The Slasher’s Apprentice #2
(W) Justin Richards (A) Val Halvorson (C) Rebecca Nalty (L) Buddy Beaudoin
When Riley doesn’t give them much of a choice, the Hopton Valley Killer springs into murderous action, putting Riley to the test as she must dive knife-first into assisting with taking out an entire frat party. As HVK seems set to prove why they’re one of the greats, Riley seeks to prove she’s worthy to follow in their footsteps.
Riley, a horror-obsessed podcaster with a slasher villain fixation, is seeking a new career path: Helping her favorite legendary slasher, The Hopton Valley Killer, regain their long-lost notoriety while learning the ropes herself. The Slasher’s Apprentice #1 kicks off an interesting concept that plays off the popularity of true crime podcasts with a twist.
There seems to be a resurgence of the slasher genre lately both in film and comics. In comics especially, the concept has taken some interesting directions by adding new concepts to the concept. The Slasher’s Apprentice #1 is an example of that blending the popular horror type and adding in an obsessed true crime podcast aspect. Co-created by Justin Richards and Val Halvorson, the comic is an interesting start that, like the resurgence of the Scream franchise, updates details for today’s modern world.
We’re introduced to Riley and her podcast as well as the trauma and experience that led to it. Riley focuses in on serial killers who have more in common with Freddy and Jason than they do the real world versions of them. As the story progresses, it’s clear that Riley is more than obsessed with her latest subject, discussing history, but also tracking down likely targets, and then the killer him/her/itself. Riley uses simple technology to track the killer and narrow down where they likely are so that she can go and confront the killer. Not to stop them, but instead to be their apprentice. Riley isn’t the “final girl” in the traditional sense but might instead be the killer’s latest tool. Richards hints as to why Riley might be interested in joining her obsession in killing but true motivations aren’t quite laid out.
Val Halvorson delivers a murderous glee in the slasher’s actions as we get to see creative and over-the-top deaths that work in comics but wouldn’t in another medium. The violence is almost comical at points in that it’s excessive but also devoid of reality. The kills are excessive but that’s what makes them entertaining. Halvorson’s style too makes it all come across as quick and fast focused more on the aftermath than the action. The color by Rebecca Nalty delivers a slight dour feel with lots of browns, reads, and oranges. It’s not a bright and happy color palette. Buddy Beaudoin‘s lettering also emphasizes the action and terror.
The Slasher’s Apprentice #1 is an interesting start. It quickly throws readers into the death and destruction and deftly sets up what’s to come. There’s likely more to Riley’s motivation that’ll come out in further issues but she comes off as a cold and obsessed person that might not have issues killing people. It’s a nice start overall that fans of the horror and slasher genre will want to check out.
Story: Justin Richards Art: Val Halvorson
Letterer: Buddy Beaudoin Color: Rebecca Nalty
Story: 7.75 Art: 7.75 Overall: 7.75 Recommendation: Read
Mad Cave Studios provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
Purchase: Zeus Comics – Kindle
The Slasher’s Apprentice #1
(W) Justin Richards (A/CA) Val Halvorson (C) Rebecca Nalty (L) Buddy Beaudoin (CB) Trevor Henderson
Riley, a horror-obsessed podcaster with a slasher villain fixation, is seeking a new career path: Helping her favorite legendary slasher, The Hopton Valley Killer, regain their long-lost notoriety while learning the ropes herself.
Gatchaman Ryu: Scavengers
(W) Steve Orlando (A/CA) Riccardo Robaldo (C) Rebecca Nalty (L) Frank Cvetkovic (CB) Nuno Plati
When modernized scavenger pirates—the ruthless Sea Vultures—launch a surprise attack on his harbor, Ryu, the steadfast pilot of the Science Ninja Team, steps out of the cockpit and into the spotlight! Determined to protect his community and prove he’s more than just a pilot, Ryu embarks on a high-stakes oceanic adventure, piloting his amphibious tank to outwit the pirates and uncover the mystery behind their deadly ship. The tides turn in this explosive solo mission of courage, ingenuity, and redemption on the high seas!
