent two issues dialing the scale back and giving readers an intimate view of a small town and a protagonist that feels relatable in both her strengths and flaws. Interestingly, with the second issue it becomes clear that those themes of media, and particularly, the framing and representation of media, are just as alive in Ruby Falls.
X-Men #2
Following the assassination of Professor X, itself an odd choice to happen in X-Force and not the main book, but hey I guess that pushes more titles., Hickman continues to embrace the emphatically weird angles of mutant storylines. Krakoa is moving towards another island that has mysteriously appeared and the world’s strangest father-children trio of Scott, Nathan, and Rachel Summers are all tasked with visiting that island and seeing what’s going on. When their, they have a very contrived fight with the High Summoner before the two islands merge in a pseudo-sexual framing.
Hickman is so very good at so many things, but one thing his X-books have revealed is that dialogue that is not for the purpose of exposition or the grand opera of something like Moira McTaggart meeting Charles Xavier in each of her lives is one of his week points. The casual dialogue between the Summers clan could be rearranged to give the lines to different characters and absolutely nothing about the scene would change. There’s some indicators, sure, like “son” being used by Cyclops, but there a certain artificiality to the banter that holds the book back, if only because its so weak in comparison to the more outlandish material that Hickman excels at. For the first time since Hickman took over, the art has surpassed the writing. Leinil Francis Yu’s art, particularly during the Summers interactions with the High Summoner, is some of the most memorable panels in a year full of memorable scenes from major and independent books.
