Love makes the world go round. It can also turn your heart as black as coal. I Feel Loveis an anthology of short fiction that explores love’s dark, twisted underbelly and offers a much-needed antidote to everything that is sweet, cloying, and conventional.
Contributors from both the UK and US, bring their own illustrative style and unique take to bear on the many moods of love, often leaving romance behind in search of darker desires. Ignatz Award-nominated Anya Davidson explores a slash fiction obsession, while Kelsey Wroten, whose work has appeared in TheNew Yorker and Vice, depicts medieval penance. UK-based cartoonist Cat Sims gets entwined with childbirth, and Benjamin Marra discovers the attraction of swamp monsters on the fairer sex. Rounding off the collection, editors Julian Hanshaw and Krent Able offer their own contributions, with tales of wife-swapping and a mysterious black balloon.
A companion volume to the successful I Feel Machine anthology, I Feel Love questions the one emotion that is meant to make us feel good – but that often does the exact opposite. As unflinching as it is honest, this is the kind of book you don’t take home to meet your parents.
Award-winning journalist Rone Tempest, science fiction novelist Maurice Broaddus, and Arthur C. Clarke Award-nominated writer Adam Roberts are collaborating with NeoText, a new digital publishing company dedicated to publishing short-form prose ranging from science fiction and noir novellas to investigative journalism and narrative nonfiction. Each release from NeoText will be accompanied by covers and spot illustrations from acclaimed comic book artists and illustrators, including acclaimed artist Jim Mahfood and award-winning illustrator François Schuiten. In the months ahead, NeoText will publish an impressive array of artists and storytellers—including award-winning journalist Mike Sager, Ho Che Anderson, Howard Chaykin, Fay Dalton, Charles Forsman, Mad Dog Jones, Benjamin Marra, Dash Shaw, and photographer and director Neil Krug.
Started by Addictive Picture’s Russell Ackerman and John Schoenfelder and their frequent collaborator producer Jay Schuminsky, NeoText marks a new engagement with the publishing world for Schoenfelder, who previously played a role in the creation of Mulholland Books before forming Addictive Pictures with Ackerman in 2013, which they will continue to oversee together. NeoText has also tapped Eric Raab, video game narrative development veteran and former senior editor at Tor Books, as the Chief Creative Officer, while Edgar Award-nominated crime fiction author and editor Allan Guthrie has been named Editorial Director. NeoText has also brought Nicholas Mennuti, a prolific author and a former Narrative Consultant for NATO, on as Director of Narrative.
NeoText’s August publications reflect the company’s wide ranging storytelling ambitions:
Acclaimed sci fi writer and activist Maurice Broaddus (Buffalo Soldier), co-writer Otis Whitaker and internationally renowned illustrator Jim Mahfood have created an urban fantasy novella in which a 30-year-old man comes of age — and comes into his own as a hip hop inspired sorcerer.
At thirty, Malik Hutchens is the black sheep of one of the most successful families in Harlem. While his cousins strive to better the family, he couch-surfs with relatives, parties with his girlfriend, and ghostwrites rhymes for local rappers for a few bucks to finance his lifestyle. When cocky Malik sells two warring rappers the same verse, he paints an unmistakable target on his own back.
And then his beloved grandfather dies. On his deathbed, Pop-Pop tells Malik that he is a sorcerer —and that now it’s Malik’s turn to step up and take his place as wielder and guardian of an ancient magic passed down through generations. Malik is thrown headlong into a quest that winds through the mysteries underlying the streets of Harlem, to the rural South, and places much farther beyond, places that he’s only visited in dreams… Now Malik must grow to be both a sorcerer and a man, or face death and fail his family, his people, and the world.
Award-winning journalist and investigative reporter Rone Tempest presents the gripping true crime story of a Puerto Rico-born undercover officer gunned down by a white Wyoming lawman in 1978 — and the notorious frontier trial that followed.
“THE LAST WESTERN is quick moving, deeply sourced, and a page-turning snapshot of an event that rocked the state and still lingers – for better or worse.”
— C.J. Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author of LONG RANGE
“Hugely entertaining…. Think: High Noon meets Training Day in Deadwood.” —Mike Sager, Esquire, author of The Devil and John Holmes and Hunting Marlon Brando.
