"Loose Ends is a gritty, slow cooked, "southern crime romance", that follows a winding trail down Tobacco Road, through the war torn streets of Baghdad, and into the bright lights and bloody gutters of South Florida...12-Gauge style." -- series solicitation "Smart as a weasel. Pretty as a southern sunrise. Raw as a freshly stabbed knife wound. LOOSE ENDS is all that. As well as just flat-out good. Damn good." -- Jason Aaron (Scalped, Wolverine) If all these adjectives do not convince you how good this comic is, I don't know what will. Writer Jason Latour, only after the second issue has successfully created a noir crime-romance, a most difficult genre to pull off. His artistic team of Chris Brunner and Rico Renzi not only props him up but boosts the over-all look and feel and taste and digestion of Loose Ends and its over-all superlative production values way up there. One gorgeous comic book. And a very, very good read. One other thing: 12-Gauge is an independent publisher, so each and every sale of each and every issue helps--if you can afford to, please buy their comics.

The Indifference Engine reunites the Cancertown team of Dethan, Cook and Wilkinson, joined this time around by penciller Rob Carey on his first full-length graphic novel. Publisher Harry Markos, speaking about the launch on the PSN forum, said: “You’re going to be freaked out. I warned you, a while ago, that The Indifference Engine would blow your minds...” Certainly this 4-issue graphic novel, published online as a digital comic mini-series, packs a lot of punches. Cy Dethan's script is tight, seamless, and progressive with no decompression as is common among comics mini-series nowadays, and that says a lot about the creative process that went into it. Carey's art, too, is excellent--never drawing too much attention to itself yet pulling the reader deeper into the story--with granularity, starkness and tension in all the right places. Markosia should be proud to showcase such British talent, showing that great things are ahead. This is also a coup for the PSP Comics network and what mobile comics are all about. Highly recommended. 12+

When it comes to space opera action, Edgar Rice Buroughs’ John Carter of Mars series led the way for all pulp fiction to follow. Many companies have attempted to bring the series to screen, and John Carter has appeared in comics a time or two as well. Dynamite Entertainment is the latest to tackle the character, and they’re taking the story and tweaking it just a bit. Note, however, that this is not an adaptation of Warlord of Mars, the third book in the Barsoom series, but rather a prequel to A Princess of Mars, the story that kicked off the 11-book series, and introduced readers to the Southern Civil War veteran John Carter. One of the more interesting passages in the source material is that John Carter finds himself and men of the Martians "nekkid" as the day they were born, and while Dynamite Entertainment won’t be able to get away with a lot of nudity in the series, the artists thus far managed to pull off the clothing optional aspect. As with the main series, Arvid Nelson also scripts the companion Dejah Thoris series with the same confident feel and here I'll do say that Princess Dejah Thoris would give Red Sonja or the Witchblade gals a run for our money. Surprisingly good. All HQ Minutemen scans, mostly by the one and only Minutemen-DTS.