We’re continuing our ten-year celebration of borg today with our favorite comic books. If you missed them, check out our Top 40 movies here and our Top 40 TV series here.
We reviewed thousands of books and comics that we recommended to our readers since June 2011, and some even made it onto our favorites shelf. We don’t publish reviews of comic books that we read and don’t recommend, so this shortlist reflects 21 comics and creators we view as the Best of the Best.
So let’s get going!
Who doesn’t love a modern team-up of classic characters from the Golden Age of comic books? The latest, Project Superpowers, is arriving at comic book stores Wednesday. It’s a great start to another superhero team, in an ocean of superhero teams available. Taking only a little inspiration from Watchmen, instead of creating new characters it features actual superheroes from comics of the past banding together again: The Green Lama, Masquerade, The Mighty Samson, Black Terror, The Scarab, The Death-Defying Devil, and more. If you’re a fan of the storytelling of Suicide Squad’s Rob Williams, and agree Legenderry’s Sergio Davila knows how to draw great superhero books, Project Superpowers should be next on your comic book store pull list.
A different tale than Alex Ross’s 2008 resurrection of dozens of heroes in his Project Superpowers series, the story is updated for today, albeit pulling a few superheroes from the earlier series. Dynamite Comics is publishing seven variant covers in all for the first book in this latest series with the Project Superpowers title, by Francesco Mattina, Ed Benes, Philip Tan, JG Jones, Stephen Segovia, and more. “An all-new threat faces the Earth, while the team faces turmoil from within and must overcome all obstacles to prove their worth and value in a world that desperately needs its heroes.”
A new superheroine is about to be called to duty. Here is a preview of the first issue and variant covers from the new Project Superpowers, courtesy of Dynamite Comics:
Hey, looks like we made it!
Five years ago today, Elizabeth C. Bunce, Art Schmidt, Jason McClain, and I had already spent a few months talking through the technical details for the launch of borg.com. What should it look like? What should we write about? How do we get to there from here? Then it all came together on June 10, 2011, and I sat down and just started writing. Should this be a weekly thing? Once I started I just couldn’t stop and we cemented borg.com as a daily webzine. And readers started showing up every day. Soon we had hundreds of followers, and hundreds of thousands of visits per year.
The best part? Working with friends and meeting new ones each year.
We’ve had plenty of high points. Cosplay took off in a big way in the past five years. Elizabeth and I hit the ground running at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2011 with our Alien Nation/Chuck mash-up and you can find us all over the Web in photos taken by others at the show. Our years were dotted with the random brush with coolness. A retweet by actress Alana de la Garza, coverage of Joss Whedon visiting the Hall H line at 3 a.m. outside SDCC in 2012, Zachary Levi calling out Elizabeth for her cosplay at Nerd HQ, interviewing the stars of History Channel’s Vikings series, our praise for the Miss Fury series appearing on the back of every Dynamite Comics issue one month, tweets from Hollywood make-up artist family the Westmores commenting on our discussion of Syfy’s Face Off series, our Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (negative!) review featured on the movie’s website, that crazy promotion for the Coma remake mini-series, planning the first Planet Comicon at Bartle Hall and the Star Trek cast reunion, attending the first Kansas City Comic Con and the first Wizard World Des Moines Con, hanging with comic book legend Howard Chaykin, Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Famer Darryl McDaniels, cast members from Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and Star Trek, bionic duo Lee Majors and Lindsay Wagner. And borg.com gained some well-known followers (you know who you are) along the way.
We’re grateful for some great Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and other feedback over the years from Felipe Melo, Mickey Lam, Michael Prestage, The Mithril Guardian, Francesco Francavilla, Adam Hughes, Judy Bunce, Mike Norton, Jack Herbert, Mike Mayhew, Rain Beredo, David Petersen, Rob Williams, and Matt Miner, and for creators we interviewed including Mikel Janin, Penny Juday, Tim Lebbon, Kim Newman, James P. Blaylock, Freddie Williams II, Jai Nitz, and Sharon Shinn.
What did readers like the most?
We amassed an extensive archive of hundreds of book reviews, movie reviews, reviews of TV shows, and convention coverage, thanks in part to the good folks at Titan Books, Abrams Books, Lucasfilm Press, Weta New Zealand, Entertainment Earth, Dynamite Comics, IDW Publishing, Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics, BOOM! Studios, and several TV and movie studios and distributors.
My own favorites? Sitting down to come up with my own five all-time favorite characters with the borg.com writing staff.
Thanks to my family, my friends, especially my partner in crime Elizabeth C. Bunce, Art Schmidt and Jason McClain, my support team, and William Binderup and the Elite Flight Crew.
Onward and upward!
C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com
When I was a kid my favorite comic book monthly was the original Star Wars series that continued the adventures of Luke, Han, Leia, and the rest of the gang beyond “A New Hope,” meandering in and out of continuity through beautiful adaptations of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. They even had an early issue before TESB called “The Empire Strikes.” They created one of the best Expanded Universe characters to come along until Mara Jade and Grand Admiral Thrawn with one of our favorite borgs, The Hunter. After years of reading I finally bought a subscription. My first issue? Issue #107.
