A military sci-fi adventure begins this month in the pages of a new Oni Press comic book series created by Cullen Bunn. Rogue Planetis the next intergalactic journey of a crew similar to the Colonial Marines of the Alien franchise. Similarly bloody and also set among a world of strange fantasy world elements, readers will meet a hardened team as they awake from a long-term space sleep, and step right into a horror story. It’s not just a catchy title–their destination is a rogue planet, a planet not connected to any star or planetary system.
If you love comics and especially if you haven’t read a comic book in years then this Saturday’s Free Comic Book Day is all about you. See what you have been missing at comic book stores across the United States as shops hand out free issues of new comic books from your favorite franchises and publishers: Marvel, DC Comics, IDW, Archie Comics, Image, Dark Horse, Titan Comics, BOOM!, Oni Press, Aftershock, and more.
Marvel fans won’t want to miss out on the lead-in to the new Avengers comic book series discussed here at borg.com earlier this week. Doctor Who fans will find all-new stories featuring the 7th, 10th, and 11th Doctors and the first appearance of the 13th Doctor! Today is May the Fourth–the annual Star Wars Day, and tomorrow Star Warsfans can find Han Solo and Chewbacca facing off against Zuckuss and 4-LOM from The Empire Strikes Back in Star Wars Adventures. Riverdale features a story with Betty and Pop at the Chock-lit Shop. In all, 52 new FCBD stories will be available. Keep in mind not all stores will have every title available and most stores limit each person to five issues to meet demand.
While you’re there, take a look around at the shop and purchase a comic or graphic novel or two. Don’t know which one? How about New Ultimates: Thor Reborn, or Wonder Woman: The True Amazon? If you liked Avengers: Infinity War, ask to see the shelf of Thanos and Avengers titles. Getting ready for Ant-Man and The Wasp coming to theaters? Ask about all the available related titles. You don’t know who this Venom character is that Tom Hardy is playing in the new movie? Your comic shop can get you caught up for Venom. Do you like Batman, Miss Fury, the Bionic Man, Squirrel Girl, Spider-man, The Eternals, Ghost Rider, Ghost, Wolverine, Silver Surfer, Moon Knight, Liberty Meadows, classic Archie Comics, Guardians of the Galaxy, Green Arrow, the Shadow, Star Trek, Valerian and Laureline, or Katy Keene? Just ask, and someone will point you in the right direction. Giant trade paperback editions are much less expensive than you might think, and they can get you caught up quickly on years of content.
If you’re in the Kansas City area check out Elite Comics between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., where you’ll also find lots of deals, get your Avengers issue signed by writer Jason Aaron, and meet other creators–and there’s cake. Or use this comic book store locator to find your nearest participating shop. Here’s an advance look at all 52 covers from the FCBD 2018 comic books you will find Saturday, a look inside the pages at some artwork from the Avengers issue, plus a video about the event:
In many ways the spy protagonist Lorraine Broughton, played by Charlize Theron in this year’s action blockbuster Atomic Blonde, will be barely recognizable to fans of writer Antony Johnston and artist Sam Hart’s Lorraine Broughton, the heroine of the 2012 graphic novel The Coldest City. The most obvious change is certainly that Broughton is not drawn blonde in the pages of the comic, but the modifications go much further. Yet, if you can separate the source material from the film, both can be appreciated for the great stories and the visuals that both offer.
We reviewed the film Atomic Blondehere at borg.com back in August. The original Oni Press graphic novel is now available in a movie tie-in edition. Atomic Blonde is no doubt a catchy and excellent title, and matches the violent and dynamic tone of the film. But The Coldest City is also a great title, carrying its own clever double meaning. In the book’s pages Sam Hart draws a black and white spy story that echoes the bleakness of the Cold War territory Antony Johnston’s tale revisits. Top spy Broughton is serious about her job, she’s street savvy, and has years of experience when she’s brought in for a debriefing at the beginning of the story. Hart’s art style is striking, and like Jean-Marc Rochette’s artistry in his graphic novel Snowpiercer (reviewed here), the panels aren’t cluttered with detail, and he instead relies on simple, dark lines with shadows to emphasize the mood. From every angle The Coldest City is an engaging “end of the Cold War” story.
