BIG IN JAPAN
GEHENNA IN TOKYO ONE-SHOT
LOOK HERE!
GEHENNA IN TOKYO is now available for order! This is a one-shot written by Marco Ferrari and myself and drawn by the incredible Atsuji Yamamoto. He’s among my favorite mangaka and I am grateful he agreed to do this one with us. Colors will be handled by Matteo Vattani who impressed readers with his work on GEHENNA: NAKED AGGRESSION.
The conceit of GEHENNA comics is there’s a contract on our hero’s life and it has been resold dozens of times, so it’s a game of whack-a-mole trying to catch up to the contract holder and kill them. In this one-shot she tracks the contract ownership to a yakuza family. Cue gunfights!
The covers on this one are spectacular and should give every reader a choice they’ll love. I'll talk more on those in the coming weeks. Call your comic shop, TODAY!
While you are on the phone with your comic shop, make sure you’re locked in for issue two of TIGRESS ISLAND! Monday is final order cutoff folks! That means, it’s now or never. Show us you meant it with issue one by staying with us to the end!
PAGES IN MY INBOX
I’m having a blast with this book!
THEMES
Rest In Peace to Sam Kieth. One of comic’s all-time best weirdos. An immense and singular talent.
THE MAXX was how most people knew him, and normally I’d honor a creator by posting about their creation. But this issue of THE INCREDIBLE HULK was how I first learned about him. And it’s still among the most visually arresting Marvel comics of all time.
MEDIA CONSUMPTION
Butchers Summit is(?) part of Trench Foot, which is(?) built in GZ or UZDoom. It’s basically grimdark Doom. And if you’re asking “isn’t that just Doom?” Think religious imagery and WWI aesthetics. It was fun and very difficult at times. RECOMMENDED.
The Big Racket is an incredibly fun and stupid Italian cop/crime/revenge movie. At the end he assembles the A-Team of aggrieved victims to help him wipe out the bad guys. It’s fantastic. BIG RECOMMEND.
Judd Hirsch as an abusive gypsy father? Count me in. I loved this movie. The whole time I felt like I was living in someone else’s shitty and dramatic life. I’m surprised it’s not talked about more. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
As you might imagine, this movie mostly stinks. But it’s better than the previous entry by a wide margin (cast has more charm). Watching it made me realize monster movie franchises have a terrible case of scope creep. The Aliens franchise sucks because now they are spores made by cosmic god beings or maybe they’re mold or something, I don’t know but it sucks. Same thing here. The graboids have multiple iterations (some walk now and some fly now) and it just sucks. Put compelling characters in an interesting place. Have a monster chase them. Done. Stop making new toys. LIGHTEST POSSIBLE RECOMMEND.
MARIAN HERETIC from Howard/Jaro is a very modern comic book. Nunsploitation without sex. Cleavage nuns teaching the reader a 2.5 wave feminist message. I could see this going over with the Gen Z kids who hate sex in movies. [I got murdered by some readers for having sexy GEHENNA covers without sex inside the book, so I’m throwing stones from a glass house here.] Overall, this just made me feel like a promising character design didn’t amount to enough. I would like to see Maria Llovet tackle the same milieu. I think I’ll start working on a nun book and we can do a book club through this Substack where we do BLOODY MARY, MARIAN HERETIC, and my book. I can’t recommend this one, but it could find fans among those who like their genre fiction PG-13.
I’d been wanting to check SANTOS SISTERS (Greg/Fake) out for awhile now and finally got my chance. This type of humor can be grating in high doses (Kyle Starks and Ryan Browne can both be a struggle for me) but I felt like the jokes could breath here and I really enjoyed myself. RECOMMENDED.
FROM THE DESIGN FOLDER
I purchased this from Rio Oka, an Indonesian artist who works primarily in metal band art. He’s one of several talented Indonesian artists who draw everyday and sell what they draw everyday. I have no idea what I’ll use it for (maybe a spot illustration in a crime comic; maybe album art), but it spoke to me.
THANKS
Order GEHENNA IN TOKYO one-shot and TIGRESS ISLAND 2 (AND 3, BUT 2 NEEDS TO BE ORDERED BY MONDAY)! Thank you for your support. Do for self. Tip me if you’re feeling it, but I prefer you buy books.
