Review: The Department of Truth by James Tynion IV and Martin Simmonds

The world might be flat if you believe it hard enough

cover artist: Martin Simmonds

Imagine a world in which believing something made it true. Not simply magical thinking about winning the lottery, but the kind where gods can be made, the devil can be summoned in a high school, and the world can be made flat.

What if, when enough people believe it, Lee Harvey Oswald escaped death, Kennedy was killed by the government and every other conspiracy you can think of might just be true.

Except in this world only a very few know this power is true—and so people schooled in stability and predictability can be controlled.

The Department of Truth (TDOT) is up into the mid-thirties now and there are six collected editions following a new member, Cole Turner, brought into the eponymous department as he gets to grip with what his new job in this secret organisation entails. The thing is, he’s not alone, and nor is the department. Author James Tynion proposes that this power of belief is well understood by those who’ve been in charge of the world going back millennia, and that when empires collapse, it’s as much because their enemies controlled the narrative as it is because of force of arms.

As a result, every major power in the world has its own equivalent of the Department of Truth whose main mission is to ensure that their truths prevail. With the legacy of the Cold War hanging over their heads, both Russia and the US are stuck with ideas and beliefs that seemed powerful weapons just yesterday but now hang around their necks like lead tires threatening to drag them to disaster.

What starts out as a mission to control conspiracy theories before they become dangerous turns out to be a mission to control all truth, not just conspiracies. Tynion suggests that once you start to question the nature of truth, everything is up for grabs.

Most worrying for all concerned is a third party and rival to TDOT called Black Hat, which wants truth to be decidable by whoever comes along with the most sway and influence. This third party revolves around a “Woman in Red”—a grotesque who appears around disasters and seems to feed on these conspiracies.

The threat from a breakdown in the sense of what truth is and what it can be is the central theme of this series—tied in with how the powerful manipulate media, ideas and social structures to maintain the world that benefits them most. TDOT is a dark and deeply challenging story about how easily fooled we are, how easily we become willing members of mobs and how easy it is to hack and twist human beliefs.

Tynion’s writing is dry, sardonic and, most of all, bleak. The story, which is well into its run, is very dark and shows no signs of really revealing what’s going on under the surface. After spending time telling the reader that there’s a deeper layer yet beneath the idea of a fully malleable truth via the belief of crowds and even that there is a being who might just be the apotheosis of that state of affairs, Tynion has steered away from revelation, but that deliberate refusal to provide clear answers is very much a part of the overall style of not only the story but what Tynion’s saying with this comic.

With Tynion’s focus on truth as a construct and the perils of letting ourselves lose sight of what is true and what is deception comes Martin Simmonds’s art style, which is one part collage, one part impressionistic, and several parts scratchy painting that is reminiscent of Munch’s The Scream. It brings to Tynion’s writing a sense of saturated scenes that could reach out of the page and eat you whole. It’s a tremendous achievement that I’ve shared with my daughter (an animator) that deserves to by studied for how it lands the vibe of what Tynion’s writing about while elevating the story in the process.

This lack of respect for boundaries in the visual presentation, the overwhelming richness of the colours and the frequent ghost-like quality of how the cast appear calls into question everything you’re seeing, reminding you that this is a story that wants us to fear a world in which truth is radically unstable.

Spies, murder, psyops, propaganda and conspiracies that are true—demons and mothmen, flat earths and assassinated presidents. These are the tools in The Department of Truth, the levers the characters use, but they’re also the subject of its metanarrative that asks us to remember that we are all too susceptible to falling for scams and cons and believing liars when they lie.

We humans aren’t built for distrust—we’re built for community, and part of what makes The Department of Truth bleakly compelling is how it dives into these ideas and pulls them apart and in so doing pulls us apart too. It might be speculative fiction, but the truth (see what I did there?) is that we’re easily fooled, and most of the conspiracies appearing in this series have serious advocates who have built their lives around them in the real world of the reader.

The Department of Truth is a lengthy exploration of the very idea of consensus with the most stunning artwork. I really love it.

Highlights:

• Stunning art
• Proper weird SF
• Truth as malleable set in a world of sleazy spies

Nerd coefficient: 7/10, A great comic about truth with great art and with a long running story line you can really dig into.

Reference: Tynion, James IV (writer), Simmonds, Martin (illustrator). The Department of Truth [Image Comics, ongoing at time of writing].

STEWART HOTSTON is an author of all kinds of science fiction and fantasy. He's also a keen Larper (he owns the UK Fest system, Curious Pastimes). He's a sometime physicist and currently a banker in the City of London. A Subjective Chaos, BSFA and BFA finalist he's also Chair of the British Science Fiction Association and Treasurer for the British Fantasy Society. He is on bluesky at: @stewarthotston.com.

Graphic Novel Review: Absolute Wonder Woman (Volumes 1 and 2)

An intriguing new backstory for a beloved superhero

It’s hard to believe that Wonder Woman has been around for almost eighty-five years. Over the years, the strong willed hero Diana has evolved from a bold fantasy icon in World War II to various iterations of female power tangled in a range of artistic expressions that both support and undercut these ideals. In addition to decades of comics, Wonder Woman has appeared on television, in live action series, in a variety of cartoons, and, most recently, in big screen films. In most versions of the character’s story, Diana is a born as an Amazon princess, raised on an idyllic hidden island of strong women who pursue intellectual as well as physical strength, but most of all, maintain their isolation from the rest of the world. Diana’s life is changed when an American pilot crashes on her island and Diana rescues him and soon finds herself drawn into the problems of the rest of the world. She becomes a champion for humanity, particularly in America, fighting evil humans as well as supernatural creatures, while trying to fit in with modern American culture.

Absolute Wonder Woman is a part of a new D.C. Comics series which reimagines our favorite Justice League superheroes with very different and far more bleak backstories. Written and designed by Kelly Thompson, Hayden Sherman, Mattia De Iulis, and Jordie Bellaire, Absolute Wonder Woman shows Diana’s journey to heroism starting from a very an unexpected origin: life in the underworld. The story is collected in two volumes, The Last Amazon and As My Mothers Made Me. Both volumes are told in both the present time and in flashbacks which reveal elements of Diana’s upbringing and elements of her unique character. Both stories dive straight into the action without much backstory and then pause to show unexpected memories that tell the hero’s story.

The Last Amazon 

The Last Amazon opens with an attack of monsters on Gateway City. The attack is terrifying but Diana warns it’s only the beginning of a larger attack by a mega-monster known at the Tetracide. Then we get her backstory. Unlike other versions of the Wonder Woman story, Diana was stolen from her mother's home on Themyscira, as a baby, and thrown into the underworld where she is left with an angry witch named Circe who lives in an area of hell called the Wild Isle. Even as a toddler, Diana shows the ability to fight off lethal creatures but can also show them unexpected kindness. Circe is initially indifferent to the child but grows to love her as she raises her in the desolate, monstrous environment. But as a young woman, Diana’s difficult but loving world is changed when an American pilot, Steve Trevor, is transported into hell and attacked by a hydra. When Diana saves him they become friends and she makes a stunning sacrifice to send him back to the world of the living. Later she arrives in his home, Gateway City, to fight of the attacking Tetracide. Aiding her are Steve, his assistant Etta Candy, Etta’s sister Gia, and historian Barbara. The story moves back and forth between the present time and flashbacks to the Diana’s childhood. The Greek gods are regular elements of the story and participants in the adventures. The Tetracide is an interesting antagonist since its power lies not just in its physical strength but also in its ability to affect people’s emotions. To deal with it, Diana comes up with an outrageous plan with dangerous consequences for herself and others.

