5. Pretty Deadly
There's been some controversy surrounding Pretty Deadly. But none of that matters when you start reading the book. Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Rios are telling a wonderfully rich and subversive Western. While I'd like to tell you exactly what it's about, I can't. That's because I'm not exactly sure I understand everything yet either. But three issues in, I'm getting a sense that this creative team is building an incredibly large, lush world. And if my initial confusion exists, it's something that they are aware of and that they intend to unveil this world and story little by little. That's the thing that's great about the first few issues though. They refuse exposition, they refuse to hold the reader's hand and explain everything. Instead it's the expressive art of Rios and the poetic quality of DeConnick's writing that give us hints and impressions of what's going on. This is supposed to be a story of vengeance, the story of Death's daughter riding through the Wild West. But we get something much more fantastic and definitely way weirder than we would expect from a traditional Western. It's being billed as the storytelling of Sandman meets the brutality of Preacher. Thus far it's delivering on both, and after three issues, I get the sense that this will be something massive.