Polybagged: New Comics in Shops This... Month

For the weeks of October 13th, 20th, and 27th, 2021

Keeping up with comics has been challenging for the past month— October’s a hard month for teachers and teachers of teachers— but I’ve been wanting to spotlight some comics that I haven’t seen get much attention elsewhere, ones that I’ve been enjoying.

So yes, I’ve checked out the next installment of “Inferno” in the Hix-mutant world and yes, I’m tuned in to the goings-on in with Kal-El’s upcoming business trip yada yada. But these other books caught my eye this month.

Feedback! Send feedback! Is this the stuff you want to read on Comics Syllabus? I’ll follow up this with a Sunday Substack Comics Rack post and perhaps send both in a summary email together (so as not to clog your inboxes). If I was more efficient, I’d pace out these posts, but lemmetellya the weeks get crazy in #teachinglife. And as a writer, I’m…

via GoComics from “Peanuts” by… um… need it be said? CHARLES SCHULZ!

Week of 10/13/2021

I Am Batman #2

(DC) John Ridley (W), Stephen Segovia (A, CA), Rex Lokus (C), Troy Peteri (L), Olivier Coipel & Romulo Fajardo Jr. (CA).

The fact that I’ve heard so little about John Ridley’s “Next Batman” with various artists reinforces my sometimes-suspicions that I’m hanging around the wrong corners of the comics internet. (I don’t mean my homies at Multiversity, I just mean on social media and podcasts.) Are you seeing how good this work is? If not, a DC Universe Infinite subscription will let you catch up with most of the digital first “Next Batman” and the Future State comics where Ridley has given Jace Fox a supporting cast, a complex tightrope legacy identity, and a Magistrate-run Gotham that I’ve really enjoyed. Sprinklings of dystopic future, remixed Bat-mythos, sociopolitical engagement without ham-handedness, and morally complicated Bat-action have mixed well, better and better, in Ridley’s writing. Olivia Coipel’s art in issue #1 was a feast for my eyes, and Stephen Segovia follows up in this issue with more great art, which takes advantage of the greater space to breathe by these non-digital-first pages. A lot of those good elements come together in fine balance in this issue, and they compel me to push this book harder here. Check it out.

Compass #5

(Image) Robert Mackenzie & Dave Walker (W), Justin Greenwood (A, CA), Daniela Milwa (C), Simon Bowland (L), Eric Trautmann (D).

Although I read this 5-issue series as each came out, I both enjoyed each issue and still look forward to a re-read once it’s collected. Mackenzie and Walker write dense and finely-researched adventure, and this story that respects the worlds of these 13th-century Islamic and Central to East Asian characters in the very real meeting points we moderns rarely imagine (but certainly existed). The leads are historically rooted but also fully realized as personalities, and I LOVE the centering of these women adventurer-scholars who aren’t flattened by either Orientalist diminishment or anachronistic fantasy. Greenwood draws with a deceptively loose-looking liveliness, a line that fills every panel with vibrant energy that almost makes you take for granted the deft cinematic clarity and storytelling mastery of his art. “Compass” was not a quick read each chapter, but the subjects and stories deserved that heft of detail. And in the end, still gripping adventure.

Shang-Chi #5

(Marvel) Gene Luen Yang (W), Dike Ruan (A), Triona Farrell (C), Travis Lanham (L), Sunny Gho (CA).

Regular readers know Yang’s my favorite, and while people seem to have caught that the premise of this first arc of the ongoing “Shang-Chi” is a lot of fun (Shang-Chi has inherited leadership of his villainous father’s “Five Weapons Society”— the comics version of the movie’s “Ten Rings”— so his Marvel heroes/former allies all take turns tussling with him and his siblings), I haven’t heard anyone talking about the superhero redemption work that Yang and Ruan are continuing to do here, and how important that is. Yang’s been up to this his whole career, taking the often sordid cultural othering and orientalism of US comics past, and infusing new stories with subversive and redemptive elements that somehow manage to (a) honor the best of superheroes, (b) expose the laughable or lamentable brutalities of dominant culture representations of minoritized (especially Asian-heritage) peoples, and (c) tell brilliant counter-stories. To feature the Marvel flagship heroes— Cap, Spidey, the FF, Wolvie, and in this issue, Tony Stark— tripping over themselves to regulate the virtue-stained New Yellow Peril that Shang-Chi stands in for, greeted with respectful handshakes but background distrust… something feels utterly, disturbingly familiar about that for me as an Asian-American in different institutional spaces. As usual, Gene-ius.

Week of 10/20/2021

Catwoman: Lonely City #1

(DC) Cliff Chiang (W, A, C, L, CA)

Alright, this book is off the chain. C’mon, Cliff Chiang. You can be incredibly good at “your thing”… one of the best there is. But to venture with such modesty on the interview circuit into all these other domains that people say are NOT what you are— writer, colorist, letterer, top-to-bottom creator— and to completely WIPE THE FLOOR with those parts of the game… it’s not even fair. When “Catwoman: Lonely City” was announced, I felt 120% sure we’d be treated to phenomenal art, and about 70% sure we’d get a smartly-written, tightly-paced, well-crafted story with character and intrigue. Chiang didn’t just meet those odds, he put my doubts to shame. From the ambivalences in Selina’s world-weary POV to the Old Man Croc I never knew I absolutely needed in my life, the characterizations in this first issue are crisp, refreshing and surprising, yet totally true to our head canons. And I totally can’t wait to see how page-after-page of rewarding reading of this first issue unfolds into a four-issue arc.

Phoenix Song: Echo #1

(Marvel) Rebecca Roanhorse (W), Luca Maresca (A), Carlos Lopez (C), Ariana Maher (L), Nick Russell (D), Cory Smith & Alejandro Sánchez (CA)

In “Avengers,” Echo (the Maya Lopez character introduced in 1999) became the host of the Phoenix Force. A character we’re getting ready to see in MCU glory, Echo is cool AF, Native, deaf, and now holding incredible power. Roanhorse writes the character just as I would hope to see, by turns confident and rooted, and in other moments searching with uncertainty for a place. I’ve been both drawn to the character in the past, and a little skeptical or uncomfortable with how creators have almost made her blank signifier for externalized projections. Roanhorse is doing what Marvel’s always done best, bring us the internal tensions that are universally human without shedding the cultural and community particulars that are also key to our humanness. Maresca and Lopez on art look like a lot of good quality Marvel work, which doesn’t scream anything astonishingly new… and maybe I wish the character would also occasion stretching our aesthetic muscles a bit. But it does look good, and I’m glad to be pulling “Phoenix Song: Echo.”

Week of 10/27/2021

Adventureman #6

(Image) Matt Fraction (W), Terry Dodson (P, C, CA), Rachel Dodson (I), Clayton Cowles (L).

“Adventureman” returning with issue #5 was a delightful reading treat. After a long hiatus, reading the pulp adventure and then finding our main character NOT also reading that adventure in a book, but very much alive (and fighting!) in the story was a thrill. But in issue #5, a big world gets bigger and we meet a new character, Chris, or Crossdraw Kid, and BackMatter Fraction spills considerable nostalgic ink at the end of the book clueing us in to the artists-writer dialogue that brings the character about. “Adventureman” just shouts— in large type font!— “passion project,” where the creators get to be vocal and visual about what they love, what they regret, what they hope for. And in the same way these Substack comics let us see PLENTY of the creators’ thought process, I love how “Adventureman” essays make “Adventureman” comics more fun to read.

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