I may be running out of superlatives to describe The Walking Dead. So I'll just repeat what I've previously said, for the benefit of those who have not yet read this series: The best way--as always--is to start from the very first issue. The Walking Dead grows more absorbing as it goes, revealing more exciting and complicated reasons to want to follow a story where, in a zombie-infested apocalyptic hell, the few surviving humans somehow prove with increasingly horrific means that they are, truly, more monstrous than the undead. As an IGN reviewer avers, "If there is better, more consistently thoughtful character work going on anywhere in mainstream comics, I'd like to see it. Kirkman is a master at peeling away layers of a character's psyche, and Charlie Adlard has the expressive chops to convey those complex emotions." Indeed comics reviewers have been regularly giving each new issue ratings from "Very Good" to "Outstanding". In the case of IGN, an Editor's Choice Award is the norm rather than the exception. Following IGN's ratings system, I'd give the entire series an "Incredible" 9.8 out of 10. Hands down consistently the best ongoing comic series today. Apparently from the general acclaim, a whole lot of people think so, too.

The Spirit (Denny Colt) is a crime-fighting fictional character created by writer-artist Will Eisner. He first appeared in Spirit Section #1 (June 2 1940), a seven-page insert into American Sunday-newspaper comics sections. The series was brought to DC, where it currently resides, by the one-shot Batman/The Spirit (January 2007). The following month, the first 32-issue ongoing series debuted. It was similar in tone to Eisner's original while updating some concepts for a 21st-century audience. Each issue usually runs a complete standalone story, backed up by a second feature in black and white by a rotating creative team. It is now enjoying its second run, albeit darker in tone, under DC's First Wave line. The first 5 issues of the new ongoing are all HQ Minutemen scans while issues #6 and #7 are GreenGiant scans, and they're just as good. By the way, the cover of issue #7 has got to be the best among this week's comics releases, but that's just my humble opinion.

This is the lead-in special one-shot to the forthcoming second series of Victorian Undead, to be initially released this November by DC Comics' Wildstorm imprint. I am an unabashed fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's immortal Sherlock Holmes, and it is a treat seeing him in a comic book and applying his acute powers of the mind to take on the case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.