ACES WEEKLY Comic Art Magazine sparks digital revolution with its riveting comic book and graphic novel short stories delivered every Monday!
For £1 per week, in any currency, readers get volumes of up to 150 pages in seven weekly parts.
ACES WEEKLY is the seven-card stud of e-comics!
To paraphrase David Lloyd, the idea for the award-winning ACES WEEKLY came down to comics looking better [than paper] with fewer limitations [and myriad possibilities].
In the very first volume of ACES WEEKLY, the gem Valley Of Shadows takes a black and white noir tale down new twisting alleys hereto untraveled.
More on Valley Of Shadows [Plot by David Jackson and David Lloyd, and the Script and Art by David Lloyd] later after we examine the cards, I mean the ACES.
When David Lloyd, co-creator of V For Vendetta and author/artist of Kickback (and a whole lot more), first launched ACES WEEKLY, very few comic books were available in a digital format.
Those that did come in a digital form required the paying of an extra dollar to the paper version, making a $3.99 book $4.99 in your LCS for the same 21 pages of content.
Now e-comics are in the mainstream, but none have the formula of six different works delivered every Monday night in an innovative set of seven serial installments.
Lucky seven!
At a buck a week, and adding that up, seven pounds for seven weeks of stories, you get 21+ pages for each of the six titles.
That is up to 150 pages, or six or seven comic books, for less than the price of two paper comic books!
Value aside, the proof is in the product, and ACES WEEKLY’s continuous stream of e-comic books are incredible.
The art is mostly in traditional comic form and looks STUNNING on screen!
Just like the serial installments of Superman of old, in the newspaper funny pages, the ACES WEEKLY tales are mostly told on horizontal pages.
The books are, after all, only bound virtually, in Cyberspace.
There is no limitation of the reader having to hold a vertically stapled comic book.
This means that you can read in a more natural line of sight akin to watching a movie on a widescreen, in the theater or at home.
ACES WEEKLY combines different widely appealing genres masterfully.
An omnivorous reader, like myself, loves the funny, the dark, the thrilling, and the wildly creative varying in voices from one comic book to the next.
ACES WEEKLY delivers a smorgasbord of quality each and every week!
Examples of this diversity are evident in the noir classic Valley Of Shadows by David Jackson and David Lloyd, the epic Santa Claus VS the Nazis by Benjamin Dickson and Gavin Mitchell where Santa Claus becomes a prisoner of the Nazis and the elves are enslaved, and then . . . on a planet in the middle of the Andromeda System . . . there is the powerful science-fiction book Dark Utopia by Mark Montague.
You could not ask for a better hand being dealt.
Think about it: Santa must break free of the Nazis to save the elves! What bigger stakes are there?
The art is unique, the writing top-notch, and the creations are made to pop out at you from the screen, no matter where you wish to enjoy the tales.
Each week you look forward to the latest installment of scintillating reading.
And in Volume One, Valley Of Shadows is one hell of a gripping whopper to kick off the experience.
Buddy Chaplin hasn’t got much going for him.
His marriage has failed, he’s in a dead end job, and he’s stopped looking for more.
But life is about to take an unexpected twist….
The art from David Lloyd is full of shadows, emotions, long blacks and stark whites.
The vivid scenes could easily make the silver screen.
The innovative use of comic book panels and art surrounding and behind the panels makes full use of the reader’s eye and the horizontal page layout for incredulity at every turn of the e-page.
The story, dialogue and plot of Valley Of Shadows are intricate, tight, and unique.
Security guard Buddy is dragged into helping someone, committing murder (in defense!), and racing against malicious and resourceful forces to save a stranger’s little girl from a horrible fate.
The villain is a megalomaniac bent on destroying a valley if that is what he needs to do to get an organ donor for his dying son.
And Buddy is just a normal guy who gambles too much, lost his own little girl and wife in a divorce, and gets caught up in a fight he should not be able to win.
The tale is utterly brilliant and it only scratches the surface of all of the ACES WEEKLY offerings.
The art is amazing, the creators on board ACES WEEKLY are extraordinary, like David himself.