As different as Atomic Blonde appears to be from the graphic novel, the film is substantially faithful to its source. You might find the differences in the book and movie analogous to a comparison of the film version of Casino Royale starring Daniel Craig to Ian Fleming’s original novel (we reviewed that one here). The imagery is different but the author’s intent comes through, albeit in an updated package.
At the beginning of Daniel Craig’s first foray as James Bond in 2006’s Casino Royale, Craig redefined Bond as viewers were taken back to his first kill, the event that earned Bond his 00 status. The scene instantly set the standard for the modern fight-or-die scene. This is the exact level of hand-to-hand combat viewers will be treated to in the new summer release, Atomic Blonde. Charlize Theron terrifically portrays what everyone always wanted to see: a woman in the role of James Bond. Sure, she has a different name, but Theron is believable just the same as a spy being interrogated by heads of MI6 at the end of a mission. As she tells her story, in every way she convinces us that she could go head-to-head with, and maybe even knock out Craig’s tough and bloody version of the Brit master spy. Only don’t think this is a typical Bond movie. It isn’t. It’s layered, more like The Usual Suspects or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, only better–less cerebral and more fun. And Theron chalks up another badass cinematic heroine, resulting in a film that is easily worth the admission price.
Based on Antony Johnston and Sam Hart’s 2012 graphic novel The Coldest City from Oni Press, Atomic Blonde follows the original, focusing on several nations’ spies trying to recover a secret list of agents being smuggled out of East Germany just before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Theron plays Lorraine Broughton, a no-nonsense top-level spy, with attitude and style, battered and bruised from some recent epic encounter when we meet her at the beginning of the movie. She’s being interrogated and debriefed by both British and American agency heads, with John Goodman (Argo, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Big Lebowski, Monsters, Inc.) as the American and Toby Jones (Captain America: The First Avenger, Snow White and the Huntsman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Doctor Who) as the Brit. What unfolds is a smartly constructed Cold War thriller, more complicated than Ian Fleming but not as complicated as John le Carré, but enough so that it may lose viewers a few times along the way. Ultimately Broughton finds herself trying to smuggle out of the country a German officer who memorized the secret spy list, played by Eddie Marsan (Sherlock Holmes, The Illusionist, V for Vendetta, The World’s End). The rewards and payoffs come not only at the resolution but in several scenes along the way, as Theron punches, kicks, hammers, fires, splatters, mows down, stabs, punctures… everything but bites her way through dozens of bad guys trying to kill her. The violence is extreme, but it all works–it’s great fun much like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s or Chuck Norris’s blockbuster rampages in the 1980s–and it’s not gratuitous like a Quentin Tarantino bloodbath (blown-off heads aside).
The Atomic Blonde of the title comes from Broughton’s short, 1980s style hair, and that length allows us to see that much of the time Theron is actually doing her own punching, and taking plenty of punches, from all these men. She’s quicker, and she prepares herself for many of her punches and bruises by soaking in a tub of water filled with ice cubes–a concept that helps her more than once throughout the film. The story and action really kicks in as Broughton begins to smuggle Marsan’s character out of the country and as the steps are laid out in a subplot involving her mission to assassinate Satchel, a double agent known for selling secrets to the Soviets. It’s exciting like the real-life story told in Ben Affleck’s hit film Argo, where a spy smuggled a group of would-be hostages out of Iran in 1980. Atomic Blonde has less subtlety and nuance than Argo, but Atomic Blonde similarly displays an early, retro style of storytelling compelling enough to keep viewers interested. Does it feel like a comic book adaptation? Sure. Like History of Violence and Road to Perdition. In fact Broughton could be Hit Girl from Kick-Ass all grown up.
