Tag Archives: upshot

Review: Casual Fling #4

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Casual Fling #4

Content warning: sexual assault

Jason Starr, Dalibor Talajic, and Marco Lesko’s erotic thriller comes to a sweet, satisfying close in Casual Fling #4 as Jennifer teams up with her estranged husband Matthew and his hacker buddy Sensei to find the mysterious man that she had a one night affair with, but then was blackmailed by a potential leaked sex tape. Before going into the issue proper, I would like to applaud AWA Studios for publishing a monthly comic in this genre while helping the popular genres in comics match up with prose. This is while not losing sight of what makes comics great as one glance or a character’s body language as drawn by Talajic can tell as much about who they are as paragraphs of pure text.

With only four issues to work with, Starr has to quickly wrap up the loose ends of Casual Fling and leave time for a denouement featuring the beating heart of this series: the relationship between Jennifer and Matthew. The Hackers meets Eyes Wide Shut hijinks of a man, who is manipulative, charming, and as shown in this issue, a rapist are the surface draw of the comic. However, the most compelling part of Casual Fling is how it maneuvers a struggling marriage that ends up being quite complex with children, in-laws, and if the sex tape gets out, lost employment. This is why Jason Starr and Dalibor Talajaic bookend the issue with interactions between Jennifer and Matthew. The opening sequence shows how worn down they are with Jennifer balancing her career and being a single mom, and Matthew having many sleepless nights trying to track down the golden masked man, who blackmailed his wife.

There’s a chaotic energy in the way Talajic arranges the figures in his panels this first scene of Casual Fling #4 that goes with the confused dialogue that Starr writes for Jennifer and Matthew’s young children. They don’t know anything about the deeper implications of what is going on, but are tired of being shuttled in and out of the city depending on which parent gets them. The stress extends to Jennifer and Matthew, and Jason Starr’s writing nails where the relationship is at with Jennifer trying to be complimentary and repair their relationship while Matthew is laser-focused on the comic’s procedural plot. However, he does end up opening up to Sensei while they watched a montage of the curved dick, golden masked man manipulate women and says that maybe he got too caught up scheduling his children’s lives to think about her needs. Matthew also thought their relationship would work out because his parents were married for over forty years. Dalabor Talajic zooms in on Matthew’s furrowed brow while Sensei diagnoses why Jennifer had an affair. Sense is the unsung hero of Casual Fling with her filthy, often inappropriately timed sense of humor (She makes a crack about how Jennifer would be good at porn.), genuinely good advice, and casual, god-tier hacking skills.

Speaking of hacking skills, Starr definitely leans on it to wrap up the plot of Casual Fling #4 as we go from Jennifer meeting with other blackmail and sexual assault victims of the gold masked man to something out of the last five minutes of a Law and Order SVU episode. That quick wrap up connects to how Casual Fling overall is structured with the first couple issues focusing on Jennifer having the affair and the effect it had on her marriage and her career, and the back half of the miniseries turning into more of a thriller. Some off panel hacking gets the good ending, and even though it would be nice to see Sensei, Matthew, and Jennifer match wits with the golden masked man, Jason Starr and Talajic focus on getting justice for his victims instead of trying to make him a sympathetic figure. In the end, he and his partner end up looking like Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, and the fact that there are powerful men out there who act this way (Or look the other while their buddies act this way *cough* Bill Gates) is what makes Casual Fling such a harrowing read. I also love the dig that Starr gets in at the police, who are basically useless in this comic just like they are in most cases of revenge porn in real life with a focus on shaming women instead of understanding consent.

With emotionally open art and color palette from Dalibor Talajic and Marco Lesko and honest writing from Jason Starr, Casual Fling #4 is a strong finish for a comic that was a decent erotic thriller and still had plenty of time for tough, nuanced conversations. I would definitely love to read more monthly books like it in the future.

Story: Jason Starr Art: Dalibor Talajic Colors: Marco Lesko
Story: 8.0 Art: 8.3 Overall: 8.1 Recommendation: Buy

AWA/Upshot provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

Purchase: comiXology – Kindle – Zeus Comics – TFAW

Preview: E-Ratic #1

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E-Ratic #1

(W) Kaare Andrews (A/CA) Kaare Andrews

You’re fifteen years old. You’re suddenly granted incredible powers. Cool, right? There’s only one problem: you can only use your powers for ten minutes at a time. What do you do when you have to save the world but you only have ten minutes to do it? This is the problem faced by Oliver Leif, a teenager who has just moved to a new town, and a new school, and is having a hard enough time navigating classes and his crush before the inter-dimensional monsters started showing up.

E-Ratic #1

AWA Studios Has a Giveaway to Win 6 Trade Paperbacks from their Upshot Imprint for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

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AWA Studios ready to spread a little joy! From 11/24/20–11/30/20, you can enter their giveaway for a chance to win 6 new trade paperbacks from their Upshot imprint: The Resistance, Year Zero, Archangel 8, Hotell, Red Border, and COVID Chronicles. 10 lucky AWA Newsletter Subscribers will be chosen randomly – But they must subscribe to the newsletter and share at least one of AWA’s social posts with the hashtag #AWABLACKFRIDAY. Winners will be contacted 11/30/20-12/01/20 via email for their shipping address.