Of all the possible explanations for why lawman Ed Cantrell shot and killed his deputy Michael Rosa in the parking lot of the Silver Dollar saloon, the least likely was the one that prevailed at trial—that a deranged Rosa went for his gun and Cantrell outdrew him in self-defense. In his powerful and compelling reconstruction of the infamous 1978 killing in boomtown Rock Springs, Wyoming, award-winning journalist Rone Tempest tracks the parallel lives of Cantrell, an Indiana schoolboy who fashioned himself into a 19th-century Western gunfighter on the right side of the law, and Rosa, a Puerto Rico-born and West Harlem-raised decorated U.S. Marine who worked under Cantrell as an undercover narc. For a time, Tempest writes, the two were an efficient team: Cantrell, the steely-eyed Wild West throwback and Rosa, the street-savvy New Yorker with an impressive flair. But then came a falling-out. Tensions and paranoia built to a breaking point until a midnight meeting in a saloon parking lot where Cantrell, with two other cops beside him, drew his Model 10 .357 and shot Rosa between the eyes, killing him instantly as he sat in the backseat of an unmarked police car. Unearthing previously unseen investigators’ notes, military records, personnel files, census records, college transcripts and even airplane manifests, Tempest skillfully demonstrates the true aim and cost of the raucous murder trial that followed the killing.
Arthur C. Clarke Award-nominated writer Adam Roberts (The Thing Itself) and François Schuiten, recipient of the Angoulême International Comics Festival’s prestigious lifetime achievement award, present THE COMPELLED, a sci fi novella and the first book-length science fiction publication that Schuiten has illustrated.
A mysterious change has occurred in humanity. Nobody knows how, why or exactly when this change came about, but disparate, seemingly unconnected people have become afflicted with the uncontrollable desire to take objects and move them to other places, where the objects gather and begin to form increasingly alien, monolithic structures that appear to have vast technological implications. Some of the objects are innocuous everyday things—like a butter knife taken still greasy from a breakfast table or a dented cap popped off a bottle of beer. Others are far more complex—like the turbine of an experimental jet engine or the core of a mysterious weapon left over from the darkest days of WWII.
Where is the Compulsion coming from? And— more importantly—when the machines they’re building finally turn on, what are they going to do?
Upcoming NeoText publications include STONE, a dystopian revenge thriller for our times from the acclaimed cartoonist, filmmaker, and novelist Ho Che Anderson (King), as well as unannounced projects from Ray Banks, David Birke, Brendan C. Byrne, Ashley Christine, Max Allan Collins, Howard Chaykin, Fay Dalton, Sonny Day, Ryan DeMita, Charles Forsman, Alan Glynn, Henry Jones, Mad Dog Jones, photographer Neil Krug, Jardine Libaire, Benjamin Marra, Biddy Maroney, Christopher McBride, Julian Oliver Meiojas, Nick Menutti, Eric Raab, Adam Roberts, Mike Sager, Dash Shaw, Ian Simpson, Ashley and April Spicer, R. Emmet Sweeney, and Michael Tisserand.
In addition to a robust frontlist, with multiple new publications each month, NeoText will have exclusive, regular content on its website, including: a history of time travel by Adam Roberts; essays from Paco Taylor on topics from Basquiat, Counte Dante and hip hop covers; features on comic culture by Chloe Maveal; and interviews conducted by comic legend Howard Chaykin with crime legends like Megan Abbott and Lawrence Block and comic book superstars including Neal Adams, Joe Jusko, John Romita Jr, Walter Simonson, and Bill Sienkiewicz.
Cover art for each NeoText title will be designed by WBYK in a classic retro style that harkens back to the old pulp novels which inspired NeoText. Many titles will have two covers: a WBYK-designed cover and a cover where WBYK designs around art provided by the interior artist. “Just like the mass market genre publishers of old that inspired the covers’ awesome retro aesthetics, NeoText will offer our books at the super low price points you might remember from your childhood at the newsstand or drugstore,” said Jay Schuminsky. “We want our books to be accessible and affordable, so that a new generation can enjoy that delightful experience of buying good stories like candy and reading as many of them as they’d like without breaking the bank.”
Floating World Comics has announced that All Time Comics: Zerosis Deathscape #0 has sold out at Diamond Comic Distributors. But, the publisher has overprinted the issue and has a process to speed up restocking the issue.
Anticipating this would be the case, they are taking orders directly to speed up delivery for shops who would like to order or reorder the issue, circumventing the 4+ weeks the process would normally take.
They have also announced they would be doing the same for the first and second issue of the series.
All Time Comics: Zerosis Deathscape is written by Josh Bayer and Josh Simmons with art by Trevor Von Eeden, Benjamin Marra, and Ken Landgraf, and color by Daniel Lee.
There have been many different interpretations throughout history and popular culture of Jesus’s story. One of the most glaring and controversial examples is Anne Rice’s Christ The Lord series. It reimagined the religious figure out of the canon most followers had grown up believing and some thought it was sacrilegious for the author to write it. As hard it may believe, this probably was not the worst reimagining.