Although the primary story is filled with action and intensity, the characters are mostly developed via the more slowly paced backstories. We see Circe’s wise influence on Diana. And, we see Diana’s own moral determination from a young age as well as her feeling of spiritual connection to a culture from which she was cut off. In addition to the serious dialogue and the heavy emotions, the story is interspersed with nice moments of humor that humanize the characters and ground readers in the contrast between our everyday reality and the world of gods and monsters. For example, when Diana does an intense, Greek mythology interspersed, explanation of her need to replace her severed arm Gia responds simply by saying, “Arms are…good to have.”

Steve’s character is appealing and supportively green flag throughout the adventure. He is brave without being egotistical, morally strong while being emotionally honest and vulnerable. Despite his ties to the closed-minded government bureaucracy, it is clear that Steve is squarely in Diana’s corner and trusts, supports, and relies on her. There is no overtly romantic dynamic expressed or at issue in the narrative but the two are uniquely bonded. In one tense scene, Steve expresses his gratitude for Diana before choosing to stand with her when she is in a very physically dangerous mental state. It’s a sweet moment of connection after a lot of fighting and intensity.

Visually, Steve is drawn in a way that is so neutral and minimalist that he almost blends into the scenes. Although he is beloved, the visual and narrative focus is on Diana, who is portrayed in a boldly pragmatic design that is solid, and powerful. Rather than the often used red, white, and blue strapless swimsuit style seen in other versions of the character, Diana’s main outfit in Absolute Wonder Woman is drawn as tough battle gear that fully covers her, including muted red pants with weapons holsters and a matching top with battle armor layers, heavy black over-the-knee boots, arm pads and gauntlets, and a heavy black sash around her waist. Her facial features are similarly bold and solid rather than delicate and she is designed as very tall as well as strong and muscled. In their early encounter in Hell, Steve comments on how tall she is and notices her dramatic eyes which are a contrast to her heavy dark hair. In a later scene in Hades’s throne room, Diana's look changes and she is drawn in a more life-like art style with a stunning character design that fits the stark underworld setting.

As My Mothers Made Me

In the second volume of the graphic novel, Diana enters a new struggle in the wake of the Tetracide attack. She discovers a scientist using remnants of the battle to create a weapon in the mysterious Area 41. Diana finds a maze of monsters and trapped mythical creatures who are being held prisoner under the rule of Clea, an ancient Atlantean. Although aided by Steve, Etta, Gia, and Barbara, Diana becomes separated from them and is mostly on her own in this volume although she makes some new allies along the way. 

As the title implies, this volume is less about the big battle adventure and more about Diana’s internal character, personal fortitude, and moral compass. Faced with multiple potential dangers and adversaries, Diana repeatedly chooses compassion, patience, and forgiveness, when she can. But, as she notes, she will also kill if needed. This balance of kindness and pragmatism defines her character. The primary story of escaping the Area 41 maze is framed by a backstory of Diana’s childhood attachment to a turtle who she saves from a monster. Her adoptive mother Circe is fascinated by Diana’s strong moral compass which is grounded in a combination of kindness and strength and pragmatism.

As My Mothers Made Me is noticeably female driven, with almost all of the characters, from the villains to goddesses to the allies, being women. Unlike The Last Amazon, the story is also almost entirely a Diana focused adventure. The supporting characters in her original squad, Steve, Etta, Gia, and Barbara, have much less time on the illustrated pages. Most of the tale is about Diana navigating various levels of the prison while helping those she meets. This second major adventure emphasizes her journey from compassion to lethality when needed, and her struggle to navigate a balance. The coloring and character design is similar to The Last Amazon but each chapter is interspersed with gorgeous stand-alone cover portraits of various interpretations of Diana. It is worth a pause to enjoy the artwork and the unique art style of each piece.

As My Mothers Made Me also offers the first hint of a future crossover with other alternate versions of Batman and Superman. Absolute Wonder Woman is an intriguing exploration of those in bleak circumstances still finding their way to self-fulfillment, personal and societal connections, compassion, and purpose. The volumes have an appealing technique of using the larger adventures as a tool to tell a more personal and internal story. The artwork also reflects the changed worldview with intense, bold interpretations of the beloved character. Overall, this latest underworld version of Wonder Woman is an unexpected and enjoyable reboot of the popular hero’s adventure.

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Highlights:

• Dark reimagining
• Morality and pragmatism woven into traditional plotting
• Innovative, intriguing art style

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Graphic Novel Review: The Power Fantasy vol. 3 by Kieron Gillen, Caspar Wijngaard, Clayton Cowles and Rian Hughes

This comic about superheroes continues to pack a punch. Intellectually. But also fist...ly.

I like allegory books. Not always in the execution of every single instance, but in general, I’m predisposed towards a bit of “this is actually about daddy issues” (what isn’t?). But the thing is the thing is. When someone does it right, when they go all the way with it, when they say to your face what they’re doing, then do it so hard, so well, that it somehow loops round to surprise you with its sheer commitment to the bit? That shit’s magic.

And so, The Power Fantasy Volume 3: The End of History.

These (see here and here for reviews of volumes 1 and 2) have never been books to be shy about their ethical focus, their use of humans with superpowers to embody the problem of nuclear weapons and the idea of the nuclear deterrent. There’s no sneaky sneaky going on. And yet, this volume has managed to smack me in the face with that stated premise nonetheless.

As a quick recap, the premise of the story as a whole is that superheroes exist, and have done so visibly since the beginning of nuclear testing. Some of them have powers of equivalent capability (or significantly more) to nuclear weaponry, and pose a danger of concomitant level to humanity. But the people who wield them are still... predominantly... human, and prone to the emotional and interpersonal struggles that define us all. What happens when those mix with nuclear-level destructive capabilities? Well, Europe doesn't exist anymore. The story explores the interpersonal drama of a group of the strongest extant atomics, as they are called, and how they navigate their relationships with each other, their powers, their moral philosophies and the fate of the world. Whether that's Etienne trolley-probleming through increasingly horrible decisions, Valentina coming from literal heaven and trying her best to keep everyone together, Eliza with her hell-given powers and a lot of Catholicism, Masumi trying her best not to become a Tokyo-destroying kaiju, Heavy and his inclination to punch his way out of problems or Jacky and his swaggering English MLM cult trying to get in bed with the US government, there are a lot of angles through which the problems are being approached.

It helps that all of those characters, however outlandish their powers and backgrounds, remain well enough drawn, both visually but also in their behaviour, their individual voices and mannerisms, their backgrounds and morals and contexts, that they are intensely comprehensible, even as their stories take them to stranger and remoter places from our understanding. There's a lot of great work happening in grounding the outlandish in the real at just the right moments, and it forms the necessary foundation for the moments when things go to those far, strange places. They've done the work in the previous two volumes to make them believable, and it is absolutely paying off now.

It's also an intensely thoughtful story so far, with a heavy dose of utilitarian philosophy and not a small amount of theology sitting alongside the more usual approach to superpowered people. The writing leans heavily on exploring those intellectual underpinnings, using it as a scaffold to direct the wider story, as these difficult people hurtle through an increasingly fraught world.

Which all gives the story an interesting narrative progression. Volume 2 already chose to go with a character death (spoilers on that incoming, just go read the whole series first, you'll thank me for it) that felt both entirely inevitable and an absolute gut-punch, so I wasn't necessarily expecting the kind of escalation we've been given in volume 3. I am, perhaps, a bit too used to the slow and tidal pacing of long comic series, where dramatic revelations are often followed by period of downtime, to allow new events to settle into the context before stepping forward into the next drama. I had assumed The Power Fantasy would do something similar, letting us assimilate the consequences of Etienne's death and the revelation to the reader and Valentina that this... was not actually the case, and consider how the various shifting factions of the story would react to the change in the fundamental dynamic.

