1: Thanksgiving - Ahoy

            If you’re like me, when you first saw this title you thought, ‘Thanksgiving? But it’s not even Halloween yet!’ But writer Mark Russell and artist Mauricet are able to capture the tone of Thanksgiving with some Halloween flair added in for good measure. Might be too on the nose for a comparison but it’s similar to the 2023 Eli Roth movie of the same name in that way, the biggest difference being that I enjoyed this one significantly more. It’s also a oneshot without ads!

The story focuses on a somewhat ordinary family on Thanksgiving as the Turkeyneck Killer haunts the streets, decapitating their victims and cutting off a single finger as their calling card. As the story unfolds, Russell does a fantastic job showing the complicated and supposed sanctity of family. Even when the killer isn’t lurking, there’s an air of holiday tension that builds suspense as the story twists and turns. At some points it may feel a little predictable but that didn’t take away much of my enjoyment from it.

            Russell’s biggest strength in Thanksgiving is definitely the interpersonal relationships that he builds within the family and the representation of an ‘ordinary’ family as anything but. This isn’t a family dinner that you’d see in a Hallmark movie but one with members hung up on past relationships and more interested in racist tirades than discussing one another's lives over the course of the past year.

2: Universal Monsters: Invisible Man #3 - Image

            I really wanted to switch up my picks from about this time last month to keep them fresh but I’ve been enjoying this series so much that I just can’t help myself. Once again, written by James Tynion IV with art by Dani, Invisible Man just keeps getting better and better. 

            Following Jack Griffin’s descent into madness and obsession with perfecting his formula to harness the power of invisibility, #3 shows our protagonist finally moving on from experiments on animals and beginning testing on other humans before attempting anything on himself.

            My favorite part about this issue is the way that Dani uses silhouettes to show Griffin lurking and looming in the corners of bars and on city streets in negative space, it’s a clever way to represent his metaphorical invisibility before he has perfected his serum. It’s a fun story that’s improved upon if you have appreciation for the Universal film but not compulsory.

3: New History of the DC Universe #4 - DC

            Mark Waid’s New History of the DC Universe is exactly what it sounds like! Much like the previous pick, I wanted to mix it up a bit, but with this being the final issue of the series and its importance in regards to continuity, I had to.

             New History of the DC Universe #4 involves Barry Allen recounting the continuity of the DCU from Blackest Night up to modern day and beyond! Barry is no stranger to time travelling after all, so it makes a good amount of sense. It even has some small nods to the new Absolute Universe for fans of that, which was an unexpected surprise.

            Mark Waid does a great job at re-ordering and mashing together DC continuities in a way that makes them fit together in a satisfying manner, even if I wasn’t a fan of the original story. He does it in a way that’s both respectful to the history of DC and the intelligence of the reader, as much as I might like for stories and characters to be retconned completely, this is admittedly a much better way to go about it.