There was Martin Scorsese’s contentious film, The Last Temptation Of Christ, which also retold Jesus’ story and how he dealt with all the temptations of man, including the flesh where they discuss his relationship with Mary Magdelene. On the lighter side, The Life Of Brian shows how a man who followed a similar path as Jesus would exist during this time. The one reinterpretation that has not been seen as often as these few examples is the one of action hero. This is why Joe Casey and Benjamin Marra‘s Jesusfreak had me intrigued.
We meet a young man in Sepphoris, the capital of Gallilee, that goes by the name Jesus. He’s traveled to this land as a result of his visions. We also meet Pontius Pilate, the new Roman governor, whose distaste for the locals and thirst for power is unrivaled. We also meet John The Baptist, a rough religious man whose followers treated him like the voice of God. As John and Jesus meet an uncanny spark between the two ignite and a kinship is formed instantly. As an ambush by Roman soldiers lead the two to fight alongside each other where Jesus unleashes his own fighting style, a martial art, but unfortunately John gets captured by Pontius Pilate. From there we get a mix of action as Jesus must free John, a traditional take on the Bible of Jesus’ healing, and Jesus finding himself and his destiny.
Overall, it’s an action-packed story through biblical times that I wanted to compare to Spartacus but feels more like Ghost Dog: Way Of The Samurai. The story by Casey is fun, engaging, and wildly imaginative. The art by Marra is breathtaking. Altogether, a story that will intrigue readers and think of these historical and religious figures in a totally new way.
Story: Joe Casey Art: Benjamin Marra Story: 10 Art: 9.6 Overall: 9.5 Recommendation: Buy
Image Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
The year is 26 C.E. A young Nazarean carpenter is having some trouble adjusting to the violent world around him-and finding his place within it. He knows he’s different, but he doesn’t know why. Not yet, anyway.
Take some kung-fu, mix in a little 70s exploitation films, stir some of the Bible, and you get Jesusfreak, a gonzo take on Jesus Christ.
The comic is a mix of over the top insanity and sort of “grounded” Biblical tale that mixes into a comic that feels like it’s not quite sure what it wants to be.
Writer Joe Casey and artist Benjamin Marra go back and forth between a story that’s a spin on the Biblical story we know and something else. That something else is a kung-fu infused action/adventure featuring giant lizard people and a style that’s a bit 70s exploitation. It never quite commits one way or another and without doing so never quite gels in a way that makes sense. Aspects seem to come out of nowhere and never quite explained like there’s pages missing to the story.
Marra’s art, with color by Brad Simpson and lettering by Rus Wooton is good. The art style really helps deliver that retro feel to it all. There’s some odd art here and there (one panel has Jesus’ finger looking like they’re broken as he performs kung-fu) but there’s a charm to it all that makes it entertaining. One also can’t overlook the fact that Jesus isn’t white and those depicted are of a darker complexion as they should be.
There’s a lot of potential here but the comic never quite commits as to what it wants to be. It’s entertaining in a pulp/grindhouse sort of way but at times it feels like it wants to be serious and other times it wants to be something like a John Carpenter film. With a bit more focus, the story would be amazing and a lot of fun. As is, it feels like it’s unsure as to what it wants to be much like the Jesus it depicts.
Story: Joe Casey Art: Benjamin Marra Color: Brad Simpson Letterer: Rus Wooton Design: Sonia Harris Story: 7.0 Art: 7.0 Overall: 7.0 Recommendation: Read
Image Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
(W) Joe Casey (A/CA) Benjamin Marra In Shops: Mar 20, 2019 SRP: $17.99
The year is 26 C.E. A young Nazarean carpenter is having some trouble adjusting to the violent world around him-and finding his place within it. He knows he’s different, but he doesn’t know why. Not yet, anyway. A bloody, two-fisted tale of historical heroic fiction brought to you by JOE CASEY (SEX, BUTCHER BAKER, THE RIGHTEOUS MAKER, MCMLXXV) and BENJAMIN MARRA (Night Business, Terror Assaulter: O.M.W.O.T.).
All Time Comicsreturns for a second season with new publisher, Floating World Comics!
New series writer, Josh Simmons, scripts Zerosis Deathscape, an epic 5-part event co-written by ATC mastermind, Josh Bayer. Each monthly issue is drawn by Bronze Age maverick, Trevor Von Eeden.
Von Eeden’s unique and powerful style has developed a cult following among genre and underground cartoonists, who celebrate his run on Thriller and his early DC career drawing Batman, Green Arrow, and Black Lightning. He is joined on art duties by indie cartoonists Gabrielle Bell, Julia Gfrörer, Benjamin Marra, and Tom Toye, and colorist Daniel Lee.
