May is almost upon us, which means it's time for another round of reviews, recommendations and general comics fun from your friends on Team Phoenix. This month's comics are brought to you by Sloane, Elise, and Nick! Read on and see if something catches your eye.

Free Comic Book Day Reminder!

This is your friendly reminder that our national comic book holiday (and store anniversary) is just around the corner! Set a reminder to yourself, circle May 3rd on your household calendar, tell your friends - basically do whatever you need to so that you remember! We'll have a full on post about this year's FCBD coming out Monday, April 23rd, so stay tuned!

Reviews and Recommendations

We'll kick off our reviews this month with a number of new series reviews brought to you by Sloane and Nick! If you haven't ever been a subscriber with us before, signing up couldn't be simpler. Just head over to the subscription page now, create a log-in and our catalog of comics becomes instantly available for you to order from!

Superman Unlimited #1

DC Comics

By Dan Slott (writer) and Rafael Albuquerque (artist)

Okay, so DC’s big upcoming push this month is the ‘Summer of Superman’ which kicks off with their Free Comic Book Day book and is gonna get followed up on by none other than Dan Slott of Superior Spider-Man fame and Rafael Albuquerque, artist of the Absolute Batman. Expect good solid Superman epic stories, the kind to get you excited for the upcoming James Gunn Movie in just a couple more months. Slott is an incredibly solid writer who never fails to impress me, and Albuquerque’s art is absolutely fantastic no pun intended. So maybe allow yourself to get a little hype for this. Stop by the shop on FCBD and grab a copy of the preview. Watch the teaser for the movie. Humm a little of the John Williams theme while you read it, and enjoy!

- Nick

Spider-Man and Wolverine #1

Marvel Comics

By Mark Guggenheim (writer) and Kaare Andrews (artist)

Are these two great tastes that taste great together? I have no idea, but this book is certainly going to be a lot. Whether it's a good lot or a bad lot, I have no idea! I'm just still stuck back here looking at the cover art and watching Wolverine practically flex himself out of his clothes and being mystified by how Spidey's arms could possibly bend like that. Truly, what could be inside this comical book?

More seriously - if you're a big Spidey fan, and you like Wolverine too (I mean who doesn't?), this book is probably gonna be a lot of fun for you. I'm not promising high art here, but I am certain it's going to be a good time and a fun read. 

Supergirl #1

DC Comics

By Sophie Campbell (writer and artist)

I swear to you I was not expecting to push two DC books this month, let alone two books dedicated to the ole House of El. But this book was just charmingly fun and it caught me off guard. It’s cute, funny, and has relatively low-stakes compared to the usual Super-family story fare. Plus it’s got cameos by Kandor, Streaky, Krypto, and a bunch of other silver-age weirdness that’s just sort of refreshing to read, and different from the more serious DC comics status quo right now. I’ve had a chance to read the preview, and it feels like a pretty down-to-earth Supergirl story by the artist and writer who brought us the comic book version of Jem and the Holograms, Wet Moon, and a ton of other stories. I loved it and I can’t wait for this to hit the shelves so that you can read and enjoy it too!

- Nick

Dark Regards #1

Oni Press

By Dave Hill (writer) and Artyom Topilin (artist)

One of the cool things about working at a comic book store is that we get lots of advance readers copies of books. Often they’re not really enough to change our minds about a book or convince us to read a book we wouldn’t otherwise care about, but every once in a while they do what they were sent to do and get us excited about something that wasn’t previously on our radar. Dark Regards is definitely one of those books.

It’s about a teenage kid who gets super into heavy metal records and starts emailing back and forth with a scandinavian death metal label accusing them of being posers and not into real metal like he is. It’s a fun tongue-in-cheek parody of metal culture, especially the metal culture of twenty or thirty years ago, that anyone who lived through it is sure to love. But people who were never metalheads (like me, for instance) are still going to find a lot to love here. It’s funny for one, and the art by Artyom Topilin (artist of store favorite I Hate This Place) makes this book a joy to read, with lots of little details and expressions, and panels that are just fun to look at. It’s just well made, with a creative team that seems to be working in concert at full capacity. Great for folks who want a slightly sillier version of recent smash hit Grommets, I couldn’t pull myself away from the preview we had here at the store, and I bet when it comes in you won’t be able to either.

- Sloane

One-Shots & Graphic Novels

This month Sloane and Elise found soooo many one graphic novels for you! So many in fact that Sloane had to condense a bunch of them into a single lightning round's worth of posting. Enjoy!

Spent

Mariner Books

By Allison Bechdel (!!!)

I feel like everyone who’s reading this probably already knows who Allison Bechdel is, so I’ll make this brief. She got her start doing the queer newspaper comic Dykes to Watch Out For in the ‘80s, and has since become one of the most lauded graphic novelists, just like. ever. All of her books are good, but probably her most famous is Fun Home, about her strained relationship with her father and her realizing she was a lesbian. It was adapted into a broadway musical, it gets taught in classrooms all over the country when it isn’t busy being banned for being gay, and after I read it I told a friend in college, “you know, I really relate to all this lesbian stuff. There’s just something about it.” (How I took another five years for me to finally come out I have no idea.) All in all a great book, deserving of all of the awards and praise it’s gotten.

Of course this is all just preamble to talking about her new book, Spent. This one snuck up on me – I didn’t even realize this was coming out, and looking online there’s not a lot of buzz about it, but now that I know it exists I’m super excited about it. The book is about a cartoonist named Allison Bechdel, who both is the Allison Bechdel we know from the real world and isn’t, who in anattempt to save the world from climate change and the country from an approaching civil war is writing a graphic novel about how greedy and privileged she is. The TV adaptation of her first novel makes her the envy of her friend group (who are themselves the characters from Dykes to Watch Out For), and she in turn envies her partner’s new social media fame. Wrapped in layers of meta-commentary and self parody, the book promises not just to be a treat for people who were fans of Bechdel’s previous work, but also anyone not sure what to do with the state of the world today, which. Lord knows that’s most of us reading this, isn’t it.

