Our Patron-exclusive essay series continues. You can read all of these incredible analyses for as little as a dollar a month on our Patreon.
Welcome to the second in a two-part series exclusively for WWAC patrons, covering the six contenders for the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story. Reviewed in this post are Far Sector, Die Volume Four: Bleed, and Strange Adventures.
Far Sector
While the title of Green Lantern has been held by many DC Comics heroes – Alan Scott, Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Kyle Rener, Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz, to name only the humans – there is a distinct paucity of stories about any of them that have really stood the test of time. The Green Lantern line has struggled to hit upon a work in the sphere of All-Star Superman, The Dark Knight Returns or even the New 52 Wonder Woman run.
With Far Sector, however, we have a comic tailor-made to challenge this state of affairs. Part of DC’S Young Animal imprint (the Gerard Way-fronted label devoted to hipper, fresher takes on the DC universe), written by multi-award-winning novelist N. K. Jemisin and boasting high-quality artwork by Jamal Campbell, this is a Green Lantern comic that may well be remembered as something special.
Die Volume Four: Bleed
Created by writer Kieron Gillen and artist Stephanie Hans, Die can be summed as a cerebral, grown-up version of the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series from the eighties. Both are about a group of youngsters who are transported to the fantasy world of a role-playing game; but in Die, the characters eventually return to their fantasyland after hitting middle age. From then on, they must deal not only with the anxieties and traumas of adult life, but also with the darker implications that lay behind their escapist adventures.
Strange Adventures
Spacefaring adventurer Adam Strange returns to Earth and is greeted as a hero who saved the planet of Rann from the invading alien Pykkts. But while attending a book-signing for his new autobiography, he meets a reader who considers him anything but a hero. “I know about the Pykkts!” yells the man. “I know what you did! You liar! You scum! How many are dead because of you?! Tortured! Left in cages because of you! How many graves have you dug?! What did you do?!”
Read the rest of these reviews in our Patreon exclusive essay.
