ZERO

As you’ve already noticed, the genetically engineered race of superpowered individuals known as the Inhumans have seen a renewed focus across multiple Marvel platforms. The group will even star in its own ABC television series, where viewers will see Black Bolt, Medusa, Maximus and more brought to life on the small screen. While fans get to follow the Inhuman Royal Family in the present day, many of their adventures prior to adulthood remain a mystery. Marvel highlights one of these lost tales in Inhumans: Once & Future Kings #1 from Christopher Priest, Phil Noto and Joe Sabino (with a backup story from Ryan North and Gustavo Duarte starring the larger-than-life Lockjaw). The five-issue miniseries marks Priest’s return to Marvel Comics after a lengthy absence, and he doesn’t miss a beat as he perfectly picks up the voices of the Inhuman King and his subjects. Each character speaks with an air of elegance that could run the risk of sounding pompous if handled incorrectly, but Prie

Ghost Station Zero #1 continues the premise of writer Antony Johnston and artist Shari Chankhamma’s previous Codename Baboushka comics — what if the story was about the femme fatale super spy, and not the James Bond-type she sleeps with? — and dives deeper into Baboushka’s Russian connections and history. What Cold War secrets are lying in wait for this icy blonde badass? While Ghost Station Zero continues Baboushka’s story, it’s a standalone miniseries and a great jumping on point for new readers. Starting in media res during a mission in China, in which Baboushka saves women from the sex slave trade and punishes their captors, it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly who Baboushka is and what she does for a living. Working with her handler Gyorgy, she makes a daring escape that I won’t spoil and continues on to her next mission as if it were no big deal. Aren’t all escapes from murderous gangsters daring, you ask? Maybe, but this is a truly beautiful escape; Chankhamma’s illustration

With the television series debut less than a week away, DC Comics brings readers the first print edition of the digital-first adventures of the Flash in “The Flash: Season Zero” #1. With a cover bearing the brand “From the world of the CW TV show,” this comic book provides a spoiler-free sampling of what readers should expect, but with a few extras. Free of the budget constraints of any television show or movie, writers Andrew Kreisberg, Brooke Eikmeier and Katherine Walczak are able to provide artist Phil Hester with an energetic tale that takes a quick look at the Flash, his cast and the troubles lurking in Central City as Barry Allen tries to use his powers to do the most good. Kreisberg is the showrunner for the television series and is credited with the story while television series writers Eikmeier and Walczak are credited with the script. Knowing this will be some fans’ first foray into the CW version of the DC Universe, the writers present a condensed, but detailed summary o

“Zero” #9 is yet another beautifully drawn and succinctly scripted installment in this criminally under-read series by Ales Kot and Tonci Zonjic. The issue is a flashback to the violent circumstances of Zero’s birth, which means it also introduces Marina Stoikovic, the mother Zero names in issue #5. Taut, horrific and unforgiving, “Zero” #9 is only kept from real excellence by its problematic approach to point-of-view. Before I get into point-of-view, it must be said that issue #9 is a moving story that left me sick and uncomfortable. It is, like every issue of “Zero,” executed with remarkable restraint and power, and I’ll get into that. However, skill aside, the core plot of issue #9 is troubling. Though the issue is named “Marina,” it isn’t actually about Marina’s feelings or experiences at all. Her trauma is used only as a vehicle for Zizek’s; the reader is shown his pain, but never hers. In addition, the storyline of a rape victim who prioritizes her baby over herself, with its

Four stars or no, Ales Kot and Will Tempest’s “Zero” isn’t a series that I rush home to tell my friends about. With other work this impressive, I’m immediately evangelical, throwing the issue at my roommates and texting about it to everyone else. But each month when I’ve finished “Zero,” I find myself lying there in thought with the issue in my lap. It’s an intensely private series, worming under the skin in a way you don’t necessarily want to share. I’m not surprised it’s flown relatively low on the critical radar. Plus, it’s been a slow, slow build over the past four issues. Zero’s been introduced in bits and pieces, in vignettes and randomly arranged memories, so each installment feels like its own animal. However, this issue takes an unexpected turn outward from character building to world-building. The final panel is not only a stunning image but a surprise that begins to reveal what exactly Zero’s “world-changing” choice was. I don’t want to say that it raises the stakes, sinc