For the cost of less than two paper books a reader can feast on six full length high resolution comics formatted and built for any type of screen, from a Smart TV, to a tablet, or a smartphone.
This reader is subscribing for life, and POWkabam will look to cover at least one of the many tales in each volume going forward.
Aces abound!
“ACES WEEKLY Comic Art Magazine Sparks Digital Revolution” was written by R.J. Huneke.
Is your Honor Badge made of C-4? Then you have not earned the Black Badge.
Parts of the top-secret Black Badge Boy Scout manual greets the reader through excerpts sprinkled along the inner and back cover pages.
A regular troop member will recognize the Boys Scouts’ manual’s style, but not believe the contents:
“How you received your Black Badge is privileged information. Guard it with your life.
“-Black Badge Handbook”
A diagram of a Boy Scout uniform containing a pocket lined with solidified sarin gas and marking the Black Badge itself noted as a throwing star, in disguise, will give readers an idea of where the covert team’s members might have to go to survive their incredibly dangerous missions.
BLACK BADGE #1 features a teenage troop possibly as deadly and daring as the Navy Seals.
The art style is unique and grasps the emotions of the troop of characters forced to work together on their first mission with a new member, Willy.
Matt Kindt’s writing is superb, the storyline and world building, and dialogue incredibly realistic and full of surprises.
Tyler Jenkins’ art is utterly gorgeous in its innovation and the colors by Hilary Jenkins are amazing in their subtle detections of mood or setting changes.
SPOILER ALERT!!!!!
What goes down when Willy captures every Boy Scouts badge?
His dad seems to know whom to notify of this feat, and Willy is introduced to an Army-type man and told of one more badge . . . the Black Badge!
And Willy is off with his new troop in hopes to earn this badge . . . in South Korea.
And here the writing takes an immediate hold, as a repulsive bully from a school trip begins to make fun of the four Boy Scouts for their traditional Scout garb.
Little does the bully know that behind the Boy Scout sash there are throwing knives.
Kenny is the leader, Mitz is the short in stature tall in arrow use, and Cliff carries a mean walking stick with its own secrets and almost loses his cool while they are taunted by the bully.
Kenny steers him clear and their canoe is off northward.
Willy is a smart, naïve guy in husky pants, and he wonders if the Black Badge troop has lost a fourth member, which he is replacing.
He tells them of his last badge earned a diving test where he had to lose his gear and trust there would be a cave with air, as he was told.
He is loyal and trusting. He earns the badge.
The Black Badge program takes advantage of the intelligence and age and loyalty of its members.
So the troop crosses the border into North Korea.
Willy sleeps unsoundly when he realizes why he is there: they are sent because they are kids. Kids get lost. Kids are harmless. Kids can get in and get away with it.
The troop marks a village where their mission is to extract a nuclear scientist.
Kenny directs the team: Cliff marks the hut with his electronic laser, and Willy calls in the coordinates.
But then a plane sheds its bomb and an explosion evaporates the village.
As the kids are approached on their exit, they are recognized as frightened Boy Scouts and sent back to South Korea.
Willy questions whether or not they are doing the right thing, but their leader Kenny informs him that “they” tell the troop just enough to go on and the troop has to trust “them.”
The dialogue is freaking kick-ass:
Kenny: “Nobody can do what we can do. No one can go where we can go. This world needs fixing and it sure as heck ain’t the adults who are gonna fix it.”
This is a powerful book!
A big thank you to my LCS Red Shirt Comics owner Josh for his Captain’s Pick of BLACK BADGE #1 – if it was not for him I would have missed out on this sure to be amazing new series.
Go get yours before they sell out!
“BLACK BADGE #1: Boy Scouts Black Ops BOOM!” was written by R.J. Huneke.
The Sandman Universe 1 one-shot is riveting, visually visceral and stimulating, and features impactful storylines that merge for one hell of a tale.
Spoiler Warning!!!!!
Speaking of hell, Lucifer is in a bad state.
It seems he has a son, though impossible, and while the mysterious son seeks to destroy his father’s new sense of humanity, mortality, and mantra of hope, despite a potential wheel of fate forcing Lucifer to relive his pains over and over, Lucifer is off to find the mother of his child.
