Nightmares Illustrated 022 Rip Your Hearts Out

by Wayne Edwards (Feb 10, 2012)

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Top Five Picks…Buy These Right Now.

1. Monocyte #3 (IDW).

2. Venom #13 (Marvel).

3. Resurrection Man #6 (DC).

4. Moon Knight #10 (Marvel).

5. Conan the Barbarian (Queen of the Black Coast) #1 (Darkhorse).

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DC has just announced (at this writing, second week of January) its “Second Wave,” referring to what comes after the NFT (I pledged last year to stop using the marketing phrase DC adopted for its universe-wide reboot so now I have to write “NFT” instead). What comes after…hmm…what they have done here is cancel six of the NFT and started up some newer ones because those cancelled weren’t selling well. We all had to see this coming (I mentioned it would happen, the cancellation of some lines, almost a year ago). And it is also not “after” the NFT, either, it is in the middle. It is cut-the-losses time.

The bad news is they axed O.M.A.C., and just as I was finally reading and enjoying it. Number eight is the last issue so grab them while you can. Of the six cancelled books, O.M.A.C. was the only one I read, and I only started reading it because of the Frankenstein crossover of issue #5. Now I am sorry to see it go. But that is the way of the marketplace, ladies and gentlemen, profit is all that matters. It is sometimes a bitter pill to swallow when the commodity is art.

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Eerie Archives Volume 9 (Dark Horse). I just realized I have now spent about $450.00 on the Eerie Archives series, and it is less than half finished. It makes me wonder who is buying these gigantic books. Are there really that many people who are as crazy as me out there to warrant continuing the series? I hope so, because they are a thing of beauty. Issues 42 through 46 are in volume nine. If you are a fan of horror comics from the 1970s and you can afford it, these books are fantastic, high-quality reprints of the originals. The original comics are nice to have but they are expensive themselves, they aren’t usually in very good shape (being printed on pretty cheap paper in the first place), and they are a pain to store because they are magazine size and don’t fit in standard boxes. The archive series is an excellent alternative. I don’t know if Dark Horse will ever publish paperback versions of the series (I hope so), but even if they do it will likely be years before it happens because, well, you know, they are trying to sell these $50 hardcovers. If you have the cash, this project is worth your support. Recommended.

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Artifacts #1-13 (Image). I was going to write that I couldn’t possibly be more disappointed with the resolution to the Artifacts event. I’m going to pull back a little on that for fear that one of the major comics companies will find a way to do something even worse. Let me sum up the entire purpose and result of the Artifacts universe-wide crossover event: REBOOT. Son of a bitch! DC. And Marvel. Now Top Cow? Son of a bitch. You guys really cannot find a way to continue the story with the rich world and characters you have? You really can’t control the continuity any better over the months and years so that there is some other choice than to restart the goddamn world altogether? Why do I even bother to read comics? I take that question more and more seriously every time there is a reboot.

So, the current world is destroyed when all thirteen artifacts come together and the new world is reborn, similar to the old current but a little bit different. Wow. What an original idea. My hat is off to you guys. Where do you come up with this stuff, huh? It is hard to type with my head in my hands.

So, anyway, “Artifacts” is going to continue as a regular series now and the reboot kicks in with The Darkness and Witchblade starting with issues #101 and #151, respectively. Ah, who cares…I was very excited by the Image/Top Cow crossover event with the hope that it would somehow be different from what DC and Marvel always do. But then it wasn’t. I enjoyed Artifacts up through the end and the gigantic disappointment, so I will say it is worth reading the event, especially if you can ignore it portends. Pick up the collections if you haven’t read the comics yet. Who knows, maybe the continuing series will be good, too. It is just that given what they had to work with – the amazing idea of bringing the thirteen artifacts together and what could come of that – what they finally did was pedestrian. I expected a lot more out of Ron Marz.

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Monocyte #1-4 (IDW). I have been passive-aggressively listing Monocyte for a couple of issues and I will do it again next time. This comic is astounding. The artwork is unbelievably creepy and beautiful. Menton3 (sometimes Menton3) is the artist, and Menton3 shares the writing and creation credit for the comic with Kasra Ghanbari. Who are these people? I looked around a little. According to http://menton3.deviantart.com/ Menton3 is Menton J. Matthews III. Clearly a painter, and also implicated in the musical endeavors of Saltillo, whose second album (is that word/concept still in use?) comes out in February as a soundtrack to Monocyte. Kasra Ghanbari has a Facebook page but I fucking hate Facebook and positively refuse to visit any of its pages. Ghanbari apparently runs two blogs, VEI Studios (http://veistudios.blogspot.com/ ) and Ecologically Naïve (http://ecologicallynaive.blogspot.com/ ). “Blog.” I am getting distracted. Whatever happened to all the fun in the world?

Wherever these two come from and whatever else they might have done, Monocyte is amazing. It is one of the best horror comics I have read in a grand long time. If you are not reading it then you are really missing out. The artwork is elegant suffering. The writing is piercing and barely contained on the pages. Highly recommended.

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Buy These Too…

Dark Tower The Gunslinger: The Battle of Tull (Marvel). These Dark Tower comics are usually pretty goofy, but I love the original books so much I keep reading every new comic that comes out. My judgment in this regard is impaired.

Lady Death Volume 1 (Avatar). The first six issues of the newest incarnation of Lady Death is hereby collected. The artwork is simple yet beautiful, especially the coloring. Buy this at once!

The Stand: The Night Has Come (Marvel). More Stephen King derivations. The Stand is a great  novel (and here I refer to the originally published, edited version, not the unexpurgated version, which I find a bit rambling). Everybody likes a good Armageddon story, right? And this is the final act, too. Recommended.

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