If you read the last post, you know what’s going on. Here are another five wild, no-holds-barred adventure comics:
THE MIDAS FLESH
Remember the Greek myth of King Midas, who turned everything he touched into gold? Well, imagine space rebels and an evil intergalactic federation trying to get hold of Midas’ dead body in order to weaponize this odd power. Now imagine action-packed chases, explosions, betrayals, dismemberments, planetary genocide, and plenty of conversations about (fake) science and complex moral choices with far-reaching implications.
Does this sound too grim and serious? It’s not. Ryan North keeps a comedic tone all the way through while at the same time continuously escalating the stakes and hardly giving readers room to breathe between each edge-of-your-seat set piece. With crisp, lighthearted art by Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb, the comic does a particularly great job of establishing three very likable heroes (well, two heroines and one talking dinosaur) who are a joy to read even as you may question some of their actions and their casual attitude towards all the horrible shit that goes down.
What The Midas Flesh lacks in pathos or common sense, it makes up for in intelligent, riveting fun!
NIKOLAI DANTE
Yeltsin’s liver! In a 27th century where the Russian Empire dominates the planet, Nikolai Dante is a swashbuckling thief who never misses a chance to humiliate the imperial elites… and to get laid. While this hard drinking, brawling, womanizing hero at first veers uncomfortably closer to Pepé Le Pew than to Errol Flynn, for the most part his energy and panache more than make up for it.
The same can be said of the comic itself: individual vignettes and stories can be hit-or-miss, but the whole is an impressive, sprawling epic of love and war that blends Robin Hood, D’Artagnan, Scarlet Pimpernel, and Zorro with Eisensteinian iconography… and then throws it all into a fantastical world of cyborg aristocrats. The gorgeous visuals, by several talented artists (mostly Simon Fraser and John Burns), wouldn’t look out of place in a futuristic sequel to Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
During the 15 years that Robbie Morrison wrote the series, he populated it with all sorts of offbeat ideas, like a fanatical cult devoted to Rasputin (where even the women grew large beards) and a version of China that dealt with overpopulation by developing an equation which shrunk all its citizens. And after so much shameless folly, Morrison somehow still managed to deliver a genuinely moving ending.
SIX-GUN GORILLA
A suicidal reality TV show. An interdimensional colonial war in a strange world without combustion. A sarcastic primate who wears a poncho and packs a couple of humongous revolvers. This book has it all.
But while that description may make it sound like just a bunch of awesome concepts thrown together, the result is actually much more thoughtful and emotionally engaging than a comic called Six-Gun Gorilla has any right to be. Simon Spurrier’s clever, satisfying story manages to top his work in Numbercruncher. Meanwhile, Jeff Stokely is asked to draw some truly outlandish stuff, and boy does he deliver like a motherfucker.
Satirical, fantastical, and brazenly metafictional, Spurrier’s and Stokely’s high-octane tour de force is a stirring love letter to pulp narratives.
WILD BLUE YONDER
When radiation and pollution consumed the Earth, humanity took to the skies, and it is now engaged in a brutal aerial war. With a hard-hitting post-apocalyptic neo-western vibe, this is basically Mad Max in the clouds (albeit more the visionary action craft of The Road Warrior than the amazing insanity of Fury Road). That said, not only does Wild Blue Yonder deliver all the white-knuckle dogfights and explosive jetpack-driven violence you’d expect from such a premise, it wisely anchors the story on some strong character work, making us feel for the people inside the aircraft. In that sense, there’s some of those great Howard Hawks pilot dramas (like Ceiling Zero and Only Angels Have Wings) in there as well!
Mike Raicht, Zach Howard, and Austin Harrison share story credit for this nifty comic. Yet Howard’s art is the main star here, in no small degree due to Nelson Daniel’s gritty colors, which give what could’ve been a silly world an impressive lived-in feel.
WITCH DOCTOR
Finally, I just can’t recommend this one enough. Drenched in humor, horror, and medical jargon, Brandon Seifert’s and Lukas Ketner’s Witch Doctor is a hoot.
The easiest way to describe it is basically House with supernatural medicine. The comic follows the misadventures of Dr. Vincent Morrow, occult physician. He is just as brilliant and arrogant as Hugh Laurie’s character, only his diagnoses and methods are even more outrageous (including slashing up diseases with the Excalibur sword), which is understandable since he’s dealing with patients whose conditions involve actual demonic possession and vampiric infection.
And just wait until you meet his freaky assistant!