On this week’s comic book review podcast:

Ultramega #1

Image Comics

By James Harren

Black Knight: Curse of the Ebony Blade #1

Marvel

By Si Spurrier & Sergio Dávila

Orphan and the Five Beasts #1

Dark Horse Comics

By James Stokoe

Catwoman #29

DC Comics

Written by Ram V

Art by Fernando Blanco

Radiant Black #2

Image Comics

Written by Kyle Higgins

Art by Marcelo Costa

The Amazing Spider-Man: King in Black #1

Marvel

Written by Jed MacKay

Art by Michele Bandini, Alberto Albuquerque

Nightwing #78

DC Comics

Written by Tom Taylor

Art by Bruno Redondo

Orcs! #2

Kaboom!

By Christine Larsen

The Trials of Ultraman #1

Marvel

Written by Kyle Higgins & Mat Groom

Art by Francesco Manna, Eduardo Ferigato and Gurihiru

Justice League #59

DC Comics

Written by Brian Michael Bendis, Ram V

Art by David Marquez, Xermanico

Snow Angels #2

ComiXology

Written by Jeff Lemire

Art by Jock

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Full Episode Transcript

Alex:                 What is up, everybody? Welcome to The Stack. I’m Alex.

Justin:              I’m Justin.

Pete:                I’m Pete.

Alex:                 And on The Stack, we talk about a bunch of books that come out this week, but not Head Lopper.

Justin:              Yeah, what the fuck, man?

Alex:                 Never Head Lopper, never, ever. [crosstalk 00:00:22] They barely lop any heads anymore in that book. [crosstalk 00:00:28]

Justin:              It should be Head Notper because they’re not lopping anything up.

Alex:                 It’s a very good book. We’re just not talking about it in The Stack. Instead, we’re going to kick things off, talking about Ultramega #1, from Image Comics by James Harren. I think you actually said it best on the live show, Justin, so I don’t know if you want to just take it from here, but I think you totally nailed my thoughts on this book.

Justin:              Yeah. And so this book is a take on Kaiju, sort of a dark take. I’ve never been a Kaiju guy in comic book form.

Pete:                Really?

Justin:              Just in the comics, I feel like a lot of them are sort of similar to what we’ve seen before. And this book is such a dark take on it. You’re in this character’s head, it’s just such a fresh version of this type of book. I loved every bit of the story and so many surprising moments and especially where it lands by the end. This was definitely the… Caught me off guard and was the most surprising and exciting book of the week for me.

Pete:                Wow.

Alex:                 Pete, what about you?

Pete:                I loved it. The art’s unbelievable. This is a real epic book. Unbelievable battles, super gross. Yeah. The storyline is really creative and different. It’s dark in all the right places, creepy and gross looking in all the right places and huge and intense and others. And it’s just really, really well done.

Justin:              [crosstalk 00:01:56] Sorry, before you get there, Alex, one last thing, it’s also the rare book that goes hard. It doesn’t just set up the premise and then sit in it and be like, “Tune in next week.” Kind of a thing. It goes hard at the ideas and really pushes it.

Alex:                 The basic premise of the thing. And this gives away the first couple of pages, which I think are surprising and exciting in and of themself as they slowly spool out the story. But I’ll do this just to tease people about it and then not talk about what happens probably in the last two thirds of the book. Well, the general idea is this weird eye creature or space being gives three people powers to turn into giant beings kind of called, at least one of them is called Ultramega. And they are able to identify a Kaiju virus that has embedded itself in people, but the catch is when they approach those people, when they see it, it activates that virus and they turn into these