Opinion

EmCarroll.com is an oft-updated website collecting the various comics of horror storyteller Emily Carroll. Some are quick illustrations, as nasty as a bad dream, and others are longer works designed to crawl under your skin and live there, and fester. All of them will haunt you for days.

There's a really fun set-up in God Country, by Donny Cates, Geoff Shaw, Jason Wordie and John J. Hill, which starts the heavily utilize the idea of scale in the second issue. It becomes a major feature of the work, and one that the team keeps drawing attention to, page after page.

In this episode, Bloodstone joins the Crystal Gems, and Ronaldo learns a lesson, maybe. Rocknaldo was written by Hilary Florido and Lauren Zuke, and directed by Hye Sung Park, Ricky Cometa, and Kat Morris.

This week we're casting an imagined movie version of Animosity, a really fun apocalyptic comic written by Marguerite Bennett with art by Rafael de Latorre. It takes place in a world where, one year ago, every animal on Earth gained human-level intelligence and the ability to speak. Obviously this has sent society into complete disarray. The book follows a young girl named Jesse and her dog Sandor. Sandor's a bloodhound who now speaks with a Southern accent, but remains loyal to Jesse. He's attempting to protect her after the death of her parents, as they travel across a chaotic North America in search of her older brother.

The first time anyone reads a Geof Darrow comic, I can only imagine them having the exact same experience of their head exploding in some over-the-top, ridiculous way that only Darrow could illustrate. His brand of hyper-detailed hyper-violence is hard to replicate, and even just seeing a single panel of his work is enough to know that Darrow is unlike any other. So it's definitely a Good Thing that Darrow is heading back to comics this year with a new mini-series of Shaolin Cowboy.

James Roberts' work on IDW's Transformers franchise is some of the most explicitly political storytelling in comics right now. Politics is a core theme of Roberts' entire Transformers work, and while the comics do have some of the best action, romance and comedy, they're also all about refusing to let anyone else make your decisions for you.

The graphic novel adaptation of the late Octavia Butler's masterpiece Kindred opens with the main character, Dana, sitting in a hospital bed with her left arm missing at the elbow and the words "I lost an arm on my last trip home" printed in a narration box. It's a sharp, painful opening for a book that deals with slavery, suffering, and survival in one of the most dangerous times in history for Black people.

This week, we see inside the Blossom family residence, Riverdale buries Jason, Betty goes on a “reconnaissance mission” to Pop’s with a cute boy, and we learn how maple syrup ruins everything. “Heart of Darkness” was written by Ross Maxwell and directed by Jesse Warn.

It's been just a few months since Amadeus Cho told nine-year-old Lunella Lafayette that she was "the smartest person in whole world" at the end of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #12. In the time since, Lunella has been condescended to by adult scientists, helped take down the Mole Man's monsters, and teamed up with two other girl geniuses --- the new and unstoppable Wasp, and Ironheart, aka Riri Williams. Lunella's brilliance makes her one in a long line of inspiring, super-smart Black characters in comics that can be traced back decades to the Black Panther's first appearance in 1966's Fantastic Four #52, by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee.

This week, a bunch of villains from Team Arrow’s past bust out of jail, Susan Williams confronts Oliver about being the Green Arrow, and the cops learn who really killed Detective Malone. Oh, and Ollie’s mayoral career goes up in flames. “The Sin-Eater” was directed Mary Lambert from a script by Barbara Bloom and Jenny Lynn.