On The Comic Crush, Paul reviews Joe Kessler’s The Gull Yettin: The life of an orphaned boy is shaped by the devotion of a fantastical Gull in this lovingly rendered, entirely wordless graphic novel by a contemporary comics innovator. Joe Kessler is at the forefront of European comics. Co-founder and art director of UK's Breakdown Press, and winner of the Angoulême International Comics Festival's Fauve Révélation for his breakthrough comic book Windowpane, Kessler rejuvenates the form once again with his vivid and moving The Gull Yettin. Told in striking colors and loose but confident lines, The Gull Yettin's story begins when a young boy awakens late one night to find his home on fire. The boy is saved by a lanky, shapeshifting Gull (who may or may not be real). Orphaned by the fire, and now adrift in a boat piloted by the Gull, the boy faces an uncertain future, one that will be both helped and hindered by his new attendant. Without a word, Kessler builds a strange but recognizable world, using it to explore all the forms that grief, jealousy, longing, and love can take in our lives, and the compassion and cruelty that can dwell in a single heart. Filled with all the warmth and poignancy of a great folktale, The Gull Yettin proves that Kessler is pushing comics to new heights.

On The Comic Crush: In the early 1980s, new B.P.R.D. agent Abe Sapien was set to retrieve the corpse of a powerful warlock off the coast of France. Abe quickly finds himself in a battle with a century-old evil in the form of demonic monks. Mike Mignola and Jason Shawn Alexander's premiere Abe solo series sets the stage for a collection of tales tracing Abe's times both as an agent of the B.P.R.D. and delving into his long-hidden origins. A haunted lake, South American vampires, and a mad scientist seeking out man's missing link are chronicled here!

On The Comic Crsuh, Paul Dunne shares his love for Cindy and Biscuit: From revered British indie cartoonist Dan White comes a monster-fighting latchkey kid in the vein of I Kill Giants and Courtney Crumrin. Meet Cindy and Biscuit: a girl and her dog. People (even her mum!) keep telling Cindy she’s weird, that she’s got a morbid, overactive imagination—but if that was true, why would she keep encountering all these monsters, ghosts, and aliens in real life? Watch Cindy and her fearless four-legged best friend get into all kinds of trouble, as their little coastal town seems to have a preponderance of werewolves, undead mermaids, dimensional portals, alien invasions, and worse . . . it's dark out in the woods! Luckily for all of us, Cindy is the action hero we needed, just in time to save the world a few times between now and detention.

On The Comic Crush we review Liam Cobb’s What Awaits Them, the long-awaited and complete collection of Liam Cobb’s short-form comics. Bringing together the previous Breakdown Press releases “The Inspector” and “The Fever Closing”, this new anthology includes strips and stories from every part of Cobb’s career. Readers will be transported to exotic luxury islands, the darkest rainforests, snow-swept frontiers, and a bizarrely run Michelin-starred restaurant, and will discover the unique mix of lush extravagance and bleak realities that his comics bring to the form. Cobb’s comics reflect the relative loneliness of contemporary life with gleaming, monolithic architecture. Metaphysical love blossoms in the dank humidity of the jungle in a whirlwind of melancholy and mundanity. His clean, unmistakable lines razor the page through rich colour, transporting the reader to a clinical oasis, a gleaming utopia laced with irony and sweat. With these stories, Cobb invites you to submerge yourselves in his uncanny waters and discover, once and for all, What Awaits Them...

On The Comic Crush: An engrossing science fiction graphic novel about a spaceship's crew, and the end of non-renewable resources. Ada, Haika, and Mallic are on a mission . . . one last mission, before everything, everywhere shuts down. They’re raiding old, abandoned spaceships and wrecks for the (sometimes expensive) parts – and they make just enough money to get by. But living their nomadic, exploring life isn’t sustainable when they can’t afford fuel anymore. The time is coming when the mineral that makes inter-system jumps possible runs out. When it does, the scattered inhabitants of the vast galaxy will be stuck where they are. Everything will be different . . . unless the discovery in the latest wreck Ada, Haika, and Mallic are scavenging can unlock a whole new kind of interstellar transit.

