The Fade Out, Act One
Written by Ed Brubaker
Illustrated by Sean Phillips
Colored by Elizabeth Breitweiser
Image Comics
Release Date: February 25, 2015
Cover Price: $9.99

If you like your crime noir with an extra dose of darkness, Ed Brubaker has you covered in The Fade Out, Act One from Image Comics.

The setting is Hollywood, 1948, and the cast of characters runs the gamut from sleazy studio security to Clark Gable himself. The story opens as our protagonist Charlie, a screenwriter secretly struggling with PTSD from WWII, discovers the dead body of the leading lady in his current work-in-progress.

What follows is a spiral of drunken blackouts, suspicious memories, and foggy familiarity. Charlie finds himself on the fringes of a studio-constructed murder coverup and doesn’t even know if he might be the killer.

Talk about a bad night.

Amelia Cole and the Unknown World
Paperback
Written by Adam P. Knave and D.J. Kirkbride
Art by Nick Brokenshire
Colors by Ruiz Moreno
Letters by Rachel Deering
Cover by Nick Brokenshire
IDW Publishing
Release Date: August 27, 2013
Cover Price: $14.99

Amelia Cole and the Unknown World is about a young woman with magical powers who can travel between dimensions. Living in the Non-Magical world but working in the Magical one, she travels back and forth through a portal that opens up in her Aunt Dani’s house. Everything is going well until a Demon from the Magical world shows up in the Non.

After fighting the Demon Amelia realizes that something is very wrong. She travels to her Aunt’s house only to realize that the portal her and her Aunt has been using is deteriorating, allowing more than just the two of them to travel. The only way to solve the problem is to destroy the portal. But in the rush and commotion, Amelia stumbles upon another door. Going through Amelia finds a world where both Magical and Non-Magical exist together. The problem is, just because they exist in the same world doesn’t mean they do it harmoniously.

Transformers: Dark Prelude
Trade Paperback | Kindle Edition
Written by James Roberts, John Barber and Nick Roche
Art by Steve Kurth, Chee, Nick Roche, David Daza, Matt Frank and Agustin Padilla
Inks for Orion Pax by Juan Castro
Colors by J. Aburtov, Graphikslava, Ronda Pattison, Len O’Grady, Zac Atkinson, Thomas Deer and Joana LaFuente
Letters by Shawn Lee
Series Edits by John Barber and Carlos Guzman
Collection Edits by Justin Eisinger and Alonzo Simon
Cover by Nick Roche
IDW Publishing
Release Date: August 14, 2013
Cover Price: $19.99

Transformers: Dark Prelude collects the storylines of Orion Pax, ThunderCracker, Megatron, Bumblebee, TrailCutter and Hoist in an overarching story that spans millions of years, from the distant past, to now. Each story shows a major event from each character’s life. This allows for a more in-depth view into each character’s make up and driving forces.

The abrupt changes between the different stories can be a bit much but do help to distance each story from the last. This was also helped by each character’s changes in appearance between stories. These stories add to lore of this Transformers universe in a wonderful way.

We’ve been hearing about a 300 prequel/sequel/spinoff for a while now, but we knew it would be a long while before we actually saw it because creator Frank Miller still had to work on the graphic novel for which the movie would be based. In fact, it was almost one year ago that Zack Snyder confirmed that he was working on the script for the prequel, and we haven’t heard much of anything major since then.

At that time it was unclear whether or not Snyder would return to direct the movie, which is now titled 300: Battle of Artemisia (previously titled Xerxes, which is the name of Miller’s graphic novel), though it sounded like he very much wanted to, saying “It’s really going to depend on what the studio wants to do…I don’t have a directing deal in place but we are writing it, so call it intent. If there was a crime they could probably convict me.” But we now know that what the studio (Warner Brothers) wanted, was for Snyder to take on their reboot of Superman, titled Man of Steel, which will star Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, and Michael Shannon, to name a few.

Sad news for anyone who buys their graphic fiction at Borders Book Stores.

Diamond Distributors, the company that supplies comic books, graphic novels, manga, and the like to most shops across the country, has elected not to ship any new (or back catalog) merchandise to the chain of book stores due to late payments.

The decline in print media demand has caused most brick and mortar book retailers to see their sales slump, but Borders has been hit especially hard due to an absence of a digital business strategy.

The elimination of a graphic fiction section isn’t going to help matters much either.