2. Pretty Deadly #1 By Kelly Sue DeConnick And Emma Rios (Image)
If the amazing cover doesn't grab you, the lineup should: Kelly Sue DeConnick, Emma Rios, and Jordie Bellaire, a trio of blistering comics talent who put together Pretty Deadly #1. Set in 19th century America, the frontier days, the first issue opens with a butterfly and a bunny talking before a little girl with a gun blows off the bunny's head! From there Sissy, a young girl in a vulture cloak, runs through a ramshackle Old West town while Fox, her blind, old companion, sets the stage for a haunting and lyrical story of love and death. This first issue is more about establishing atmosphere and tone, with hints of the characters' mystery, than revealing the larger plot. The opening scene feels dream-like, or at least mythological like an Aboriginal creation story, before we're in the old west and seeing a mixture of animals and humans - a running theme in this comic - as they act out another story, a kind of a performance-art version of a comic, of the anthropomorphised version of Death and his human love. The story is very sombre and dramatic, with Deadwood-like backgrounds giving way to moments of real magic, sorcery and danger. With its mix of magic and Westerns, Pretty Deadly #1 felt a lot like Stephen King's The Dark Tower in a lot of ways, so if you're a fan of that series, this comic will definitely be up your alley. But Emma Rios - holy crap, is she going to win some awards for this comic! Her character design for Sissy when she's wearing her vulture cloak is incredible, it's such a simple idea but so eye-catching and immediately grabs your attention. That opening scene of the old west town too is so good, capturing the dirt and filth of the streets and striking the right balance between civilisation and nature with the looming rocky backdrop. Jordie Bellaire's colour work is always amazing - check out Brian Wood and Ming Doyle's Mara for more of her good stuff - but she really goes above and beyond with Pretty Deadly #1. For all the brilliance of her work throughout, the colours in the sequence when Fox and Sissy meet up with the rest of their gang in the badlands before dusk was freaking poetic, it was so good! And speaking of poetry, DeConnick's writing in this issue is first rate, especially her poetry on Death's story that Fox performs. But what really surprised me the most was the two-page afterword entitled Falling Up, where DeConnick gives a kind of summary of her life that was so unexpectedly moving. She writes stream of consciousness, picking out memories from her life and somehow connecting them all in the end, leading to the inception of this comic. I know some comics readers tend to skip afterwords and letters pages, and so on, but I really recommend reading this section - it's the perfect ending to this great first issue. Pretty Deadly #1 is pretty damn good, guys - definitely get on board with this promising new series today!