HEART

After their stellar run on Wonder Woman, writer Greg Rucka and artist Nicola Scott return to the world of Detective Rowan Black with a revealing coming-of-age story. Some family legacies are easier to bear than others, and in issue #6, Rowan’s 13th birthday party is capped off by the day’s actual main event — her awakening ceremony. It’s been more than a year since issue #5, and it was a good decision to use this flashback issue to reacquaint readers with the characters by exploring a critical period in Rowan’s history. The happy-go-lucky preteen we meet at the start of the issue is a “typical” kid enjoying her life. This naive young Rowan is quite the contrasting figure to the 33-year-old with the prevailing sense of melancholy we’ve known so far. Although her mother and grandmother adore her and have raised her in the traditions of their religion, Rowan cannot fathom the impact of the line she will cross at her awakening ceremony. Rucka deftly structured the issue as a “before and

Christopher Sebela and Robert Wilson IV bring the heat in “Heartthrob” #1. Their protagonist, Callie, gets a new lease on life when her heart transplant comes through, but her recovery is complicated by the ghost of her heart donor. Sebela writes a believably frustrated, confused protagonist who only knows what she doesn’t want, and Wilson’s bold artwork captures all the characters’ highs and lows. “Heartthrob” #1 marries a straightforward arc to thorny emotions, creating a first issue that’s as confident as it is intimate. Callie narrates heavily in “Heartthrob.” For the most part, this is one of the story’s strengths. She refuses to be a plucky survivor; instead, the years of illness give her a more nihilistic strength. When she says things like, “I get that [life is] a gift, jackass. What I need is someone to tell me what the f*ck I do with it,” Sebela shows her weariness without giving into the tiresome superiority that sometimes underlies nihilist characters. Callie feels like s

Writer Kelly Thompson and artist Meredith McClaren do a fine job blurring the lines between “story” and “art” in their collaboration on “Heart in a Box.” The book opens in medias res with an action-packed murder scene that requires explanation, so naturally the story circles back to the beginning to deliver that in a mostly linear fashion. Instead of bouncing all around the theoretical timeline, though, Thompson and McClaren focus on recounting the events leading to and spinning out of the opening sequence. Emma, the protagonist of “Heart in a Box,” holds the key to the story; Thompson presents the tale in a first person narrative, letting readers into Emma’s thoughts and ingratiating the character into the readers’ minds. What should be a fairly simple, procedural story of heartbreak and the long road to recovery becomes an action-adventure turned mystical thriller, peppered with all sorts of bizarre checkpoints. The heavier (or more unusual) beats anchor the front end of the boo

“Nemo: Heart of Ice,” the latest installment in Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” series, is not a proper League tale. Set in 1925, it focuses on Janni Dakkar, daughter of Captain Nemo, and the pirate crew of her submarine Nautilus. Bored of pillaging and weighed down by her dead father’s legacy, Janni determines to prove herself by recreating Nemo’s ill-fated expedition to Antarctica. The resulting graphic novel sees Moore and O’Neill pull out all the stops as the characters encounter some of the greatest creations of H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, and Jules Verne. On the surface, “Heart of Ice” reads as a lighter tale than most League works. The trademark nods to obscure genre fiction are here, promising to send all but the most obsessive reader scurrying to Wikipedia to unravel throwaway jokes, but the complex plotting of works like “The Black Dossier” and “Century” is missing. In its place we have a fairly standard adventure framework, but — per

I don’t follow mixed martial arts, nor do I care to. I never got into boxing or “professional” wrestling, either. Heck, the closest I came to becoming a fan of any wrestling was when I was reading “The Thing” in the 1980s and following Ben Grimm’s adventures in the Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation. So, naturally, when it came down that there would be a new comic centered on MMA, I had no intention to review it. That was before a relaunch and a summer full of tedious events. I read books I never thought I’d read and, honestly, never plan to read again. What would it hurt to read this MMA book and offer up my two cents? I’m glad I took this detour. Mind you, this is not groundbreaking literature. This isn’t going to be the next “Watchmen,” “Maus,” or even “Dark Knight Returns.” It is, however, a story about a young man and his quest to find relevance, something everyone struggles with at some point in their lives. Blair Butler delivers a story that reads like a peek into the main

The stories here aren’t simple fact sheets about the characters’ eye color, height, and weight. These are stories told about the characters by the characters themselves. Max Brooks, of “World War Z” fame, opens up a series of stories focusing on the spark and the fuel of the less-popularized soldiers of Cobra and G. I. Joe. This issue kicks it off focusing on what drives Major Bludd and what makes Spirit the best he is at what he does. This issue is a surprisingly breezy read that offers up the essential information on one Cobra and one G. I. Joe, both men given motivation beyond the obvious. These are the stories behind the other characters that rarely get time in the spotlight. The eleven pages to Major Bludd opens up a vast array of story potential beyond the snarling, mustache-twirling character Bludd appears to be. His motivation is surprising, and his arrogance in his own abilities is stunning. Chaykin marvelously interprets the arrogance of Bludd through a story that traces