"Space is weird and terrifying!" and other themes: Catch It September 15th, 2021

Welcome to Catch it at the Comic Shop, where the Panel Patter team looks at what's coming out at your favorite store or digital device this week. Each one of us that participates picks up to five items due out this week, with a little bit about why we like them. (NOTE: We use solicitation material for this, so if we miss creators, please talk to your publisher!) Sometimes we might only have a few items to share, other weeks, keeping it to five will make for hard choices. Here's what the team wanted to highlight this week...
 
James' Picks:
 
Canopus TP by Dave Chisholm, Published by Scout Comics
Canopus is a weird, beautiful poetic story, about loneliness, determination, and hope. I don't want to say too much about the details but it's an absolutely wonderful, slightly bizarre journey into space and memory. There's an astronaut marooned on a barren planet, alone except for her robot companion. She just wants to get back to Earth. And things get...strange. It's a compelling story, about finding things to believe in when that seems impossible. Chisholm is a fantastic storyteller in all aspects, and his animated, expressive, dramatic art tells the story beautifully. 

Primordial #1 by Jeff Lemire, Andrea Sorrentino, and Dave Stewart, published by Image Comics

Keeping with the space is weird and dangerous theme, Primordial is the new book from the creative team that brought you Gideon Falls. That's great news, because I loved Gideon Falls. It was an amazing, weird, sci-fi-horror meta-story, with tons of twists and turns. The first issue of Primordial sets up a different 1960's than we remember. There's no space race. Something has scared America and Russia away from going out into space. We don't know what yet, but this is an excellent debut issue that hints at a vast scope, and great story to come. 

Rob's Picks:

Fang Vol 2: Weekend at Medusa's by Marc Palm, published by Fantagraphics
Fang, the monster hunter, gets bit by a snake and has a nightmare. And because this is an off-the-wall kind of book, it involves everything from drugs to vampires to some good old fashioned mythology along for the ride. Palm's art works perfectly for a story like this, where there's just enough reality to keep things grounded while moving off into some strange directions. This is exactly the type of book I enjoy from Fanta--strange, horror-tinged, and with plenty of drugs. There's a Weed Witch, people! Do I have to say more?

Godzilla Rivals Vs Mothra by Mary Kenney, SL Gallant, Maria Keane, Adam Guzowski, and Nathan Widick, published by IDW
Godzilla's about to do his usual run of devastation, and only Mothra might be able to keep the carnage down. But despite the efforts of a photojournalist, the military wants to keep the giant insect on the sidelines. Is the lesser of two evils a better bet? It's an excellent question that Kenney poses, taking us down a journey where Godzilla is unambiguously evil and the quandary is whether the cure is worse than the disease. I love the premise, but the answer is a bit less ambiguous than I think it could have been with a stronger artist. Gallant tries but can't quite show the stakes, and Godzilla and Mothra never seem as imposing as they need to be for this story to work perfectly. Still, it's a great Godzilla tale in a cool anthology series, and despite a few rough edges, it's still a pick for me this week.