The series is about space and time meeting anti-time and alternate-space combining Bronze Age adventure genre comics with other comic styles. The massive superhero crossover hearkens to other classic cosmic event comics and brings together all the characters established in season 1 of All Time Comics.
Zerosis Deathscape begins monthly in June and is preceded by a special prologue issue, All Time Comics #0 in April. Written and illustrated by Josh Simmons, with inks by Ken Landgraf, this zero issue is the perfect intro to the new wave of ATC. Features the first appearance of The Red Maniac, and we meet Time Scientist Vampire, who foretells the devastating power of Zerosis!
All six issues of All Time Comics Season 1 are finally collected in a massive 240 page trade paperback, coming this June from Floating World Comics.
Atlas – his only weakness is fear! Blind Justice – the man who walks through bullets! Bullwhip – here to put a stop to the bullsh*t! Crime Destroyer – will fight for justice or die trying!
These four heroes face an over-the-top lineup of villains including The Misogynist, Raingod, White Warlock, Krimson Kross, P.S.Y.C.H.O., and the Time Vampire.
All Time Comics features the work of current indie comics creators like Josh Bayer, Benjamin Marra, and Noah Van Sciver, alongside the work of established artists like Al Milgrom and the last art by legendary artist Herb Trimpe, co-creator of Wolverine.
Floating World Comics has announced that in 2019, Consortium Book Sales & Distribution will begin US and Canadian sales and distribution on behalf of Floating World Comics.
Floating World Comics is an independent publisher of international, avant-garde and genre comics and graphic novels. Our publications are an exciting extension of our bookstore, which has been operating at the heart of contemporary comics for over 12 years. With a focus on a unique, curated selection of the most outstanding comics from around the world, we bring new voices to the forefront.
The first chapter in a grand fantasy epic filled with psychic warrior monks, magic battles, monsters, and romance from the mind of Zack Soto!
“Zack Soto has wrought this series with every drop of elbow grease found in a cartoonist’s death grip. It’s a relentless enterprise, The Secret Voice, one that will fill your head brain with one man’s passion.”
—Michel Fiffe, COPRA, ZEGAS
“If you’ve got a grievance with reality, I reckon you’re in the right place.”
“This is a look at our beautiful, abject world, with all of its delights and degradations, filtered through the mind of one of the funniest, most inventive cartoonists alive.”
–Anya Davidson, The Comics Journal
Publisher: KaBOOM!, an imprint of BOOM! Studios Writers: Aaron McConnell, Brandon Zuern, Mari Arakaki, Benjamin Marra, Ben Passmore,
Jaimie Coe, Xiao Tong Kong, Tyler Jenkins, Reza Farazmand, Jack Sjogren, Morgan Beem, Carissa Powell, Jean Wei, Sonny Liew Artists: Aaron McConnell, Matt Frank, Mari Arakaki, Benjamin Marra, Xiao Tong Kong, Boya Sun, Reza Farazmand, Morgan Beem, Carissa Powell, Jean Wei, Sonny Liew, Jack Sjogren Colorists: Gonçalo Lopes, Aleksander Gushky Letterer: Mike Fiorentino Cover Artist: Richard Chang Price: $14.99
WHAT CAN OOO DO?
Strange peril strikes the beloved world of Ooo again and no citizen is safe! Between Ice King’s heart calling it quits, to the entire Breakfast Kingdom getting locked out of their homes when Finn and Jake drop the key to the city in the Cappuccino River, mystery and chaos ensue in this ADVENTURE TIME COMICS collection.
Featuring work by Sonny Liew, Matt Frank, Cristina Rose Chua, Jack Sjogren and many more!
Next spring, Image Comics presents Jesusfreak, an all-new, never-before-published and sure-to-be-controversial original graphic novel by writer Joe Casey and artist Benjamin Marra. Jesusfreak is a bloody, two-fisted tale of heroic historical fiction featuring a certain young Nazarean carpenter who is having some trouble finding his place within a world of ever-increasing violence. He knows he’s different… he just doesn’t know why. Image Comics will publish the original graphic novel as a 64-page, full-color hardcover retailing for $17.99 in comic book stores on March 20, 2019 and in bookstores on March 26, 2019.
An exclusive 16-page black-and-white ashcan preview of Jesusfreak, featuring a two-color cover, will be available for purchase for $1.00 at the Image Comics booth #1444 at New York Comic Con. Joe Casey and Benjamin Marra will attend the convention, which will be held at the Javits Center in New York City from Thursday, October 4th through Sunday, October 7.
Jesusfreak (ISBN: 978-1534311749) can be ordered on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, IndieBound, and Indigo.
