JUSTIN’S PICK :: ANDRE THE GIANT LIFE & LEGEND GN: Fellow 80s kids will understand the childhood affinity for professional wrestling. It’s a cult that runs right up to today, but it found its footing and gathered its momentum in those halcyon days of Reaganomics and bad newsman toupees. The sport has its detractors; personally, I just enjoyed it for what it was: a good show. And we must remember, for all its highfalutin pretension and staggering gallery listings, art is, at its core, show business. It would seem that’s the point Box Brown is underlining in his biography of pro wrestling icon Andre the Giant. Once we start to gauge art by assumed intentions or monetary gain, we must evaluate ALL art by the same criteria, and that, my friends, is a slippery slope. Art is in the heart of the artist, and I believe this tender portrait of Mr. Roussimoff will illustrate that point quite well. Brown dove into some exhaustive research for this project, and his style – somewhere at the intersection of Tezuka and Pendleton Ward – is perfectly suited for the subject matter. Expect this one to show up on plenty of best-of-the-year lists, come December.

SETH’S PICK :: STARLIGHT #3: Starlight is yet another fine indicator of the recent resurgence of so many classic pulp elements back into comics. I will admit, though, that it took a little convincing from fellow Heroes staffers Rico and Justin for me to pick this one up. The art was a guaranteed joy from the time the book was announced. Artist Goran Parlov always produces strong and interesting work. My hesitation to pick it up was only rooted in the fact that I’ve historically found the work of writer Mark Millar to be gratuitous on many levels. He’s obviously a talented and versatile creator, I just doubted I’d have much interest in his take on the space opera.

Thankfully, I did give the book a shot, and soon realized that this is a very different kind of story for Millar. It’s full of classic pulp adventure goodness, and clearly reflects his love for the genre. Parlov is excellent as always, but I’d be remiss not to mention how impressed I’ve been with Millar’s character work here. His protagonist, the perfectly named Duke McQueen, did save the universe some four decades ago. After that heroism, he had a fairly mundane life, complete with a wife and kids. But what happens if you had your one adventure, somehow outlive your wife (and usefulness in the eyes of your kids), and in your golden years are called upon to save the universe once again? It’s an ambitious story about aging and adventuring that thus far hasn’t drifted into the excessive tendencies you might expect from Millar. If these two creators keep this up, we might just have a new classic in the making. 

We took a week off for our big Free Comic Book Day party (check out pics here if you missed it!) but we are back with more great guests for HeroesCon 2014! You DO NOT want to miss this show. Lots of great creators who have never been to our show are being added every week along with our core guests who never miss the show! We’ll see you at the Charlotte Convention Center June 20-22, 2014. Tickets for  are on sale now!

CREATORS! Artists Alley tables are still available but they are going fast! Reserve your space today!

Dave Bullock: Director of Justice League:The New Frontier, Batman Black & White,Wednesday Comics

Chris Brunner: Loose Ends, Sundowners

Cully Hamner: Red, The Question, Detective Comics, Black Lightning, Blue Beetle

Kate Leth: Bravest Warriors, Kate Or Die, Adventure Time: Seeing Red

Andy MacDonald: Zoo, Terminator, Time Warp

Mike Maihack: Cleopatra in Space

Benjamin Marra: TERROR ASSAULTER: O.M.W.O.T. (One Man War On Terror), BLADES & LAZERS, Night Business, Gangsta Rap Posse

Billy Martin: Vitriol the Hunter

Drew Moss: The Colonized, The Crow: Pestilence, In the Dark
Tom Raney: Bloodshot, H.A.R.D.Corps
Afua Richardson: Genius, Cyblade, Captain Marvel
Chris Schweizer: Crogan’s Loyalty, Crogan’s Vengance, Crogan’s March
Tony Shasteen: Batman, Arkham Asylum, Vampire Diaries, Star Trek
Shannon Smith: Addicted to Distraction, Small Bible, Brush & Pen

Jim Starlin: Thanos: The Infinity Revelation, The Death of Captain Marvel, Dreadstar, Breed, Silver Surfer

Brian Stelfreeze: Day Men, Jonah Hex, Wednesday Comics, The Ride, Gun Cand

Andy Suriano: Samurai Jack, Liberty Justice, Doc Bizzare M.D.

