Book Review: Pop Kill

Award winning creators Jimmy Palmiotti and Dave Johnson deliver an all-new graphic novel about what happens when the top two cola comapnies declare all out war on each other!

Imagine a world where the two dominant and competing Cola companies, each worth billions, are owned by former conjoined twins who are now separated and have grown to hate each other so much they hire assassins, saboteurs, and espionage personnel to meddle with each other on a daily basis. This is the story about brotherly love run afoul, and the people they enlist to do their dirty work.

Pop Kill by Jimmy Palmiotti, Dave Johnson and Juan Santacruz will be published August 19, 2025. It collects issues 1 to 4 of the series. Mad Cave Studios provided an early galley for review.

Book Review: Nostalgia

A reclusive rock star receives a mysterious package that forces him to face both his past and a resistance movement that represents all of the ideals he had once stood for.

In a world where fame can consume the soul, a once-revered musician has chosen isolation over the limelight. But when an unexpected package arrives at his doorstep, he's thrown into a whirlwind of memories, regret, and a rebellion that seeks to rekindle the ideals he abandoned.

Nostalgia by Scott Hoffman and Danijel Zezelj will be published June 17, 2025. the volume collects issues 1 to 5 of the 2023 series. Mad Cave Studios provided an early galley for review.

Book Review: The Death of Captain Marvel

Witness the classic and tragic end of one of the greatest heroes of all time, Mar-Vell of the Kree, who became the Earth hero Captain Marvel! After dozens of battles on Earth and across space, and with the power of his Nega-bands and his all-knowing Cosmic Awareness, can Mar-Vell fare well in his battles with Nitro (the exploding villain who later sparked Marvel's super hero Civil War), the death-defying Stellarax, and the seemingly dead Thanos? Guest-starring Rick Jones, Drax the Destroyer, Starfox, and all your favorite Earth heroes!

The Death of Captain Marvel by Jim Starlin was published in April 1982 by Marvel Comics.

Book Review: The Mushroom Knight vol. 2

An adolescent girl named Lem searches the deep dark woods for her missing dog, entangling her destiny with a chivalrous mushroom faerie named Gowlitrot on a mystical quest to protect the biome from catastrophic ruin.

As their friendship develops, Gowlitrot pledges to aid Lem in a quest to discover the fate of her missing dog, but as the search progresses, they uncover perilous betrayals that challenge the foundation of each of their worlds— both inner and outer. The natural world may never appear the same again.

Book Review: The Ministry of Compliance vol 1

Thirty-seven years ago, Earth was secretly invaded by an alien force known as the Devolution, and they’ve been shaping the direction of humanity ever since. Why? To prepare us to be assimilated into their empire.

The Devolution has 13 ministries, each responsible for manipulating a different aspect of human life. The Ministry of Compliance, the most feared of all the ministries, led by the fierce Avigail Senna, keeps every ministry in line and focused on the empire’s mission. Just as their mission is on the verge of success and Earth is about to be assimilated, the empire suffers a horrific blow.

For the survival of her people and herself, Avigail must rally the ministries together. A feat made near impossible as tensions and conspiracies run rampant.

Book Review: Junkyard Joe volume 1

Throughout history, unlikely and strange heroes have risen and fallen, their identities and lives a secret. But for a Great Evil to be stopped, their stories must be told. They are The Unnamed fighting The Unknown War.

From the explosive pages of Geiger comes Junkyard Joe! The world knows him from the comic strip by recently retired cartoonist Muddy Davis, but the truth stretches back to the Vietnam War. It was there that the tragedies of combat and visions of a strange robot solider that saved his life still haunt him. However, dreams become reality when Joe mysteriously shows up on Muddy’s doorstep, warning us of a new and impending war.

Book Review: SubZero vol 1

Clove is the last remaining heir of her Cerulean Dragon clan, fighting in a seemingly endless 300-year-war against the vast Crimson Empire. With no end to the war in sight, Clove agrees to leave her sheltered homeland in favor of a political marriage with the heir to the enemy Crimson Dragon clan, Prince Kyro.

Raised on the battlefields and feared by his rivals, the cutthroat prince is first to notice that Clove is hiding a dangerous secret she’s been working tirelessly to protect. As tensions rise between these unlikely allies, the fragile peace brokered by their marriage is threatened by those who wish to continue the war. Now fighting in the world of her enemies and fighting a surprising attraction to Kyro, Clove discovers that achieving peace is far more dangerous than she could have ever imagined.

