This Week’s Haul

Mouse Guard #6 of 6 (Archaia Studios Press)

Well, that was fun! Maybe a bit slight on the story side, but I enjoyed it. It looks like there will be both a collection and a sequel. And indeed, the creator has a home page for the comic.

Colonia: On Into The Great Lands vol. 2 TPB (Colonia Press)

Colonia is a really neat comic: It concerns Jack, a young man, and his uncles Pete and Richard, who are all thrown from our world into a parallel world where the New World still has the feel of the 17th century age of pirates, and magical forces seem to be rampant. It’s inventive, funny, at times touching, and generally downright eerie.

Creator Jeff Nicholson’s art style reminds me somewhat of my old buddy Scott Marshall‘s art. It doesn’t have the polish of comics from the big publishers, but who cares? It’s earnest and serves the story. Really, if the series has a downside it’s that it doesn’t come out very often. But hey, it’s publishing more frequently than Xenozoic Tales is these days!

If you want to check it out, you could start with the first collection.

The Maze Agency vol. 1 TPB (IDW)

Back in the days of the first independent comics boom, Comico Comics published a little series called The Maze Agency. Written by comics veteran Mike W. Barr and drawn by a newcomer named Adam Hughes, it was a mystery comic in the classic sense: Every story was a mystery that the reader could try to solve before the heroes.

It worked quite well, actually, and was an entertaining read, even after Hughes departed to be replaced by considerably lesser lights on the art. IDW printed a short Maze Agency mini-series a year or two ago, and is now reprinting the original series in paperback. This is the first volume. If this is your sort of thing, check it out.