After whatever the hell 2023 was, I got back into comics in 2024. The Absolute and Ultimate lines helped me get back into Marvel and DC’s output, and I also finally read some stone cold classics, both old and new, like Starman, Gender Queer, 20th Century Men, and Something is Killing the Children. I really love that I can get Silver Sprocket’s books from Comics Plus and Hoopla from my public library, and even though I’m not a New Year’s Resolution person, I definitely plan on reading more of their catalog in 2025 (Caroline Cash’s Peepee Poopoo calls my name!) as well as the back half of Starman, Planetary, finally finding out what actually happened to Krakoa in the X-Books, and keeping up with new titles. (Metamorpho and New Gods were two year end bangers!)
Without further ado, here are my favorite ten comics of 2024
One of the happiest surprises of 2024 was the release of one last issue of Joe Matt’s Peepshow a year after his untimely passing. This comic deals with Matt moving to Los Angeles to pitch a TV version of Peepshow to HBO and deals with similar subject matter as the previous decades of the book like his frugality, personal feelings of inadequacies, and yes, obsession with Asian women. However, occasional distasteful subject matter aside, Peepshow #15 shows a cartoonist’s cartoonist at the height of his craft with impeccably placed sweat beads and speed lines as Joe Matt has another existential crisis. It’s also a love letter to a comics medium with one of Matt’s friends entreating both him and the reader to pore over some of the comics taking up space in his apartment.
In the launch title for DC’s new Absolute line, Scott Snyder, Nick Dragotta, and Frank Martin rebuild and revise the Caped Crusader from the ground up. Absolute Batman takes elements from Frank Miller’s works, various Bat-films, and Snyder’s previous work with the character to create a beefy, working class Batman, who is currently bestie with what might later become his Rogue’s gallery. Scott Snyder and Dragotta take aim at school shootings, the prison industrial complex, and cryptocurrency while having entertaining action and chase sequences. They’re three issues into building a universe, and I’m excited to see where this book goes in 2025.
Rick Remender, Brian Posehn, Brett Parson, and Moreno Dinisio’s Grommets is a semi-autobiographical love letter to 1980s skate and punk culture set in the Sacramento suburbs. Remender and Posehn draw on their own experiences as teenagers while Parson and Dinisio turn them up to eleven with detailed and period-accurate visuals that are something out of Mad Magazine. It’s fun to watch Rick and Brian’s misadventures and the ups and downs of their friendship, especially once a timer is put on it when Rick’s parents tell him they’re moving to Phoenix. The past few issues of the series have been literal bloodbaths as punks and jocks clash, and of course, the cops don’t take the jocks’ side. Grommets really captures how epic, hilarious, and occasionally sad growing up was.
I read Sami Alwani’s Ignatz-winning “The Happy Art” on his Instagram, but it’s also available in the Pulping “Comics on Comics” anthology. “The Happy Art” is a quite meta comic about how hard it is to appeal to different audiences in comics and also about collective thinking, cancel culture, and all that jazz. Alwani portrays himself as a dog, and the story reaches new heights of absurdity with each page. I love the juxtaposition of Gen Z lingo with a fanatical love for comics as a medium, and how it changes styles and POV with each panel. Saehmeh is indeed based, and so is this very accessible comic.
Zoe Tunnell, Sebastian Piriz, and Rebecca Nalty tell a cute queer love story against the backdrop of kaiju attacks in Godzilla Valentine’s Day Special. Kaiju romcom is kind of the perfect subgenre, and Tunnell gives the full progression of the relationship between unemployed burnout-turned-monster chaser Piper and Earth Defense Force soldier Tam from loathing to sweet loving. On the art side, Piriz gets to dig deep into Toho’s library of critters, including a battle royale between Godzilla and MechaGodzilla that shows that building bigger bombs and weapons doesn’t lead to peace, but just more war. It’s also interesting to see the portrayal of the King of Monsters change as the book progresses from something jarring and life-changing to just a reality of life. This could also be a metaphor for the progression of a romantic relationship as well.