It... does not.

Instead, this volume, which encompasses issues 12-16 of the comic, is a steady progression of increasing crescendo's, leading to an ending that I could simply never have predicted. This upending of the typical flow of pacing feels deliberate - it's unsettling, and we should be unsettled! It all feeds back into that same commitment to the analogy. When you are handling fundamentally scary ideas, ones that think about the possibility of the deaths of millions... of course you want the reader to be uncomfortable, on edge, unsure what to expect. And also, that kind of rapid, almost uncontrolled sense of escalation feels... well, it feels exactly how the kind of world-ending scenario these books have always been about would feel. It's analogy all the way down, right to its bones. That commitment to theme just fills every single part of this story, and makes it better for it.

The art remains, as it was in the first two volumes, gorgeous, and is by no means exempt from that commitment. What I think bears extra consideration in this one is how well it is used to illustrate the moments of enormous horror - world-threatening events, city-damaging catastrophes and individual human violence - in a way that both makes an impact visually, but also keeps close the genuine sadness and violence inherent within the moment. It is incredibly necessary, in a book like this, to never let the glory of the spectacle overwhelm the image's role in conveying tone and story, and it never, ever does. Caspar Wijngaard is doing great work here.

If I sound hyperbolic, that's on purpose - I truly think the team behind The Power Fantasy are doing amazing work here, and that needs to be celebrated. It's not fun and happy, but it is challenging, committed and thoughtful, never losing sight of its goals or its core idea and feeling tight and perfectly constructed because of it.

When I reviewed volume 2, I said:

"I struggle to envisage where this goes, to have narrative closure that truly encompasses it all. But I have faith."

Having finished volume 3... there are several ironies in that conclusion. But also, however much I could not see it, however much I could not have expected where the plot would go, the faith I had has been entirely rewarded. The Power Fantasy Volume 3: The End of History is absolutely the best volume so far - and my god I hope we get more of this story, if this gets cancelled midway through I will weep - and promises that wherever they choose to continue going, there is much yet to be delivered from this world, these characters and, fundamentally, the analogy. It is an absolutely stunning (I was stunned) addition to the series, and if you like superhero stories, one I would urge you with the greatest insistence to read.

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The Math

Highlights: absolute commitment to the analogy, gorgeous art of terrible events, believable characters with unbelievable power

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10

Reference: Kieron Gillen, Caspar Wijngaard, Clayton Cowles and Rian Hughes, The Power Fantasy Volume 3: The End of History, [Image, 2026].

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroformtea.bsky.social

Graphic Novel Review: Free Planet #1

A wildly inventive comic/graphic novel by Aubrey Sitterson and Jed Dougherty

The planet of Lutheria has been through a lot. However, after much strife and struggle, they have gained independence from a tyrannical interstellar polity that has exploited them and their resources for a long time. They have struggled mightily against great odds and have achieved a precarious peace and stability. But it is what happens now that freedom is won that is the real story of Free Planet, a comic by Aubrey Sitterson and Jed Dougherty.

Graphic novels and manga are not my usual medium to read and review. And I am not the usual person here at Nerds of a Feather to review such work. But, in the spirit of spreading my oeuvre and skills, I decided to give it a try. And I am glad that I did. I was drawn immediately to the complexity of the art style. The creators take full advantage of the medium they are working in and push the boundaries of the form in telling their story. How? Graphic novels and comics are a visual medium; they tell the story by using imagery to do the heavy lifting alongside the dialogue and text, but it is imagery that they rely upon to tell the story. Comics have a structure that is recognizable: issues, pages, panels. If you’ve read some comics, you know precisely what to expect. And while that superstructure is here in the physical sense, the authors do much more with it, and create a visual language and a graphical vocabulary.

This first panel is a traditional comic panel, easily recognizable to anyone who has read a comic:

But many pages go much further. Look at this second image and the information density here:

We have a tense standoff between forces of the revolution and a mercenary outfit. But look on the left and you also see the story behind the story, the consequence of the revolution on grain prices as well as orchaleum production (orchaleum is a material needed for FTL travel; Lutheria has an abundance of it). Many pages of Free Planet use infographics like this to enhance and enrich the story.

This is a story about how fragile a revolution can be, and how the aftermath of success can affect the characters and the world itself. Using the visual vocabulary, we get a full sense of just what the costs of victory have been. The infographics, maps, and charts such as the one seen above do the heavy lifting of worldbuilding that would be difficult to replicate in prose.¹ We get a sense of a revolution, a planet, and the characters who are all on the edge, all of them under stress in the aftermath of the revolution. The novel focuses on the disappearance of one of the leaders of that revolution, and in the process gives us a “tour” of the revolution, both in the present and in key moments leading up to its success. Free Planet is entirely effective in using its sui generis approach to tell its story.

As a result, for me, Free Planet did not seem like a traditional comic, and I did not read it like a traditional comic. This was a deep and immersive reading experience that I took slowly and carefully, lingering on details in the graphics and visual vocabulary. It was like reading a dense space opera novel, once you don’t batter through with speed to flip pages, but rather linger on, thinking about the word choice and the scene being set. And for all of its graphical use, Free Planet has as much in common with that dense space opera novel as it does more traditional comics. I can’t imagine the amount of effort and resources it took to create Free Planet; it has to be an order of magnitude harder to accomplish. The fact that it is done so well is a testament to the work that the creators have put into it.

Thus, Free Planet has immersed me and engaged me deeply into its story, characters, backstory and worldbuilding. There is something hopeful and scary and unflinching about the story here—revolution and change are possible—but there is no happily ever after, and it takes work, a lot of work, to handle what comes next. The story of what comes after the revolution is as complicated and messy and interesting as the story of the revolution. Through the imagery, characters, and graphics of Free Planet, I was able to get my head around the costs of that revolution. And to be clear, those costs are high. And we do see bits and pieces in flashbacks of the struggle, but just enough for context, for understanding what the characters and the world of Lutheria are in for, now. But the point and focus of the graphic novel, always, is “what now?” And of course, what the revolution means. Each of the characters wants freedom… but what that actually means is not a single thing. And those definitions of freedom can and do clash.

The comic itself proclaims touchstones to Saga, and to Dune, and those are good reference points to those wondering just what kind of world this is and whether you might like to immerse yourself into this story and its characters. Other touchstones connected for me as I read the story. One in particular I want to bring up is Andor, the series as well as Rogue One. The series and the movie are at their core about getting the revolution off the ground, about how resistance is not futile, and how opposing tyranny can have high costs. So it is set “earlier” in a cycle of resistance and revolution than Free Planet is. But what the Andor saga shows, as Free Planet does, and what the main line of the Star Wars movies do NOT, is the often uneasy and prickly alliances and pieces of that revolution. Luthen, in Andor, is trying to put together a whole host of different factions into the Rebel Alliance.² And those factions are often at odds with each other as with the Empire and have very different ideas on what freedom from the Empire’s tyranny would be like. Free Planet shows that those contradictions and tensions are still there after the revolution. Readers of history (or listeners of, say, The Revolutions podcast) see this dynamic again and again.

One final note. As you could see from the panels above, the cast and society and world of Free Planet is diverse along a variety of axes, ranging from a mostly POC cast to a wide range of genders and sexualities. Lutheria and its inhabitants are a world and a people trying to find itself among a riot of diversity, and trying to find those commonalities and find strength in that diversity is part of the story of the comic. There is a definite Spanish/Brazilian flavor to Lutheria, and we see that not only in the cast, but in the use of language as well.³

I look forward to reading more issues of Free Planet, and continuing this fascinating and engaging story.

