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So since Evie couldn't do this stuff from work today, and since I wanted to write about my Book of the Week here anyway, behold ... VISUAL AIDES!

Here's Evie's Panel of the Week, from I Kill Giants #2 by Joe Kelly and JM Ken Niimura. Technically her P's otW are the two on the left, but I included the image on the right because it's an awesome image.


My PotW, from Chris Giarusso's Mini Marvels strip, appearing in the back of Incredible Herc 121 (and probably a few other books as well) I just love that one in the back left.


I'm not going to bother posting my Cover of the Week, because it's the Craaaaazy Wild Drunken Superman Cover, which you've all seen a dozen times. But here's Evie's, a sweet Captain Marvel from Mike Kunkel.


Now, to what I actually came here to write about - My pick for Book of the Week (and what probably would have been Evie's pick too, had she not known it was going to be mine) Tales of Penance: Trial of the Century Issue #2, from Arcana Comics.

This book features story and plot by Sean Wise and Paul Gilligan, brilliantly paced Scripting by Ryan Foley, art by Gian Fernando (credited as GOOF) and pitch-perfect colors by something called "EvE" - about which no further information can be easily googled.



So here's your back o' the trade blurb for this one.

ONE OF THE MOST UNIQUE TAKES ON SUPERHERO STORYTELLING IN YEARS.

Here's another one.

RIVALS THE BEST OF POWERS, ALIAS, OR GOTHAM CENTRAL.

And I mean both of them. When Evie and I came up with the format for the show, we decided to include a category for First/Last of the week - hoping that the Firsts would force us to pick up a few Indie titles, perhaps forgoing the latest Wolverine one-shot or Geoff Johns retconned origin in favor of a lesser-known book that we could recommend to our listeners.

Now in the 15th week of this podcast, I can already count several previous "first of the week" winners as among the books I look forward to the most every month. Jonathan Hickman and JM Ringuet's Transhuman is one. This book is another.

I'm not going to bore you with plot descriptions that you can easily get elsewhere, other than to say it's a gritty-ish, noir-enough crime/law/cops/tights drama that takes place in a vastly underutilized setting (the south) and involves a murder mystery.

What you need to hear from me are the superlatives. I can't say enough about Foley's scriptwork. His characterizations and mannerisms are spot on. He uses background media brilliantly as an expository device. And while the book isn't ROTCFLMAO funny, when there are punchlines, he nails them. And I'll get to his pacing in a second.

The plot, whether devised by Foley, Wise, Gilligan, or some combination thereof, managed to pull off a relatively shocking surprise twist in a universe less than 50 pages old. This is no small feat. Thanks in large part to Foley's pacing, the reader finds him or herself easily immersed in a very dense world, and absorbing elements of character and backstory at a remarkable clip. This is what allows for the storytelling team to pull off the twist at the end of issue #2 and have it feel like it's got some weight behind it.

That's not to say the book doesn't have its faults. Fernando's art is lively and the colors by EvE are much more vibrant than one would expect from a book of this tone - but the art really takes a back seat to the words, and while that serves the book fine, it could be stronger. Fernando has some curious profile shots in the book - whether purposely or not - that I found a bit distracting. And while his art is perfectly fine throughout and quite good in places, the book would probably be even better in the hands of someone more experienced like Sean Phillips (who did a beautiful cover for this issue) or Michael Gaydos. Fernando does have quite a knack for expressive eyes, though.

And I must say, the seemingly obligatory use of other comics creators' names in a non-comic setting has really gotten a bit old at this point - so the references to "State V. Miller, State V. Lee and State V. Bendis" were a bit too wocka-wocka for my taste, and only served to pull me out of the story, albeit momentarily.

Still, these are tiny faults, and I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Especially given the fact that Evie's LCS (one of the bigger comic stores in Manhattan) didn't stock it, I'd like to see it getting more attention. Thankfully my LCS (the biggest comic store in Manhattan) did.

So you know what I'm going to do here? I'm going to do something my old comic store in NH used to do. I'm going to offer you, our readers and listeners, the Tom Guarantee. And yes, it should probably be the Aaron Guarantee, since Tom won't be giving you your money back. And neither will I, actually.

BUT.

If you pick up the first two issues of this book, and you don't agree that it's on a par with Alias, Powers, or Gotham Central, e-mail us. You send me those issues, and I'll send you a TPB of something else, worth a bit more.

