October brings an exciting lineup of new stories at Image Comics, and to help introduce them Kieron Gillen has lended his talents to share his perspective. As the writer of The Power Fantasy and DIE, Kieron knows firsthand what it means to launch bold new work at Image. Below, he offers a look at the upcoming titles arriving this month and the creative voices behind them.
Author Immortal is a love letter to literature-as-magic-portalfantasies like The Unwritten and The Magicians and hatemail to YA authors who use their fortune and power to make life hell for marginalised people. This story could easily have been dialectic inlesser hands, but Frank J. Barbiere (Five Ghosts, Violent Love) centres messy and daringly unlikeable humans and Morgan Beem (Swamp Thing: Twin Branches) creates enchanting watercolour art which makes the magic beautifully and petrifyingly real.
It’s a bad time to be a Mexican. The time in question is. Death to Pachuco is rooted in the real L.A. history of the Zoot Suit riots and the Sleep Lagoon Killer. This is a self-described Chino Noir. Henry Barajas (La Voz De M.A.Y.O.: Tata Rambo) and Rachel Merrill (IZZY N JEAN, The New Yorker) do the work here, taking us to a different time, showing what it was like, and how it wasn’t so different a time after all.
In Hector Plasm: Hunt The Bigfoot roaming ghost-hunter Hector Plasm hunts the Bigfoot, even though that’s well out of his area of expertise. Maybe ghost-Bigfoot will turn up before the end? This is the first of the Hector Plasm stories I’ve read, and Benito Cereno (Blood & Thunder), Derek Hunter, and Spencer Holt confidently drop you into a vivid world that balances the cartoonishly quirky and the surprisingly grounded. I certainly didn’t feel lost just jumping aboard.
In Spawn: The Dark Ages the king of the Britons, Aurelianus, has problems with the Picts, the Saxons, the Hibernians and some kind of rival monarch who is a pagan Devil Spawn. All I’ve seen of this one is Liam Sharp’s pages, which is basically all I need to see. Liam (Starhenge, Green Lantern) has been carving a space – with a battle-axe – as one of the best fantasy artists working today, his art seemingly actively classical in its grandeur.
Good Devils: Don't Play Fair with Evil compiles three short stories from David Brothers (Time Waits) and Nick Dragotta (East of West, Absolute Batman) and just goes off. Absolute Batman is obviously great work, but if you want to see what Nick does for the love of the game? It's here, and everything is brutal, thrilling, funny, messy and pure comics. It’s a stolen muscle car of a -page special that will reward your time with the finest face punches anyone could wish for.