NB: The work of Aubrey Sitterson has previously been covered at Nerds of a Feather in some of the Thursday Morning Superhero columns.

NB: Although I do not do a lot of Hugo Award Nominations for the category Best Graphic Story or Comic, Free Planet #1 is going on my nomination ballot.

Highlights:

• Unique, enthralling and engaging format for visually telling the story
• An important story: what happens after the revolution wins.
• A diverse,queer and rich set of characters.

Reference: Sitterson, Aubrey and Dougherty, Joe. Free Planet Vol. I (Issues 1-6) [Image Comics, 2025].

¹ Ideas that come to mind include the use of footnotes, or perhaps the Dos Passos method of conveying information via metatexts, that has been since appropriated, adapted and evolved by authors like John Brunner and Kim Stanley Robinson. ² That is a bit of nice worldbuilding in Andor and Rogue One, isn’t it?  The core movies have the rebellion as a unified thing, with a unified command… but the name of the group is the Rebel alliance. Alliance of *what* is a detail that had to wait to be explicated. ³ And that, of course, makes me think of the Viagens Interplanetarias novels of L. Sprague de Camp.

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Graphic Novel Review: The One Hand and The Six Fingers, by V, Campbell, Watters, Kumar, Loughridge, Bidikar and Muller

 The Left hand can't know what the Right hand is doing

Cover Artist: Anand Radhakkrishnan

I don't read many graphic novels - mainly because I'm a latecomer to the field. I love stories - I read, I listen, I watch. Akira, which I first discovered as an imported graphic novel as teenager cemented a love of visual media. However I haven't ever really had the time for or interest in reading about superheroes. 

In a confession of my own ignorance I discovered only very late that western graphic novels were much broader than simply Marvel and DC. My exploration of what they do have to offer has led to me developing a bit of a habit which I’m sure keeps my local comic book shop happy. 

A recommendation for The One Hand and the Six Fingers came to me through a friend after he sold me on another of Ram V’s standalone stories – Rare Flavours. The One Hand and the Six Fingers has a central premise that’s outside of the story; that Ram V collaborated with two different other writers on the story to bring together essentially what is two stories about the same subject into one intertwining experiment in storytelling.

To understand how that works we have to explore the story itself a little (although no spoilers). The One Hand and the Six Fingers is a tale about a set of murders happening in a city that could be any big American city but mostly reads as New York or Chicago. We learn in the first chapter that the murders are serial murders and have been solved not once, but twice before by the same cop and now they’re back for a third spree it’s all falling apart.

The thing is the people locked up for the first and second set of murders each obviously did those murders. The cases against them were watertight. So what is going on and how is someone replicating the cases exactly, including elements that were never released to the public?

As it turns out the two sides of the story were planned as a complete arc but then the different people involved in each side got on with producing their pieces separately (with Ram V being the common writer across both sides). This is an audacious piece of plotting and artistic creativity because it means the telling has contextual divergence built into its fabric even if the meta-narrative is coherent.

There are the classic set of tropes – the cop due to retire, the maverick nature of their obsession with the murderer. We also have a murderer who’s not entirely sure if or why he’s doing what he’s doing. We have black police lieutenants ready to suspend the cop, we have accidentally caught up love interests who may or may not support the murderer.

Across the top of this we have the setting which is neo-noir but also cyberpunkish in a very Bladerunner 2049 sense. The detective has a long term relationship with a synthetic human, called here a Cog. The entire thing is at once familiar.

What is interesting to me though is what V and his collaborators do with the story. There are two extremely pertinent references beyond Bladerunner – Dark City, the 1998 film directed by Alex Proyas and the Matrix, the 1999 film written and directed by the Wachowskis. In that sense, The One Hand and the Six Fingers is treading well worn ground for people as old as I am. That doesn’t mean it’s not fun or interesting both from a dramatic and a philosophical point of view, just that it’s standing on the shoulders of giants.

The themes here, hidden behind gory murders and lush, economically structured panels and vistas are about meaning, information, the lives we perform for ourselves and how we create coherence in the worlds we build.

When I talk about world building I mean that in the personal sense of how I construct the world I encounter each day, the meaning in my experiences and what baggage I bring to it as well as grander ideas about how meaning is constructed.

V et al are very interested in deconstructing how we consider the world is put together. From Gerard 't Hooft’s holographic principle to Nick Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis we are asked to question whether the world we encounter with our senses, while the ‘us’ exists somewhere internally, can be considered real. If the world is not ‘real’ then what does that imply for both our sense of self but also our sense of self through instantiation?

This is the kind of thing that you might think is a bit sophomore in nature – to be discussed at three am at a house party with strangers but the narrative here handles it pretty well. Certainly the framing device of the killer and the detective wrestling with the same crimes adds more flair and nuance than the simple contemplation of everything being constructed (i.e. the classic antirealist stance). 

Not that V tackles it here, but if the world is one that’s entirely constructed whether by our social consensus or through the illusionary constructs of our sense data then building racism, sexism and other prejudices into it becomes a deeply weird position to take.

The One Hand and the Six Fingers doesn’t offer a definitive answer – its characters are in one specific iteration of the nexus of these ideas (which I am being careful not to spoil!) and in true story telling style it follows them to the end of that idea, to a position that is very definitely reductio ad absurdum. 

This is where it fell a little short for me. It may well be because I’ve come across these ideas a lot in my own reading/studying/writing but the main characters are, in the end, sitting in the well of fatalism. They are most concerned with identifying that they’re in the well and when they do? At that point they stop fighting and that was kinda disappointing to me. 

That’s a me thing – I want existential puzzles to have meaning, to be an impetus to changing the world. Ram V’s story presents a different epistemology – in that the limits of knowledge are both emotional as well as physical and intellectual. For his characters the weltanschauung they dwell within is one that starts and ends in despair and the discoveries along the way being transformative are decidedly not transformative of the fundamental meaninglessness of existence.

The One Hand and the Six Fingers suggests that learning the truth might only offer us an escape from these limits through non-existence because only by non-being can we counter the futility of being. It’s bleak when you write it out longhand.

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Highlights:

• Serial killers
• Cyberpunk, noir, hard bitten detectives
• Weird as fuck world building

Nerd coefficient: 7/10, a familiar set of tropes given new life with a brilliantly structured, drawn and coloured story about meaning wrapped up in a serial killer mystery.

References: V, Ram. The One Hand and the Six Fingers [Image Comics 2024].

STEWART HOTSTON is an author of all kinds of science fiction and fantasy. He's also a keen Larper (he co-owns the UK Fest system, Curious Pastimes). He's a sometime physicist and currently a banker in the City of London. A Subjective Chaos and BFA finalist he's also Chair of the British Science Fiction Association and Treasurer for the British Fantasy Society. He is on bluesky at: @stewarthotston.com.

Graphic Novel Review: The Power Fantasy vol. 2 by Kieron Gillen, Caspar Wijngaard, Clayton Cowles and Rian Hughes

The tensions increase in a stalemate between superpowers, as does the backstory and the drama of all kinds. 

The second trade volume of The Power Fantasy series of comics, Mutually Reassuring Destruction continues to follow a group of super-powered individuals from the twentieth century in their stand-off and power jockeying, against the backdrop of a world already gravely marked by their exercise of power.

Where vol. 1 (reviewed here) gave us the premise and initial setup, however, chucking out the ideas and the groundwork to lure us in, vol. 2 goes back to consolidate those ideas into something with further depth and texture. The key part of which is taking the "Second Summer of Love" - a catastrophic event which wiped out all of Europe - and giving us the backstory that led to the destruction, extremely well-placed as well as much-needed for the emotional depth it provides.

