Thursday, November 30, 2023

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!

XINO will be released January 23, 2024. Oni Press provided an early galley for review.

As a teen of the late 70's/early 80's, I grew up on sci-fi comic anthologies like DC's Timewarp, Marvel's Epic Illustrated and, of course, Heavy Metal magazine. Each issue would always bring something new, engaging, wild, and eye-opening. XINO carries on that proud tradition.

The fourteen stories here have a very hit-and-run nature to them. With an average of ten pages apieces, they have to get right to the point and yet still leave the reader with ideas to ponder (something all good short stories do). They provide tantalizing tastes to satisfy the reader's hunger for sci-fi goodness. We also get some otherworldly single-page pieces of art between stories, just to further tease our imaginations.

If you're looking for some interesting comic tales with a sci-fi flare from a wide array of rising comic talents, XINO might just be what you need.

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