This week the Wednesday Comics Reviews team tackles the start of a new story arc in Snotgirl #18, a new series with Bronze Faces #1, and one of the best comics of the year so far with Assorted Crisis Events. Plus, The Prog Report!
Are you a weekly comics sicko? You’ve come to the right place. This is where The Beat’s review team writes about the new #1s, finales, series just hitting preorder eligibility, and other notable issues out in shops from non-Big 2 publishers…enjoy!
Snotgirl #18
Writer: Bryan Lee O’Malley
Artist: Leslie Hung
Colorist: Rachel Cohen
Letterer: Iasmin Omar Ata
Publisher: Image Comics
Review by Zack Quaintance
Snotgirl is an interesting series. It launched in 2016, marking one of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s highest-profile projects post-Scott Pilgrim. O’Malley was scripting the series, while the artwork was done by then-newcomer Leslie Hung with colors by Rachel Cohen and letters by Mare Odomo (with Iasmin Omar Ata coming on as letterer later). From 2016 through 2020, the series put out 15 issues, for a total of three trade paperbacks of material. Then it disappeared, making its return in December 2024 with a new set of issues that I’ve been calling Snotgirl – The Return.
What’s so interesting about all of that to me is that Snotgirl is a comic very much born of an exact moment in time. The concept for the series is essentially that its protagonist is, as the first issue description says, “a social media star,” or more familiarly, an influencer. And layered on that is that despite her glamorous looks, she also suffers from a set of severe (and very unglamorous) allergies, thus the name. It’s clever, a way to get at the tension between how one appears on social media versus the reality of one’s every day life. But now eight years past its initial debut, technology and culture have both moved rapidly from the moment when Snotgirl was born. Yet Snotgirl is as enjoyable to read as ever.
I’ve been thinking about this since the series returned, and I was struck by it again this week, when I read Snotgirl #18, which in my opinion is the best issue since the book came back. It might even be in the conversation for one of the book’s best issues ever. One of the things this issue helped me realize is that the most interesting elements of Snotgirl were never really about social media culture, but rather the people who were swept up in it. And those people are capable of transcending trends and satire to remain interesting.
This is especially interesting for single issues like Snotgirl #18, which has a deceptively simple setup — most of the characters are trapped in a vacation resort by inclement weather, forcing them to confront issues between them. It’s sort of a bottle issue in that way, but concurrently another plot is running where two side characters are investigating a mystery that has been part of the book from the very start. I don’t know about you, but this kind of use of periodical form mixed with long-haul storytelling is one of the major reasons I read these things in real time as they come out. It’s simply good comics.
So yes, to sum up a lot of what I said above — Snotgirl was gone but now it’s back and as fun and good-looking as ever. Maybe it’s lost a step in terms of satirizing a specific moment in culture, but the storytelling takes chance and moves quickly, and the characters are a fantastically-flawed bunch to spend time with. It’s not as innovative as something like Scott Pilgrim, but it’s a great and solid comic nonetheless.
Verdict: BUY
Rapid Wednesday Comics Reviews
Bronze Faces #1 (BOOM! Studios): Family drama and a plan to reclaim the British Museum’s appropriation of sacred (cultural and familial) artifacts color the pages of Bronze Faces. Written by Shobo & Shof, this book oozes style on every page, from textures in the panel borders, connecting non-diegetically to the Nigerian identity of the story and the characters, and then we see the patterns diegetically in costuming and artifacts with expressive character illustration by Alexandre Tefenkgi, colored by Lee Loughridge, with letters by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou that bring these textures into the text literally and everything jumps off the page. We are presented with three estranged siblings, who, and I cannot stress this enough, are not related by blood. We see them across different periods of time, given insight into their upbringing which then contextualizes them as adults as they are brought back together through an exhibition. Their relationships feel real, from the jabs and competitiveness, to the care underneath; save for a very blurred line that personally makes me uncomfortable across pieces of media that have done similar, though I would not say it takes anything away from the story overall. If anything, the drama really dials things up as we end where the story begins, at the beginning of a journey of reclamation. It’s beautiful to read and gorgeous to look at, with solid characterization and striking character designs; this first issue sings with this creative team. —Khalid Johnson
Frankenstein – New World: Sea of Forever #1 (Dark Horse Comics): If you followed the main Hellboy narrative, you know the world as we know it ended, a few years ago even. But Mike Mignola and his collaborators have found creative new ways to sort of add to that and keep things going, and one of them is by telling stories that star Frankenstein. This week we get the debut of the second Frankenstein-featuring miniseries set after the end of the world. Some of the tension and momentum of the old Hellboy Universe has drained, and that’s understandable. The world did, indeed, end. How do you go bigger than that? But there’s no shortage of ideas in these new books. They also have a slightly evolved tone to them that I find interesting, feeling a bit more mythological, almost elemental. This series in particular seems interested in exploring a blend of fantasy-horror that takes on ideas of survival and evolution. Frankenstein – New World: Sea of Forever #1 was written by Mignola, Christopher Golden, and Thomas Sniegoski, with art by Peter Bergting, colors by Michelle Madsen, and letters by Clem Robins. —Zack Quaintance
FOC Watch
In a new feature this week, our reviewer takes an advanced look at a title that is now available for pre-order…and might just be one of the best comics of the year.