Review: American Ronin #1

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American Ronin #1

At times, American Ronin #1 is quite the cathartic read. Basically, a cold, sunglasses wearing asshole takes out rich assholes by psychologically manipulating them in addition to the other, more traditional action hero skills like hand to hand combat and motorcycle chases through Hong Kong. Peter Milligan‘s elegant, yet brutal writing balances Aco’s zoom panels, grids, and decadent, mayhem-filled layouts. And then Dean White’s colors adding a finishing touch of atmosphere along with Sal Cipriano’s stern, straightforward letters. They all team up to tell the story of a day in the life of a very badass assassin.

Unlike his previous work on Midnighter and Nick Fury, Aco, for the most part, doesn’t use his grids, close-ups, and inset panels to show rapid-fire action. Instead, he uses these storytelling techniques to show the protagonist do his social engineering thing on the utterly empty and pathetic corporate billionaire Barrett Cornell and his cheekier counterpart, the billionaire heiress Gigi Lo, whose foot fetish and cheetahs on a leash are straight out of a Lana Del Rey music video. Aco frames Cornell and Lo in close-up as she teases and emasculates him and makes one of the most powerful men in the world suck her toes. Maybe a little kink shame-y, but Milligan and Aco do a good job building on it as they expand on Cornell’s emptiness. He might have wealth, power, sex workers at his beck and call, and an army of highly trained bodyguards, but this is meaningless because he’s just a pawn for a corporation. So, he just wants to die, and our protagonist has every intention of granting Cornell his wish.

For the most part, Peter Milligan and Aco find a happy medium between mind and body, or psychic and traditional action moments in American Ronin #1. Conversation is also a weapon in our protagonist, Lo, and by extension, Milligan’s hands. It’s a nice bit of schadenfreude to see Cornell go from holding court in a mansion or helicopter to falling on the ground in front of Lo, or having a breakdown as the protagonist (With a help of a DNA injection.) whispers his deepest, darkest thoughts at him. Aco channels a psychological horror director in this sequence with all kinds of ghoulish panels of Cornell’s eyes or the sweat and pills that surround him, and the openness of his penthouse that show how lonely he really is. It really works in tandem with Milligan’s dialogue and captions that cast him as a man in pain, who just wants release from his corporate overlords, but without a little psychic push from the protagonist, he would have continued to live his life of luxury.

Although, it is full of violence, both of the physical and mental variety, American Ronin #1 is actually a slice of life comic. The life of a special kind of enhanced and enigmatic assassin though. But, honestly, I give kudos to Peter Milligan for showing the ronin in action before peeling away layers of backstory or involving him in some mystery master plot. He has a simple job: get a very wealthy man to give into his suicide fantasies, and we get to see him execute this job throughout the first issue. It establishes the ronin’s competence and his role as a rugged individualist in a world that’s run by corporations, not nation states. And as far as individualists, our protagonist is more John Wick than John Galt. He’s not afraid to make a quick friend like Lo to get closer to his real target.

Also, it would be a waste of Aco and Dean White’s visual talents to have them draw just talking heads even though some of the dialogue sequences in American Ronin are more intense than the action ones. I do have one criticism of the art, and that is that it seems Aco is holding back as far as the scale and epicness of some of his layouts, especially in the action sequences, but that might just be him holding something in reserve for a big set piece in issue 3 or 4. The ballet of violence and viscera that he throws down in the last few pages are especially promising and show that the ronin isn’t as control of things as he seems.

American Ronin #1 is a fairly visual interesting action/assassin comic from Peter Milligan, Aco, and Dean White that isn’t weighed down by unnecessary exposition. Except for the last few pages, the book is fairly standalone and has a grindhouse (But slicker.) or darkly humorous tone. If you like John Woo movies, but also want to guillotine Jeff Bezos, then American Ronin is worth checking out.

Story: Peter Milligan Art: Aco
 Colors: Dean White Letters: Sal Cipriano
Story: 7.5 Art: 8.2 Overall: 7.9 Recommendation: Buy

AWA/Upshot provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

Purchase: comiXology – Kindle – Zeus Comics

Preview: Devil’s Highway #1

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Devil’s Highway #1

(W) Ben Percy (A/CA) Brent Schoonover
In Shops: Jul 01, 2020
SRP: $3.99

Ben Percy (Wolverine) and Brent Schoonover (Batman ’66) present a nerve-racking thriller examining murder in the dark underbelly of America’s heartland. A young woman with a dark family secret embarks on a quest to hunt down the serial killer that brutally murdered her father – only to discover he is just one piece of a national network of evil that snakes across the country and hides in plain sight. To catch the devil she must first embrace the darkness within.

