As I bought the Image Humble Bundle, it included issue #1 for various recent series from Image. Some of them I already talked about, but here my short impressions of all the number ones:

Black Magick: It's Rucka, it's Nicola Scott so it looks and reads well. Story is a bit slow in getting going; Rowan Black is police officer and a practicing witch and is called in on a hostice situation. It turns out that somebody (or something) is starting a new witch hunt. Like I said Rucka and Scott are a solid team, but this definitely didn't have the draw that Lazarus had on me and I'm already getting too much Image titles as it is.


Citizen Jack: Corrupt and nearly bankrupt, Jack Northworthy decides to run for president. Lacking any of the qualifications, he does have one advantage: a deal with the devil. I liked it and I want to see where it's going, but did not like it enough to get the full series (again: too much titles, too little money). Maybe if word of mouth is very good.

Huck: Huck is a gifted young man; he has basically the powers of Superman, but is a simple and honest boy who has been raised to do a good deed every day (ranging from mowing the lawns of pensioners for free to saving a busload of kidnapped school girls in Africa). People around him think he is mentally slow, but I'm not sure, too often innocence and ignorance are mixed up. It's Millar, so I'm kinda fearing where this is going. It could be the sincere Millar of Starlight or the glib Millar from Kick-ass and various other titles. One

I Hate Fairyland: Scotty Young on writing and art. I found the closing word on issue 1 better than the issue itself, but I still like it (mostly for the art). Gert is taken to a magical fairyland as a young girl and given a quest. It turns out that Gert is not that clever and decades later is still on her quest, embittered and violent, but still in a child's body, murdering her way accross Fairyland.

Injection: Typical Warren Ellis story, I've read too much of the series so far to give a good issue 1 review as it takes a few issues to reveal the actual premise of the series.

Limbo: Artist is named Caspar Wijngaard, which is about the dutchest name I've seen in American comics, but I don't know the man. Anyway a beautiful cover, but the story itself seems a bit too much of everything (Luchadores, fish people, Loa and so on.. oh and the main character is an amnesiac which I usually dislike as a plot device). Plot seems to be all over the place.

Monstress: Another one I'm already getting. Beautiful art is the main draw. It's a magic world with a war between humans and arcanae (basically all magical creatures), the main character is on a path to avenge her mother and let's herself get captured and sold as a slave to get close to the object of her revenge. Lots of worldbuilding in the first issues.

Paper Girls: My favourite of the ones I hadn't read yet (it was on my get-in-trade list though). Cliff Chiang on art, Brian K. Vaughan is writing. Group of four newspaper delivery girls find a capsule from outer space, set in the 80s. The four girls have distinct personalities, the art is great (but I'm a big Chiang fan anyway).

Plutona: Another I had already read; a group of diverse kids find superhero Plutona in the woods. Most of the story is establishing the different kids as characters. The backup story gives us a basic intro to Plutona, an overworked single mom/superhero. I gave it a few issues, but it never clicked with me.

Pretty Deadly #6: For some reason they put an issue #6 between all the first issues. Art is gorgeous and I like DeConnick's writing, but an issue 6 is pretty confusing to drop into.

Ringside: A series about professional wrestling, mostly the lives of the people behind the wrestling in- and outside of the ring. It's very ambitious, but I have zero interest in professional wrestling, so I'm the wrong audience for this.

Saints: Christian saints as superpowered beings? That can go a lot of ways wrong. And there are angels trying to kill humans (which does sound like a plot I've read/seen way too much). It's not bad, but it had nothing I'm interested in.

The Goddamned: Jason Aaron's story about the days before the Great Flood. So basically the whole cast are terrible, terrible people. And Noah doesn't seem to be any better from the short appearance that we see. I usually like Aaron's work, but there are other titles out there I like better so I gave this a pass.

Tokyo Ghost: Rick Remender and Sean Murphy's cyberpunk story. Officers Debbie and Dent chase a virtual criminal who can control the cybernetic implants that all (except Debbie) people seem to have. Dent is a silent murdering machine, drugged out of his mind who doesn't seem to notice most of anything happening around him. I usually like Remender, but again this was not working for me.

We just got the three Nail Biter trades.
And we are going to be ordering up to current, and are having current pulled at our LCS.

I am hooked. I need more.

Nailbiter's cool. I read Emily Carroll's "Through the Woods" and it KILLED me and I was looking for more modern horror and Nailbuter was the only one I even sort of liked.

Wicked + the Divine was pretty great, too. I'm glad vol. 3 is out.

Read The Humans today... not at all what I expected, but not bad. I little to high on the gratitutious sex and swear words, but a decent read anyway. Plus, who doesn't love cool ape art?

Depending on which books they are both The Shadow, The Green Hornet and The Spider can be pretty decent. 

Descender volume 1 by Jeff Lemire.

Lemire has been a pretty consistent hit for me.

And I don't quite know what to make of Descender yet, as the first book is mostly setup and world-building, but what a world.

Looks to be the start of a great sci/fi epic.

I think this decade will prove to be a golden age for sci/fi comics.

Descender, Mind Mgmt, several works by Hickman, Lazarus, Prophet... that's enough to define the era as a great one.

Throw in Black Science, FBP, etc and it seems to be going strong.