What do you get when you take sequential photographs and add word balloons to it? You get Union of Heroes by Arne Schulenberg & Eric Wünsche. I’ve spent some time going through the archive trying to come up with a way to describe this masterpiece only to find I really can’t describe it easily. Take a regular joe, named Marc who wakes up one morning to find a mysterious figure cooking him breakfast (The One Who Knows) and ends up telling him he is needed in a parallel world where superheroes exist not in the pages of comic books but in real life. We discover along with Marc that his doppelganger from this parallel world has gone missing and Marc will need to take his place there. Your head may very well start spinning trying to grasp the concept, but belive me, it is a good kind of dizzy.

From there you are thrust along with Marc on his journey to discover his place in this mirror Earth along with a few other characters that have been introduced thus far in the storyline. Updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the story is already into Episode 3. The photography by Jens Sundheim is superb, full of rich scenery that helps you enter this world and believe it could be happening right this very minute. The dialog is crisp with a few typos here and there, but that is only because this gem is produced in Germany and they really don’t distract from being able to read along. You will find yourself immersed in this world and wanting more. But be patient and enjoy the ride as it is far from over. In fact, it has only just started!

The website is fantastic and easy to navigate with archives, character bios, media including buddy-icons, banners, a you-tube documentary about Union of Heroes, podcasts and more. You can also buy comics & graphic novels from Germany through their storefront powered by amazon.de.

So if you want a comic that combines the richness of photography with a story that holds your attention firmly, head on over to The Union of Heroes and strap yourself in, keeping your arms and legs in the car at all times while it is moving. Enjoy the ride!

I just got home from seeing the much anticipated new Star Trek movie and wanted to share my views on it with you, my readers.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy the movie…to a point and I will provide as spoiler free a review as possible.

The movie should have very well have been titled what I have as the graphic up there.  Yep,  I said it.  Now, don’t start flaming me, just hear me out.  I was on board with this movie until they destroyed a certain planet…a planet that figures very importantly in the Star Trek universe…after that, I was just plain bored as it shocked me to the core that they could just go and do this.  That said, the acting was very good and they did a great job filling the cast with people who did a very good job, making the characters believable…to a point.  I am a fan of Simon Pegg and loved him in the movies he has been in before, but here, he takes the comic relief a bit to the edge of the cliff and you are teetering on that edge watching the rocks and pebbles fall off at your feet.  As I said, overall, the movie was good, but there is only so much you can dick around with and still call it Star Trek.  I know, I know, alternate universe, yadda yadda yadda…it is just a convenient plot device to wipe the slate clean and kick start a franchise that has become stale, so I give them that and will just have to wrap my mind around it and let it sink in.

Beyond that, there are a few points that seem to urk the crap out of me, and I could just very well be nitpicking:

1) To have a thoroughly modern, sleek and great looking ship then have an engine room that looks like a 20th century industrial plant, just doesn’t mesh well.  If the rest of the ship is all squeeky clean and ergonomic right down to the barcode readers on the bridge, they why the heck can’t you have the engineering section look more like the rest of the ship?  You can have it look all industrial if you want, but at least make it industrial-tech, not boiler room on the Titanic.  Another area of the engineering section looked like a processing room in a dairy plant, and I should know having worked at a dairy for 19 years, which was another example of 20th century tech, not tech of the future.  Even the water processing room looked closer to industrial-tech and something that would have been on the Enterprise (I won’t go into the Willy Wonka-esque factor of that scene…Augustus Scott!) This sort of gritty tech worked well on the Kelvin, which was an older ship and had years in space, but for a brand spanking new ship?  Come on.

2) Windshields on a starship.  Um, I don’t think that is such a great idea and this part almost comes to pass during the climax.

3) The serendipity of it all.  I know they needed to get everyone in place in one movie so they can start working on the inevitiable sequels with everyone where they need to be, but it all seemed to be just too convenient in how it came together.

Those points aside, I do believe this will be a new Trek that more people can relate to.  The effects were superb, the costumes excellent (there is even a nod to the style of uniforms from the Motion Picture towards the end) and the story worked on many levels adding new complexity to what is now the established Star Trek Universe.  All other events that happened before the time line had been changed (which is explained nicely by Spock) will be referred to as Prime (Kirk Prime, Spock Prime, Tribble Prime, etc), which wraps it all in a nice little package saying, what had happened before is still happening out there, but what we will see from now on is happening on a new timeline tangent.  This gives JJ and the crew leeway into forging their own Universe with things familiar to us old timers but yet, allows new stories to be written without the baggage of 40 plus years of what has happened before.  Star Trek Lives (now with brand new blood) and one less very important member planet of the Federation!

Take two Davids, mix them together for two years and what do you get?
Shadowgirls!  Way back in 2005, David A. Rodriguez of Starkweather and Dave Reynolds were attending Wizard World Chicago when they started discussing a concept Dave had for a book called Shadowgirls.  The two have a history together as Dave was the colorist for David’s first Starkweather book.  After reading over the documents and design concepts, David agreed and started to write scripts for what would become Shadowgirls.  After getting a few bites and offers from publishers that didn’t quite suit the duo, they decided to venture out on their own to bring their work to the world, displaying it on the web and offering print-on-demand to their fans.

Starting in July of 2007, the pair brought Shadowgirls to the web.  The story starts out about a single mother Charon (which, according to their website is pronounced Share) and her daughter, Rebecca.  From the first pages we are thrown right into the birth of Rebecca and as the pages unfold, the strip delves into Charon’s back story and how she came to be at the hospital she is at.  From there we are led through the tale of a broken person and how she is left to pick up the pieces, trying to put them together while being a parriah to her town, her friends and best friend.  The only person there to help her raise her child is her grandmother but as the story progresses, we find that option doesn’t pan out, through no fault of Charon.  The story jumps ahead to the present and then unfolds from there following Charon and Becka as they try to live their lives out as normally as possible, only, something unexpected is lurking in the shadows, a power, a transformation, a danger.

In between chapters there are little interludes of Shadowbabies by David A. Rodriguez and Misty Coats.  These are nice little diversions in a standard comic strip format as opposed to the comic book format the main story follows and serves as a nice break in the drama and tension. There are also Character Cards here and there that give you stats of the main characters, giving you a peek, an insight into what makes them tick.

The artwork is fantastic and has great flow.  There are backgrounds you can really sink your teeth into, rich and deep.  Above all, this webcomic does what all webcomics, heck, what ALL comics should do: act.  The characters actually act their parts and aren’t just poseable sprites.  You can actually picture them saying their dialogue and believing it is happening.  The suspension of disbelief, this is fantasy after all, is complete and allows you to lose yourself in this world of fantasy and magical powers, that there really is some shadowy creatures lurking in every dark place.

Do yourself a favor, visit this comic, bookmark it and hang around to see where the story goes.  In between updates, you can go through the deep archive and get yourself caught up so you know where the story has been.  You won’t regret it!