This backstory section is critical in a lot of ways, but I want to first highlight the thing that most makes it stand out against the rest of the story at first glance - the art. Caspar Wijngaard was a strong part of why volume 1 captured me, and that continues throughout volume 2, but never more so than in the Second Summer of Love and the character at the heart of it, the Queen. This section is awash in trippy rainbows, swirling colours and abstract motifs, and has, at the centre of it all, the distinctly non-human Queen. Thus far, the superpowers we have met have been at least human-base, if modified (Eliza) or obscured (Magus). The Queen is... not that. What she is is not fully explained either, but her visuals are a point of complexity and mystery that underscores how little this group of people - and the world - understand about their superpowered nature and origin. This is not "mutant gene" territory. At least one of them is theoretically from heaven. But that fact isn't taken as true whole cloth - quite frequently characters say that she "claims" that as backstory. Taking us visually that extra step away from human baseline - along with some other turns of the narrative - just adds greater depth here to the sense that none of this is cleanly explicable. I love mess, and The Power Fantasy is rolling in it like a delighted pig in muck.

The majority of the volume is given over to this and other vignettes which dot through time, and for a significant part of the story, the pacing has a sense of circling - lingering on certain ideas from different angles yes, but also the nervous hostility of two predators pacing around one another, assessing, waiting for the moment to strike. Big Cold War vibes continue apace, then. Had that been the whole of the thing, I might have been less satisfied, and wondered if volume 2 was being wholly given over to this consolidation and scene-setting, in service to reveals and action in story to come. Many a comic series has done likewise - one of the hardest things, in my opinion, about a long running series of graphic novels is to manage the pacing so no volume feels insubstantial on its own, subordinated to the needs of the greater plot. I would not have held it deeply against The Power Fantasy to do likewise. But no. The end section delivers a rush of drama and narrative crescendo that makes this volume feel like a complete emotional arc, as well as all the work being done to pick up threads from before and lay foundations for later. There is one particular page of beautiful work in which that dramatic arc reaches its destructive peak that I just had to sit with, enjoying just how well it combined its focus on the significance of the moment and the aesthetics of it, how the two really do pull together to serve the story.

Thematically, the focus remains firmly on the morality of power. It had already been put front and centre, and that isn't going away, but a new thought has entered the chat. In my review of volume 1, I said that that no one here is free from sin and boy howdy has that come to call in volume 2 with Eliza. We met her briefly before, but now she gets far more time in the spotlight, with her deeply held christian faith and her powers that come straight from hell, and her morality that burns bright because of/despite/throughout this. The Second Summer of Love was her crisis point and origin story, and its legacy continues to haunt her. As we learn about her, about her choices and her actions, she stands vividly for the fact that everyone in this story has fucked up and is fucked up. No one here is unalloyed good. She is haunted by her mistakes, and has taken herself off to a place outside the world, constructing an edifice of her own remorse and regret in which to do penance, and demanding an accounting of sin from those who try to visit her. Which makes her sound deeply unfun to read along, but nothing could be further from the truth. Her existence at a crossroads of faith and identity is extremely compelling, and casts a light which causes shadows to spring from those around her - her faith, her bringing her faith into all these questions that have been the centre of the story already, causes us to re-evaluate the premises we've already been given.

Alongside and in contrast to her, the character of Magus also continues to develop. I picked up previously his parallels with Wōden  in WicDiv and those haven't gone away, but the longer we spend with him the messier that comparison (productively) becomes. They draw on similar motifs and ideas, the fusing of technology into irrational systems of magic, the direct exploitation of others for power, but go in very different directions ideologically, especially in the partial resolution of the some of hints from the first volume that his journey from anarchist to dickhead techbro was... not what I was expecting.

And I think that's the thing that makes this stand out so much. Magus is one of the two closest characters to anything that resembles a potential "villain" in a usual narrative sense, and we are given so much information about both of their positions, their backstories and their moral philosophies, that even when we can't sympathise with their choices, we always understand how they resulted from the premises and processes that went into them. I'm not saying anyone in this story is a morally good actor - indeed, I think the whole point is that none of them completely are - but all of them are shown to be relatively rational and well-intentioned characters. Their differences come from their ideas of what good is, and the scope of their framework, what they consider the stakes to be. And it's this that Eliza's presence complexifies - her unshakeable faith, and her bringing both god and hell into the equation. As named specifically on the page, the idea of eternity is now on the table and that changes things. What does justice, punishment and good look like when you have to consider that suffering can be unending? What is a reasonable sacrifice when that's what it costs? And this, at least to me (with my relatively limited superhero comics background) feels fresh and thoughtful, because it takes the premise and the terms of the problems on the page genuinely seriously. All these factors would be a headfuck if you had this kind of power and were determined to be a force for good.

It did also, at several points, make me wonder if Kieron Gillen has just been having a little obsession with utilitarianism and its relationship with problems. And I'm cool with that.

There is a risk that anything this philosophical will get wanky, but for me at least, The Power Fantasy, is still staying plenty on the right side of the line. If anything, I put the book down realising that most other superhero media should be doing the same sort of grappling with power and isn't. Obviously plenty of this kind of media can be taken as clear analogies for all sorts of real world problems of varying scope, that isn't new, but the thing I'm taking from this is how much benefit there is to doing that my taking every single part of the equation dead seriously, and thus giving it time and the characters space to develop it to some kind of conclusion. The fights and the explosions and the romantic entanglements - because there are all of those - aren't vying for ground with the philosophical and moral musing, but forming the groundwork and fuel for it to be productive. The morality matters not just because the stakes are high, but because the people thinking it through are really people, and the space is given to ensure that comes through clearly on the page too.

The closure we get marries all of these up, too - it represents the culmination of arcs that matter both morally and personally - from which comes its success. But this is only vol 2, so any closure it has is going to be small scale, and indeed, the ending leaves a hint at the reduced scope of its conclusion. For all that we've had consolidation, we're still setting up some of the ideas that feel like they'll come more into play later on, and I'm still excited about all of them, but glad to see that vol 2 still gets to be a complete thread of its own, rather than entirely subservient to the larger plot. I said in my review of vol 1 "This is, quite clearly, not going to be a series for easy answers or simple debates." and that has only got more true.

I am interested, though, in how we'll reach any kind of conclusion on the broader scope of the problems in a later volume. I struggle to envisage where this goes to have narrative closure that truly encompasses it all. But I have faith. Everything I've seen so far here indicates that The Power Fantasy is being taken seriously as a thematic and a narrative project, and that any conclusions will ensure both parts are being served and supported. Which makes my inability to envisage where it's going pretty exciting. I have no idea where this is going, and I can't wait to find out.

--

The Math

Highlights: 

• a few stunning full-page spreads and gorgeous moments that really sell the atmosphere of the story
• hell turns up to make things all the more complicated
• some proper sexy character arcs

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Reference: Kieron Gillen, Caspar Wijngaard, Clayton Cowles and Rian Hughes, The Power Fantasy Volume 2: Mutually Reassuring Destruction, [Image, 2025].

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroformtea.bsky.social

Graphic Novel Review: The Power Fantasy by Kieron Gillen, Caspar Wijngaard, Clayton Cowles and Rian Hughes

What if your cold war was six people each with superpowers equivalent to a nuclear arsenal? And they're each of them a total mess of a person.

In his new graphic novel series, Kieron Gillen is once again interested in the ethics and morals of those with powers beyond the mortal. Unlike his previous explorations in that regard (The Wicked + the Divine, Die), he has saved us all the time in figuring that out by slapping it right on the first page of this bad boy, explicitly, in an ethical debate between two superpowered characters about the fate of the world, and their own responsibilities to it, the people in it and to each other.