If you can’t make it to a comic book store today, why not try some digital comics? Four independent comic book publishers–Dynamite, Image, IDW Publishing, and Oni Press–are coming together to offer a low-cost entry into their critically acclaimed graphic novels, many reviewed here previously at borg.com. The pay-what-you-want “Bundle of Independents” features approximately $300 worth of books by some of the comic book industry’s best creators. Books in the bundle include titles by Howard Chaykin, Ande Parks, Garth Ennis, Greg Rucka, Andy Diggle, Peter Milligan, Jim Starlin, Jae Lee, Tim Seeley, Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen, Brian Wood, Rick Remender, Joe Hill, Sam Keith, Cullen Bunn, and many others.
This bundle showcases not only some of comics’ best creators but their original creations, and sales support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
The first tier is unlocked with a $5.00 minimum contribution, while a $12.00 minimum offers fans an additional batch of graphic novels, with even more available for a $25.00 or greater contribution. The more readers contribute, the more it allows publishers and creators to continue to make other comics available.
The $5.00 Tier includes eight comics and collections, valued at approximately $70:
· The Boys Vol. 1 by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson (Dynamite Entertainment)
· Revival, Vol. 1 by Tim Seeley and Mike Norton (Image)
As recently as August 2011, 40 years after a man hijacked a flight from Portland to Seattle, the legendary D.B. Cooper was the subject of a new lead in the FBI’s investigation of America’s only unsolved hijacking. An Oklahoma woman came forward suggesting that when she was eight years old her uncle revealed amassing the stolen fortune in the days after Cooper took $200,000 and a parachute and vanished over the Pacific Northwest on the November 24, 1971. In 1980 $6,000 of the bills washed ashore, found by a kid playing at a beach.
So did D.B. Cooper survive?
Writer/artist Brian Churilla suggests in his new mini-series from Oni Press that maybe there was something more sinister going on in the fall of 1971, and that D.B. Cooper was a trained assassin turned rogue agent of the CIA. Why the skyjacking? Cooper went on the run and the publicity was an effort to enlist the public to flush out and track down Cooper.
Far-fetched?
You bet! But that’s the stuff of good comic book action. In issue #1 of The Secret History of D.B. Cooper, Churilla goes off in even more bizarre directions, showing that Cooper also was a bit of a dream traveler like Dennis Quaid’s character in the 1984 cult sci-fi classic Dreamscape. And just like in Dreamscape, the government enlisted Cooper to murder targets in their sleep, stumbling through a frenzied dream world in the process.
Unlike Dreamscape, Churilla takes off in a surreal direction like something you might find in the pages of Animal Man, where reality is blurred with otherworldly elements, with Cooper using the resources of a one-armed teddy bear sidekick. Yes, that’s right, a one-eared teddy bear. With a sword even.
The above description might have the more mainstream audiences running for cover, but for those that like a good alternate history mixed with X-Files overtones, this series may be up your alley. A good introductory story, issue #1 suggests this independent publisher mini-series could get a foothold with readers of the big comic publishing houses. And it’s plain fun.
First, Animal Man is big right now, and the over the top, supernatural imagery of The Secret History should attract readers of that popular DC Comics series.
Second, Churilla picked a great hook using D.B. Cooper as his hero. In more than 40 years he is still thought of not like every other airplane hijacker of all time, but is constantly referred to as “an American folk hero,” achieving something of a mythic status like Jesse James and Bonnie and Clyde. The FBI has investigated over 1,000 suspects over the years, documented several deathbed confessions, a movie, The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper starring Treat Williams, and several non-fiction books. Yet, Cooper has hardly been used as the subject of a good, creative retelling.
Third, a buddy cop story where one buddy is a teddy bear. ‘Nuff said.
Fourth, like the popular NBC TV series Grimm, The Secret History takes place in the great Pacific Northwest, home of the X-Files and Twin Peaks, prime real estate for a creepy and cool supernatural detective story.
Finally, Churilla’s art and colors has a very Mike Mignola quality and the writing also reads like a Hellboy story from Mignola.
One alternate cover version is available, drawn by Batwoman writer/artist J.H. Williams III.
