Gail Simone

Leaving Megalopolis is a graphic novel by Gail Simone and J. Calafiore that was funded via Kickstarter. I was one of the backers and have a lovely hardcover with a bookplate signed by Simone and Calafiore to show for it. There is now an ongoing comic (I don't know if it's a limited series or not) from Dark Horse Comics, called Surviving Megalopolis, that continues the story.

The premise has the city of Megalopolis cut off from the outside world, under quarantine, after an "incident" in which show more something came out of a crater that formed in the city, a something that caused the superpowered heroes to turn evil. Now, those former heroes are preying on the city's citizens. The graphic novel told the story of a small group of people and their attempt to escape the city.

The comic sets up as a rescue mission, with a small team entering Megalopolis to find two people and bring them out to safety. But, as we learn in the most recent issue, #3), two members of the team have their own agenda, because isn't that always the case? Sure, it is. And in this case, it just adds to the intrigue. The comic is filling in some of the gaps left by the graphic novel while posing new questions about what happened in the city.

This is a great, gritty tale of survival, a different type of disaster story where the heroes people normally turn to for help are now the things to be feared. The people of the city who we meet are all individuals, capable of heroism, and Simone makes us care about them. Calafiore's art is wonderfully detailed. His people look real, full of emotion, and the backgrounds show a city in chaos.

I'll admit I don't love everything Simone writes. I adored her take on Birds of Prey, and I thought her Secret Six series to be amazingly good, but I was less enamored of her writing on the pre-New52 Wonder Woman, and I never could get into that short-lived DC comic with original super-powered characters she wrote (the title of which escapes me). Here, she's at the top of her game, giving us a story that seems so real, a story of fear and what it can cause people to do to survive, good things and bad. But it's also a story of hope, and I hope it's around for a while because I'm enjoying (if "enjoy" can be the right word for such a dystopia) my visits to Megalopolis.
Scripted by Shelly S at 11:54 AM show less

Going into reading this TPB I really had no idea who or what Red Sonja was. I'd heard the name of course, and I'd seen a lot of the art/covers on various sites around the internet. But I'd never read any of the other comics or seen the movie about her either. I was a Red Sonja newbie going into this, and wow, I think I need to find more.

I mainly decided to read this book because Gail Simone wrote it and I pretty much get around to reading everything that she writes eventually. But her show more authorship aside, wow it was a great TPB. The art was amazing, the covers were even more amazing, and the story was pretty awesome too.

It's the tale of two different stories basically, the one in the present, where Dimath, a King who was once very, very kind to Sonja calls for her help after not seeing her for three years. She gets intertwined in a big ole heap of trouble that involves a plague, and a bunch of people who are called Zamorans (which appear to include both humans and mermen? That threw me off a little bit). And then there's the past where we get to see how Red Sonja was sort of... created. I really liked that part of the story because it wasn't how these Sword and Sorcery heroes usually get created, some big event and --poof they're a hero--. It was a process that was disturbing and interesting and very bloody.

The two stories fit together so perfectly too. The narrative went back and forth between the present and at different times in the past and I never had a problem figuring out where or when I was in the story, and the two stories just complemented each other so well. In the future story I'd be wondering about some detail, and in the next part, there in the back story would be the answer to my question.

Honestly, these last few years I've read quite a few TPBs, good, bad and everything in between, and this is right up there with Lazarus, Vol. 1. It's truly a TPB that can be called a Graphic Novel and not just a 'comic book'.

I got this advanced galley through Netgalley on behalf of Dynamite Entertainment and Diamond Book Distributors. show less

I had to grit my teeth when yet another Jessica Jones book began with the return of the Purple Man. (Can we put him in a box and set him aside for a good long while, please?) But the story slowly moves Zebadiah KIllgrave to the side as Jessica gets increasingly involved with her alternate reality doppelgängers -- the multiversal "variants" of the title -- who suddenly start popping up.

The required slugfests upon first meeting lead to a Jessica Jones support group with some humorous show more one-upmanship for who has it the worst and who can be trusted the least.

What really lifts the story though are its Luke Cage moments. He steals the scene every time he shows up, from introducing someone to the most dangerous real estate in the world, to being kinder to a woman on an elevator than she is to him, to being "damn bulletproof."

Jessica is at her best when she is with Luke, and all those sad variants are just gonna have to be jealous of that. show less

This is sort of a part of the Brightest Day Saga that's DC Universe spanning. But, unlike a lot of the other Brightest Day TPBs, this one is quite a bit more stand alone. Oracle, Canary, and their Bird of Prey friends are being attacked by someone who has info on all of them and will release it unless the Birds of Prey (including Lady Blackhawk, Hawk and Dove, and Huntress) play in their little game. A game which involves an assassin named White Canary, Savant and Creote, and a bit of a trip show more to Bangkok.

Gail Simone. I wish that she could write every comic book ever... (I know, first she'd have to be cloned). The relationships between all the characters are so real, and I just love, love, love the banter. I think that sometimes comic writers are scared to let their characters love each other (in whatever form), but Simone manages to make them both caring and able to kick some serious butt. show less