Madeline Mouse’s Belly Full of Heart is queer softness, love, and desire in fluid comic book short story format. Mouse uses pomegranates, starfish, cars, Adidas slides, and more as visual metaphors for love. Their vignettes flow from page to page and color palette to palette in a way that feels like a warm hug multiplied by eleven. Belly Full of Heart throws plot out of the window and focuses on feelings and vibes instead. It’s also full of silly humor with “Kissin’ at the beach/Pissin’ at the beach” getting inducted into the kind of rhyming couplet hall of fame. Belly Full of Heart captures the feeling of being 100% yourself around another person as Madeline Mouse rejects rigid panel boundaries and embraces hand lettering to craft one of the most beautiful and gender euphoric comics of 2024.
I know that Midnight Radio technically came out in 2019, but it got a special edition remaster from writer/artist Iolanda Zanfardino so it’s eligible for my “Favorite Comics of 2024” list. Using a distinct color palette for each protagonist, Midnight Radio follows the lives of a diverse cast of characters brough together by a mysterious radio message urging them to be their own authentic selves. There’s a plotline with a healthcare company being responsible for the deaths of many people that was painfully relevant last year, and Zanfardino explores even more social issues like racism, xenophobia, social media addiction, and violence against queer people throughout her story. However, the main draw of Midnight Radio for me was the characters breaking off the shackles of corporate jobs, corrupt cops, unwelcoming families, and societal pressure and finding fulfillment through a variety of types of art, including indie games, music, and more!
Deniz Camp, Juan Frigeri, and Phil Noto’s Ultimates is anti-imperialist team superhero comic published by the world’s largest entertainment corporation that is also an ode to the single issue. As a collective unit, Ultimates builds to the assembling of Earth-6160’s mightiest heroes and the return of the Maker. However, Camp does the opposite of writing for the trade and gives each single issue its own flair. For example, Ultimates #4 is about Dr. Doom trying to bring the Fantastic Four back and can be read in five distinct ways to tell his tragic story with Noto channeling his inner Dave Gibbons and creating gorgeous symmetry. Deniz Camp and Frigeri connect new takes on She-Hulk and Hawkeye to the violence done towards the indigenous people of the Pacific islands and North America and breathe new life into old school anti-fascists Captain America and Jim Hammond’s Human Torch. Ultimates feels a lot like if Angela Davis wrote the Avengers, and that is a high compliment.
Influenced by comic book history as well as his own experiences as a cartoonist, Chip Zdarsky’s Public Domain is part love/hate letter to the medium and dysfunctional family drama. Public Domain #6-10 shows how the sausage is made with Dallas Comics trying to beat the clock and their new take on iconic superhero, The Domain. Along the way, there are old men arguing at bars, thinly veiled analogues for “star” comic book creators, and a look back at a love affair. Public Domain shows the difficulty of being creative under corporate constraints and also having a personal life while being caught up in the wringer of the comic book industry. It comes across as a real passion project for Zdarsky who crams each issue with visual gags, parodies, and of course, heartfelt moments.
