trees

The last few years have been incredible for big, smart sci-fi comics. Saga, Copperhead, Kaptara, Nameless, Lazarus, Southern Cross... and those are just the ones coming out of Image. If you're a fan of anything alien, dystopic, robotic or just forward-looking, you have a lot of options. Equally, though, it can be difficult to make room for another space book, but Trees stands tall even in that crowded field. (Yes, that was a tree pun.)

A great comic book cover is an advertisement, a work of art, a statement, and an invitation. A great comic book cover is a glimpse of another world through a canvas no bigger than a window pane. In Best Comic Book Covers Ever (This Month), we look back over some of the most eye-catching, original and exceptional covers of the past month November's covers include some superb compositions, some new twists on familiar iconography, a Catwoman, a Batgirl, and an enormous killer whale. Check out some excellent comic covers from familiar names like Michael Del Mundo and David Nakayama, and some new names for this column, like Butch Guice and David Rapoza.

I love Sleepy Hollow, and while my favorite thing about the show is definitely the character moments between Ichabod and Abbie -- especially Ichabod's continuing frustration with life in the 21st century -- I really love all the bad guys, too. Shape-shifting succubi, zombie cops, actual satans and, of course, a headless horseman who walks around blowing things away with an M-16 in each hand like he's holding the bridge at Gjallerbru. They're great, and this week in Boom's Sleepy Hollow comic, Marguerite Bennett and Jorge Coelho are adding a new and terrifying villain to the roster as Ichabod and Abbie fight... a tree.

Alien invasion stories have always been fertile ground for allegory. Throughout the history of the sub-genre, spaceships filled with arachnid creatures, little green men, shape-shifting Skrulls, omnipotent super-beings, and brain-eating slugs have come to represent oppressive and militaristic governments, Communism, the disenfranchised, and several more variations of the great and unknowable Other, usually influenced by politics or social issues. Yet with all the metaphoric territory the alien invasions have covered, in Image Comics' Trees, Warren Ellis and Jason Howard prove there's still plenty left unsaid.

Teased on Tuesday and confirmed early Wednesday morning, Trees is a new comic book miniseries written by Warren Ellis and drawn by Jason Howard. Described by Ellis (Planetary, FreakAngels, the forthcoming Moon Knight)  as a science fiction comics serial that will be released in print, the first issue goes on sale in May from Image Comics...