Lucifer’s bar is in shambles, as is his state of mind, his world, and his ravens (all but one at least).
And Dream’s raven (not Lucifer’s) has possibly the best line in the book when referring to Lucifer and his current predicament:
“It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy . . .”
The Sandman Universe 1 has many familiar faces, though Lucien is losing his memory and the Cain and Abel murders are helping to hold back the entire universe of Dreaming from cracking at the seems.
Daniel, Dream of the Endless, is gone.
And Lucien charges the all-knowing raven with finding him to help them save their increasingly brittle dreamscape.
The raven crosses dreams and stories in his search.
Another familiar face the raven flies over is Tim Hunter.
This sharp story sticks out immediately.
Tim’s life as a teenage magician living in the real world offers all kinds of complications.
Getting up late, showing up at school late, and finding your book blank when you go to read aloud in class is scary.
Finding out that your new teacher knows your secret and has plans for your magic is even more alarming.
What Tim does not know, but the raven sees, of course, is that Dr. Rose, with her scarlet scarf, has bloodily murdered Tim’s old teacher in his office with a fountainhead pen to the ear.
The Sandman Universe comes from master storyteller Neil Gaiman whose original work on Sandman has been nothing short of groundbreaking.
He is working with the talented writers of four new titles to come from the Sandman Universe.
The Sandman Universe 1 introduces the overall state of Dream, Daniel, and the Dreaming.
Because the raven knows, he hones in on Daniel in a city dressed as a teenager in Converse All Stars (donning white threads, of course), but he misses him before getting to speak to him.
It was like he had him and could not remember the Dream . . .
The Sandman Universe 1 story is by Neil Gaiman, and Simon Spurrier, Kat Howard, Nalo Hopkinson and Dan Watters write the yarn here as they set up their upcoming titles.
The illustrators of The Sandman Universe 1 are Bilquis Evely, Tom Fowler, Dominike “Domo” Stanton, Max Fiumara and Sebastian Fiumara.
Daniel does not want to be found. Has he given up his post as Dream?
At the end of the credits in The Sandman Universe 1 we get a post-credits scene if you will:
The Story Continues In . . .
The Dreaming #1 that comes out on 9/5/18, The House Of Whispers #1 coming out on 9/12/18, Lucifer #1 out 10/17/18, and Books Of Magic #1 released on 10/24/18 (just in time to get your magic up and running before Halloween).
Get ready for a journey through anything and everything dreams car offer and all while the infinite realms possibilities of the Dreamscape are unraveling!
Go grab a copy from your LCS, mine is Red Shirt Comics, before all of the coolest cover variants are gone!
“Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman Universe 1 Unravels Dreaming” was written by R.J. Huneke.
Neil Gaiman’s A Study in Emerald: Holmes falls to Cthulhu in the most unexpected of ways, and it is simply brilliant.
What does Sherlock Holmes really stand for here, good or evil?
Simple as the question posed the story yields only the most intriguing and complex mystery as its answer.
An all-star lineup comes together to bring a Neil Gaiman world, a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle world and then drop them into an H.P. Lovecraft Cthulhu world.
The artwork could not be better used to craft the incredible world in this tale.
The 19th Century, the blood patterns (bright green too), the English gray tones, the wallpaper, and the sharp, poignant characters come to life in a unique and enticing fashion.
Writer: Neil Gaiman, Rafael Albuquerque, Rafael Scavone
Artist: Rafael Albuquerque, Dave Stewart
Colorist: Dave Stewart
Cover Artist: Rafael Albuquerque
Neil Gaiman’s A Study in Emerald: Holmes Falls To Cthulhu CONTAINS SPOILERS
This fantastical detective mystery has so much more than meets the eye going on.
We start at the beginning of the Sherlock Holmes mythos and Holmes meets John Watson in the world of Baker Street looking for a roommate for the London flat.
The tall Holmes is very familiar, as is the shuffling Dr. Watson.
Yet something is eerily different and out of place too.