Jonathan Hickman, Marco Checchetto, and David Messina’s Ultimate Spider-Man was twelve issues of comic book comfort food as Peter Parker gets his powers as a thirty-something and must learn how to use them in a world undergirded by evil and corruption. In opposition to certain other writers and editors, Ultimate Spider-Man shows that a married with children Spider-Man comic can be compelling. There’s nothing like struggling fighting the Shocker while one kid knows your secret identity, and the other doesn’t and is kind of besties with J. Jonah Jameson. Speaking of Jameson, the story that showcased him and Uncle Ben digging into the Kingpin and Oscorp might have been the single issue of the year as the two old school newspapermen show their work and speak truth to power. On the art side, Checchetto brings a sleek high tech sheen to the suits and fights while not losing that classic Spider-Man charm, and Messina does a good job of holding down the fort in his fill-in issues. All in all, Ultimate Spider-Man (2024) is the Spider-Man comic I needed at 31 like Ultimate Spider-Man (2000) was the Spider-Man comic I needed at 13, and I love that it wrapped up its first year with a dark, Empire Strikes Back type ending.
Gatchaman: Galactor #4
(W) Steve Orlando (A) Pasquale Qualano (CA) Kath Lobo (C) Rebecca Nalty (L) Frank Cvetkovic
Galactor is under siege by a threat from within! After a secret attempt on his life, Berg Katse sets about to uncover a conspiracy within Galactor, born of their earliest days. Galactor’s leader goes undercover to hunt, identify, and ruthlessly dispense with a revolution growing within Galactor’s ranks. The masked villain Berg Katse must root out a conspiracy within Galactor, the sinister organization that plagues Science Ninja Team Gatchaman.: “Collects “The Rival” short story from Gatchaman #0 and the complete four-issue Gatchaman: Galactor miniseries.”
Just in time for the big greeting card holiday, Zoe Tunnell, Sebastian Piriz, and Rebecca Nalty give readers a sweet, gay kaiju treat in the form of Godzilla Valentine’s Day Special. This one-shot chronicles a growing slow-burn romance between an unemployed burnout-turned-monster chaser named Piper Simmons and Lieutenant Tam Sauveterre, an officer in the Earth Defense Force, a self-explanatory peacekeeping force. It’s set against a tapestry of deep-cut monster fights, a variety of locations, and interrogates the relationship that the world has to the existence of Godzilla and the various upheavals he and his buddies cause through two different perspectives. But it’s also very cute and flirty.
Within the first two pages of Godzilla Valentine’s Special, Tunnell and Piriz grabbed my attention as a reader. I’ve definitely worked some dead end jobs and pondered, “What if Godzilla showed up?”, and this comic gave me my wish. Piriz uses contained square and rectangle before opening up to Godzilla’s side profile and finally giving a poster-worthy double page spread of Godzilla taking out an office building with explosions, sound effects, and helicopters all around. His take on the King of Monsters swallows up the page and is more like a natural landmark than an action figure-type figure. Piper has almost a spiritual experience, and of course, she ends up chasing monsters after her work lays her off in a “restructuring move” after the collapse of their building.
Initially, Piper is a typical thrill seeker posting about monsters on social media and being reckless. Her meet cute with Tam involves being almost hit by debris in Singapore, and Nalty’s jarring color palette and aggressive effects lettering from Johanna Nattalie drive the sequence home. However, she ends up having a full arc throughout the course of Godzilla Valentine’s Day Special and turns her theories about how EDF’s militarism and radiation leaks around have led to the rise of the kaiju into praxis as she ends up doing EDF’s job better than them and eventually and unexpectedly earns Tam’s respect. Mutual respect is what leads to their romantic relationship, and there’s nice bookends of Piper saving Tam after they saved her towards the beginning of the comic.
There’s definitely flirting (Tam’s job offer), glances, and physical touch, but Godzilla Valentine’s Special is chock-full of the social commentary that is why his stories are so compelling for me. The big action climax of the comic is a fight between Godzilla and the EDF constructed MechaGodzilla, who Godzilla sees as a predator. Piper lectures Tam on how using military ways of fighting Godzilla just leads to more war and destruction instead of figuring out ways to adapt to his and other monsters’ presence in the ecosystem. I mean, how many times in the films have you seen Godzilla save Earth from bigger, badder monsters. Piper’s ideas about dealing with Godzilla could be a metaphor for anything from climate change to any number of ongoing wars, crises, and genocides as she goes for smarter, more ethical solutions instead of just throwing money and weapons at a problem like the United States government and its corporate cronies. However, the personal angle between her and Tam keeps the comic approachable and not preachy. The relationship between Tam and Piper is relatable for anyone who has had a strong attraction to someone that they had ideological differences with, in say, a leftist versus liberal way.