On The Comic Crush, we discuss Fantastic Four by Ryan North Volume 1: Something has gone terribly wrong in New York! The Thing and Alicia are travelling across America to escape it! But when they stop for the night and wake up the morning before they arrived, they find themselves caught in a time loop that's been going on since before they were born! Meanwhile, Reed and Sue are on the run from their troubles - and make an unfortunate stop in a small town full of killer Doombots! But what is their terrible secret? And Johnny is left alone in New York - a city that hates and fears him! So it's time for a new identity - and a new job! Can the FF find their way back together and somehow rebuild their lives?

On The Comic Crush, Paul Dunne reviews Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise. Brace yourself for a Doctor Strange story like you've never seen! From the uncanny mind of Tradd Moore, the Master of the Mystic Arts stars in one of his most mind-bending adventures - now wilder than ever on the oversized pages of a Treasury Edition! Doctor Strange awakens alone in a distant world not his own. Lost of purpose and surrounded by danger, the wandering sorcerer must explore this land of blades and mystery to unravel arcane secrets and escape the deadly horrors that lie in wait! Strange is pulled in every direction by powerful figures while millions of lives rest in the balance - including his own! Who can he trust? Can this world's deadly ritual be stopped? Or is the answer simply: Blood? Heaven help us, it must be blood!

On The Comic Crush, Paul Dunne reviews Minor Threats: The first creator-owned comic series from Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum, showrunners of Marvel's M.O.D.O.K on HULU, and superstar artist Scott Hepburn (Tom Morello's Orchid) , this is a graphic crime drama about superheroes and villains and the last gasp of the colorful innocent days of the silver and bronze age before they're dragged into the grit-soaked modern era. It’s hard out there for a supervillain. Not the world conquerors, chaos engines, or arch-nemeses...but the little guys, the career criminals. The ones who put on uniforms, knock over jewelry stores, and get tied to telephone poles before the hero swings off to face the actual big bad. Times are tough for costumed crooks, and they’re about to get much worse.

On The Comic Crush, we discuss The Wasp: Small Worlds! Celebrate 60 years of the wondrous Wasp! Fashion designer, businesswoman, and founding Avenger - Janet Van Dyne has worn many hats over the course of her super-heroic career. And many costumes! But when an old enemy threatens Janet and her fellow Wasp, Nadia - seemingly against his will - the Van Dynes must confront the ghosts in their shared history to get to the bottom of the mystery! But something about this case seems unnervingly familiar to Jan. Can she figure out what it is in time to save both their lives? Trapped in a past where Henry Pym, the Ant-Man, was never born, will they be wiped from existence altogether?

On The Comic Crush, we pick another of our 100 Comics We Love: A retiree dedicates his days to combing a dense, snow-covered forest in pursuit of the unknown, and his nights to reminiscing about his wife. Old Caves is a peek through a frost-covered window at isolation, obsession, and the slow erosion of relationships. The high contrast black and white art enhances the sense of absolute solitude. Old Caves is one of the best-looking graphic novel debuts in recent memory.

On The Comic Crush: check out our guide to Marvel’s First Family! Our short series of reviews and essays on some of the best modern FF stories is your entry point to the world’s greatest superteam!

On The Comic Crush, we join the Fantastic Four and solve everything! Solve everything! Inside a room kept secret from even his closest friends and family, Reed Richards had scrawled upon the walls 100 of the biggest and boldest ideas his brain could produce. And, recently, he added a 101st, the most audacious ever: 'Solve everything.' It would be a mantra that would lead the obsessively intellectual Mr. Fantastic to do great works on behalf of humanity - and, in typically fantastic fashion, lead him into even greater trouble! For, as the big brain of the Fantastic Four will find out, solving everything carries with it a great cost and one that is perhaps too much to pay.

On The Comic Crush, we begin our look at the Fantastic Four when Marvel's First Family meets Millar and Hitch! When one of the world's greatest writers teams up with one of the world's greatest artists, the result is the truly World's Greatest Comic Magazine! Following their epic successes with ULTIMATES and ULTIMATES 2, Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch reunite to forge a new future for the Fantastic Four! Taking their cue from the wild-eyed, creative abandon of the classic Lee/Kirby years, Millar and Hitch make the book decisively their own! First up is the return of Reed Richards' old flame, Alyssa Moy, with news of worldwide calamity that only Mister Fantastic can help divert - but what if the price is his marriage to Sue? Next, the Defenders are back and barraging New York with high-velocity attacks. This mysterious group of heavies has taken out Doctor Doom and Johnny Storm - and that's not even their biggest surprise!

