Comics
Image Comics Releasing 10 Franchise Firsts Priced At A Buck
Image just announced their Image Firsts line of comics. These are the reprints of ten key first issues of Image’s most acclaimed titles. They will only cost a dollar and include “The Walking Dead”, “Spawn”, “Chew”, “Youngblood”,”Savage Dragon”, “Invincible”, “Witchblade, “Girls”, “Age of Bronze” and “Proof”. Leading up to Free Comic Book Day on May 1, two Image Firsts titles will be released every week starting on March 31. Continue on for the press release and release schedule.
“As discussions for Free Comic Book Day began, many of our retail partners brought up how helpful it would be to have additional, inexpensive supplements to our featured title, Silverline’s FRACTURED FABLES, as a way of bringing in an even wider range of fans,” explained Image Comics Publisher Eric Stephenson. “We developed the ‘Image Firsts’ program to showcase the great variety of titles we have to offer. Between the superheroics of SPAWN, INVINCIBLE, WITCHBLADE, SAVAGE DRAGON and YOUNGBLOOD to the science fiction of GIRLS and PROOF to Eric Shanower’s historical epic, AGE OF BRONZE, and the horror of THE WALKING DEAD and CHEW, there’s something for every reader, old and new.”
IMAGE FIRSTS SCHEDULE
MARCH 31
IMAGE FIRSTS: YOUNGBLOOD #1
story ROB LIEFELD & JOE CASEY
art & cover ROB LIEFELD
32 PAGES / FC
$1.00
The original celebrity superheroes make their debut in this remastered tale by Rob Liefeld and Joe Casey.
IMAGE FIRSTS: THE WALKING DEAD #1
story ROBERT KIRKMAN
art & cover TONY MOORE
32 PAGES / BW
$1.00
A continuing tale of survival horror in a post-apocalyptic world.
APRIL 7
IMAGE FIRSTS: SPAWN #1
story TODD McFARLANE
art & cover TODD McFARLANE
32 PAGES / FC
$1.00
Todd McFarlane’s arcane superhero discovers the truth behind his unholy resurrection.
IMAGE FIRSTS: CHEW #1
story JOHN LAYMAN
art & cover ROB GUILLORY
32 PAGES / FC
$1.00
Bizarre culinary crimes investigated by the FDA’s premier psychic detective.
APRIL 14
IMAGE FIRSTS: SAVAGE DRAGON #1
story ERIK LARSEN
art & cover ERIK LARSEN
32 PAGES / FC
$1.00
A lone supercop fights against a city of organized supercrime.
IMAGE FIRSTS: AGE OF BRONZE #1
story ERIC SHANOWER
art & cover ERIC SHANOWER
32 PAGES / BW
$1.00
Eric Shanower’s epic retelling of the Trojan War.
APRIL 21
IMAGE FIRSTS: WITCHBLADE #1
story DAVID WOHL & CHRISTINA Z
art & cover MICHAEL TURNER
32 PAGES / FC
$1.00
The only weapon powerful enough to keep the forces of Darkness and Light at bay is in the hands of a New York cop.
IMAGE FIRSTS: GIRLS #1
story JOSHUA LUNA
art & cover JONATHAN LUNA
32 PAGES / FC
$1.00
A small town trapped in an invisible dome becomes the epicenter of an alien invasion unlike any other.
APRIL 28
IMAGE FIRSTS: INVINCIBLE #1
story ROBERT KIRKMAN
art & cover CORY WALKER
32 PAGES / FC
$1.00
When a teenager inherits his father’s superpowers, he learns there’s much more to being a superhero than he ever anticipated.
IMAGE FIRSTS: PROOF #1
story ALEX GRECIAN
art & cover RILEY ROSSMO
32 PAGES / FC
$1.00
Comics
[Review] Graphic Novel ‘Tender’ Is Brilliant Feminist Body Horror That Will Make You Squirm & Scream
Beth Hetland’s debut graphic novel, ‘Tender,’ is a modern tale of love, validation, and self-destruction by way of brutal body horror with a feminist edge.
“I’ve wanted this more than anything.”
