Weekly Comic Features: May 17, 2023

Why are wrestling books always so good?!

Dark Space: Good Deeds #1 (w: Che Grayson, a: Kelsey Ramsay)
Publisher: Image Comics

I'm admittedly biased because this book takes place in St. Augustine, FL and seems to have the exact same love/hate relationship I have with that city...

Two stories unfold parallel to one another. One story follows a writer trying to recover from some unknown incident five years prior. She is handed a puff piece on St. Augustine's 450th Founder's Day. The second story follows a high schooler whose mother just purchased an old diner in the same town. She's having a hard time fitting in at school but is excited to help her mother with this new stage of life. However, both women find themselves surrounded by something mysterious. Our writer keeps seeing a strange, haggard apparition, while our student is saved from an assault by a mysterious and violent haze.

While not much happens beyond character development in this first issue, a satisfying air of mystery has been established. I like the angle Grayson is taking, focusing on the history of St. Augustine as a backdrop for a story about ancient, almost druidic horrors. We honestly don't see much of these mysterious forces of nature beyond the establishing pages and the aforementioned mist, but it's a cool set up for a spooky tale. I like the art and the characters feel real enough to be empathetic. I really liked the first entry in the Dark Spaces collection, Wildfire, so I'm hopeful that this one can keep up that same excitement.

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Ghostlore #1 (w: Cullen Bunn, a: Leomacs)
Publisher: BOOM! Studios

If there's one thing Cullen Bunn does well (and there's more than that, but come with me on this), it's a ghost story that simultaneously feels new and different, but well steeped in traditional horror tropes. It's like getting a new blanket; same coziness you expect, but still a new pattern or color or size. 

In this tale, we watch a family struggle to connect. The father is a paster watching his congregation walk away from the church slowly but surely, the mother is cynical and struggling to keep the family together, the teenage daughter is moody and ready to leave the minute she's 18, and the son... has just stopped talking, for some reason. It's very standard dysfunctional family, but because they're so easily relatable, Cullen's able to dive right into the meat of it all without too much exposition. 

The meat, by the way, is a car crash. And that, my friends, is when it all gets weird. Body horror, demons, ghosts, lies... The vibe changes FAST, but in a good way. It's a pretty quick read, and while it doesn't up-end the genre in any way, it's still a tasty morsel for horror traditionalists.  

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Arcade Kings #1 (w/a: Dylan Burnett)
Publisher: Image Comics

This book is cool AF. If you've been around for a while, you know one of our favorite new (and sort of random) new genres of comics lately have been wrestling-centered tales. Not really sure what happened in the industry, but all of a sudden a TON of new stories all centered around the ropes started happening all at once, and what's even stranger is that most of them are really, really good! This one, thankfully, is no different. 

Joe, our "dragonfruit-headed" protag walks into town just in time to watch a video game nerd get pummeled right outside an arcade. After interrupting the fight and saving the victim with some super cool fighting moves, they become friends and Joe starts crashing at the arcade, laying low and dominating the fighting games. Laying low from what, we only have vague details about until the last few pages, but it's safe to say he's wrapped up in some hostile crime syndicate of some kind and searching for someone important. 

It's colorful, it's creative, it's both based in reality while solidly not at the same time. Dylan clearly has a vision for a Joe's upcoming adventure, and I'm really excited to see it play out.