That said I read the depiction of Watson’s war injury, from a Cthulhu-like kraken while he was at-sea in the Queen’s Army, and I completely failed to notice the near-standard 19th century sea-monster from the hidden depths of the volatile world was, in fact of the tale, a real Cthulhu.
I had entered a vastly darker Lovecraftian world and it had robbed the good doctor of his crack-shot ability by sucking life out of his shoulder.
This would only come back to me, like a splash of cold water on a sleeping face, at the finale of the grand tale.
In the dark mirrored world of H.P. Lovecraft – that is so close to our own and yet so starkly different and dark – the perpetrators of the tales’ main mystery, the prince’s murder, were never caught.
And though Holmes and Watson do uncover and even meet in-person the two wholly ruthless villains, foils of our heroes, one cannot help but wonder if the murderers – the tall actor and the shuffling doctor with his walking stick and his devious ability to wage medical knowledge as a war on anatomy – if they were not the mirror dimension of some H.P. Lovecraft multiverse: an evil Holmes and Watson!
But then that bears its own questions of good and evil and over-simplicity.
Lovecraft’s fear was sometimes best induced by building a world that reflected our own but just produced physical monsters to encompass real world troubles.
And in A Study in Emerald the Cthulhu beings are a mystery!
The wild one may have forever maimed Watson and yet the leaders of the world and the Queen Victoria of England Cthulhu has gone ahead and healed Watson upon meeting with the sleuths for hire.
The world has been ruled over by Cthulhu figures for hundreds of years.
The dynamic of pre-WWI era tensions – once called The Great War – are very apparent in the story, just in subtle ways.
As Holmes speaks to Inspector Lestrade of possible motive for the Prince Cthulhu’s murder, he talks in admiration of the anarchists: those who see the powerful Cthulhu leaders are feeding off of humanity’s pain.
And the anarchists feel humans are best left to ourselves, where chaos rains.
In the real world, this was indeed a sentiment shared by anarchists around that time.
And the terrorist-anarchist groups committed violent acts that shaped the world and its tension leading up to the first World War.
Back to the tale: a comically round version of Lestrade is exasperated by Sherlock’s blasphemy.
And Holmes, who seemed to know the Queen Cthulhu of England personally, is clearly sided with the crown’s rule and prosperity, despite his understanding of the motive.
This possibly points to Holmes and Watson as being the villains upholding authoritarianism in the tale, while the terrorizing murderers only committed their evil act out of hope for a cause that even Holmes seems to admire as a noble one, if not misplaced with violence.
The question of the age and the foils of the Cthulhu world Holmes and Watson are best left to our imaginations . . . for now.
Unless, of course, Mr. Gaiman and co. takes us back to this bizarre and riveting world again!
Ask your LCS for a copy of this marvelous hardcover from Dark Horse comics; I know Red Shirt Comics will get you one!
“Neil Gaiman’s A Study in Emerald: Holmes Falls To Cthulhu” was written by R.J. Huneke.
Tank Girl All Stars 30th Anniversary smut-tastic comic book celebrates Alan Martin’s creation as only the kick ass heroine Tank Girl can do it.
Has it really been 30 years?
Tank Girl All Stars confirms the punk battle-ready blonde is indeed 30 years old in 2018.
Titan’s expanded comic book starts the newest story in the Tank Girl Mythos with TIME FOR TANK GIRL PT. 1 off with a bonus tale from writer Alan Martin and artist Chris Wahl dubbed “Salon Tank Girl”.
Tank Girl All Stars SPOILER WARNING*******
And page one we have not only a nipple slip – such sensational smut – but a Tank Girl searching for just the right garb for a post-apocalyptic party where everyone will be there.
Her wardrobe contains blasts from the past 30 years . . . and more!
We have the fun bra (with shit on it) and ripped up black pants complete with her mostly shaved head and band-aid.
We have the 40 Watt Club tee (smelling of shit), and of course, the classic American Tank Girl premier missile bra and cut-up jean hotpants, to which she replies: “WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING?!”
Memories pour in as outfits come and go until she settles on an oddly reminiscent and unsmut-like pink dress and heads out to donate the shreds of her former wardrobe to a second-hand store.
