Minor Threats Vol. 1: A Quick End To A Long Beginning (Dark Horse, 2023)

A new original comic series from Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum - showrunners of Marvel's M.O.D.O.K on Hulu - and superstar artist Scott Hepburn! In the vein of Sin City, Watchmen, and The Boys, this noir-ish superhero caper, focuses on a lower-class kind of criminal, similar to the Coen Bros' most pulpy films, but set in a high concept world of heroes and villains. "I was hooked from the first page!" - Taika Waititi It's hard out there for a supervillain. Not the world conquerors, chaos engines, or arch-nemeses, but the little guys, the career criminals. The ones who put on uniforms, knock over jewelry stores, and get tied to telephone poles before the hero swings off to face the actual big bad. Times are tough for costumed crooks—and they're about to get much worse. The psychotic Stickman has done the unthinkable and murdered Kid Dusk, sidekick to Twilight City's premier crime-fighter, The Insomniac. The Insomniac's teammates, The Continuum, are tearing Twilight apart, turning it into a terrifying police state—desperate to capture the Stickman and stop the Insomniac from "crossing that final line" in which he may never come back from. Caught in the middle are the small-time C-list villains, finding it impossible to pull jobs or even walk down the street without being harassed by these heroes. With a bounty on the Stickman's head, former villain Playtime decides to put together a ragtag team of equally disgruntled supervillains to take down the Stickman and kill him themselves, leading her on a dark journey into the criminal underbelly she's tried so hard to escape. This graphic crime drama is about superheroes and villains and the last gasp of the colorful, innocent days of the silver and bronze age…before they're dragged into the grit-soaked modern era. Features a bonus pinups section with art by Mike Mignola (Hellboy), Kevin Maguire (Justice League), Francesco Francavilla (The Black Beetle), and David Aja (Hawkeye).