Comics for Grown-Ups in July's Graphic Novels

Graphic novels come in an array of of genres and styles and can tell any story imaginable — some of which are definitely not for kids. Image Comics’ July releases feature four titles that aren’t afraid to explore the dark side of life — or even have fun with it!

BAD DOG Volume 1: In the Land of Milk and Honey by Joe Kelly and Diego Greco
Two misfit bounty hunters incapable of catching a break, let alone a criminal, drink their way across the American Nightmare, hunting down the dregs of humanity...to find themselves. (That is, if by "find themselves," you mean drink, swear and generally make a mess of things.) Lou is a werewolf who despises people so much that he refuses to shift back into human form. Wendell is a vertically-challenged, gutter-mouthed ex-preacher with a hair-trigger temper. Two glorious bastards brought to you by beer-goggle visionary bon vivants Joe Kelly and Diego Greco.

CHEW OMNIVORE EDITION Volume Four by John Layman and Rob Guillory
A glorious hardcover collection with all the fixin's. Anthony and Antonelle Chu are fraternal twins. Tony and Toni. Each with their an extraordinary, albeit diametrically opposed, ability. Tony is Cibopathic, able to get psychic sensations of the past of anything he bites into or ingests. Toni is Cibovoyant, able to flash onto a vision of the future of any living thing she bit into or ingested.

Tony is alive. Toni is dead. Toni has been murdered. Tony has vowed to catch her killer. Toni is going to help.

Presenting a new storyline of the New York Times Best-Selling, Harvey- and multiple- Eisner-Award-winning series about cops, crooks, cooks, cannibals, and clairvoyants.

Chew is being adapted as an animated feature starring Steven Yeun (The Walking Dead) and Felicia Day (The Guild)!

MURDER ME DEAD by David LaphamHanging from the ceiling fan in their lavish Hollywood home. That’s where Steven Russell finds his estranged wife, a tear-stained note in her pocket pouring out years of pain and regret. Is it suicide? The police think so. But his wife’s rich and powerful family is convinced otherwise, and they’ll do everything in their power to make him pay. As Steven’s life is systematically destroyed by a lascivious private detective, a chance meeting with an old friend drives him back toward a simpler time when the world was full of hope—to a downtrodden neighborhood he had long left behind and a fateful reunion with a woman who loved him....

David Lapham’s love letter to classic noir takes you down the long, dark road of obsession, sex, betrayal, and murder. Peeling back the carefully constructed facades of each character, he exposes the true nature of their humanity and propels you toward a final, horrifying revelation.

Lapham was one of the most successful creators of the alternative comics “black-and-white boom” of the late 1990s. Murder Me Dead, first published in 2002, has been out-of-print, but Image Comics is bringing it back, along with Lapham’s seminal series Stray Bullets.

SEX VOLUME 2: SUPERCOOL by Joe Casey, Piotr Kowalski, Morgan Jeske, and Chris PetersonRetired superhero Simon Cooke has returned to Saturn City to live life as a "normal" civilian. Easier said than done! After a full-blown ten-year superhero orgy, life in Saturn City is getting even more complicated. And not only for the newly-"normalized" Simon Cooke; everyone seems to have their own kink to deal with. Just remember: morality may be subjective, but SEX is still great!

Sex got a lot of tongues wagging when it debuted in 2013, even being featured in Playboy. At Comics Alliance, critic John Parker wrote “this book is churning with psychological depth, sexual tension, mounting frustrations, and the specter of something big and awful threatening to happen any minute now. Everything is steadily welling up, and you can’t quite shake the feeling that things are going to get real, real bad when something bursts.”