“Zero” #2, like issue #1, is a standalone story that looks at the formative years of protagonist Edward Zero, a soldier who has trained and works for a government operation known so far only as The Agency. Writer Ales Kot takes Zero, still a child, on his first mission as an anti-IRA assassin, and Zero’s world is a stark, cold and emotionless one as he’s raised to think of people not as human beings, but only as targets. Artist Tradd Moore makes it a barren and ugly world, with its brutal training camps and characters with exaggerated and twisted faces, but for all its ugliness, “Zero” #2 is an intense exploration of a troubled boy who grows up to be a trained killer. Both Kot and Moore are unrelenting in the book’s intensity, in fact. Zero as a boy is seemingly exposed to nothing even remotely pleasant; he’s told that promises are nothing but lies and that life is only a state of perpetual war. He believes he’ll be dead before adulthood and finds comfort in solitude while confined

“Zero” #1 is the first creator-owned ongoing from critically-acclaimed wunderkind Ales Kot who, with his debut releases “Wild Children” and “Change,” delivered stories as confident as they were abstruse. Both infused powerful high concepts with a surrealist air, willfully defying attempts at direct interpretation and giving readers a lot of ambiguity to play with. Perhaps even a little too much. They were striking, no doubt, but one was left with the impression that Kot, despite a demonstrably strong voice, might not have the chops to pull off an actual story in the traditional sense. With “Zero” Kot hasn’t quite abandoned his penchant for narrative amorphism — each issue is written for a different artist — but this time he’s got the story nailed down cold. The series is a futuristic espionage thriller steeped in real-world politics and starring next-generation spy Edward Zero. This first issue shows us what kind of man Zero is and how far he’s willing to go to accomplish his mission

“Solider Zero” #5 is not just the beginning of the book’s second story arc, it’s also the debut of its new writing team of Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning. Picking up where Paul Cornell left off, the writing duo has its work cut out for them after Cornell established a strong voice for this book and how the characters interact, even leaving the fourth issue with a big cliffhanger. Last issue ended with Stewart/Soldier being set up for the death of a police officer that the enemy ‘Soldier’ was possessing and, here, he has to deal with the fallout from that in addition to the collateral damage done during the fight like the disintegrated arm of his brother. It’s an issue of the writers finding their footing and beginning to set things up for the new story, resulting in a scattered issue. The biggest problem with this issue is how much of an effort DnA go to to rehash what happened already, going over the details again and again thanks to Application Nine, a mysterious man who shows up at

Soldier Zero is a comic living somewhere between a simpler “Iron Man” concept and a more bland and helpful “The Blob” visitor all trapped in a watered down “Terminator” scenario without the perfect menace and action. Sadly, it’s a situation that is not faring well. Two alien suits have hosts, one living and one not, and they are fighting it out, with what purpose and motive we are still unsure. It’s obvious that not all is at it seems between these two suits. Hints keep getting dropped but information is constantly pushed back. All will be explained, later. It seems pretty clear, through murderous actions, that one suit is good and one is bad, to paint with a very thick brush. If they turn out to be brothers or former best friends, or even lovers, it will be a twist, sure, but I doubt I’ll care. The roles have already been cast and not much could change that, except superficially. Unless they’re both fighting for some sort of ‘Quickening,’ then I might get back into it. The back and

I thought Doug Zawisza’s review of “Soldier Zero” #1 was right on the money. Reading the second issue, you can see what the first issue was lacking: the other half of the origin story. With the first issue focusing exclusively on Stewart Trautmann and his life after being paralyzed in Afghanistan, the debut issue was lacking the strong hook of the alien suit that attaches itself to Trautmann at the end. The premise of the book doesn’t simply require that we care about Trautmann, we also needs to know what’s actually happening and, this issue, fills in those gaps, providing the other half of what, ideally, would have been the first issue. There’s a familiarity in the concept of “Solider Zero” if you’ve read the first issue only: alien suit/weapon bonds itself to human, granting him powers of some kind. Not an uncommon premise, but this issue works to bring out what makes this story different. Part of that is how the suit changes the paralyzed Trautmann’s life, while a large part is t