Reviews

Sana Takeda's art is the reason. Liu builds a world dense enough you trust her with every twist. Issue one is a high-effort entry — it asks you to keep up — and rewarded everyone who did.

Hickman pulled off the impossible — soft-rebooted the X-Men without alienating anyone. Larraz is a revelation. The data pages are a swing that completely lands. The Krakoa era starts here and it's a hell of an opening.

I keep coming back to this issue. BKV's opening line is iconic for a reason and Staples just blows the doors off the first page reveal. The romance, the worldbuilding, the absurdity — every comic launch since has been chasing this.

Tom King and Mitch Gerads turning Mister Miracle into a meditation on depression, fatherhood, and capes is the kind of swing that wins Eisners for a reason. Issue one sets up the impossible question and earns every page.

Hard to overstate how fresh this felt in 2003. Kirkman builds the world with restraint, Walker keeps it grounded. You feel the genre love in every panel. The first issue every other "kid in a superhero costume" book gets compared to.

Local Man is the only book on the stands that pulls off the meta superhero genre swap. Tony Fleecs and Tim Seeley clearly have a blast with the format. The 90s flashback throwbacks are a great touch.

Day one zombie comic. Restraint is the magic — issue one is more about people than walkers. That cliffhanger still holds up. Kirkman/Moore lit the fuse on a 16-year run that changed indie comics for good.

Gaiman finds the voice almost immediately — by issue one we're in his world, not borrowing from someone else's. Sam Kieth's art on this opening arc is rougher than what came later but it has its own charm.

Re-read. Still works. Moore/Gibbons/Higgins built the seminal deconstruction of superheroes here and the symbolism in just the cover works on three levels. If you've never read Watchmen, start tonight.