Ben Templesmith: The Squidder, Choker, Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, 30 Days of Night

Billy Tucci: Bar Maid, Shi, Sgt.Rock: The Lost Batallion, A Child Is Born
Robert Ullman: Atom-Bomb Bikini, Old-Timey Hockey Tales, Traffic & Weather

Heroes Convention takes place in Charlotte, North Carolina, June 20-22 2014. Get your 3 day passes today! The full guest list (so far) is here.

SETH’S PICK :: COMPLETE CUL DE SAC BOXED SET: I’m happy to remind you all that this week finally sees the release of the Complete Cul de Sac! Some of you may not know the work of artist Richard Thompson, but comic strip fans around the country know him to be a national treasure. But it’s not just fans who appreciate Thompson, it’s writers and artists who are rightly blown away by the genius-level writing and art that he infused into not only the Cul de Sac strip, but also his Richard’s Poor Almanac series. The level of humor, heart and skill readily available in Thompson’s work is truly astounding, and I can’t think of many books I’d rather have in my home library than this one. 

Some of you may know that for the past several years we’ve celebrated Thompson’s work at our HeroesCon Drink and Draw event. We’re thrilled to once again be working with Team Cul de Sac at this year’s event, which will take place on the Friday night of HeroesCon. I’ll be letting you know more specifics about it soon, but if you haven’t been to our Drink and Draw before, it’s a fun event where artists from hobbyists to professionals hang out at a nice bar and create art. We then auction off that art that very night, with all the money we raise going to Team Cul de Sac and the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. It’s the best way to celebrate the greatness of the comics community and help us raise money for a worthy cause. Kick off the celebration by picking up The Complete Cul de Sac this week!

Here’s your guide to the FREE COMICS  we’ll have on hand this Saturday, May 3rd at our FCBD event! Doors open at 10AM; get here early to make sure you get the books you want! *Please be respectful of others when making your selections, supplies are limited and we want to make sure as many people as possible get the comics they want. Taking multiple copies of one title is not nice! Neither is pushing while in line. Be respectful of the people around you and we will all have a great time!

• COMIC SHOP NEWS FCBD 2014 SPECIAL
• 2000 AD SPECIAL
• ADVENTURES OF JELLABY
• ALL ROCKET RACCOON
• ALL YOU NEED IS KILL TERRA FORMARS
• ARCHIE DIGEST #1
• ARMOR HUNTERS SPECIAL
• ATOMIC ROBO & FRIENDS
• BLEEDING COOL MAGAZINE
• BONGO FREE-FOR-ALL
• BUCK ROGERS
• CBLDF PRESENTS RAISING A READER
• COURTNEY CRUMRIN #1
• DC THE NEW 52 FUTURES END SPECIAL EDITION
• DEFEND COMICS
• DARK HORSE AVATAR ITTY BITTY HELLBOY REXODUS
• DARK HORSE PROJECT BLACK SKY
• ENTROPY
• EPIC #0
• FINDING GOSSAMYR WAY OF THE BLADESLINGER
• FUBAR ACE OF SPADES
• GIANT-SIZE 4-COMIC BUNDLE
• GRAPHIX SPOTLIGHT DUMBEST IDEA EVER
• GRIMM FAIRY TALES #0
• GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
• HATTER M FAR FROM WONDER
• HELLO KITTY SURPRISE
• HIP HOP FAMILY TREE TWO-IN-ONE
• INTRINSIC VOL 2
• IPSO FACTO
• KABOOM SUMMER BLAST
• LES MISERABLES FALL OF FANTINE
• MAGIC WIND
• MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS
• MOUSE GUARD LABYRINTH RUST HC
• OVERSTREET COMIC BOOK MARKETPLACE
• PREVIEWSWORLD SPECTACULAR
• RISE OF THE MAGI
• SCAM CROSSWORDS #0
• SCRATCH 9
• SHERWOOD TX BOONDOCK SAINTS DOUBLE FEAT
• SHOWA HISTORY OF JAPAN
• SKYWARD & MIDNIGHT TIGER
• SONIC THE HEDGEHOG MEGA MAN FLIPBOOK #1
• SPONGEBOB FREESTYLE FUNNIES
• STEAM WARS
• STREET FIGHTER #0
• TEEN TITANS GO #1 SPEC ED
• THE SMURFS
• THE TICK
• TOP SHELF KIDS CLUB
• TRANSFORMERS VS GI JOE
• UBER THE FIRST CYCLE
• VALIANT UNIVERSE HANDBOOK
• V-WARS
• WALT DISNEY SCROOGE DONALD DUCK GRAVITY
• WORLDS OF ASPEN
• ZOMBIE TRAMP & EHMM THEORY