"Of course, the ethical thing to do would be to take over the world" - so goes the first piece of dialogue in the story. 

But, lest we worry this is going to be all mouth and no trousers, the rest of the volume - the first trade in what feels like will gear up to be a substantial series - serves not so much to back up the content of that debate but instead to problematise it, and no more so than if you're already familiar with Gillen's work. There are allusions in here particularly to The Wicked + the Divine that are, quite swiftly, undermined instead of built upon, or at least made more complex. This is, quite clearly, not going to be a series for easy answers or simple debates.

The world of The Power Fantasy is one of superheroes - people with extraordinary powers over minds, gravity, the usual set of strangenesses you get in any work of the genre. They can fly, fight, control, create. They began to appear in the mid-twentieth century, and the strongest of them, the Atomics, liken their abilities to the force of the bomb, and with good reason, as the legacy of their existence on the planet is shown to us mid-way through the volume, written large on the landscape in brutal form. They are, then, a threat, to the world and to each other. There are allusions to threads of X-Men too, of a United States wanting to control and harm those within its bounds with these powers, alarmed by the threat of external actors. All of this is incredibly familiar. Except... there are twists, here and there. There's an irreverence, or at least humanisation, of the powered characters that felt unusual even from the first page. They are not their powers, sensationalised by fantastical names (at least, not those first two we meet). They are two people, walking on a city street, having a conversation, wearing normal clothes, with normal names. When more do show up as larger-than-life personalities with nicknames and cults teams families associates, they are not united as a common force with a specified aim, they're not fighting crime or taking over the world. They are simply... there. Existing, with their power, and as a threat simply for that existence. Is that a subtle take? Not at all, but sometimes the good ones go in with a machete rather than a scalpel.

We do, eventually, spend some time with the family, as they are known, and the suspense of getting there is worth it, because there's already a sense that something is wrong with the way these people all fit together, and meeting them only serves to confirm that suspicion - Heavy, the man who seems to be leading at least some of the powered individuals on a floating island home, is definitely construable as a cult leader, an idea he voices himself, letting it play out firmly in the text as well as the implications. Heavy is impulsive, emotional, very nearly destructively, genocidally violent at that first meeting with him, forestalled only by Etienne, one of those two first characters shown in a moral argument. Etienne, who stresses himself as an ethical man. But the act he does to appease Heavy - an ethical act, as he says to himself and to others - is the point upon which this first volume turns.

Heavy would likely have levelled a whole US state in his anger, killing millions. Etienne, specifically asking Heavy what he wants to prevent that violence and carrying it out, kills hundreds. Anyone order a trolley problem lads? We've got a big one here to unload. But the ethics of it aren't so much the interesting part of how this is played out in the story. Instead, what I found lingering with me was the perceptional aspects - how is Heavy coming out of this being perceived as sympathetic after that interaction, but Etienne is the threat? Why is a surgical murder of a smaller number more troubling, more evil-feeling than that threatened destructive rage? Trolley problems have been done and done and done, but how people around them respond to the decision makers... well, at least that I've seen less of. If Gillen is tackling the price of power, he's far more interested here in other costs, and willing to tread more interesting paths than great power and great responsibility.

This is only more highlighted when we meet someone who, at first, seems well set up to be the villain of the piece. Magus, with his green-blue colour palette and masked face, is instantly evocative of Wōden from The Wicked + the Divine, who was about as uncomplicatedly villainous as that series got. Like Wōden, Magus deals in tech, and appears, at least at first, to be extremely self-serving. He, too, had something of a cult (and again, that nature is labelled straight on in the text, cluing us straight away that Gillen is messing us around somehow). But his cult, in 1978, is anti-fascist, anti-police anarchists.

How he goes from this to tech-rich shithead... there are glimpses, but clearly more is to be revealed. So the allusions back to Wōden are both right and wrong - right about what we have on the page, but wrong about the depth, and the journey.

I could go on, because there are more examples, but none of the sides in this, even as a first volume are cleanly drawn, and no one is free from sin. There are sins of action and inaction, sins of morality and ethics, sins of accident and decision. This is clearly a world in which the Atomics have had long enough to muddy all the boundaries, to have seen some shit, fought some bad guys and be living in their own legacies. And I say "sin" with deliberate choice, because there are some tantalising hints of verrrrrry interesting worldbuilding that I hope to see more of in future volumes, and which shift things away from a lot of existing mutant or other pseudo-scientific superpower scenarios. As a first trade, it is to be expected that much will be hints without resolution. But there's enough substance alongside them, and the substance lies firmly in all that undermining, that outward referencing and then complicating, that's very clearly setting out a stall for some interesting thoughts on how someone can exist in a world with that kind of phenomenal power. The answer, I suspect, will be some flavour of "with deepest, unresolvable regret", amongst other things.

Gillen is at his best, in my opinion of his past work, when he's deeply in his references, pulling on multiple threads in other works and forcing the reader to confront something about them that they may not have considered before, quite possibly something with uncomfortable implications. Volume 1 of Die did precisely that with its Tolkienian allusions, and the series went on to do it for D&D with bells on. Once and Future was all over it for the Arthuriana mythos. There's a perfect line between obvious affection for sources and clarity of thought and incisive critique that I find intensely appealing, and makes me come back for more of his work again and again, and I have absolutely no doubt that The Power Fantasy will be doing that, if anything, harder than ever. This first volume has already taken a thesis of problematising the found family, and that alone is selling it to me as an interesting line to take.

But it's not all Gillen. Caspar Wijngaard's art also has a strong part to play in why this story is beginning so effectively. There's a distinct colour palette overhanging the whole story - the majority of it is slightly sepia-ed pinks, peaches, and dusty purple, giving it an aged vibe, even for the segments not told in the past with respect to the narrative. When you have a setting that is distancing superheroes from a sciencey underpinning, pulling it away from the crisp, blue-toned futurism of some of the contemporary superhero comics feels like a pointed decision. Likewise, several sections occur at different times and places, and the art plays around beautifully to reflect that - from the black and white, splotchy, made-in-someone's-garage feel of the 70s anarchists sections, to the crisply-green modern hub of Magus, to the red-toned hellscape of a past atrocity, this is art that states its case very clearly for the mood of each scene, and isn't afraid to switch it up when needed. Colour also helps tell the story panel to panel - when characters are pulled into telepathic conversations, the colours pale along with character eyes, distancing the reader from the physical body. As with some of the storytelling - it's not subtle and not trying to be, but it is effective and it is interesting.

One can never be certain with graphic novels from the first trade how things will go in the long run - too many get lost in the weeds of middle issues - but The Power Fantasy has a great deal of the promise one wants from a starting point, setting up interesting themes, worldbuilding and characters, and especially character dynamics, that I am keen to see play out into something special.

--

The Math

Highlights: 

• Nuanced and unusual approach to superheroism
• Who cares about the trolley problem, how does everyone feel about the trolley problem?
• None of you is free from sin

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Reference: Kieron Gillen, Caspar Wijngaard, Clayton Cowles and Rian Hughes, The Power Fantasy Volume 1: The Superpowers, [Image, 2025].

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroformtea.bsky.social

Review: Deadlier Than by Corey Brotherson, art by Jennie Gyllblad, Olivia Samson, Ted Brandt and Kit Buss

 A collection of graphic shorts that deliver a big punch in a small space.

I don't think I've ever read a graphic novel of short stories before, or at least not this short. WicDiv had that one issue that was bit more episodic... but it was also a lot chonkier than the rest of the series, and had a heavy reliance on text-only pages, so I'm really not sure it counts. Deadlier Than... however is a collection of three short stories told in comic form, connected by a theme of female strength, and tied together by short text interludes from the perspective of an injured spider. And that's great! More of that format please!

