The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Michael Phelps indulges Anderson Cooper in some watersports and Dexter makes a 'bitch move.' Plus: the secret of Tina Fey's scar, revealed!
Dating Advice From . . . Engineers by Steph Auteri Q. For optimal functionality, what should go into a first-date emergency kit? A. Fine wine, road flares, a snake-bite kit and Ghirardelli chocolates.
Alias by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos
Marvel Comics heroine Jessica Jones is a tough-talking private eye, a modern-day female Humphrey Bogart. But she's also a woman with a past — as a pink-haired young superhero who fought alongside the Avengers, then quit for reasons she's ashamed to reveal. In the first issue of Alias (unrelated to the Jennifer Garner show, incidentally), Jessica punches a client through a window, gets wasted at a local bar and initiates rough sex with a man from her superhero past. Here is a woman who began her life with a clear, noble purpose, only to have it taken away by the complications of the real world. When I was reading Alias, I'd just graduated from college, I couldn't find a job, and my idealistic ambitions were dying on the vine. Jessica's candy-colored superhero memories looked a little like mine; her sarcastic, vodka-drinking, ex-boyfriend-fucking mindset looked a whole lot like mine. Jessica Jones never goes back to being a superhero, but over the course of the comic, she learns to take her screwed-up, all-wrong life and run with it. And that's a good skill for anyone in their early twenties to learn. — Gwynne Watkins
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Preacher by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
This epic Western about a young man named Jesse Custer hunting down God to hold him accountable for the mess he made of Earth is equal parts high comedy and horrific sadism. When the first issue hit stands in 1995, it scared the crap out of me. Glenn Fabry's painted covers of burning Southern mansions, leather-masked gimps and torn-off faces were plain too much. But I got hooked when Jesse, his girlfriend Tulip and his foul friend Cassidy headed south to New Orleans to consult a voodoo priest. This was the perfect Western — it was about friendship and love against all odds and protecting your own all the way to the end of the world. Ennis' dialogue was thick with stranger's voices I wanted to meet; Dillon's sweating faces showed me the sort of pain I never wanted to know and the kind of orgasms everyone deserves to have. — John Constantine
"Bomb Scare," Optic Nerve #8 by Adrian Tomine
I'm borderline-obsessed with angsty high-school stories — movies, music, books, you name it — and yet I've never read anything that felt as muted and true as "Bomb Scare." What struck me is how uncomfortable it made me, and yet how much I didn't want it to end. The comic depicts two teens — a bookish loner named Scotty, a party girl named Cammie — linked by their after-school job at a fast-food joint. Their young lives, like most, are full of shame and suckitude. But what Tomine really nails is how subterranean and baffling their own feelings are. By the time the story ends, I feel so unsettled and confused that I just don't know what to do. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much how I felt in high school, too. — Sarah Hepola
Hate by Peter Bagge
I loved Peter Bagge's Hate when it first came out. I think I was attracted to Buddy, the slacker loser hero — attracted as in, I wanted to date him. I dimly recall some image of Buddy having sex with his girlfriend and leaving his socks on, and perhaps not even being all that enthusiastic about it in the first place. The ways in which the comic was gross (clothes riding up; hair in weird places; sweat) seemed scary in a not entirely unpleasant way. I later did date men like Buddy. It was just like I'd been led to expect by Peter Bagge, except with duller dialogue. At least the sex was better. — Ada Calhoun
Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis
This comic about gonzo journalist Spider Jerusalem in futuristic America manages to achieve exactly what all great political journalism does: shame you into paying attention and giving a damn. I started reading this in 2003, right around the time I was starting to wonder why I'd voted at all in 2000 and 2002. Spider's column "I Hate It Here" — full of sermons to the people of the City, calling them out for their indecision and ignorance — made me itch with embarrassment. Ellis' city and Darick Robertson's images of just what the Information Age would evolve into didn't feel like the future; it felt sickeningly like right now. — JC
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