Our incredible list of comic creators will be signing and sketching from 1 – 5 (or longer at the creators’ discretion). Remember that free sketches are done at the discretion of artists, and are not guaranteed.

• NATALIE ANDREWSON – Artist: Mamuana, Eris, Meanwhile
• CHRIS BRUNNER – Artist: Loose Ends, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, The Ride
• BRIDGIT CONNELL – Brother Nash
• SHAWN CRYSTAL – Artist: Deadpool, Fantomex, Archer & Armstrong
• JEREMY DALE – Writer/Artist: Skyward
• SANFORD GREENE – Artist: Rotten Apple, Deadpool, Wonder Girl, Methodman GN
• JOHN HAIRSTON JR – Painter
• DUSTIN HARBIN – Boxes, Diary Comics
• JASON LATOUR – Writer: Wolverine & The X-Men, Winter Soldier, Loose Ends Artist: Southern Bastards, B.P.R.D., Django Unchained
• JACKIE LEWIS – Artist: Play Ball
• JAY POTTS – Writer/Artist: World of Hurt, Atomech
• BUDD ROOT – Writer/Artist: Cavewoman
• ANDY RUNTON – Writer/Artist: Owly
• HOYT SILVA – Artist: Quatermain: Ghosts of the Nzadi
• BRIAN STELFREEZE – Artist: Day Men, Domino, Matador, Batman: Shadow of the Bat

In addition to all the Free Comics and great artists, we’ll also be debuting a brand new, never before touched sale stock on Saturday! More specifically, this is a 27 box dollar stock that happens to be in alpha-numeric order. That’s right, it’s all in alpha-numeric order! Buy single books for $1 or fill a long box for $250. We haven’t debuted anything like this in quite some time, so bring your back issue want lists and enjoy the ease of shopping through an organized stock.

PARKING: This is always a big question for FCBD attendees. We want you to know there are plenty of parking options for Saturday. You can park anywhere in the lots directly beside or behind Heroes without the threat of being towed. This includes in front of any of the businesses from Dollar General down to the former Florist, including the small lot on the other side of the Florist. Our neighbors are kind to let us use their spaces for their event, so please patronize them on Saturday. We would love for them to see a little extra business from our FCBD crowd. This is our largest store event of the year, and these lots may fill quickly. The good news is that Saturday’s weather is supposed to be perfect for the event. If and when these lots fill up, remember that you can park on any of the surrounding streets behind Heroes. 8th Street and beyond has plenty of on-street parking, and it’ll be a beautiful day to walk a block or two to Heroes.

There are a few places you cannot park. Those are the four spaces directly in front of the Laundry in the lot next to Heroes, and in any of the spaces across Pecan at Pecan Point. This includes all of the parking spaces in the shopping center including businesses like Anntony’s Caribbean, Bang Bang Burgers, and around to Sunflour Bakery. You will be towed at your own expense if you park in any of those spaces, so heed that warning now, and remember it on Saturday.

