Looking for a new comic book to read? The Wizard’s Wagon has you covered.
Every Wednesday, Jon “Fleet” Norfleet thumbs through up to 70 new comic book releases. As owner and comic manager at the Wizard’s Wagon, he knows every book on the shelves cover to cover. Fleet shared a few of favorite recent releases on St. Louis on the Air. They include popular comic book properties and new series from Eisner Award-winning comic book writers and artists.
Teen:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Usagi Yojimbo: WhereWhen #1
Writer: Stan Sakai | Published by IDW
“For fans of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that go way back, every now and then you'll see the rabbit character Usagi show up, and this is because the creator of Usagi and the creator of Ninja Turtles were friends. Usagi is a feudal era Japanese samurai. Everyone is an animal in this world. The Ninja Turtles are the Ninja Turtles. And in this event here, there's a doctor named Dr. WhereWhen, who's a time traveler. And through time traveling shenanigans, the Turtles and Usagi end up meeting each other.”
Mature:
W0rldtr33 #1 (Worldtree)
Writer: James Tynion | Published by Image Comics
“It's about the effects of the internet and the dark web. How it gets into people's minds and it gets them to commit great, heinous acts of violence. In this particular issue, we follow a character whose brother goes on a mass killing spree and streams it live. As he does this [and] more people see this, there's [a] kind of virus thing that gets into their minds.”
Writer: Alex Paknadel | Published by Image Comics
“Let's say we take the concept of the story ‘Tarzan,’ but we apply it to the movie ‘Predator’ from the 80s. So you have aliens who find themselves face-to-face with a [lone] human who is completely decimating them due to gravitational differences [on Earth]. The human is the alien. The stylistic choices here are meant to give you this kind of alien feel to everything. When they're in the Earth setting, everything is very lush and green. But when we deal with the aliens, there are the colors that aren't normally associated with life — off-color blues and pinks.”
Writer: Rodney Barnes | Published by Image Comics
“The girl on the cover, her name is Marli. She's the adoptive sister of the main character, Trayvon. Trayvon is an alien who was seeded into the world and meant to grow up and assess humanity, so that when his alien brethren come, they can harvest the planet [of all its resources]. In this issue, Trayvon is dealing with the struggles of being an alien, but also growing up human and regretting the things he’s done. He wants to save his [human] family and his friends.”
Writers: Charles Soule and Ryan Browne | Published by Image Comics
“The [series’] concept is that when Earth reaches a population count of 8 billion people, the [planet] releases a sort of a defense mechanism to cull the population. In this case, it generates one genie for every living being on the planet, which allows them one wish per person. It’s chaos.”
To hear more about this week’s new comic releases, Fleet’s thoughts on the homegrown comic talent in the region, and his love for X-Men’s Cyclops, listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or by clicking the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Avery Rogers is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr. Send questions and comments about this story to talk@stlpr.org.