If you are familiar with that Marvel Comics Star Wars line, you know that 107 was the final issue of the series. Along with my first issue in the mail of Star Wars came a postcard with those dreaded words for fans of comic books and a message on the cover: “Last Issue.” So much for my subscription.
Hey, why is everyone smiling?
So it was with a certain raised eyebrow that I learned this month that my favorite series, Dynamite Comics’ Miss Fury, that time travelling superheroine story with mobsters and Nazis and parallel Earths, is cancelled. Tomorrow, comic book stores around the country will be selling Miss Fury, Issue #11, wrapping up Marla Drake’s story, at least for now.
I admit that when such things happen my mind’s eye recalls a headline (over a much more serious event) from decades ago on a street corner newspaper stand from the New York Post with the simple but effective boldface headline: “Bastards!” In this case I mean this in the nicest possible way, of course. Some titles get readership, some don’t do as well. Economics determine what goes and what stays. But keep in mind Miss Fury is a character who just celebrated her 73rd birthday. As Arnie might say, “She’ll be back.”
So here is a preview from the beginning of the end, Miss Fury, Issue #11, courtesy of Dynamite Comics:
The borg.com selection for best comic book series of 2013, Dynamite’s Miss Fury, continues to be an action-filled series in 2014, full of time travel, parallel histories, and an update to a classic and nostalgic superheroine. Add to that mobsters, Nazis, the Philadelphia Experiment, atomic age scientists, and an interstellar timeship, and the result is just plain fun.
Writer Rob Williams, artist Jack Herbert, and colorist Ivan Nunes have merged the future with the past, and thrown in some new, cool, supervillains on par with Deathstroke and the pantheon of bad guys from the Arrow TV series. Stuck out of time, Marla Drake has met and killed herself, and now she is forced into continuing to be an assassin to try to save a man from her past. But violent recurring, mind-numbing headaches are catching her off-guard, the result of popping across time. Can she take control of her actions and stop the madness before her own time is up?
After the break is a preview of Miss Fury, Issue #10, courtesy of Dynamite Comics:
Sassy, smart, and seductive. It applies to Marla Drake, the Miss Fury of the 1940s and of today in Dynamite Comics’ time-hopping series Miss Fury. And it applies to Drake’s masked persona and the series itself. Writer Rob Williams and artist Jack Herbert have provided their response to the much-lauded Batwoman team of J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman. And just as the Williams III and Blackman team-up created one of the best comic book series in its first year out of the gates, so has team Williams and Herbert with their first year of Miss Fury.
Catsuits and pointy ears aside, Miss Fury is a unique take on the world’s first superheroine. Writer Rob Williams concocted the surprise hit of the year–a book that might not have been on pull lists yet it was swiped off the store shelves every week as readers couldn’t get enough of the series. Among many classic titles emerging from the publisher known for licensed works from the past like The Shadow, the Green Hornet, and the Bionic Man, Miss Fury is a non-stop, action-filled, fun read–it’s a comic book series that will remind you why you love comic books in the first place.
As a comic book artist that excels at the feminine form, Brazilian artist Jackson “Jack” Herbert is well on his way to becoming the next Adam Hughes. His Marla Drake is a sophisticate back in the 1940s. In 2013 she is a provocateur, an agent of an untrustworthy manipulator, murdering as he directs, because she believes she can save America from a dreadful alternative reality.
Miss Fury was the one of the first female superheroes, created 42 years ago this month by June Tarpé Mills (1915-1988)–one of the few early female comic book creators. Written and drawn by Mills, Miss Fury is also the first female superhero created by a woman. Original Miss Fury works were signed merely Tarpé Mills–to mask the fact that the work was created by a woman. Mills’ stylish socialite Marla Drake was provided glamorous images by Mills in the pages of Miss Fury, with classy costumes for the character. Appearing just months after The Cat–which would become the Catwoman over time, Miss Fury also wore a catsuit to fight crime.
June Tarpé Mills–with cat.
Mills’ characters gave similar inspiration to the war effort in World War II as Captain America and Superman. Mills herself would be an excellent subject of study for comic book historians.
Miss Fury most recently has appeared in the recent Masks series from Dynamite Comics and this Wednesday Dynamite releases a standalone series starring Miss Fury with Miss Fury #1. Just as the original pages of Miss Fury inspired Allied troops during World War II with planes named after the characters from the series, Dynamite’s new series also brings the Nazi menace back in a story with time-out-of-joint elements that will factor into Miss Fury’s reality. Miss Fury is being pulled from time period to time period–from 2013 to 1943 and back again–and someone or some thing has changed the course of history. The artwork provided by Jack Herbert is lavish and stylish in ways original artist Mills may have approved of. Just check out this image of the sophisticated Marla Drake–the wealthiest woman in Manhattan in 1943 (and high-end thief): Continue reading