We expect hundreds of people to pass through Heroes on Saturday, but there are many more parking options for you this year. As with your actions in the store, we would appreciate you being respectful of our neighbors, parking lot, and neighborhood. This is a large and busy event, but it’s one designed to be enjoyed, and we can all work together to make sure that happens for everyone.

RICO’S PICK :: BATMAN ’66 #10: In comics there are hidden gems. Short stories that generations of artists seek out for inspiration. Inside Batman ’66 #10 is one of these stories. Together, David Williams and Kelsey Shannon have crafted some of the most beautiful art you’ll ever see. Here’s a small tease, pick up the issue to see it in all it’s glory.

I arrived at Southern Bastards #1 with plenty of high hopes. Jason Aaron has long been one of my favorite writers, with his creator-owned Scalped being one of our great modern crime epics, and his mainstream Marvel work on Wolverine and Wolverine and the X-men being of reliable entertainment and quality. Jason Latour is an artist/neighbor whose work I’ve had a chance to see develop and flourish over the past 8 years. He’s proven himself as an accomplished writer on the creator owned Loose Ends and Marvel’s Winter Soldier, and as an artist on everything from B.P.R.D. to Captain America. Needless to say, I had a lot of expectations riding on this book. 

Upon my first reading of Southern Bastards, I quickly realized it was hitting close to home. I’ve lived in Charlotte my entire life. There aren’t many of us who can say that anymore. North Carolina isn’t the South of Southern Bastards’ Craw County, Alabama, but my Dad hails from Jackson, Mississippi, so I’ve got some deep south in my blood. Southern Bastards pulled up some of my memories of Mississippi and made me angry and wistful at the same time. The Mississippi of my memory is quiet and spacious, and seemingly hot all the time.  There’s all kinds of beauty surrounding you, but it’s not always easy to see it, because there’s plenty there to offend and infuriate. It’s an odd juxtaposition, the vast expanse of natural beauty and the racism and violence that occurs within it. It’s all part of what modern southern songwriter Patterson Hood refers to as “The Duality of the Southern Thing,” and it’s always there. Southern Bastards does a better job of encapsulating this duality that just about any comic I’ve ever read. 

Aaron and Latour wisely don’t acknowledge this equal parts blessing and curse with a slap-you-in-the-face, didactic approach.  Instead, they use open space and quiet moments to intended effect.  These are storytellers seasoned in Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Conner. They know a little can go a long way. They also know that the South is full of spiritual things that can be as unsettling as they are revelatory. Southern Bastards’ protagonist Earl Tubb sees this all too well in the first issue when he sees a giant tree growing right out of his father’s grave. Earl surmises that it sprouted from the legendary stick that his daddy used to clean up Craw County. It’s quite a sight, but for all the mystery it represents, it’s not necessarily something Earl wants to see. Earl comes back to Craw County for the first time in forty years, and you see in his face that home can be a place full of memories and still somewhere you don’t want to go. It’s like North Carolina writer Thomas Wolfe said: “You can’t go home again.” 

When we first meet Earl, he’s been in the big city (Birmingham) for years now, and he quickly realizes why he left his hometown. For all the good memories, there are plenty of things difficult and terrible about Craw County. While the series will surely tell us more about all of these things, it strikes me that it’s not an accident that Aaron and Latour chose Alabama as the locale for their story. Aside from the obvious fact that Aaron hails from the state, it’s worth remembering that Alabama is notable for several things other than football. On the cultural front, Muscle Shoals’ Fame Studios was a place where black and white musicians came together to make some of the most enduring American records, even in the midst of the unrest around them. And then you have Birmingham itself, where the violence of the Civil Rights struggles came to a head in 1963. Southern Bastards seems to be very conscious of so much that makes the South a wonderful and troubling place.

There’s a phrase applied to music that says “always serve the song.” It refers to the idea of pushing your ego out of the way in a performance and letting the song’s inherent soul be revealed to the audience. Though a different medium entirely, Aaron and Latour clearly serve the song in Southern Bastards, and it’s one that will get stuck in your head if you let it. This is a comic of deft storytelling and uncommon soul. I, for one, can’t wait to see how it all plays out.