Men so often dominate the body horror subgenre, which makes it so rare and insightful whenever women tackle this space. This makes Beth Hetland’s Tender such a refreshing change of pace. It’s earnest, honest, and impossibly exposed. Tender takes the body horror subgenre and brilliantly and subversively mixes it together with a narrative that’s steeped in the societal expectations that women face on a daily basis, whether it comes to empowerment, family, or sexuality. It single-handedly beats other 2023 and ‘24 feminine horror texts like American Horror Story: Delicate, Sick, Lisa Frankenstein, and Immaculate at their own game.
Hetland’s Tender is American Psycho meets Rosemary’s Baby meets Swallow. It’s also absolutely not for the faint of heart.
Right from the jump, Tender grabs hold of its audience and doesn’t let go. Carolanne’s quest for romantic fulfillment, validation, and a grander purpose is easy to empathize with and an effective framework for this woeful saga. Carolanne’s wounds cut so deep simply because they’re so incredibly commonplace. Everybody wants to feel wanted.
Tender is full of beautiful, gross, expressive artwork that makes the reader squirm in their seat and itch. Hetland’s drawings are simultaneously minimalist and comprehensively layered. They’re reminiscent of Charles Burns’ Black Hole, in the best way possible. There’s consistently inspired and striking use of spot coloring that elevates Hetland’s story whenever it’s incorporated, invading Tender’s muted world.
Hetland employs effective, economical storytelling that makes clever use of panels and scene construction so that Tender can breeze through exposition and get to the story’s gooey, aching heart. There’s an excellent page that depicts Carolanne’s menial domestic tasks where the repetitive panels grow increasingly smaller to illustrate the formulaic rut that her life has become. It’s magical. Tender is full of creative devices like this that further let the reader into Carolanne’s mind without ever getting clunky or explicit on the matter. The graphic novel is bookended with a simple moment that shifts from sweet to suffocating.
Tender gives the audience a proper sense of who Carolanne is right away. Hetland adeptly defines her protagonist so that readers are immediately on her side, praying that she gets her “happily ever after,” and makes it out of this sick story alive…And then they’re rapidly wishing for the opposite and utterly aghast over this chameleon. There’s also some creative experimentation with non-linear storytelling that gets to the root of Carolanne and continually recontextualizes who she is and what she wants out of life so that the audience is kept on guard.
Tender casually transforms from a picture-perfect rom-com, right down to the visual style, into a haunting horror story. There’s such a natural quality to how Tender presents the melancholy manner in which a relationship — and life — can decay. Once the horror elements hit, they hit hard, like a jackhammer, and don’t relent. It’s hard not to wince and grimace through Tender’s terrifying images. They’re reminiscent of the nightmarish dadaist visuals from The Ring’s cursed videotape, distilled to blunt comic panels that the reader is forced to confront and digest, rather than something that simply flickers through their mind and is gone a moment later. Tender makes its audience marinate in its mania and incubates its horror as if it’s a gestating fetus in their womb.
Tender tells a powerful, emotional, disturbing story, but its secret weapon may be its sublime pacing. Hetland paces Tender in such an exceptional manner, so that it takes its time, sneaks up on the reader, and gets under their skin until they’re dreading where the story will go next. Tender pushes the audience right up to the edge so that they’re practically begging that Carolanne won’t do the things that she does, yet the other shoe always drops in the most devastating manner. Audiences will read Tender with clenched fists that make it a struggle to turn each page, although they won’t be able to stop. Tender isn’t a short story, at more than 160 pages, but readers will want to take their time and relish each page so that this macabre story lasts for as long as possible before it cascades to its tragic conclusion.
Tender is an accomplished and uncomfortable debut graphic novel from Hetland that reveals a strong, unflinching voice that’s the perfect fit for horror. Tender indulges in heightened flights of fancy and toes the line with the supernatural. However, Tender is so successful at what it does because it’s so grounded in reality and presents a horror story that’s all too common in society. It’s a heartbreaking meditation on loneliness and codependency that’s one of 2024’s must-read horror graphic novels.
‘Tender,’ by Beth Hetland and published by Fantagraphics, is now available.
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