- Sloane

Royals

Image

By Derek Kirk Kim (writer) and Jacob Perez (artist)

Look. I love a heist story. You tell me there’s a new story about telepathic twins backed into a corner and forced to pull off an insane heist and I’m in! Twins Paul and Castor are hustling poker in Seoul, South Korea and with the help of thor telepathic connection they’re unbeatable. Or so they think until they’re caught red-handed and forced to work off their debt doing jobs for a ruthless crime syndicate. They’ll have to pull off a heist bigger than either of them could have imagined just to survive. 

Drawing on Kim’s love of “crime capers and Jackie Chan films” Royals promises high octane fun. Perez’s art is energetic and dynamic and I cannot wait to see the life this pair breathe into this book. I can’t find a ton of information about what else to expect from this book but it sounds right up my alley and I’m so excited to get my hands on it. 

-Elise

Big Burn HC

DSTLRY

By Joe Henderson (writer) and Lee Garbett (artist)

Like I said, I’m a heist person and at the end of the day if you promise a casino heist from hell, that’s all it takes to hook me. Luckily, The Big Burn has a lot more going for it than a concept on a stick. The creative team behind Skyward and Shadecraft has brought to life a heist powered by lost love and desperation that only a damned soul would dare attempt. 

The only thing more impressive than Owen and Carlie’s skill as thieves is their love for eachother. Until they get caught. Surrounded, with no way out, they get an impossible offer from the devil himself: trade their souls for their freedom. When they cut a deal and come out the otherside feeling empty, no longer in love the two deteriorate in very different ways. Carlie ends up institutionalized and Owen has a mountain of gambling threatening to send him on the express line to hell. When Owen decides to break into hell and steal their souls back he has to put together an impossible team of thieves and criminals who have all made similar deals and are the only ones crazy enough to try to rob hell. 

This book came out so slowly I feel like it lost a lot of momentum in between issues but I think it’s gonna be so much fun in trade where you blast through at breakneck speed (as you should). I’ve been preaching The Big Burn gospel since I wrote about it in our look aheads last May and I’m so happy to finally get to hold the completed series in my hands. 

- Elise

Saint Catherine

23rd Street Books

By Anna Meyer

Catherine is afraid something bad will happen if she stops going to church. In her 20’s Catherine has mostly moved away from her Irish American Catholic upbringing living a modern city girl life. She focuses her energy on balancing her relationships, work, and family but still never misses mass. She can’t shake the feeling that if she stops going some unnamed bad thing will happen. Until, one day, she decides to skip mass for the first time ever and something bad does happen… she gets possessed by the demon prince of hell. 

 Saint Catherine is a story about religious trauma, catholic guilt, and what it means to be good. 

I grew up in the church (albeit not the Catholic one) so the idea of pulling away from that life as you reach adulthood but still facing pushback from family and struggling with superstition and deeply ingrained thought patterns and cycles is familiar to me. I’m really curious to see how this book handles these topics and what happens with Catherine.

- Elise

Sloane’s Rapid Fire Graphic Novel Recommendation Corner For Messy L’il Lesbians and Other Assorted Angsty Girl-Weirdos

Okay so the last few months have honestly been a little light on stuff I’m excited for, but May looks fukkin’ STACKED in terms of cool new graphic novels. There are so many in fact that I don’t have space to do full write-ups for all of them, but I didn’t want to leave anything out so here’s some quick previews for some of the fun new OGNs and collections coming out in May.

Everyone Sux But You - Henry Holt - K. Wroten

This is a peak messy l’il lesbian comic. Two high school best friends who are sick of everyone and everything except for going to shows, moshing, and each other slowly realize there’s something there more than just friendship. It deals with the messiness of losing a parent, the realities of growing up queer in a small town, and what it means to be loved.

Motherlover - Iron Circus Comics - Lindsay Ishihiro

A collection of the entire webcomic Motherlover which is about, as you may have guessed, two moms who fall in love, and how they navigate their families, their feelings, and the rest of their lives. I love webcomics but prefer to read physically, so this collection is super exciting. The art is great and the vibes are wholesome, it’s exactly what I want from a soft, marshmallowy romance comic.

Raging Clouds - Fantagraphics - Yudori

Probably less fun than some of the other books on this list, this book is about a 16th-century dutchwoman and her husband’s slave trying to navigate a world dominated by men, the ways in which they are drawn together, and their plan to free themselves from their physically and sexually abusive husband. It’s Korean comics artist Yudori’s print debut and it promises to be both beautiful and poignant. (Big Portrait of a Lady on Fire vibes.)

Face Meat - Living the Line - Bonten Tarō

Not quite as girl-focused at the rest of this list, I just had to include this one because of how off the wall it is. Bonten Tarō was a Japanese ex-yakuza, ex-kamikaze tattoo artist who drew horror manga for trashy men’s magazines in the ‘60s and ‘70s, essentially pioneering what horror comics in Japan could be. Face Meat is a translated collection of some of the most exciting of those stories, and I’m so hype to flip through it when it comes in.

And that's a wrap on our May Comics Look Aheads! If you saw something here that caught your eye and want to subscribe or preorder it, head over to our subscription page now and get it ordered! Otherwise we'll be back towards the end of the month with June's Comics Look Aheads!