Devil's Highway #1

AWA Studios Announces a New Digital series The Resistance: Reborns from J. Michael Straczynski and C.P. Smith. Read it Here

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AWA Studios/UPSHOT has launched The Resistance: Reborns, a new digital mini-series exploring the origins of the newly superpowered humans after a global pandemic. You can read the full comic below.

The Resistance: Reborns spins out of the critically acclaimed series, The Resistance by title creator J. Michael Straczynski where “The end is the beginning” after a global disaster leaves hundreds of millions dead in its wake, causing a few thousand to suddenly manifest superhuman powers. The first “episode” also features colors by Snakebite Cortez and converted for the web by Iliana Jimenez.

In The Resistance: Reborns, Straczynski explores the origins of the newly superpowered humans after a global pandemic and features artist C. P. Smith. AWA Studios is giving newcomers and longtime fans alike a FREE exclusive look at how the characters introduced in The Resistance #1 received their powers.

The Resistance: Reborns, like all of their other UPSHOT comic series, is also available on popular webcomic platforms such as Webtoons and Tapas. You can read the first episode below:

Preview: ET-ER #1

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ET-ER #1 – The Walk Ins

Written by Jeff McComsey
Art by Javier Pulido
Letters by Dezi Sienty
Cover Artist: Andrew Robinson

Severed tentacle won’t grow back? Intergalactic virus has liquefied one of your heads? Feeling a bit woozy ever since you drove through that black hole? Make a beeline for Roswell General, the galaxy’s leading medical facility. Secretly serving the cosmos since 1947, this interplanetary crew of doctors, nurses, paramedics and technicians is uniquely qualified to cure what ails you – no matter where you’re from.

Today’s patient? An alien from the boondocks of outer space whose deadly immune system will put the doctors to the ultimate test: to save their patient, they must first survive him.

But that’s just one story in the truly limitless universe of ET-ER, which stands at the intersection of E.R. and Men in Black. For the courageous health care workers at Roswell General, no planet is too far, no asteroid is too small, and no life form is too, well, alien, for their care – and they accept most forms of insurance.

ET-ER #1 - The Walk Ins

AWA Studios’ Latest Series ET-ER Debuts Today… for FREE!

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AWA Studios remains committed to bringing fans original and exciting new stories, continuing this week with ET-ER, now available to read for the very first time! Read it for free in the mobile-friendly, vertical-scrolling format on WEBTOON and Tapas.

Severed tentacle won’t grow back? Intergalactic virus has liquefied one of your heads? Feeling a bit woozy ever since you drove through that black hole? Make a beeline for Roswell General, the galaxy’s leading medical facility. Secretly serving the cosmos since 1947, this interplanetary crew of doctors, nurses, paramedics and technicians is uniquely qualified to cure what ails you – no matter where you’re from.

Today’s patient? An alien from the boondocks of outer space whose deadly immune system will put the doctors to the ultimate test: to save their patient, they must first survive him.

Written by Jeff McComsey, ET-ER features art by Javier Pulido, lettering by Dezi Sienty, and a cover by Andrew Robinson.

ET-ER

AWA Studios Launches their Digital Program Early Due to COVID-19. Read The Resistance #1 Here.

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With the spread of COVID-19, businesses are scrambling and changing their plans to meet a new landscape. Newly launched comic publisher AWA Studios is adjusting their digital program in hopes to keep interest for themselves and stores and make sure “readers will still have access to new and exciting comics over the coming months.”

The publisher is fast-tracking an upcoming initiative that was to launch next month. AWA has released The Resistance #1 digitally in an innovative vertical scrolling format (similar to WEBTOON or Tapas), for free on their website and across the web.

Given the timeliness of the story and the limited access to get the physical copy at retail due to COVID-19, J. Michael Straczynski and Mike Deodato Jr.’s The Resistance #1 is the first of their stories to premiere in this new format, beginning with Part One this week. Other AWA comics are in the process of being released in a similar way.

AWA is encouraging retailers to embed the digital reader versions to build interest in the series and for consumers to buy them when things return to “normal.” This also will help fight piracy (AWA estimates The Resistance #1 has over 10,000 views so far) by delivering a better reading experience.

The Resistance #1 is available on the sites below or read it right here:

Red Border from Jason Starr, Wil Conrad, Ivan Nunes, and Sal Cipriano Gets a Trailer

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Red Border #1

Writer: Jason Starr
Artist: Will Conrad
Colorist: Ivan Nunes
Cover: Tim Bradstreet
Letterer: Sal Cipriano
Diamond Code: JAN201611
On-Sale: March 18, 2020
Cover Price: $3.99

When a young, middle-class Mexican couple targeted for death by the Juarez Cartel flee across the border into Texas, they wander into a house of horrors beyond their wildest imagination. Rescued by a mysterious local who takes them to the safety of his family’s ranch, the couple soon realize their hosts have more than just skeletons in their closet, and the army of assassins on their trail might be the least of their problems.

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