I have a feeling I won't need to, though.

ABC Podcast, Episode #15

This week's episode of Awesomed By Comics is sponsored by "Two and a Half Men," and Harriet's Halfway House, and three-quarters of a banana. Aaron and Evie revisit the awesomeness of Arcana's Penance: Trial of the Century with the second issue, say a sad goodbye to X-Men First Class as an ongoing, and finally give something to always-a-bridesmaid Tangent: Superman's Reign. Editing may not be super tight, Aaron has a lot of actual work to do.

I actually couldn't get this up when I was at home with my scanner and whatnot, so no visual aids for Cover and Panel of the Week just yet--maybe tonight, if I get a burst of energy.

Download/subscribe in the right sidebar, and leave an iTunes review!

The Eat-Your-Greens Indie Review of the Week

I actually love vegetables quite a bit (except beets, so leave me the fuck alone about beets). But like a lot of convenience-obsessed Americans, I don't always go out of my way for a good veggie, especially if it means dirtying a pot or needing a fork for lunch at my desk. This weekly-ish off-the-mainstream-highway indie comics feature is what I'm doing instead of going to the Union Square farmer's market after work for perfect asparagus.

True originality is rare, and should be hunted down and properly acknowledged whenever possible. At the same time, there's a reason those of us who are into the superhero crap keep coming back to the genre's familiar formulas week after week--I can't really tell you what that reason is, but there must be one. That's why it's satisfying when someone takes a common superhero scenario and still manages to make it its own thing through the details.

Penance: Trial of the Century, a four-issue mini from Arcana Studio by Ryan Foley and Gian Fernando (credited in the book as GOOF), pulled this off in its first issue this week. The book initially caught Aaron's attention because of the "Penance" part, which of course is the current name of Thunderbolt and former New Warrior Speedball in the Marvel Universe--in the Arcana book, Penance is in fact the name of a superhero, and within the first few pages, he allegedly causes the death of another mask called Justice, which also happens to be the name of a former New Warrior--I'm not totally sure how that all works copyright-wise, but I guess they are just nouns.

In its fundamentals, Penance: Trial of the Century is pretty much Powers with one lady cop instead of the Walker-Pilgrim pair, and takes place in Atlanta instead of, uh, whatever city Powers takes place in. It kicks off with a rooftop battle between two costumed gentlemen, which is caught live on tape by a news helicopter. Penance apparently pushes Justice off the building along with Justice's civilian hostage, and both fall to their deaths--but the helicopter flies behind a gargoyle at a key moment, missing the murderous money shot. However, there's plenty of footage to haul Penance in for the tragedy, and police officer LJ McCloud is all too happy to lay it down on a vigilante who she feels undermines police work and, coincidentally, killed the wife of her best friend in this incident. The citizens are equally pissed--as a costumed criminal, Justice may have deserved what he got, but Penance equally deserves to pay for it.

Sounds fairly standard, right? Cops resent superheroes, public loses faith in superheroes as soon as they cause collateral damage, superhero commits the perfect crime for sending a message and making an example of, etc. But then a few interesting details unfold--the importance of Atlanta and the South as the setting are repeatedly reinforced; the superheroes are unionized; a relentless union leader by the name of Parasol launches a savvy campaign to support Penance and slowly gets to work on convincing McCloud that they're on the same side; there's something important about McCloud's elderly dad. The art is choppy and angular in a way that perfectly reflects the minor chaos of the plot, and the chaos adds to the realism--of all the many attempts to portray what it would be like if the "real world" (i.e. the world pretty much as we know it) had superheroes, this may be the closest I've seen. Lots of bureaucracy, media sensationalism, reactionaries, assholes.

But even more to the point, how many superhero comics take place in the urban South? There's always a hero from Kentucky who goes back to the family farm when things get rough or whatever, but the South is rarely the center of metahuman activity and attention. This seems to be a key element of the story, and mega-Northerner as I may be, I find this a rather promising change from the New York-Gotham standard. There's even a superhero called the Confederate, costumed just as you might imagine--and as long as the series doesn't take any too-obvious turns with this character, there's a lot of possibilities for nuanced tension there.

So that said, I'm giving Penance: Trial of the Century #1 a rating of "al dente," needing no more than a sprinkle of salt and maybe some Smart Balance, what with all the cigarette smoking. Definitely recommended.