Kelly-Sue-Deconnick

Starting in college and continuing in the following decades I’ve slowly been learning that women have a completely different experience of the world. I thought I understood the struggle women had compared to men; at the highest level, being expected to be successful as both mothers and career women without a social support system. But as the years went on and I was exposed to more and more women-created content - articles, blog posts, comedians, etc I discovered there was a whole experience based upon avoiding verbal, physical, emotional, or sexual abuse from men. An experience I had no idea existed, but which women were initiated into by other women in their lives; things to say and do to avoid becoming a victim. Mostly because they are in a system that rarely recognizes them as victims. So I was not as surprised as some men claim to be on Twitter and Reddit that women had finally had enough culminating in the current moment where some powerful men have been toppled by a history of sexual abuse. (EG Weinstein) It’s clearly this moment that Kelly Sue DeConnick was tapping back in 2014 when she first started Bitch Planet, putting her ahead of the current moment, but as I’ll discuss, also a little behind because of the slow nature of releases for the book. ...

We don’t often consider single issues here at Comic POW! We prefer to look at story arcs and completed series to get a better feel for what the author and artist were trying to accomplish. However, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some comics’ first issues to predict where we think it might be going and see how that compares with where the series actually goes. This series is called “At the Beginning” and it’ll usually be for series right as they are starting up. ...

While I was on vacation last week Image Comics announced a boatload of new series coming out soon. Here they are: The Fade Out I’m not a huge fan of Ed Brubaker, but I do respect his work on Fatale. It’s going to be ending after its 24th issue and Brubaker will be working with Sean Phillips (who he also worked on Fatale with) on The Fade Out. Here’s how Brubaker describes it: The Fade Out is my ultimate noir story. It’s a brutal crime story set in late ’40s Hollywood, and all spinning around the mysterious death of an up-and-coming starlet. For people who’ve been waiting for us to return to Criminal, this will be exactly what they’re looking for, but on a much more epic scale—going from studio backlots to the debauchery of the rich and famous, and even stretching back to the horrors of World War Two. I am a fan of noir, but what’s really exciting about this announcement is how it’s shaking up the industry. Phillips and Brubaker will have full creative control and ownership of their projects at Image for the next five years. Image Comics was founded because of the Big Two having ownership of characters created while working for them. But this is an even further move. I think this new move is motivated by Thrillbent and Panel Syndicate proving that the Internet is finally coming through on its promise of no longer needing a publisher. So if publishers want to stay in business, they need to provide something above and beyond what creators can get doing it on their own. It’s an exciting shakeup that could lead to even more creative works in a space that really needs it.

I always have a hard time figuring out which new comics I want to pick up. There are some choices that are easy, sure – I already know that I’ll be picking up Damian: Son of Batman when it’s released starting next week, and I’m just as sure that I have no interest in jumping into any of the X-Men titles – but the choices aren’t always that simple. I find it especially difficult to decide what, if any, indie books I’m going to check out. A lot of them are fantastic, and I’d never say otherwise, but there are so many ongoing titles from publishers that aren’t the Big Two that it seems even more daunting to figure out what to read there than it does to catch up with the first run of Detective Comics.