Zander Cannon's graphic novel Heck was hands-down one of the best books of 2013. It mixed an intricately detailed depiction of hell with a deep emotional resonance and an expressive, but also appealingly simple cartooning style. In some ways, it was so good that it made it hard to imagine how Cannon could follow it.

But then Oni Press announced Cannon's new, ongoing series at New York Comic Con Thursday. It's called Kaijumax, and it's about a maximum-security prison for giant monsters. Let me repeat that so it sinks in. It's about a maximum-security prison for giant monsters. When we all expected Cannon to zig, he zagged.

It's not all that unexpected, though. Cannon can boast one of the most varied careers in comics, working in a very realistic style on Top 10, drawing a graphic guide to DNA, blazing new trails in digital comics with Double Barrel (the series in which Heck was initially serialized), and digging into religion with The Replacement God. So his next project being about monster prison is just the next step in a blast through a wide array of genres and concepts.

And just like Heck, which looked on the surface like a romp about a guy who went adventuring into hell when he felt like it but turned out to be way more, Kaijumax looks like it'll have an unexpected depth to it. Each monster character (they talk, by the way) has its own personality and plight, and who knows, we human readers may even start to feel some sympathy for them.

How novel.

Issue one is coming in April of next year, but you can check out several pages below, exclusively at ComicsAlliance.

 

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