Tag Archives: Monarch

Monarch #1 is an interesting start that shows off a lot of potential

Monarch follows Travon, an orphan living in Compton. His foster home seems like a good place and he’s surrounded by people that look out for him, an important factor considering other foster kids who’ve perhaps not been as lucky as him are out to violently bully him for having it marginally better than others. And then the aliens descend…

Story: Rodney Barnes
Art: Alex Lins
Colors: Luis NCT
Letteer: Marshall Dillon

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Zeus Comics
comiXology/Kindle


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Around the Tubes

Harrower #1

It was new comic book day yesterday! What did you all get? What did you like? Dislike? Sound off in the comments! While you think about that, here’s some comic news and reviews from around the web.

The Beat – Digital Comics: Omnibus and GlobalComix are ready for the world post Comixology – Anyone using these? What do you think?

Kotaku – Everything You Should Know About Marvel Snap’s Game-Changing New Season – Who’s playing and what do you think?

Reviews

Collected Editions – The Batman Adventures Vol. 1
Comics Crusaders – Harrower #1
Comicbook – Monarch #1
Comic Crusaders – My Life Among Humans
Comicbook – Storm & the Brotherhood of Mutants #1

Monarch #1 is an impressive debut that builds a living, dangerous world with complex characters

Monarch #1

I’m always wary of stories that feature kids as the main characters. I immediately think it’s going to be another coming-of-age story or a childhood trauma yarn that’ll follow the same old story beats as countless other works that go down similar routes. Not that they’re bad. They’re Just a bit overused, which often makes them predictable. Rodney Barnes and Alex Lins break away from this in their new series Monarch, openly resisting what’s been done before to explore ideas that might hit harder but that must be faced regardless.

Monarch follows Travon, an orphan living in Compton. His foster home seems like a good place and he’s surrounded by people that look out for him, an important factor considering other foster kids who’ve perhaps not been as lucky as him are out to violently bully him for having it marginally better than others.

As if things weren’t hard enough for Travon, aliens descend from the skies thirsty for blood and mayhem, looking like monsters that were exclusively bred to slaughter and maim indiscriminately in the worlds they’ve targeted for invasion. Travon must fight for his life and that of his surrogate family and friends, even if it requires sacrificing things that can’t ever be recovered.

Monarch #1

Monarch sets the tone early with its relentless approach to violence. Lins captures both bully violence and alien aggression as things weighed by consequence, making them feel meaningful and necessary to the story rather than gratuitous. Travon’s living environment feels dangerous as a result, a symptom of the status quo, and it helps to build compelling characters that readers can worry about and fear for.

Barnes’ script leans on rawness to build its characters. Travon isn’t a Disneyfied version of a foster child. He’s a boy that is always aware of the hand he’s been dealt so he can never lose focus of the things that are important to him, like the people that have become family in the absence of blood relatives. Barnes makes it a point to present Travon as a survivor, a condition that might end up making him better suited than most to face down a scenario filled with vicious aliens given the things he’s had to live through at such an early age.

It’s in this arrangement that Barnes and Lins’ Monarch sets itself apart from other stories featuring coming-of-age themes and YA-like sensibilities. Nothing here is played safe or to keep readers in their comfort zones. Quite the opposite. Travon and his friends are all at risk of becoming just few more casualties of the invasion at any time. The prospect of that generates an overwhelming sense of tension that makes for compulsive reading.

Monarch #1

Fans of the 2011 sci-fi horror film Attack the Block will find a similar appreciation for roughness in the storytelling process that makes Monarch such a hard-hitting experience. In it, a group of kids from South London (an historically underprivileged area) have to fight off malicious aliens and defend their home, dysfunctional and difficult though that place may be. The movie’s strengths lie in turning commonly overlooked characters (in this case, rowdy kids that fall into a life of crime given their circumstances) into protagonists that never shed their complexities. Monarch frames its story and its characters in a similar way, letting the harsh realities of life come along for the ride without feeling the need to soften them to make audiences more comfortable. You just have to embrace the conditions of Travon’s existence and feel them along with him.

Monarch #1 is an impressive debut that builds a living, dangerous world with complex characters that already carry a considerable amount of personal history with them. It’s impossible not to root for Travon and you will keep turning the pages with a certain reluctance for fear of what might happen to him throughout. But turn them you shall, and you won’t want to stop. Monarch is just that good.

Script: Rodney Barnes Art: Alex Lins Colors: Luis NCT
Story: 10 Art: 10 Overall: 10
Recommendation: Buy and check out Barnes’ Killadelphia if you haven’t already.

Image Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review


Purchase: Zeus ComicscomiXology/Kindle

Graphic Policy’s Top Comic Picks this Week!

Monarch #1

Wednesdays (and Tuesdays) are new comic book day! Each week hundreds of comics are released, and that can be pretty daunting to go over and choose what to buy. That’s where we come in

Each week our contributors choose what they can’t wait to read this week or just sounds interesting. In other words, this is what we’re looking forward to and think you should be taking a look at!

Find out what folks think below, and what comics you should be looking out for this week.

A Home Without (Northwest Press) – An autobiographical graphic novel about a boy growing up in the Bible Belt of the 1980s.

Bishop: War College #1 (Marvel) – Bishop is leading and teaching a new team!

The Exiled #1 (WhatNot Publishing) – Wesley Snipes doing a comic. Nuff said.

Harrower #1 (BOOM! Studios) – A new horror series from Justin Jordan and Brahm Revel that sounds like a nice throwback to slasher/horror films of the 70s and 80s.

How I Became a Shoplifter #1 (Sumerian Comics) – A year by year look at the final generation of juvenile delinquents before technology took over. The concept sounds really intriguing.

