‘Curse Words’ Leads The List Of This Week’s Best Comics

It’s a story as old as the fantasy genre: An evil wizard comes to our world to end it. But what if that evil wizard pokes around, meets the people, and decides it’s a lot better than the crappy alternate reality he comes from What if he uses his magic powers to set himself up in business That’s the basic premise of Charles Soule and Ryan Browne’s Curse Words (Image), launching this week.

Soule is no stranger to putting a sharp twist on an old story, and what anchors this tale is Wizord, the “hero” who turns out to be a lot more morally complicated than his supposedly heart-warming backstory would indicate. He can help you, but he’s not a nice guy, and you forget that at your peril. Browne, meanwhile, is perhaps something of an odd choice for a book like this; while he’s skilled at fantasy, his thick lines and his taste for psychedelic colors (along with colorists Jordan Boyd and Michael Parkinson) tend to lend themselves more to comedy than action. Still, Browne can deliver the action scenes, and he has a taste for working gags into his depictions of magic; the introductory villain’s scepter is, uh, a bit phallic.

Curse Words has the virtue of being something unique on the increasingly crowded stands, and that makes it a great place to start. Besides, who doesn’t want to see Justin Bieber turned into a statue and blown up

Margaret Stohl and Ramon Rosanas have the unenviable job of pleasing the Carol Corps, especially after the events of Civil War II, wherein Carol was kind of an ass. Stohl keeps it relatively light: Part of the fallout of that crossover is she’s stuck selling her life rights to Hollywood to secure the funding she needs, only to discover Hollywood is more interested in boob windows than superheroics. That said, there’s a refugee situation she needs to deal with, as aliens flee to Earth, allowing the book to touch on current events with enough distance to get the point without belaboring it. It’s a solid launch for Carol, and we’re looking forward to what she does next.

Andy Diggle and Luca Casalanguida deliver a classic martini take on the spy story, with just enough of a mix of modern tech and geopolitics to keep it fresh. Diggle, of course, can write government conspiracies inside and out and make them feel authentic, and he’s having a grand old time with a twisty story of legit arms manufacturers and very dangerous illegitimate weapons. Casalanguida puts a unique style on it, balancing the necessary glam with deep shadows and a more monochrome color palette. If you’re a Bond fan, this’ll fill in the gap until the next movie.

Sean Lewis and Hayden Sherman start up a story of a divided United States, where much of the country is little more than a far snowier Mad Max knockoff. At the center of it is Edan Hale, a seemingly normal young woman who, when a genocidal warlord suddenly begins killing his own, is handed a baby and told to run. But there’s far more to Edan, and her unexpected rescuers, than we realize. Sherman’s stark art sets the atmosphere: Everything is grey and made of straight lines, giving the book a harsh feel. But it clicks surprisingly well, and the final twist offers a lot of promise.

Christa Faust and Gary Phillips layer on the complications here in the classic noir way: Namely, everybody makes a string of bad decisions and/or gets betrayed by somebody they trust, usually the latter following hard on the former. Faust picks up the pace of the plot with a robbery, a murder, a confession, and a betrayal, but never loses her secondary goal, to reflect what sex work back when Times Square was sleaze was genuinely like. Some of the most uncomfortable moments in this book are the casually horrible ways women get treated, which Faust and Phillips simply present as stone cold fact and let the reader make their own calls. Phillips’ art takes a similar approach, subtly letting the faces of his characters tell us just how awful this all is. Peepland is easily one of Hard Case’s best books and hopefully Faust has more comics coming.

Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye #4, DC: This book has settled into a pleasant rhythm of mixing old-school DC heroic adventure with a more thoughtful approach to Cave and his struggles to connect with his daughter.

Kill or Be Killed #5, Image: Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips took a break after the first arc of this book… that lasted all of a month, and now they’re back, with this story of Dylan, a vigilante who is either under thrall to a demon, losing his mind, or possibly both! As always, it’s a must-read.

Harbinger: Renegades #3, Valiant: Valiant’s best team book is back with an excellent twist, with the theme of getting past your failures woven in.

Justice League: The Ray, DC: Steve Orlando and Stephen Byrne update the origin of The Ray, the light-manipulating hero who comes out of the darkness, more or less literally, in an inspiring one-shot.

Monsters Unleashed #1, Marvel: This book can be a little stiff, but it’s hard to knock a crossover that’s all superheroes fighting giant monsters. Will Fin Fang Foom finally explain why he wears pants

The Goddamned Vol. 1: The Flood, Image (Softcover, $10): Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera ask just how awful the world was before Noah’s flood, that God thought the whole thing should be drowned. Suffice to say, you’ve never read a Bible story quite like this horror tale.

Kennel Block Blues, BOOM! Studios (Softcover, $15): Ryan Ferrier and Daniel Bayliss turn going to the pound into a prison drama in this psychedelic, heartbreaking book.

Kazar: Savage Dawn, Marvel (Softcover, $16): Marvel reprints one of its strangest, most fun, and most overlooked books. If you’re into tales of dinosaurs and pulp heroes, look no further.