Book Review: Dwellings

Welcome to Elwich—an oasis of small-town perfection, where the schools overflow with cheery-eyed children, lovingly adorned homes line the historic boulevards . . . and only the crows can see the deep, festering rot that lurks beneath the pristine surface.

Murder.

Demonology.

Possession.

Obsession.

Elwich has them all on offer—and behind every dwelling awaits a horrifying new story to be told.

Book Review: The Mushroom Knight vol. 1

A chivalrous faerie mushroom named Gowlitrot the Gardner embarks on a quest to uncover a clandestine threat that has brought calamity to his magical woodland kingdom. An adolecent girl named Lemuelle from northwest Philadelphia desperately searches for her lost dog.

As their destinies coalesce, a whimsical friendship forms. But peril is nigh, and their respective journeys threaten to challenge the foundation of their realities...and reality itself.

Book Review: Crusader Vol. 1

A nameless Templar Knight from the Third Crusade finds himself magically transported to a mysterious world filled with sorcery and monsters. In order to survive, the ferocious Crusader must reevaluate his penchant for violent righteousness and make peace with both himself and this ruthless world. But will peace be enough to stop the deathless, power-hungry ghoul known only as The Pilgrim?

Crusader Vol. 1 by Matt Emmons will be published on February 13, 2024. Mad Cave Studios provided an early galley review.

Book Review: Andy Warhol - A Graphic Biography

In 1962 Andy Warhol displayed 32 canvases of Campbell’s soup cans in a New York gallery and what we think of as art would never be the same again. But who was Andy Warhol? Where did he come from, what’s his story, and where did his incredible artistic journey begin and end?

Told in a colourful graphic novel format , Andy Warhol: A Graphic Biography first introduces us to an awkward young comic book obsessed boy from Pittsburgh. Following him as he grows up, moves to New York City, finds inspiration and conquers the creative world, we learn the innermost workings of Warhol – his delights, drives and frustrations, the artistic world he lived in, and the incredible way that he continually evolved as an artist.

Book Review: Under the Influence vol. 1

Undercover Federal Agent Cara Cole finds herself in a fight for survival and sanity after infiltrating "The Hot Dog Party," an online cult run by a washed-up viral internet sensation. What seems to be an open-and-shut case transforms into an identity crisis for Cara when The Hot Dog Party's cult leader Paul Kovac reveals himself to be trapped inside a web of his own making.

Under the Influence vol. 1 by Eliot Rahal, Stefano Simeone and Frank Cvetkovic will be published January 30, 2024. Mad Cave Studios provided an early galley for review.

Book Review: XINO

Because the future is getting weirder everyday, we give you XINO, an intra-ocular lozenge of subversive, surrealist science fiction to cure your awful awareness of it all. Try not to worry; the insertion process will be guided by the megawatt brilliance of comics’ brightest talents as they slowly tune your hopes, dreams, desires, paranoia, alienation, anxiety, and adrenaline to produce the desired results.

Join Melissa Flores and Daniel Irizarri as they surgically activate the hidden dimensions of the human senses; cult phenoms Christopher Condon and Nick Cagnetti debut the world's first intravenous video game system; underground radicals Jordan Thomas and Shaky Kane surveil the suburbs for signs of covert infiltration; plus much, more from a startling cast of megawatt talents, including Phil Hester, David Lapham and Maria Lapham, Alex Segura and Zander Cannon, François Vigneault and Artyom Trakhanov, Dan McDaid, and Connor Willumsen.

All that and much much more in this dazzling deconstruction of our past, present, and future!

Book Review: Monomyth Vol. 1

What if the secret school of magic you were chosen for...was trying to kill you?

Magic is all but extinct. When the last ailing wizard casts a final desperate spell to summon the descendants of ancient bloodlines to a school for magic now in disrepair...those chosen ones find a horror of the likes they've never experienced. They will have to confront the deepest parts of themselves and defeat each other in order to survive the ordeal.

Monomyth Volume 1 by David Hazan, Cecilia Lo Valvo and Federico Bertoni will be released December 26, 2023. Mad Cave Studios provided an early galley for review.

Book Review: Pixies of the Sixties - We Can Work It Out

Great Britain in the swinging sixties–The Beatles are taking the music charts by storm, the pop-culture revolution has gripped the nation’s youth…and human and fairies live uneasily, side-by-side.

