World Comic Book Review

28th March 2024

Collapse: Isolation #1 – Something to Take Your Mind Off the End of the World

Collapse: Isolation #1
Rising Sun Comics, October 1, 2015
Writers: R.P. Foster & Russ Pirozek

Rising Sun Comics’ “Collapse: Isolation” rides the current fin de siecle vogue of comic books that deal with a post-apocalyptic version of Earth. “Collapse”’s Earth has gone through a nuclear world war, which gave rise to mutated humans, who in turn waged war on normal humans before another bomb made the surface completely uninhabitable. This brief recap of what happened within the story in the comic occurred in a couple of pages, and unfortunately it is the only interesting part of the whole issue.

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The X-Files: Deviations – A Whole Lot of Nothing

The X-Files: Deviations – Time and Being
IDW Publishing, March 2016
Writer: Amy Chu

In March 2016, American comic book publisher IDW Publishing launched a publishing campaign dubbed ‘Deviations’. This campaign at essence is a set of standalone stories for IDW Publishing’s titles that play around with the concept of alternate realities, not as a plot point but as an entire concept. The “Deviations” one-shot issues do not explain why the presented reality is different from the established one, if indeed such an explanation is necessary, and instead each issue jumps straight into the parallel universe story. In the “Transformers: Deviations” one-shot, a character that died in mainstream community survived. In the “X-Files: Deviations” issue, the male protagonist of the famous science fiction television series, Fox Mulder, is replaced in the narrative by the character’s sister.

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The Five #1: The Birth of 21st Century Archetypes

The Five #1 (review)
( Mysteria Maxima Media, April 2016)
Writer: Laith Tierney

An independent publication from Australia, issue one of The Five explores the creation of a modern Illuminati. Members of this secret society are a pantheon of sorts: a god of international money markets, a god of global fame, a goddess of pornography, a god of tinpot mysticism (which is, perhaps, the most awkward fit of the line-up of characters) and in a surprising twist at the end, a goddess of global terrorism.

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Weavers #1 (Review)

Weavers #1
Boom! Studios, May 2016
Writer: Simon Spurrier
Review by Neil Raymundo, May 12, 2016

The cover to the first issue of Simon Spurrier’s “Weavers” makes it easy to discern the premise of the comic book. It features a man dressed like the typical modern gangster, surrounded by silhouettes of similarly-dressed people with arachnid-like eyes. The spiders are not symbolic. The comic is about gangsters and spiders. A key issue in the premise of the story is the kind of spiders, and what role they play in the story.

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