I Am the Law: How Judge Dredd Predicted Our Future (Rebellion/2000AD) – Blending comic book history with contemporary radical theories on policing, I Am The Law takes key Dredd stories from the last 45 years and demonstrates how they provide a unique wake up call about our gradual, and not so gradual, slide towards authoritarian policing.

Marry Me a Little (Graphic Mundi) – Recounting same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges made gay marriage the law of the land.

Monarch #1 (Image Comics) – Growing up in the city of Compton is tough enough as it is, but as Travon has learned all too well, growing up as an orphan in the city of Compton with gang members hunting you down every day is even tougher. But all of that is about to change, because today is the day that aliens make first contact with Earth-and it only spells doom for life as we know it! Read our glowing review here!

Red Goblin #1 (Marvel) – Normie Osborn gets his own symbiote. We’re hoping this isn’t the expansion of too many symbiotes again but it’s clearly leading somewhere.

Saga of a Doomed Universe #3 (CEX Publishing) – In 1984, the unlikeliest heroes emerge at the world’s end: a memory-powered loser named Super-Sleuth and the often-held-hostage heroine, Psionica. Reality itself is now threatened!

The Secret History of Black Punk: Record Zero (Silver Sprocket) – An illustrated roll-call for punk, post-punk, hardcore, no wave, and experimental bands from ground zero until now.

Space Job #1 (Dark Horse Comics) – After five long years of soul-crushing servitude as a chef’s assistant, Danny Sheridan is getting his dream job in space as First Officer aboard the SS George H.W. Bush. But on his first day he finds himself crashing back to reality. Nothing seems right. We’re intrigued by this one.

Spy Superb #2 (Dark Horse Comics) – Matt Kindt alone sells this one for us but the first issue was amazing. The series is about spies so perfect, they don’t realize they’re spies!

Static: Shadows of Dakota #1 (DC Comics/Milestone) – Static is back! The second season kicks off here as a new threat lurks in the shadows!

Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants #1 (Marvel) – A “Sins of Sinister” series. The debut was solid and Storm leading a resistance against Sinister sounds too awesome.

Under the Banner of King Death (Beacon Press) – Set at the pinnacle of the “Golden Age” of Atlantic piracy, this novel follows three unlikely companions, who are sold into servitude on a merchant ship and unwittingly thrust into a voyage of rebellion.

Early Review: Monarch #1 is an impressive debut that builds a living, dangerous world with complex characters

Monarch #1

I’m always wary of stories that feature kids as the main characters. I immediately think it’s going to be another coming-of-age story or a childhood trauma yarn that’ll follow the same old story beats as countless other works that go down similar routes. Not that they’re bad. They’re Just a bit overused, which often makes them predictable. Rodney Barnes and Alex Lins break away from this in their new series Monarch, openly resisting what’s been done before to explore ideas that might hit harder but that must be faced regardless.

Monarch follows Travon, an orphan living in Compton. His foster home seems like a good place and he’s surrounded by people that look out for him, an important factor considering other foster kids who’ve perhaps not been as lucky as him are out to violently bully him for having it marginally better than others.

As if things weren’t hard enough for Travon, aliens descend from the skies thirsty for blood and mayhem, looking like monsters that were exclusively bred to slaughter and maim indiscriminately in the worlds they’ve targeted for invasion. Travon must fight for his life and that of his surrogate family and friends, even if it requires sacrificing things that can’t ever be recovered.

Monarch #1

Monarch sets the tone early with its relentless approach to violence. Lins captures both bully violence and alien aggression as things weighed by consequence, making them feel meaningful and necessary to the story rather than gratuitous. Travon’s living environment feels dangerous as a result, a symptom of the status quo, and it helps to build compelling characters that readers can worry about and fear for.

Barnes’ script leans on rawness to build its characters. Travon isn’t a Disneyfied version of a foster child. He’s a boy that is always aware of the hand he’s been dealt so he can never lose focus of the things that are important to him, like the people that have become family in the absence of blood relatives. Barnes makes it a point to present Travon as a survivor, a condition that might end up making him better suited than most to face down a scenario filled with vicious aliens given the things he’s had to live through at such an early age.

It’s in this arrangement that Barnes and Lins’ Monarch sets itself apart from other stories featuring coming-of-age themes and YA-like sensibilities. Nothing here is played safe or to keep readers in their comfort zones. Quite the opposite. Travon and his friends are all at risk of becoming just few more casualties of the invasion at any time. The prospect of that generates an overwhelming sense of tension that makes for compulsive reading.

Monarch #1

Fans of the 2011 sci-fi horror film Attack the Block will find a similar appreciation for roughness in the storytelling process that makes Monarch such a hard-hitting experience. In it, a group of kids from South London (an historically underprivileged area) have to fight off malicious aliens and defend their home, dysfunctional and difficult though that place may be. The movie’s strengths lie in turning commonly overlooked characters (in this case, rowdy kids that fall into a life of crime given their circumstances) into protagonists that never shed their complexities. Monarch frames its story and its characters in a similar way, letting the harsh realities of life come along for the ride without feeling the need to soften them to make audiences more comfortable. You just have to embrace the conditions of Travon’s existence and feel them along with him.

Monarch #1 is an impressive debut that builds a living, dangerous world with complex characters that already carry a considerable amount of personal history with them. It’s impossible not to root for Travon and you will keep turning the pages with a certain reluctance for fear of what might happen to him throughout. But turn them you shall, and you won’t want to stop. Monarch is just that good.

Script: Rodney Barnes Art: Alex Lins Colors: Luis NCT
Story: 10 Art: 10 Overall: 10
Recommendation: Buy and check out Barnes’ Killadelphia if you haven’t already.

Image Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

In shops February 8th