Episode 77 - Reviews of Aama, Vol. 1: The Smell of Warm Dust, Stray Bullets: Killers #1, and The Returning #1

This week on The Comics Alternative, Andy Wolverton and Derek review three more new titles. First, they look at another great book from SelfMadeHero, Frederik Peeters’s Aama, Vol. 1: The Smell of Warm Dust. This is the first of a multi-volume series from this innovative Swiss creator. The Guys discuss Peeters’s skills at world-building and his ability to get inside and flesh out his protagonist, Verloc Nim. Next they take a look at two new #1 issues: David Lapham’s Stray Bullets: Killers (Image Comics) and Jason Starr and Andrea Mutti’s The Returning (BOOM! Studios). They spend quite a bit of time discussing the return of Stray Bullets, starting with the big new Uber Alles edition — which collects the original 40 issues of Stray Bullets, plus the recent conclusion of its last story arc in issue #41 — and then moving onto the new Killer arc. They place the new title in context of the entire series and draw out similarities between it and the earlier comics. Finally, they flip through The Returning, reading it as a different twist on undead narratives. While they recognize the premise as fairly common, they hold out hope that Starr and Mutti will take their mini-series in a unique direction.