Who Says Horror Can’t Also Be Funny?: Catch Its for July 6th, 2022

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...

Sean's Picks:


Deadbox #3 by Mark Russell, Benjamin Tiesma & Vladimir Popov and published by Vault
The Nightfall series from Vault returns with issue 3 this week as Mark Russell brings his trademark satire to us once again. Issue one disentangled this country’s misguided patriotism in the most absurd ways, and issue two focused on the hypocrisy one succumbs to when religion guides their path. In those first two issues Russell tackled the two topics he is most known to critique with religion and politics, and I am most curious to see where this next issue will go. Each issue so far has paralleled a movie from the Deadbox (a fictional representation of Redbox) with the life of someone in this small town. This series seems to be less of a horror and more of a social satire and critique, but there is still story left to be told though I cannot seem to shake the idea that the Nightfall imprint at Vault was supposed to be horror. Something tells me to just sit tight and see where this goes. The art in Deadbox from Benjamin Tiesma has been enjoyable so far. I am previously unfamiliar with Tiesma’s work and I anticipate more collaborative work from him and Russell as they compliment each other seamlessly with each panel and page. Though this series has suffered from significant delays, I hope that with issue three things begin to change. More folks should be reading this one. It’s fun, timely, uncomfortably relevant, yet also fun and easy to digest. 


Strange Academy #18 by Skottie Young & Humberto Ramos and published by Marvel
The final chapter of the ongoing series that introduced readers to several new and beloved characters comes out this week. Solicits say that this will be the issue that destroys readers emotionally, and after doing a reread of the previous 17 issues recently I can attest to this presumption. I have prepared myself for the worst and if you have been reading this series you would probably assume similar things to happen in this final chapter as I have. I just hope this new band of misfits will continue in comics in some capacity after the demise and destruction of the Strange Academy (yes, this is one of my pessimistic predictions) in whatever the eventual and formulated roster is to become.