The Five Fists of Science
Image Comics
This much is true: Geniuses and contemporaries Nikolai Tesla and Thomas Edison did wage a war of sorts on one another at the turn of the last century. It was over their different systems of electricity, with the former advocating an alternating-current system and the latter a direct-current system.
Writer Matt Fraction and artist Steven Sanders embellish quite a bit from there in their hilarious alternate-history graphic novel, The Five Fists of Science.
A down-on-his luck Mark Twain hooks up with Tesla and armistice advocate Baroness Bertha Von Suttner to end war forever. Twain's plan is essentially a forward-thinking theory of mutually assured destruction: If the combination of his showmanship and Tesla's science can sell every world power their own invincible, Tesla coil-powered giant robot, they'd be too afraid to ever go to war.
While Tesla uses his science to fight for peace, Edison is, he says, sick of knowing everything, and has fallen in with a cabal of devil-worshipping industrialists, including J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and fat, nervous radio-inventor Guglielmo Marconi. Their plan is to summon Lovecraftian monsters and rule the world.
You can't make up characters as compelling as the real-life Tesla and Twain, which goes a long way toward explaining how unbelievably fun Fraction's mixture of biographical fact with outrageously fantastical fiction is. All of the weird quirks Tesla exhibits are real, for example, even if he never actually mounted Tesla coils on pistols to fight crime or constructed a giant automaton to fight J.P. Morgan.
Included is a handy guide to the characters, explaining that Carnegie was actually a really nice guy and that his portrayal here is "a rancid character assassination" done for dramatic effect, and that Marconi wasn't really a stress-eater, but "it was funnier than making him a fascist."
Super F*ckers No. 3
Top Shelf Comix
In mainstream superhero comics, super-powered teens like the Teen Titans or Legion of Superheroes tend to hang out in headquarters-cum-clubhouses, fight for justice against teenage villains and save the day, just like the straightlaced little buzz-killing narcs the last generation of comic-book writers hoped their readers would be.
Not so with indie comics superstar James Kochalka's team of superteens, the Super F*ckers, who behave exactly as real teenagers do. That is, they bicker, smoke, swear, drink, do drugs, swear, copulate, play video games, swear and spend more time trying to peep on each other in their HQ's shower than they do fighting crime. Did I mention the swearing?
Kochalka's extended Legion parody is now in its third issue, and the joke is still funny. It probably helps that the art style he's adopted is the exact opposite of his usual black and white—it's so eye-assaulting colorful that I don't think there's any black or white in it at all; even the dialogue balloons are colored. It's probably the perfect superhero book, as it appeals as much to people who love superhero books as it does to people who absolutely hate them.
Skyscrapers of the Midwest No. 3
AdHouse Books
The third issue of artist Joshua W. Cotter's horribly depressing series is just like the first two: book-length, heartbreakingly realistic and gorgeously illustrated (each panel seems to have about 10,000 ink lines in the background). Cotter's series is set in a poor town of anthropomorphic cats somewhere in the Midwest, and focuses on a put-upon middle-school boy and his younger brother as they navigate the existential horrors of childhood (If you've forgotten them, Cotter's story will quickly show you exactly where the psychic scars they left on you are).
As ugly with realism as the book is, it contains bizarre moments of intriguing fantasy, like a giant robot that stalks the landscape with a giant bindle and lantern and strange flies that symbolize ... something. Whether they're elements of the protagonists' imagination or allegories presented for the readers' own edification is never resolved, giving the book an extra layer of mystery and uncertainty.