Issue Number Ones: The Comics Starting This Week

Last week, we enjoyed “Winter Soldier” and hated the eminently hatable “Alpha Girl”. What does this week have in store for us?

Kevin Keller

We admit it, we bought this one for the historical value. But if you were expecting something along the lines of “Life With Archie”, the actually pretty good ongoing about growing up, look elsewhere. This is pretty much your typical Archie: Kevin Keller has his first date ever, and of course everything goes wrong as he tries to prepare for it.

Mostly this book is worth a read to see the Archie formula with the genders flipped: Reggie plays the Veronica to Kevin’s Betty, and it…is…weird. Especially the moment where he offers Kevin a thumbs up for wearing a mesh shirt and leather pants. Although, damn, does that ever explain a lot about Reggie. Also, Archie and Betty’s dating advice is freaking hilarious.

In short, it’s an Archie book, just with a character who happens to be gay. Progress!

Garth Ennis’ Ninjettes

Basically, “Heroes for Hire”, only with no guys, dumber, more violent, and more misogynist. Really, once you read the words “Garth Ennis”, you pretty much know exactly what to expect.

Adventure Time

Yes, based on the Nick series. But actually, this might be the best new comic of the week. Ryan North and Aaron Reiner strike a very funny balance between aiming the comic directly at kids while not talking down to them to make this book genuinely fun to read for any age. It’s not earth-shaking, but you’ll get a few chuckles out of this one. Especially when they wind up drinking a baked good’s armpit sweat (read the book).

Conan the Barbarian

Part of Dark Horse’s ongoing effort to squeeze everything they can out of the Conan license, but so far everything they’ve done has been great, and this is no exception. Then again, it’s a fairly straight adaptation of a favorite Howard Conan tale…so that’s pretty hard to screw up.

Thief of Thieves

Awful, awful, AWFUL title aside, this is arguably the best book of the week. The pacing is solid, and the first book takes the time to establish the characters and set up the main plot arc without feeling like some sort of Bendis-esque “decompression” garbage. Issue #2 actually promises to be a lot of fun. If you’re looking to start a new series, this will be worth your time.

image courtesy Image Comics

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