Indie

Over the course of his career, Mark Millar has worked alongside some of the best artists in the business on creator-owned projects, and in the process created a lot of valuable franchises that have been optioned by Hollywood. Later this year, another artist and series joins those ranks as Greg Capullo heads to Millarworld for the sci-fi/fantasy series Reborn this October.

I don't want to come off as all "sterotypical American" or anything, but I have to admit that I don't really get the appeal of soccer. I realize that it's the sport of choice for the vast majority of the world --- and that I also don't get the appeal of most sports that don't involve steel cage matches and a zombie cowboy whose brother is a fire demon --- but something about it just continues to elude me. But maybe, just maybe, I could finally get into it if someone found a way to combine the Beautiful Game with, oh, I don't know, a secret alien invasion and scenes of planetary-scale destruction. Fortunately for me, legendary writers John Wagner and Alan Grant have teamed up with artist Dan Cornwell to do just that in Rok of the Reds, a new comic from Glasgow-based indie publisher BHP. Check out a preview!

Between them, writer John Ostrander and artist Jan Duursema have done some amazing comics work. Ostrander is best known as the creator of Suicide Squad and co-creator of Oracle with his late wife Kim Yale; Duursema has artist and writer credits ranging from Sgt.. Rock to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Together, they've worked on a Hawkman series, the old Star Wars Expanded Universe, and more besides. Now they've teaming up again and have turned to Kickstarter to fund original graphic novel Hexer Dusk, a 72-page full color book written by Ostrander from an idea by Duursema, illustrated by Duursema. The book is in the final stretch of its campaign, but there's still time to get on board.

The Flash has been one of the most consistently enjoyable and downright fun comic book adaptations since it debuted, and more than most of its peers it is blisteringly unafraid to embrace its comic book origins. In the space of two seasons we've got multiverses, time travel, and an honest-to-gosh Gorilla City, and it paved the way for shows like Arrow and Gotham to lighten up and have more fun. With no new episodes of The Flash until later this year, you might be looking for something to fill that science-based superhero hole in your life, and we've got five great independent comics for you that, while they might not all feature a super-speedster punching a gorilla in the face, do live up to The Flash's absurdity and unrelenting inventiveness in one way or another!

First-person video games make me dizzy to the point of nausea, and as a result, I often feel left out of the conversation when everyone's excited about something new and different. Dishonored, for instance, is a game that sounds right up my alley. A stealthy steampunk adventure from the publisher behind Fallout? That sounds rad as all heck, but I know in my heart of hearts that if I ever play it for more than five minutes, I'm going to end up laying down on the floor for an hour while I wait for the room to stop spinning. So obviously, the solution is for me to experience those games through a medium I'm more comfortable with: Comics! I mean, it worked for Doom, right, and gave us one of the great literary masterpieces of the 20th century in the process, and now, it's happening with Dishonored, courtesy of Titan Comics.

The X-Men has been one of the most popular superhero franchises in comics for more than a generation, and the big screen adaptations helped kick off the current wave of superhero films, including X-Men: Apocalypse, which arrives in North American theaters this weekend. The world of the X-Men is packed with relatable themes, from the simple school setting to more complex ideas about alienation and persecution. If you love the X-Men and what they stand for, here are five of the best independent comics that reflect the themes and message of Charles Xavier’s gifted students.

This weekend saw the eleventh annual Glyph Awards held in Philadelphia, at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention. The awards, founded by Rich Watson over a decade ago, celebrate comics made by, for, and starring black people, but are not necessarily limited to black creators.

"One day, for no damn reason, the animals woke up." That's the tagline for Animosity, a new Aftershock Comics series by Marguerite Bennett and Rafael de Latorre, revealed this week at The Hollywood Reporter. It tells the apocalyptic story of a young girl and her talking dog making their way across an America where thinking, talking animals have become the norm.

No other comic artist's legacy is as tough to nail down as that of Dave Sim, born on this day in 1956. As the creator of Cerebus, Sim is one of the medium's biggest champions for creators' rights, a patron saint of self-publishing, a contender for the title of greatest living cartoonist, and a visionary who achieved something that seemed both both crazy and impossible. Simultaneously, he's a lightning rod for controversy, the holder of a litany of contentious opinions that he's made one with his work, and he's often dismissed as a kook at best, disgusting at worst. Yet no matter what one thinks of Sim as a human being, there's no denying the white-hot sequential brilliance that emanates from one of comics' most controversial creators.

I just read one of the most remarkable comics that I've experienced in recent memory and, as is often the case when I read a really great comic, I wanted immediately to tell everyone about it and suggest they seek it out to experience it for themselves. When I sat down at my computer to do just that, however, I found that this particular book, Brecht Evens' Panther, presents a challenge to the critic. The subject matter is as dark and disturbing as it can get, but a large part of the book's power is the way that Evens only very gradually reveals what's really going on. Panther seems slightly off, then hints, then suggests, and ultimately demonstrates that something sinister and sickening is going on, before a somewhat equivocal ending that implies it's far worse than one initially thought.