Afterlife with Archie

Archie Andrews and the Riverdale gang are some of the most enduring characters in comics history. They’ve teamed up with superheroes, met countless pop music icons, taught Bible lessons, and fought Sharknados. Their stories range from innocently humorous vignettes to deeply emotional personal drama; Archie married both Betty and Veronica in divergent story arcs that converged again with Archie’s death. Archie Comics as a company has taken on a number of licenses through the years and never been afraid to push the boundaries of comics as an art form. I guess it was inevitable that the zombie apocalypse would eventually make it to Riverdale. read more

Disney Kingdoms comics

I just happened to be in the Magic Kingdom when I noticed a comic book on the shelf at the Haunted Mansion gift shop, Seekers of the Weird. I didn’t pay much attention. I flipped through the book and decided that if it caught my attention again when the trade came out I’d give it a try.

Five issues came and went. The collected edition hit the shelves. It didn’t catch my attention.

Quite without my knowledge my wife had been buying issues of Figment for my daughter, a huge fan of the imaginary purple dragon. All five issues went into Destiny’s comic box without crossing my line of vision, accompanied a year later by the follow up Figment 2. When my wife discovered they had missed the five issue run of Big Thunder Mountain, she painstakingly tracked down and special ordered every one of them. It wasn’t until Haunted Mansion came out that they saw fit to approach me. “Destiny doesn’t want to read Haunted Mansion,” she said. “I need you to add it to your pull file so I don’t miss any of them.” Ah, me. Les bandes dessinées sont la langue de l’amour. read more

Sonic the Hedgehog

I never would have guessed that Sonic the Hedgehog and Archie Comics would be the ones to revitalize my interest in superhero comics. For reasons I won’t go into immediately, I walked away from both Marvel and DC in 2009/2010. They simply stopped telling the kinds of superhero stories I wanted. When Humble Bundle featured a selection of Sonic the Hedgehog comics as their digital book bundle, I thought it was a good opportunity to stoke my son’s interest in reading in general and comics in particular. I read the first book just to see what Sonic looked like these days. It hooked me instantly. read more

He-Man / ThunderCats

As with many of my generation, two cartoons virtually defined the high-adventure genre of techno-fantasy during my formative years. Both ThunderCats and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe featured pseudo-technological heroes engaged in a never-ending battle against the quasi-mystical forces of evil. Both cartoons made my parents very nervous with their parade of occultish imagery and the regular invocation of otherworldly forces. They were very concerned that these shows would cause me to join a cult; I was very concerned that they wouldn’t allow me to watch them anymore. Somehow we all made it through the 80s alive and cult-free. read more

Scooby Apocalypse

I love Scooby-Doo, so when DC added a Scooby book to the Hannah-Barbera revival line it immediately caught my attention. In Scooby Apocalypse, we get a glimpse of what it would be like if the Scooby gang met for the first time just as the world ended. It’s a kind of sci-fi version of The Walking Dead, where the Mystery Inc gang is cast as the survivors of a nanotech plague that transformed the whole world into monsters. The main characters are indeed named Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby. They do indeed ride around in a green van they call the Mystery Machine. Their visual models even show inspiration from the classic characters … and there ends any resemblance to anything remotely Scooby-Doo. read more

Wacky Raceland

In the summer of 2016, Warner Bros decided to try and reimagine their popular Hannah-Barbera cartoon characters as more mature versions of themselves. This line included four titles: Future Quest, which united the Hannah-Barbera actions heroes on an adventure throughout space and time; The Flintstones, looking at the stone-age Honeymooners through a modern sitcom lens; Scooby Apocalypse, where the Scooby gang meets for the first time just as the world ends; and Wacky Raceland, twisting the goofy wacky racers into post-apocalyptic speed demons in a world where it’s drive or die. read more

Doctor Who at Titan Comics

I’m afraid my association with Doctor Who is not as extensive or storied as it could be. I watched Tom Baker and Elizabeth Sladen on PBS with the rest of my generation but I was always more interested in Star Wars and Star Trek, Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica. Still, Tom Baker is who I think of as the Doctor and the Fourth Doctor is my Doctor. I have friends who are massive Doctor Who fans and I distinctly remember when Paul McGann’s Doctor movie first premiered that we all threw a party for the advent of the Eighth Doctor. read more

Dungeons & Dragons by Jim Zub

I don’t remember exactly how I stumbled onto Humble Bundle; it probably came up in one of the forums or newsgroups I read. However it happened, I arrived just in time to purchase their Dungeons & Dragons digital comic book bundle. The bundle included the complete runs of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms books that DC Comics published in the 80s and 90s. It hadn’t really been on my radar at the time; I was mostly into superhero books. At the moment, though, I was craving good fantasy adventure and wanted something to go along with our current D&D campaign. Good value, good cause, great buy. read more