The party contains, Booga, Jet Girl, Sub Girl and all of their friends wearing all of Tank Girl’s old things, freshly bought from that same second-hand store.
And the young, bald Tank Girl in the pink dress starts to have a nosebleed, just like Eleven from Stranger Things!
Art By Brett Parson
This opening gives way to some of the poignant poetry of Alan Martin, reflecting on Tanks, the world at large, and Tank Girl with cartoony emanations of the Tank Girl world.
Death of Superman in ominous Man Of Steel 5 cover, alone, had me.
The Brian Michael Bendis Superman mini-series, his first book in his D.C. Comics run, is enveloping, surprising and terribly suspenseful in its first 5 of 6 issues. But that Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, and Alex Sinclair The Man Of Steel 5 cover wrenched at my heart, just as Dan Jurgens’ cover of Superman 75 “The Death Of Superman” did as a kid so many years ago.
Lois cradling Superman in his torn duds, fallen among his seemingly dead enemy, Doomsday, with a tattered red cape flapping in the wind like an American flag gone through a battlefield is iconic.
And this homage in The Man of Steel 5 alludes to rubble and a looming death for Superman and possibly for many others too.
SPOILER ALERT (for Death Of Superman homage in The Man Of Steel issues 1-5)****
Rogul Zaar has been said to have destroyed Krypton, after all, and he is not happy that the son of Jor El escaped his ‘cleansing’ of the universe from the ‘plague’ of the Kryptonian ways.
And so as he, this new menacing and mysterious zealot – though his past as a defender of the universes adds a lot more to his character than mere obsession – mops the proverbial floor with Superman and Supergirl in Metropolis, we learn to fear him.
But at the start of Bendis’ fifth part of the tale, a giant eye peers down at the last Kryptonian city, Kandor.
It is evil.
It is murderous.
And it brings death.
This is right before Rogul Zaar destroys the city of Kandor and its entire people.
Superman and Supergirl are devastated that their promise to un-shrink the last living city of their home planet is dead.
The brilliant artwork in this issue, done by Adam Hughes, Jason Fabok, and Alex Sinclair, is poignant in its depiction of the fury of the battles, the concerned faces realizing the stakes, the ominous flashback, and the ferocity of the situation.
But with Superman’s true home, earth as his major concern, and thus a disadvantage to his human concern f, he takes the heavyweight title fight to space.
And while the Justice League gathers in Metropolis, Zaar goes toe-to-toe with Supes and eventually succeeds in burying him, unconscious, within the surface of the moon.
Wow, this villain is powerful!
The flashbacks of Clark Kent, Lois, and their son Jon speaking to Jor El, who comes from who knows where, to take the descendant of El on a tour of the galaxies is key.
It seems Lois may have either gone with their son, or just outright walked out on Clark who may have changed his mind and let their child go off-planet.
The human element of Clark and Superman, written by Bendis, is again remarkable.
We have a family gone to a dysfunctional state, and Jon would be a target of Rogul Zaar should he catch wind of his existence.
Maybe Jor El really takes his grandson away to spare him the sight of his father dying for the sake of earth . . . again?
So far Lois is gone, Superman is flirting with the new fire department captain, and Clark is riddled with concern over his son’s potential trip off planet.
Does he foresee his own demise, defending earth to the last?
Certainly Zaar is too great a foe for even the Justice League and the Green Lantern Corps standing guard.
And Superman, the father, knows this, realizes shortly after being revived by the Justice League that he alone can stop Zaar’s plan and flies away alone.
Clark knows that Zaar will see earth as a new planet to be sacrificed to the cause.
Zaar must wipe out the world he sees as now infested with the touch of Krypton from one man to all of them spreading, like bed bugs.
And at the heart of the moon is the ancient creature’s own doomsday device built within a fiery heart of unknowns.
Will Superman die?
Will earth die?
Can Zaar be stopped?
I have rarely been so excited to read a series and so anxious to revel in its finale!
“Death Of Superman In Ominous Man Of Steel 5” was written by R.J. Huneke
Be sure to pick up this book at your local comic shop, and if you are in Port Jefferson go right to my LCS Red Shirt Comics – they have them in stock . . . for now!
