Grovel

Some people believe that love is the most powerful force in the universe. It’s a nice thought but, when you think about it, there are plenty of obstacles love still struggles to cross, including death and time.
Michael Easton and Christopher Shy explore this and a few other things besides in Soul Stealer. When a mighty [...]

Step-mothers are something of a thriller cliché. The standard wicked step-mother pattern usually involves a recently bereaved widower finding solace in the arms of another woman. Meanwhile, teenage daughter, who’s probably had the thankless task of being mother to younger siblings and held the family together while Dad falls apart, sees this usurper of her [...]

American Born Chinese was always going to be a tough act for Gene Yang to follow and The Eternal Smile, illustrated by Derek Kirk Kim, doesn’t quite hit the mark. Although the three short stories offered here are interesting, it’s only the last one that shines with anything like the brightness of American Born Chinese.
Each [...]

When humans eventually go off and settle on new worlds, it’s hard enough to imagine what life might be like for the first few colonists. But what about generations later? When the original settlers have died and it’s their children, and their children’s children, who are left to live on this potentially wild frontier? This [...]

UPDATE: Now available in paperback in the UK
There used to be a time when superhero comics were aimed at children, before DVDs, computer games and teen-wizards finally swamped comics with their superior sales. As existing audiences grew up and new blood failed to appear, the themes and content of superhero comics cranked up to a [...]

The last place Blanche, a 1930s housemaid in the service of an elderly Parisien lady, thought she would work is in a brothel. But this uptight and inexperienced young woman finds herself doing just that, following a tragic sequence of events that see her witness a murder then find her roommate shot dead by the [...]

The second and final volume in Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman sees the ultimate superhero continue his Herculean tasks, which he must complete in order to save the world. Superman seems better suited to Morrison’s epic, mythical style than Batman. Superman is a god on earth, like a character from Greek or Roman [...]

TV not enough for you? Feel like you need more from America’s First Animated Family? Try these two out for size.
Featuring stories originally printed in Simpsons Comics and Bart Simpson Comics, so suitable for all age ranges, these books take The Simpsons on a range of new adventures. Not quite as multi-faceted as the TV [...]

UPDATE: Volume 10 out now.
When Kurou Takagi’s mother dies, he has to face the horror of transferring to a new school. Luckily, his father is the proprietor. Unluckily, this means he has to stick around the school after hours, and finds that it’s riddled with zombies. As Kurou makes new friends with his classmates, they [...]

UPDATE: The 2nd volume in the series is out now.
Many aspects of Japanese culture have been influenced by manga – not just the obvious things like animé. These anthologies celebrate manga’s influence, collecting short prose stories and comics alike, alongside a few extras like interviews and columns. This makes it a must-have for Japanophiles who [...]

This far-future sci-fi tale tells the story of a distant human colony. When 80 percent of the people are blinded by a natural disaster, they are enslaved by those with sight, forced to work as miners in terrible conditions. This oppression has gone on for a thousand years, but perhaps now is the time for [...]

From the DC Comics Classics Library comes another slice of comics history, reprinting the first three Batman annuals, from 1961 to 1962 (yes, we know, that’s too many to actually make them annual – the first one sold so well that the second one came out just over four months later).
Written and illustrated by some [...]

UPDATE: The 2nd volume in the series – The Best of Roy of the Rovers: The 1970s – is out now.
British men of a certain age will remember Roy of the Rovers with a generous dollop of nostalgia. Roy appealed to nearly every 8-year-old boy, as star striker of Melchester Rovers (a fictitious soccer team), [...]

I can’t speak for mothers, not being one myself, but as I was passing through the first few weeks of horror that is realising what you’ve let into your house when you have your first child, I had serious concerns that I’d been duped – that there was a conspiracy of silence about the trials [...]