On The Comic Crush: A dazzling work of horror, intercutting between the present-day narrative and the story of a lost horror film. Director T.F. Merrit has spent decades confined in a retirement facility, which he claims is run by the Order of the Fly, a cult organization from his very own movie. And as the night goes on, Forest Inmann and his son Orson find themselves falling deeper into his cinematic nightmare. The writer and artist behind Batman: The Black Mirror reunite to shed light on a celluloid artifact once thought forever missing, perhaps with good reason…

On The Comic Crush, Paul Dunne reviews Poison Ivy Vol.1: Pamela Isely has been a lot of things in her life: a living God, a super-villain, an activist, a scientist…and dead.In a new body that she didn't ask for and with a renewed sense of purpose, Ivy leaves Gotham and sets out to complete her greatest work: a gift to the world that will heal the damage dealt to it...by ending humanity. But plans have a tendency of changing, and Ivy realises life isn't just black and white and all humans aren't evil - except for the ones destroying the Earth with corporate greed. And Ivy will make. Them. Pay.

On The Comic Crush: A Post-Apocalyptic Fable Told In Three Parts For Fans of Saga! In this decades-spanning post-apocalyptic tale, Maceo and Mezzy have never met anyone like each other, and they'll need all the help they can get to survive a planet ravaged by environmental catastrophe. "Love in the Wasteland" kicks off the first arc of this epic trilogy that spans a lifetime as the dark mysteries of a ruined world and their own stark differences tear at the threads holding Mezzy and Maceo together. As they endure the horrors of plastic tornadoes and frozen sludge, Maceo proves to be more than just a burden, and they make an unlikely connection. But to their peril… they might not be as alone as they thought…

On The Comic Crush: From the creator of MURDER FALCON and Wonder Woman: Dead Earth comes the wrestling adventure of the decade! Lona Steelrose wants to be a pro wrestler, but she's living under the shadow of her mother, the best to ever do it. Everything changes when a wrestling-obsessed necromancer brings her to another dimension and asks her to join the DEATHLYFE tournament, the grandest - and most dangerous- pro-wrestling tournament of all time! It's The Wrestler meets Dragonball Z in a tale where the competitors get more than they ever bargained for!

On The Comic Crush, we review Dark Spaces: Wildfire: Legendary writer Scott Snyder presents Dark Spaces, a thrilling new anthology series exploring our deepest fears of the unknown. Six weeks into the slow burn of the historic Arroyo Fire, a crew of women from an inmate firefighting program are risking everything on the frontlines when their newest recruit-a white-collar convict with a deep network of shady dealers-discovers they're mere miles from her crooked former associates abandoned mansion. When she proposes a plan to abandon their duties and hunt for riches under cover of smoke and ash, the team must decide if they're ready to jeopardize their one sure path back to normalcy for a shot at a score that would truly change their lives... but is this a flicker of fortune, or a deadly trap?

On The Comic Crush, with Indigo Children out now, Paul looks back at Vol. 1 of Youth, the previous collaboration between Curt Pires and Alex Diotto. YOUTH is Larry Clark's Kids meets Chronicle. X-Men by way of Frank Ocean. It smashes together the violence of coming of age with the violence of the superhero narrative - as well as the beauty. YOUTH is a coming-of-age story that tells the story of two queer teenagers as they run away from their lives in a bigoted small town, and attempt to make their way to California. Along the way their car breaks down and they join up with a group of fellow misfits on the road. Embarking together in a van traveling the country they party and attempt to find themselves. And then something happens . . .

On The Comic Crush, Paul Dunne reviews The Lonesome Hunters Vol. 1: The Pitch: From Russ Manning Award-winning and Eisner-nominated Harrow County co-creator Tyler Crook comes this supernatural fantasy about loss, power, and destiny. An old and out-of-practice monster hunter in hiding crosses paths with a young girl that forces him to confront these chaotic creatures. As the beasts invade their tenement they set off on a supernatural road trip to stop these ancient evils in a story that explores the ways that youth informs adulthood and how early traumas can haunt us in old age.