Assorted Crisis Events #1
Writer: Deniz Camp
Artist: Eric Zawadzki
Colorist: Jordie Bellaire
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Designer: Tom Muller
Publisher: Image Comics
Release Date: March 12, 2025
Review by Sean Dillon
In a recent interview with Empire Magazine, Mike Leigh mused what he would do with a James Bond movie. The filmmaker, known for his social realist cinema, pitched the film as “The entire film would be James Bond visiting his elderly mother in a suburban house, spending a bit of time with her, and then leaving.”
Assorted Crisis Events isn’t quite that project. For starters, our lead character, Ashley, is not the action movie heroine out to stop the evil plot. Rather, she’s an ordinary person caught up in a rather mixed up world. A waitress stuck living alone in an apartment beset by an uncaring film crew out to make whatever the next postapocalyptic blockbuster is out there. All she wants is to get her clock fixed.
Instead, the world ends.
This is quite possibly the first great comic of the year. An absolute barnstormer of a book full of inventive ideas, clever sequences, and one of the most jaw dropping punchlines of the year. While it might be obvious to cite the rising star of Deniz Camp as delivering on the pitch of “What if Alec by way of Final Crisis?,” the true star of the book is the collaboration between artist Eric Zawadzki and colorist Jordie Bellaire.
Frequently throughout the issue, Bellaire opts to deemphasize the color work being done, muting backgrounds and even foregrounds to have everything blend together to highlight the disjointed blandness of a matte painting that is swiftly undercut with the sharpness of apocalyptic decay. Combined with the clean and clear pencil work by Zawadzki, and you have some of the most stark images of the year.
Where Camp’s previous efforts opted for the grotesque and flamboyant, the world presented in Assorted Crisis Events remains grounded, yet nevertheless unsettling. One sequence involving Ashley running afoul with the police jolts the reader with its harsh cruelty that a page of nothing but caped clowns flying about, talking about “anti-life” and “Crisis Energy” simply can’t.
This is the going to be one of the best books of the year, and you should get on the ground floor of it immediately.
The Prog Report
2000AD 2418 (Rebellion Publishing): After talking about 2000AD with Deans Simons last year, I decided that I was going to start reading stories even if I wasn’t caught up on past installments. Well, that decision served me well this week with jumping right into Full Tilt Boogie, Book Three, by writer Alex De Campi, artist Eduardo Ocana, colorist Giulia Bruso, and letterer Simon Bowland. The strip did a wonderful job of introducing characters in a clever way (with faux click bait-y headlines, often juxtaposed in funny ways with panels), and giving me everything I needed to engage. The premise for the story is our characters are headed for a war festival, and what am I even doing if I don’t want to see what the deal with that is? The clever writing paired well with clean line work and fun sci-fi concepts throughout, making for a great start. My favorite strip right now, however, remains Fiends of the Western Front, by writer Ian Edginton, artist Tiernen Trevallion, and letterer Jim Campbell. I’ve written about it here in the past, but this literary Old West vampire supernatural adventure is exactly my type of thing. And this week’s chapter introduced a fun new frog monster atop a pile of bones in a desecrated old church. In other words, this one is keeping up the good work. This week’s cover (above) is by Nick Percival. As always, you can pick up a digital copy of The Prog here. —Zack Quaintance
Read more entries in the weekly Wednesday Comics reviews series!
Next week in this space, Bug Wars #1 and The Hive #1 give us a double dose of bug-related comics. Be here!
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