Magical Trees Are What You Can Find In This Week's FOC! :P

Roots and Tubers! When It Reigns, It Pours! With Great Power Comes Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Thwip Ouch!

This week in FOC: Kaziranga Thing, mutant heyday, and everyone's favorite guilt complex! 

Happy St. Paddy's, you crazy diamonds.

Swamp Thing by Ram V and Mike Perkins Omnibus

You probably know Ram V as the man with the lushest head of hair you’ve ever seen. But he’s much more than that: Ram V writes comics, it turns out. Sometimes he even does superhero makeovers.

Mike Perkins's art and Ram V's locks: The kind of lushness shampoo commercials dream about.

In The Swamp Thing, he reinvented DC’s eco avatar as Levi Kamei, an Indian scientist living in the United States. Levi is surrounded by ghosts both emotional and metaphysical, as a possibly dubious trip home as a corporate representative saddles him with the terrible gift of Swamp Thing-ness. His stumbling, metaphysical journey to understanding what he’s become takes him through fever dreams, personal dissolution, and becoming a kaiju Green Lantern.

In other words, this is a heady one. Like much of Ram V’s work, it’s a lurid combination of far-flung influences. There’s grounding in classic, atmospheric horror (one of the book’s earliest scenes evokes the locked-in, sweaty-palmed in-flight terror of that classic Twilight Zone episode with Captain Kirk). There’s Tool references, too. And, amid the visceral, nightmarish images, there’s a strangely light, almost elegant touch.

The prettiest lil’ autopsy you ever did see.

Mike Perkins is the ideal artist for this series. Visceral, pulpy, and kinetic, his work is entirely unique—I kept thinking of 80s horror comics with layouts designed by peak Batwoman J.H. Williams III.

The Swamp Thing by Ram V and Mike Perkins Omnibus collects Future State: Swamp Thing #1–2, Legend of the Swamp Thing Halloween Spectacular #1, The Swamp Thing #1–16, and Poison Ivy/Swamp Thing: Feral Trees #1.

X-Men: Age Of Krakoa - Reign Of X Omnibus Vol. 1

Love that freaky-deaky quick-grow flora but can’t handle the fever dream of it all? The Krazy Plants of Krakoa might be more your speed.

The X-Men are feeling pretty tops: they’ve established the mutant nation of Krakoa and triumphed in the Kurosawa-Monty-Python-Mortal Kombat round robin that was X of Swords. Now it’s time to reign.

The crazy thing about the Krakoa era was that writers did so much so well. Orbital cloak-and-dagger? It’s there in S.W.O.R.D., where peak Al Ewing and Valerio Schiti spin a grab bag of slightly peripheral fan favorites like Abigail Brand, Manifold, and Peeper into solid gold.

“I have to write around a King in Black tie-in? Fine. Mentallo gets to save The Five in a ‘think tank.’” Al Ewing 4-ever.

In the space of two issues, #16 and #17, X-Men takes us from a Land of the Lost day out with Dad Cyclops and the kids to peak 90s X-Factor fan service, with artist Brett Booth in Jim Lee nostalgia drag for the entire issue.

And then there’s issue 16 of Marauders, where Kate Pryde and Emma Frost beat the absolute holy hell out of Sebastian Shaw. For pages and pages. Savor it, friends.

This isn’t even the best part. It’s just the best one-liner.

In short, there’s delights a-plenty here, and they range all over the place. So get this book and savor it, because right after this, the Krakoa roller coaster starts to plunge.

X-Men: Age Of Krakoa - Reign Of X Omnibus Vol. 1 collects S.W.O.R.D. (2020) #1-4, X-Men (2019) #16-19, X-Factor (2020) #5-6, Hellions (2020) #7-8, New Mutants (2019) #14-17, Marauders (2019) #16-19, Excalibur (2019) #16-19, X-Force (2019) #15-19, Cable (2020) #7-9, Wolverine (2020) #8-10, Children of the Atom (2021) #1-2 and King in Black: Marauders (2021).

Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection Vol 13: Nothing Can Stop The Juggernaut

If you’re sick of bemoaning modern Spidey, why not give yourself a break by revisiting some of that Classic Parker Storytelling? 

Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection Vol 13: Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut contains the beginning of Roger Stern and John Romita’s seminal run with the webhead, and it’s absolutely fantastic.

The storytelling is dense and multi-layered, and most issues spend as much time establishing the stakes in Peter Parker’s life as they do on web-slinging. But there’s plenty of jumping and punching and thwipping, too. Exhibit A is the introduction of the mysterious Hobgoblin, which is measured, mysterious, and genuinely scary.

A lot of the power in this Hobgoblin is the slow burn of the character reveal.

Then there’s the two-issue issue “Nothing Stops the Juggernaut” storyline, a stone-cold modern classic. As the Juggernaut stomps through Manhattan, Spider-Man basically throws himself at the immovable object over and over again without anything resembling success.

With great power, etc., etc.

Spider-Man’s core character traits are almost a cliché these days, diluted across media platforms. But there’s something very special about how these stories don’t take Peter Parker’s selflessness and refusal to give up for granted. Unlike some modern writers, Stern and Romita never seem to reach for gimmicks to keep themselves interested in “puny” Parker—they’re busy solidifying what makes him so endlessly fascinating.

Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection Vol 13: Nothing Can Stop The Juggernaut collects Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #224-241 and Amazing Spider-Man Annual (1964) #16.

You can check everything out on FOC…

HERE

Wednesday is the official deadline for low pre-order prices (but we never change prices before Friday... shhhh it's a secret!)

See you,
Don