Graphic novels are always a bit tricky. Sometimes it's a series that never gets finished (RIP Ody-C). Sometimes it's a one-off that feels in an awkward position between too short to be long and too long to be short. Sometimes it feels like you spent a chunk of money for something you only spent 45 minutes reading. But somehow, doing three separate short stories really solved that problem here. It felt substantial, when you got three fully complete and coherent narratives in one book. There were natural pause points for me to put the book down and reflect on what I'd just read. There was a bridging motif that enforced those pause points. And when I finally did close it, I felt like I got three whole stories out of it, not just one, and that felt like a super worthwhile use of my money.

All in all, it's an A* from me for the format.

But onto the actual content.

These are three very different stories, spanning SF and F. We've got fairies, we've got robots and we've got aliens. So what joins them together? What makes this a collection, rather than just well... some things that have been collected? The cohesive force between them is the focus on the three, central, female characters and their strength, in whatever form that might take. Each of the three stories lasers in on a single event, a single encounter or episode, in which its character demonstrates, at her core, who she is in this world (wherever, whenever and whatever that world might be). There's some obvious physical strength at play, but there is also a focus on surviving adversity, and being able to adjust your thinking in the face of events that change your worldview. There are themes running through of self-doubt, of being misled, and having to live with the consequences of those revelations, all of which are surprisingly well-covered for the extremely short story-space they each occupy.

There are also three different art styles, and each one feeds into the vibe that story has - I particularly enjoyed the contrast of the more clean line style of the sci-fi future story and the loose, almost watercolour lightness of the story with the fairy protagonist. It's a format that lends itself well to that sort of playfulness, with the space to bend the form to accommodate the story, without having to commit to anything for all too long.

But there's also a fourth story. And this one is slightly different. It sits between the others, connecting their themes together, following a spider trapped in a garden longing for escape. This one is told primarily in text, white on saturated black background, and slower, more poignant than the others, told as it is in little episodes broken up by the brightness of the other stories. While all the tales in the collection have strong emotional through-lines - it's one of the things the collection does well - it is in the spider's story that I found the strongest emotional resonance, quite simply because it is pared down. It's a story that contains so little, it has distilled itself down to the finest grains of bittersweetness, and so manages to pack even more of a punch than its fellows, while occupying so little space. And where the others may leave some ambiguity, the spider's story does not, and sets the tone for the whole collection, your entrance to and your exit from it. You begin and end with crispness, visually and narratively, and I really enjoyed how that directed the reading experience.

Within the stories, there's also a lot to love. All three are very quick to give you a sense of their character and the general arc of their struggle. They trust the reader to roll with light worldbuilding (and reward that trust) and instead lean in heavy on character and tone, ensuring they deliver on their punchy intensity.

But there's obviously a downside to that, and because it is so world-building light, and each story is so short... you can't really ask any questions. What's there, if you confine yourself to solely the text and nothing more, is great. But really good stories, both long and short, leave you with the space to wonder and wander around the edges of them. This is the stuff that fanfiction is made of, after all. But because we don't get that here, because the decision has been made to prioritise immediacy of character and emotional arc over anything more external or concrete, once you pass the end of each story, it starts to flatten itself out in the memory. It only lives while the reader lives in it, and doesn't quite manage to stand on its own beyond.

I'm not sure this is even a flaw, exactly. It's a choice that needed to be made within the constraints the format demands. There simply is not space in a graphic novel, in a short-story style format, to do anything extensive, and so something needs to be prioritised. For me, I think all three of these made the right call, choosing as they did. I would rather fleshed out people with believable responses to problems than an expansive, thought-provoking world. Both is great, don't get me wrong, but if I have to choose, that's the choice I would make every time. So I don't think it's a problem here, exactly. But it is a limitation, and one to be aware of when reading it, especially if the reader is someone who prefers world-forward style narratives, because that simply isn't what we have here.

And that's what, for me, caps it at an 8 out of 10. There's ultimately something incomplete about the experience, when looking back at it. It gets the 8 for how it feels in the moment, and all its successes. But it goes no further because it simply cannot. If it had been a little longer, perhaps? Or done only three narratives? Maybe. Maybe then. 

Looking only within the constraints of itself, it absolutely sings, and is a worthwhile read. I just found myself, when I finished, when I pondered... not quite satisfied, in the end. But some things don't need to last forever. Read it for the moment, read it for the experience, and embrace that ephemerality.

--

The Math

Highlights: instantly emotive characters; well handled, interestingly used story structure; beautiful visuals that really play well with the vibes of their stories

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Reference: Brotherson, Corey, Deadlier Than, [Doodle Doole, 2019]

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroformtea.bsky.social

Nanoreview: The Little Red Wolf by Amélie Fléchais

A small change to the tale makes all the difference

You know how it goes: there's a curious child, a worried mother, a meal to deliver to a frail grandmother. An errand through the forest. A chat with a stranger. And menace lurking. Except this time the curious child is the wolf, and the stranger in the forest is the girl, and the crux of the story is the mystery about who is more of a menace to whom.

But what does it all mean? The traditional versions of Little Red Riding Hood have given rise to all sorts of interpretations: a didactic fable about obeying your elders, a remnant of matriarchal initiation rites, a summarized model of heliolatrous cosmology, a Freudian dream of death and reemergence, an allegory of sexual assault. Amélie Fléchais, in her retelling The Little Red Wolf, recently translated into English by Jeremy Melloul, chooses to focus on the most salient theme that this story has always presented to young readers: the fear of untamed nature.

When the wolf loses his way in the forest and meets the little girl, she regales him with a song about the origin of the enmity between the hunter and the wolves. But the wolves remember a different song, one that completes the story and makes you want to reread the book and catch the visual clues that were there all along.

The illustrations fulfill this role outstandingly. "Show, don't tell" has always been a dubious rule, but if there's any art form where it would be wiser to follow it, it's graphic novels. In The Little Red Wolf, the text is precise and just sufficient, while the images are evocative of a deeper plot underneath what's said. The secrets hidden in the forest are heightened by ironic contrast with the gentle choice of palette. Both wolf and human faces eschew anatomic accuracy and go for pure emotion. With his huge eyes and tiny snout, the little wolf is a harmless creature that just wants to see everything the world has; with his overgrown beard and haughty expression, the hunter is a force of nature more fearsome than any beast.

Upon reading the promotional blurb, The Little Red Wolf might sound like your average fairy tale reversal. However, when the full backstory is revealed, the picture that emerges is more complex than just a switching of roles. Each party in this human-wolf conflict holds a portion of the truth, and few readings are more stimulating to the young mind than a tale told through conflicting versions none of which can be ignored. When you figure out that the reason this forest has a hunter of wolves is the same reason this wolf wears a red cape, your understanding of the plot goes full circle, and with that richer perspective, you'll want to go through the experience again.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Reference: Fléchais, Amélie and Melloul, Jeremy [translator]. The Little Red Wolf [Oni Press, 2023].

Nanoreview: Peculiar Woods by Andrés J. Colmenares

A gentle fantasy about the many meanings of home

From Andrés J. Colmenares, the artist behind the adorable webcomic Wawawiwa, comes a graphic novel with deep worldbuilding, understated characterization, and a whimsical sense of humor: Peculiar Woods, whose first entry, The Ancient Underwater City, tells the story of Iggie, a sensitive boy who moves to a new town near the forest and becomes intrigued by the secrets of a lake that doesn't appear on the map. As he learns to adapt to a different school, a mysterious forest and a new family situation, he meets unexpected friends in the objects around him.