As the only woman working at the Daily Telegraph, Carrie Mallinson is determined to become London’s first prominent female reporter. But after being assigned to a complicated murder investigation, the plucky journalist quickly uncovers hidden truths about her past and evidence of a terrifying force within the fairy world that challenges her certainties and makes her reconsider her priorities at the paper...

Sidelined at Scotland Yard following the racist blunder of a colleague, Sergeant Amar Singh–a young policeman of Indian origins–finds himself reassigned to the department’s underfunded fairy division. There, his investigation into the murder of a young fairy soon sets him on the trail of an odious trafficking ring, revealing a dark conspiracy that threatens to shatter both human and fairy alike...

Book Review: Three Rocks

From Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead and Nobody’s Fool, comes Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller - The Man Who Created Nancy This is more than the story of an iconic comic book artist. It is the story of this American art form, tracing its inception to 1895 with the Yellow Kid, the creation of Nancy in 1933, and all the strips that followed, including Peanuts and The Far Side. When Bushmiller died in 1982, Nancy was running in almost 900 daily newspapers—a number few syndicated cartoonists ever achieve.

Nancy is hailed as the “perfect” comic strip by fans and cartoonists alike. The title Three Rocks refers to the trope of three hemispherical rocks often seen in a Bushmiller landscape—just enough to communicate environment to the reader. This distillation is exemplary of the iconic, diagrammatic look of Nancy, a comic strip about the nature of what it means to be a comic strip—the perfect avatar for Griffith to expand upon his philosophy of creating comics.

Three Rocks was published August 29, 2023, from Abrams Books.

Book Review: The Twilight Man

We recognize Rod Serling as our sharply dressed, cigarette-smoking tour guide of The Twilight Zone, but the entertainment business once regarded him as the "Angry Young Man" of Television. Before he became the revered master of science fiction, Rod Serling was a just a writer who had to fight to make his voice heard. He vehemently challenged the networks and viewership alike to expand their minds and standards—rejecting notions of censorship, racism and war. But it wasn’t until he began to write about real world enemies in the guise of aliens and monsters that people lent their ears. In doing so, he pushed the television industry to the edge of glory, and himself to the edge of sanity. Rod operated in a dimension beyond that of contemporary society, making him both a revolutionary and an outsider.

Book Review: All Tomorrow's Parties

Many cultural critics would agree that Andy Warhol gave the Velvet Underground their break simply by bringing them under his wing. While they reached a certain level of notoriety and local celebrity in their time and have since acquired a lasting cult following, their success was in large part fostered by Warhol’s patronage. But at the time, this relationship was muddied by a certain level of codependence and an insatiable appetite for fame and irony, leaving Lou Reed to ponder quietly: Would we have succeeded without Warhol's help? This doubt begins to spread like a malignant force, eventually leading to the band’s undoing as they break away from Warhol and, perhaps, give up their golden ticket to success.

Book Review: George's Run

George Clayton Johnson was an up-and-coming short story writer who broke into Hollywood in a big way when he co-wrote the screenplay for Ocean’s Eleven. More legendary works followed, including Logan’s Run and classic scripts for shows like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek. In the meantime, he forged friendships with some of the era’s most visionary science fiction writers, including Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, Richard Matheson, and Rod Serling.

Later in life, Johnson befriended comics journalist and artist Henry Chamberlain, and the two had long chats about his amazing life and career. Now Chamberlain pays tribute to his late friend in the graphic novel George’s Run, which brings Johnson’s creative milieu to life in vividly illustrated color panels. The result feels less like reading a conventional biography and more like sitting in on an intimate conversation between friends as they recollect key moments in pop culture history, as well as the colorful band of writers known as the “Rat Pack of Science Fiction.”

Book Review: Blade Runner 2019 volume 1

Return to the original rain-soaked dystopic world of Los Angeles, 2019. A hardboiled future noir world of renegade Replicants, deadly femme fatales, Spinners and bloody, violent death!

There's a new Blade Runner in town, and she's out for blood. Replicant blood. When a rich industrialist's wife and young daughter go missing, seemingly the victims of a Replicant kidnapping, Blade Runner Ash is called in to rescue them before they end up on a slab or worse. As Ash's investigation deepens she uncovers a shocking secret that could very well end up costing her her life.