[Inked In Blood] New And Upcoming Comics For February 27th, 2015

IN SHOPS THIS WEEK:

CURB STOMP #1

Writer: Ryan Ferrier
Artist: Devaki Neogi
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Price: $4
Description: Three gangs. Five girls. No way out. Machete Betty leads a small gang of women under the selfappointed task of protecting their home of Old Beach, one of three boroughs surrounding a rich metropolitan city. When Betty takes the life of a rival gang member in an act of self-defense, she sets off a chain reaction of retaliation, gang warfare, and unlikely allies.

Our Take: As much as I wanted this to be a mix of Switchblade Sisters and The Warriors, it doesn’t have the delirious absurdity of the latter or the delicious trashiness of the former. But, like The Warriors, it retains the brazen violence of that cult classic while subtly investing the protagonists with the kind of relative depth that elevated Switchblade Sisters above pure sleaze. Absolutely worth your time if you love crime drama, grindhouse cinema or just enjoy seeing handsome ladies smashing some faces.

CLICK HERE FOR PREVIEW

THE FADE OUT TP

Writer: Ed Brubaker
Artist: Sean Philips
Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $10
Description: Hollywood – 1948. A noir film stuck in endless reshoots. A writer plagued with nightmares from the war and a dangerous secret. An up-and-coming starlet’s suspicious death.  And a maniacal Studio Mogul and his Security Chief who will do anything to keep the cameras rolling before the Post-War boom days come crashing down.

Our Take: I’m not a huge Brubaker fan, to be honest. His work is mature and sophisticated for sure, but it’s also typically mired in a specific genre; Criminal, for all its critical praise, is still just plain ol’ hardboiled crime drama and Fatale is Weird Noir. So why does the even more traditional noir of The Fade Out work so well? Well, by my reckoning, it’s Brubaker distilled. It’s his magnum opus. It’s a noir that, more than anything I’ve ever read (yes), feels like reading a movie. If you settle down with it, like a glass of 10-year-old scotch, and take in each page slowly, you’ll be taken some place as ugly on the inside as it is beautiful on the outside.

CLICK HERE FOR PREVIEW

---

NAILBITER/HACK/SLASH ONE-SHOT

Writer: Joshua Williamson, Tim Seeley
Artist: Mike Henderson, Emilio Laiso
Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $5
Description: SERIAL KILLERS MEET SERIAL KILLER… KILLERS! Cassie Hack vs. the Nailbiter! Vlad vs. the Lucha Eliminador! IT’S ON!

Our Take: We’ve reviewed Nailbiter here at Destroy The Brain. It’s great horror comics, truly. Hack/Slash, though, is a non entity for me, as the “sexy goth chick kills serial killers” concept isn’t my thing. Which is why I’m actually excited to see how her encounter with Nailbiter goes. The preview, interestingly, focuses largely on the satirical comedy of Hack/Slash, and that’s going to be interesting when it runs headlong into the menacing dread of Nailbiter. In Shops: March 4th, 2015

CLICK HERE FOR PREVIEW