That's the magic of this town: without warning, without any clear pattern, objects come to life. Against his mother's advice, Iggie goes on a risky adventure with his blanket, which can wrap itself to walk or spread wide to fly; his chair, a yoga enthusiast with anger management issues; and a chess king, which is convinced that he has a kingdom to return to. The quest to help the chess king find his home ends up uncovering clues about the origin of the lake, the creatures that hide nearby, and the magic that animates objects. The final pages lead to a strong cliffhanger that promises more revelations to come.

There's an irresistible sweetness to this story. For reasons to be explained in future entries, Iggie has so far lived separated from his mother, and he's very aware of his feelings of vulnerability and loneliness, even as he strives to not let them show. Over the course of this adventure, he starts learning to share his fears and open up to others who are as vulnerable as he is. This is a beautiful emotional journey to watch; one is immediately captivated by Iggie's thoughtful and delicate personality. In the design of this character, the story succeeds at avoiding a common pitfall of children's literature: the protagonist experiences noticeable inner growth, but never in a manner incongruous with his age.

The author's trademark visual style suits greatly the book's emotional content. The palette is soft, without sharp contrasts; the lines have a hand-drawn appearance that doesn't try to hide irregularities; and the facial expressions have just the intensity needed. The combination of these artistic elements is effective without looking calculated. Like the characters in Wawawiwa, those in Peculiar Woods make odd choices that make total sense once the full story is considered. Even in a world that has bullies and scheming villains, Peculiar Woods doesn't lose its firm grounding in the inherent kindness of people.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Reference: Colmenares, Andrés J. Peculiar Woods: The Ancient Underwater City [Andrews McMeel, 2023].

Microreview[Graphic Novel]: Real Hero Shit by Kendra Wells

 A genuinely funny romp through an RPG-style world, with enough meat under the comedy to be a really substantial read.

Real Hero Shit follows a fairly standard RPG style group on a mission to investigate shady goings on, while we explore the group dynamics and get to know (and love) the characters along the way. We have the mysterious elven rogue leader of the group, who is quiet and determined to get the mission done. We have the badass cleric with a massive hammer who seems nice... right up until e sees someone doing a Bad, and then we see es angry, disappointed and well armed side come through. We have the extremely grompy sorceror who is done with everyone's shit. And we have... Eugene, the inexplicably purple and horned prince of the realm who's bored of fucking around in the literal sense, so is trying it in the metaphorical one for a nice change of pace.

It's very much the introductory volume of the story - we follow Eugene getting to know the rest of the party and exploring the world, while they undertake a relatively simple quest to see why people are going missing in a nearby town. And purely in terms of the story any worldbuilding, it's nothing stunningly original. We seem to be in approximately fantasy pseudo-medieval Europe for our tech level, fashion and general vibes, with modern vernacular, modern attitudes to sex (and the casual having thereof) and modern gender and sexual mores.

The latter point is one of the things that really makes this book stand out for me.

D&D has got quite queer recently. I've only been playing for six or so years, and the shift has been visible even in the time I've been involved in it. It is really enjoyable then to see stories written in D&D style worlds and modes that really reflect what the hobby is for many players. Real Hero Shit is precisely that. We have bi characters, gay characters, characters whose gender is not confined to the male/female binary, without any of it feeling like it's a big deal. It's a story where it feels like... well it's D&D, of course it's queer as heck.

Which isn't to say it's alone in this - it's something plenty of D&D/RPG inspired stories are doing at the moment, as the literature around the hobby catches up to much of the playerbase - but it's still not the dominant mode enough, at least in what I'm seeing, that it remains refreshing. 

Likewise, it's a story willing to put its politics front and centre. This is not a party full of murder-hobos, or people whose moralities wander hither and thither depending what the story needs. We start out with a clear mandate to find the missing villagers, and that's the driving narrative and moral tone that carries us through. This is particularly useful for making the cleric character, Hocus, feel like a bedded in member of the party. So often, paladin and clerics are odd ones out, either slightly compromised (or maybe simply non-standard) in their portrayal of their character archetypes, or else constantly at low key odds with the rest of the party who want to do crimes have adventures. But because we come in with this clear mandate that we are, indeed, doing real hero shit, Hocus feels truly part of the group, and we never have reason to doubt em and es cohesion with everyone else.

But the thing that really makes it stand out is the humour - it is, while being at points serious, absolutely laugh out loud funny. And almost all of that humour is down to Eugene. Eugene is a horny, low attention span, well-meaning yet utterly spoilt lovable idiot. Eugene flirts with everyone. Eugene has no filter. Eugene will piss everyone off and apparently not notice. And it makes for great comedy that isn't complicated or particularly clever, but is hitting the mark time after time. Some of its success is simply that it is willing to acknowledge that the story, the setting and the characters are inherently ridiculous and just... embrace it. And some of it is leaning into the ridiculousness super hard with a knowing wink to the reader and a vibe of "I know your mind went there too". It feels like the author is colluding with you while reading, in the way of good D&D parties everywhere with players who make each other cackle and escalate their shenanigans.

It's not perfect though; there are some weaknesses. Critically, the worldbuilding feels somewhat underdone, and relies heavily on giving you the broad strokes (are we in typical D&D fantasy medieval land? Yes we are!) and then letting you assume the rest from this shorthand. And obviously that does work - medieval fantasyland has been so thoroughly done and done and done that you don't need to spell it out for the reader to get the gist. But it's nice if you do. When so much of what you're doing just rests on those familiar tropes, except in the moment where you're doing something different, the worldbuilding does start to feel somewhat low effort. It's not nothing, and we do begin to see peeks here and there of details of what Wells' world has to offer, but it's always a light touch rather than anything approaching a deep dive, and it does feel at times like it would benefit from a bit more exposition and originality, just to flesh things out a bit.

Of course, this is only the first book in what feels inevitably likely to be a series, so we can't expect to have everything spelled out straight off the bat. But at the same time, there has to be enough to pull you in, to make you want to learn more about the world, and it does feel like Wells has barely got us there while they focussed on other things, with a few tidbits at the end dangled as a hook to lead us into volume two. It's a very slim volume, and I think we could have stood a little slow down on the pace to do the grounding now, rather than the risk of crowding in exposition later when it will, hopefully inevitably, be needed for events to be fully embedded in the world, or worse, risk that it never comes through as fully as we need, and the story fizzles out after the excitement of volume one.

That being said, there was enough that I want to read volume 2 - enthusiastically so - so for all my grumbling, they did clearly do enough for it to work, just about.

In the same vein, while I have no real complaints about the art style, which is absolutely fine for the story it's telling and the characters it's building, neither do I have any real praises to sing either. It's perfectly cute, functional and dynamic, but it's not going to stick with me for years to come, and nor is it going to be the reason I push this into someone else's hands.

But I am going to be pushing it into people's hands. And that's because the combination of the characters, the humour and just feeling incredibly reflective of D&D as it is now was a joy to read. It has flaws, it's not perfect, but the core of what it was doing was so wonderful, I'm entirely happy excusing them for the time spent with these people. They made me laugh, time and again, and they made me sad that the book was only as small as it was, because I just wanted to spend more time getting to know them and seeing their dynamics. And it's that chemistry, the spark between characters, that really grabs you while reading. Like a good D&D session, one that really sticks with you, it's a story full of people who just vibe with each other, in different ways, and that's what makes it all work out.

--

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10

Bonuses: +2 amazing characters that make you want to spend time with them, +1 laugh out loud funny

Penalties: -1 not enough worldbuilding to tell me why this isn't just off the shelf medieval fantasy Europe

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Reference:  Kendra Wells, Real Hero Shit [Iron Circus Comics, 2022]

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroform_tea