Welcome back to Conskipper’s New Comic Day Picks for the week of September 15, 2021!
This week brings some great titles featuring brand new stories, new takes on classic characters, as well as some perennial favorites.
–Fantastic Four #35 (Marvel Comics): Marvel has been celebrating the Fantastic Four all year long, and the party culminates in this 60th anniversary special. Dan Slott and the returning John Romita Jr. combine forces to continue Slott’s impressive run on the title with a showdown with a very different four: the four faces of Kang the Conqueror. Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny contend with Rama Tut, the Scarlet Centurion, Kang the Conqueror, and Scion in this time crisis that will have lasting effects on Marvel’s First Family. And if that wasn’t enough, Mark Waid and Paul Renaud deliver an all-new anniversary story appropriate for issue #680 (legacy numbering, of course). You can’t pass up this ode to the original comic characters that Marvel formed an universe around.
–Primordial #1 (Image Comics): Yes, we are again featuring a title by Jeff Lemire in our top five, and there is a very good reason for that: he won’t stop writing excellent comics! This week brings the new series Primordial from Image Comics and reunites Lemire with artist and frequent collaborator Andrea Sorrentino (Gideon Falls, Green Arrow, Old Man Logan) for a Cold War-era science fiction thriller. The six-issue miniseries begins when the USSR and USA never see the return of the animals that they launched into space and the question is: where did they go? Primordial will appeal to fans of Lemire’s science fiction and horror work, and Sorrentino’s realistic art is once again a perfect compliment to Lemire’s smart and realistic prose.
–I Am Batman #1 (DC Comics): John Ridley continues to build on Jace Fox and the Future State timeline in I Am Batman #1. Fans responded positively to DC’s Future State titles, and probably none more than Ridley’s new version of the Bat. Jace returns with a new and improved Bat-Suit, ready to bring justice to Gotham, but the Anti-Oracle isn’t going to make it easy. Olivier Coipel provides the art for this one, and fans of the artist will be drawn in with his kinetic artwork.
–Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1957: Family Ties #1 (Dark Horse Comics): The new series of Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. one-shots begin with the excellent Family Ties issue, showcasing the best that Mike Mignola, Chris Roberson, Laurence Campbell, and Dave Stewart have to offer. The idea to tell a series of stand-alone stories allows the writers and Campbell to take their time with each tale, and also focus on the relationship dynamics between Hellboy and various members of the 1950’s version of the B.P.R.D. Family Ties showcases the interactions between “Big Red” and Susan Xiang, as they hunt down a copy of Gustav Strobl’s Witchcraft and Demonology, which naturally leads to the presence of demonic interference. A perfect bite-sized Hellboy story.
–Time Before Time #5 (Image Comics): Writer/artist Declan Shalvey (Bog Bodies) and the Write It In Blood team of Rory McConville and Joe Palmer wrap up their first story arc in Time Before Time #5, as time begins to run out for Tatsuo and Nadia. The creative team on Time Before Time do an excellent job of combining science fiction and gangster/noir tropes in the year 2140, and if you haven’t read the previous issues of the continuing series, track them down at your local store or put the upcoming trade paperback collection on your hold list.
That’s it for this week, so please continue to support your local comic shop in a safe and responsible manner.