Godzilla Valentine’s Special is a beautiful story about two people finding each other in the middle of years of turmoil that happen to involve giant monsters. Zoe Tunnell gives lovely arcs to both Tam and Piper, and her dialogue is full of emotion while Sebastian Piriz and Rebecca Nalty make sparks fly with the big monster battles as well plenty of close-ups of our protagonists coming to terms with their feelings. This is a must-read for fans of kaiju stories, queer romances, or both like yours truly!
Story: Zoe Tunnell Art: Sebastian Piriz
Colors: Rebecca Nalty Letters: Johanna Nattalie
Story: 8.9 Art: 8.4 Overall: 8.7 Recommendation: Buy
IDW Publishing provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
Purchase: Kindle
Mariko Between Worlds
(W) Matthew Erman (A) Liana Kangas
(C) Rebecca Nalty (L) Micah Myers
Mariko and Rem are breaking up but they have one last night together in the Mall of Portals, an inter-dimensional consumerist heaven full of unending vice, before Rem takes his new job doing data entry on the Moon of Plenty. With a couple hours to spare, no personal repercussions and entire dimensions at their fingertips — what’s the worse that could happen?
This out of this world rom-com is straight out of the year 2099, but speaks to a feeling that time will never change. The fear of loss.
Artist Liana Kangas and author Matthew Erman team up to create a world of lust and star dust. Find yourself navigating the human condition with the most out of this galaxy characters. Mariko Between Worlds is down to earth and completely off the wall swarming with magic portals and sexy aliens.
Tales From Nottingham Vol. 1
(W) David Hazan, Magdalene Visaggio, Anna Everts, Sabs Cooper, Dylan Essex, Damien Becton (A) Shane Connery Volk, Victor Santos, Gabriel Serra, Federico Bertoni, Miguel Puerta, Rafael Romeo Magat (C) Luca Romano, Josh Jensen, Rebecca Nalty, Diana Sousa, Ellie Wright (L) Justin Birch, Taylor Esposito, Chas! Pangburn, Matt Krotzer, Dave Sharpe (CA) Shane Connery Volk, Luca Romano
Tales from Nottingham explores untold stories from the twisted universe of Nottingham, including the secret origins of Robin Hood and the Merry Men, Marian’s violent past, Aya of the Hashashin’s first kill, and an ordeal that will shake Friar Tuck to his core.
Never-before-seen mysteries confront Everard Blackthorne, the Sheriff of Nottingham, culminating in an investigation that will lead directly into the climactic events of Nottingham Vol. 3.
Tales From Nottingham
(W) David Hazan, Magdalene Visaggio, Anna Everts, Sabs Cooper, Dylan Essex, Damien Becton (A) Shane Connery Volk, Victor Santos, Gabriel Serra, Federico Bertoni, Miguel Puerta, Rafael Romeo Magat (C) Luca Romano, Josh Jensen, Rebecca Nalty, Diana Sousa, Ellie Wright (L) Justin Birch, Taylor Esposito, Chas! Pangburn, Matt Krotzer, Dave Sharpe (CA) Shane Connery Volk, Luca Romano
Tales from Nottingham explores untold stories from the twisted universe of Nottingham, including the secret origins of Robin Hood and the Merry Men, Marian’s violent past, Aya of the Hashashin’s first kill, and an ordeal that will shake Friar Tuck to his core.
Never-before-seen mysteries confront Everard Blackthorne, the Sheriff of Nottingham, culminating in an investigation that will lead directly into the climactic events of Nottingham Vol. 3.
