Haven't had a chance to get it yet.  But Brubaker and Phillips are absolutely the best. 

Ok still catching up on new stuff, I'll comment on Miskatonic #2 here since it was released this week, but I read both #1 and #2 in one sitting so some of the comments apply to both issues.

Miskatonic #2 (Aftershock COmics)



Written by Mark Sable. Art by Giorgio Pontrelli. Cover by Jeremy Haun and Nick Filardi.

Miranda Keller is an investigator for the Federal Bureau, but when J. Edgar Hoover takes over he seeks to eliminate all female agents, but she has some kind of photo dirt on the director so he gives her a special assignment to investigate a supposed radical bombing in the Miskatonic Valley of Massachusetts rather than having her re-assigned to the secretarial pool which is what he believes is the proper place for women in the Bureau. Along the way she teams up with a retired police officer, Tom Malone, who was a veteran involved in the Red Hook raids and encountered some supernatural things there that altered him forever. Malone is a believer, Keller a skeptic, so it's a nice genre-reversed X-Files dynamic in their partnership. Sable mashes up pretty much every scrap of Lovecraftian lore in his worldbuilding as well. Innsmouth, Dunwich, Arkham, the Whateleys etc. are all present, but spends perhaps too much time placing Easter Eggs and not enough time crafting the narrative flow. The story in both issues is choppy, though #2 is better than #1, and it sometimes jumps form scene to scene not so much in a Mamet quick cut but in a I am not quite sure what I am doing in my pacing-though I am not sure if the fault lies in the script or in the visual storytelling ability of the artist-Pontrelli. I like the aesthetic of Pontrelli's art, but I'm not sold on his panel to panel, page to page storytelling, but again I'm not sure if that's because the fault lies in the script he was given or in his own visual storytelling instincts.

The second issue moves the story from Innsmouth to Arkham University as the pair seeks the aid of a scholar to translate hidden writing found etched in a radical pamphlet at the scene of the initial bombing, and pay a visit to the debutante daughter of the bombing victim, as she is a student at Arkham, and the mystery of the bombing is crammed full of Lovecraftian horrors.

Overall it does a very good job of capturing the Lovecraftian feel, to me it feels like a Call of Cthulhu style adventure complete with the characters being called "Investigators" though in this case that is their actual occupation but the bandying of that term in story to refer to them feels like a nod/Easter Egg to the rpg. The story is interesting and the characters appealing, the art is nice to look at, but again the actual storytelling leaves something to be desired. I believe it's a mini-series, so I will likely ride it out to see how it pays off, but if it's an ongoing, there would need to be some improvement on the storytelling craft to get me to stay on board long term.

Overall I'd give it a 3 out of 5 stars so far, but slightly higher if you just want to geek out on Lovecraftian lore.

-M