Rob's Picks:

Midnight Fantastic Four #1 - Midnight has come for Marvel’s first family! My personal favorite of the three horror-fied remixes dropped this week, Midnight Fantastic Four is less interested in checking off familiar origin story beats than Spider-Man, and makes more daring choices with its central characters than X-Men. This FF carries some obviously flawed personalities, but their flaws are not departures from the original characterizations as much as maladaptive growths on them. The best example is Reed Richards, a promising young mind on the verge of great breakthroughs and greater academic burnout. Reed has pushed his genius beyond its limits with performance-enhancing drugs, leaving reality behind for pure theory and the occasional hallucination, leading to an irreversible tragedy. Now a super-science pariah, Richards has no choice but to take a job offer from Sue Storm, a high-tech oligarch whose rocket business has discovered cosmic horrors among the cosmic rays. This book’s team has a great track record with Marvel’s horror-adjacent titles; writer Benjamin Percy had an amazing run on Ghost Rider and gave us the awesomeness of Hellverine, while artist Kev Walker contributed to Infernal Hulk’s demonic majesty. Percy’s plotting is the most evenly paced of the Midnight books, and it seems like his approach is to write a solid dark sci-fi narrative with human stakes, depending as little as possible on the audience’s attachment to the original material. There is still work to be done getting this Four to become Fantastic, but the final pages will leave you at maximum hype with your first look at Midnight’s Doom! I must, on the strongest possible terms, recommend this to fans of Black Science who have been missing that blend of moral complexity, flawed humanity, and cosmic darkness.

Jonah Hex and the Shadow of Death #1 - The most ornery, ugly son of a gun to ever ride the range is back for another two-fisted tale! The fact that this character has endured so long past the heyday of Western comics is a testament to the iconic appeal of his design and the way writers have maintained his core of badass grit, adapting the stories told around him rather than changing the man himself. Somewhere along the way, this archetypal gunfighter became a magnet for supernatural horrors, and that has been a constant element ever since. This book is using the whole buffalo: all of Jonah’s history as a bad man shooting badder men, a hunter of horrors, and a dude cursed to just never die. This series finds Jonah an old man in the waning days of the Western frontier, trying to live a quiet life and hoping for a quiet death. A reputation as bloody as his won’t be forgotten by children raised on dime novels and young toughs looking to make a reputation of their own. On a trip into town, he weathers the usual fisticuffs and the attention of an adoring fan when a young girl comes to him looking for help. Annie’s dad was always a bad man, but now he’s become something worse, or something worse has become him. Annie has one ask for Jonah Hex: kill her dad, or whatever thing has gotten under his skin. Michael Walsh of Silver Coin and Exquisite Corpses is the writer and artist on this book. I knew he was a capable hand with horror stories, but this book really impressed me as a Western. There is a clear understanding and appreciation for the themes, imagery, and voice of Western cinema, showing a love for the material that goes deeper than homage to any one classic film or comic. Jonah Hex and the Shadow of Death is a rootin’, tootin’, spookin’ good read.

Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees: Halloween Special #1 - Rites of Spring ended in spectacular fashion and left us all wanting more. The wait for the third Beneath the Trees series may not be over, but creator Patrick Horvath has a bag of goodies to hold you over, just in time for Halloween. Time has passed since the town of Woodbrook learned that pillar of the community Samantha Strong was, in fact, a serial killer hiding in plain sight. After her apocalyptic exit, she grew from local news to local legend, a boogeyman whose list of real and imagined horrors grows with the imaginations of the town’s youth, including the rumor that she returns on Halloween night to kill again! For this special issue, we join some Woodbrook teens as they share a series of campfire tales about the infamous bear, each from a different team of comic greats. Names like Che Grayson and Tony Fleecs are enough reason to pick up this anthology, but the best segment comes from James Tynion IV. Tynion’s segment involves a troubled child growing into the same obsessions that made Samantha a killer. An encounter with the infamous bear while she was still undercover suggests a dark kinship, and even an element of contagion to her evil. Need one more treat to finish your Halloween haul? This special ends with our first preview of the upcoming Beneath the Trees: The Summer and the Fall!

Jupiter's Picks:

DC’s Quoth the Raven “Whatever” #1 - This super-sized issue has a lot in store for readers wanting to get into that spooky mood! There are eight short stories, so I won't tell you about every one, but I can tell you about a couple of my favorites. Catwoman's mini-comic, “Cat's Out of the Tomb,” is an adorable story I enjoyed a lot. She goes on a mission to help a cat regain a new life, though she doesn't even remember going on the mission at all. Catwoman just wakes up to a new feline friend in her life and moves on! Swamp Thing also has some great appearances in the first and sixth stories! In “For Abby,” we see two men carry a dead body into the swamp and soon regret it. The two become lost and separated, leaving one dead and the other fearing what he hasn't accomplished in his life. I found most of these short stories quite fun, making this a great way to start October! Let me know your thoughts!

Midnight Spider-Man #1 - Out of the three Midnight issues Marvel came out with, this one is my absolute favorite!! We get a great look at what Peter could've become through some truly gruesome, yet beautifully drawn, art. We start off with a young Peter excited to see his cat after vacation, only to realize he mistakenly left her outside before locking the doors. Bamf the cat is found outside in the yard, decomposing, and we learn that she was unfortunately attacked by a dog and killed. One time skip later, we get to see some other parts of Peter's life. He is getting a ride from his Uncle Ben as they talk about the family's money problems. As they talk, they see all the chaos and fighting in the streets but pay it no mind at all. The remainder of the story has gore-filled pages of Oscorp's experiments, including one involving Peter himself. I encourage you to read this issue on your own to find out more!

Crowbound #2 - We pop back to where the first issue left us in these beautiful and simple yellow grasslands, with our main character meeting the Scarecrow Queen. She seems to have merged with another character from 200 years ago, or maybe even time-traveled. I'm not too sure, but either way, it's pretty cool! The Queen gives our main character a chance to fight for her missing daughter, Ava, but it comes at a cost. She goes along with the deal and springs into action as any mother would, violently demanding to know where her daughter is. She questions a few people, even going as far as to kill one of them. We then see her and her daughter in a conversation from the past as they talk about the Wall and what's beyond it. Ava questions what the Eater is, whether it's real, and if there is truly nothing beyond the Wall. The last few pages made me quite excited to see where this story is going. I can't wait for the next issue!