Every week I write about the most interesting new comics hitting comic shops, bookstores, digital, and the web. Feel free to comment below if there's a comic you've read recently that you want to talk about or an upcoming comic that you'd like me to consider highlighting.
1. PTSD: The Wound That Never Heals
By Leela Corman
Nautilus
The description of Leela Corman’s short but powerful comic essay published this past week in the online magazine Nautilus reads, “Coming back to life after losing my first child.” That phrase is like a punch to the gut, yet there's a sense of hope. Corman uses the tragedy in her life—the unthinkable passing of her 1-year-old daughter—and her long road of dealing with that trauma to explore the science behind Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. At the beginning of each month, Nautilus picks a subject and then every week publishes a new chapter containing multiple articles and fictional stories exploring that subject. April’s subject is “Dominoes,” the way one thing in life can lead to another.
Corman has previously published a comic in Tablet Magazine called “Yahrzeit” in which she compared dealing with her own tragedy to how her grandfather dealt with losing his entire family in the Holocaust. Corman’s husband Tom Hart is also a cartoonist and has been processing their daughter’s death himself through a series of webcomics called Rosalie Lightning. It is incredibly brave how both Hart and Corman are willing to publicly share this process. What Corman does with PTSD is something that victims of any trauma—from soldiers to victims of violent crime—can hopefully find helpful and inspiring.
You can read PTSD here on Nautilus.
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2. The Realist
By Asaf Hanuka
Archaia/Boom! Studios
Israeli cartoonist Asaf Haunka is best known in the States for his collaborations with his twin brother Tomer, particularly on their wildly experimental comic Bipolar. In Israel, Asaf is well known for his autobiographic strip comic The Realist, which has been published weekly in the Israeli business magazine Calcalist since 2010. Archaia (now part of Boom! Studios) has just released a hardcover collection of these strips, showcasing Hanuka’s gift of metaphor and his willingness to tap into his dark side to get at some universal truths.
The Realist mostly focuses on Hanaka’s life with his wife and son, navigating some relatable daily trials (being an over-protective parent, marital spats, smart phone addiction, having a new baby) as well as some that are very specific to life in Israel (finding an apartment in Tel Aviv, living with the fear of nuclear annihilation). What makes The Realist so great is how each and every strip is visually creative, and also Hanuka's unflinching willingness to expose his flaws and personal turmoil. When depicting arguments with his wife and the way he emotionally detaches, he shows self-realization in a visually elegant yet raw manner that most people making diary comics strive to achieve. (One beautiful illustration shows him as an astronaut while his wife breaks down in front of him.)
Here’s a preview of just some of the great pages in this book.
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3. Uncle Scrooge #1
By Jonathan Gray, Rodolfo Cimino, and Romano Scarpa
IDW Publishing
Everyone knows Disney owns Marvel now, so it may be counter-intuitive to learn that IDW is poised to launch a line of Disney comics featuring the likes of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Donald’s cantankerous, billionaire uncle Scrooge McDuck. While Marvel has recently began publishing comics that center on various park attractions like Epcot’s Figment and Adventureland’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the license to the characters has recently changed hands from Boom! Studios to IDW (both are publishers that have come to specialize in developing excellent comics from licensed properties).
The first of IDW’s new Disney comics will be Uncle Scrooge, which arguably carries the biggest comics legacy. Dating back to the 1940s, legendary cartoonist Carl Barks created some of the greatest kids' comics ever during his run on Uncle Scrooge (these, as well as some also excellent work by Don Rosa, have been getting high-end archival treatment from Fantagraphics over the past few years). Although IDW’s new series will begin with a new #1 issue, the legacy numbering (#405) will be listed on the inside cover. In another mix of old and new, IDW has brought on fan-favorite Jonathan Gray to translate popular stories drawn by the late Italian Disney comics master Romano Scarpa.
Here’s a preview of the first issue.
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4. The Death Defying Doctor Mirage
By Jen Van Meter and Roberto de la Torre
Valiant Entertainment
Valiant Entertainment has been doing an amazing job building a new comic universe over the past two years by reviving their super-powered concepts from the 1990s. The success of relaunches like XO-Manowar and Harbinger show how strong those underlying concepts were.
Their latest concept to return to the page is The Death Defying Doctor Mirage. It re-imagines a short-lived series from 1993 that was ahead of its time in terms of diversity with its mixed-ethnicity husband-and-wife psychologists Hwen and Carmen Mirage, who investigate paranormal activity and the afterlife. Jen Van Meter and Roberto de la Torre have made substantial changes in their version: Hwen’s wife is now Shan, and Hwen has died, meaning he is not really the “Doctor” of the title. When we meet Shan Fong, she is a popular TV clairvoyant who helps people communicate with dead family members; however, her secret is that she is unable to make contact with her own deceased husband. When she takes on a job that involves entering the afterlife, it may be her best chance yet to make contact with him.
There is a sadness that pervades this story, mostly due to the gritty realism of de la Torre’s artwork which has a similar feel to John Paul Leon or Alex Maleev. However, the tragic realism of Shan’s longing mostly gives way to lots of supernatural antics that will be more appealing to fans of magic in the Dr. Strange-style. Still, stick around to see if Shan finds what she is looking for.
Here’s a preview from the first issue of Doctor Mirage.
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5. Convergence Week 3
By Various
DC Comics
Each week during DC Comics’ Convergence event, they are pre-empting their regularly scheduled comics with special Convergence editions featuring characters who have been erased from continuity. Week one stepped back only a couple of years to show characters that existed before 2011’s Flashpoint reboot. Last week took us to 1994’s Zero Hour, and this week brings us back to the grandaddy of all reboots: 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths. Thrown in the mix are heroes from 1997’s Tangent Universe which featured DC characters that existed in a universe greatly altered from our own due to the way their own existence influenced world events. Some of the comics we’ll see this week are:
• Convergence Flash starring the classic Silver Age version of Barry Allen.
• Convergence Justice League of America in which the less-than-impressive Justice League Detroit faces the heroes from the Tangent Universe.
• Convergence Swamp Thing featuring the pre-Alan Moore version of the character returns written by original creator Len Wein.
• Convergence Superboy & the Legion which brings back one of the many versions of the Legion of Super-Heroes we’ve seen over the years.
• Convergence New Teen Titans in which writer Marv Wolfman returns to DC’s most popular comic from that era.
• Convergence Adventures of Superman guest-starring the headband-sporting Supergirl who famously died during Crisis.
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