The shared Upshot Universe published by brand new comic company AWA Studios is only months old, but it’s already making a name for itself by consistently unleashing books that are surprisingly diverse, and surprisingly high-quality. But with so many widely varied and noteworthy books to keep track of already, we’ve assembled this guide to everything Upshot, from its origin story to sorting through all of its already-released wares (and providing a brief glimpse of what’s to come in the future).
Artists, Writers, & Artisans Studios was founded in November 2018 by such Marvel luminaries as Bill Jemas (Marvel’s former COO and publisher) and Axel Alonso (its former editor-in-chief), who now serve as AWA’s chief executive and creative officer, respectively. Each comic creator who comes aboard is awarded a financial stake in the works and characters he creates, thereby – in theory, at least – granting each artist incentive to turn in their best work; a number of these individuals also sit on a Creative Council, which helps to oversee the development and unfolding of the Upshot Universe.
The four core Upshot Universe titles – The Resistance, Archangel 8, Red Border, and Hotell – all launched on March 18, 2020, with the intended goal of releasing the remainder of their issues monthly thereafter. Unfortunately, the real-life pandemic of covid-19 intervened, delaying these plans; the various minis wouldn’t return with their second issues until June. These early stories range from instant classics to more niche and harder-to-recommend reading, but make no mistake: each AWA book is certainly worth investigating. Engaging, provocative, and masterfully told no matter their genre or thematic purview, these three comics are worth going out and getting right this very moment, no questions asked.
Hotell
A roadside motel off of Route 66 that only appears to those individuals who are desperate enough to need it, Pierrot Courts is the main player of Hotell, which is easily one of the creepiest comics in years. Four different stories in the building’s four different rooms play out across the same weekend, overlapping in ways both subtle and overt, logical and surreal. Linked by a “master of ceremonies” that addresses the reader directly, the four-issue miniseries plays a lot like The Twilight Zone – with a lot of the bizarre imagery, horrific content, and, in at least some instances, gory visuals that define the versatility of modern horror cinema.
The Resistance
The centerpiece of the Upshot Universe is the six-issue The Resistance, written by J. Michael Straczynski and illustrated by Mike Deodato, Jr. (the creative team on The Amazing Spider-Man during Alonso’s tenure as Marvel EIC), which tells of the near-extinction of the human race, thanks to a raging global pandemic, and the subsequent creation of superpowered individuals – and the world governments’ efforts to monitor and regulate them. (AWA heralds this as the first shared superhero universe to be created for the 21st century, and it’s also one that is, unfortunately, pretty timely.)
Not every subsequent book has necessarily taken place within the confines of Resistance’s events; the publisher has endeavored to give each creator a maximum amount of creative freedom, and if his story doesn’t fit within the post-pandemic landscape, it doesn’t have to – in other words, think of Upshot as being connected thematically as opposed to narratively. With this said, however, Axel has left open the possibility of these other works eventually finding their way to connecting with one another, if not also plugging into Stracyznski and Deodato’s world events.
Year Zero
Tales of the zombie apocalypse may, by this point, be beyond cliché, but writer Benjamin Percy manages to infuse this well-trodden territory with fresh energy and insight, drawing together four different characters from all across the globe – plus a fifth figure, whose story serves as both a framing device and as an explanation for the current onslaught – to illustrate just how personal and just how international a crisis it is. As AWA Studios itself puts it, “A Japanese hitman, a Mexican street urchin, an Afghan military aide, a polar research scientist, [and] a Midwestern American survivalist” are all different enough and compelling enough to make Year Zero a page-turning read – and the eye to detail, to the individuals’ personal histories as well as to their various socio-cultural backgrounds, makes the reader truly feel as if he’s stepped foot in that country, undead invasion or no.
Devil’s Highway
Dark and gritty, this take on the crime tale shines through with the same level of characterization that is the hallmark of Benjamin Percy’s other Upshot work, Year Zero. But its specific subject matter also helps to make Devil’s Highway stand out: while having a serial killer brutally murder Sharon Harrow’s father, and while having the young (anti-)hero “embrace the darkness within” in order to catch him, is pretty standard fare for a True Detective-esque yarn, investigating the real-world criminal underbelly of trucking is pretty novel, at least in the comics medium. When you throw in another descriptive phrase that the publisher has been using to sum up the miniseries – it’s a “Northern gothic tale of revenge and redemption” – you have a sure-fire book on your hands.
Bad Mother
April Walters is a pretty nondescript suburban mom – overworked, overweight, and overstressed. But when her husband goes out of town and her teenage daughter goes missing, getting inadvertently swept up in a criminal enterprise that undergirds their quiet community, April gets to turn her invisible nature into an asset rather than a liability as she takes matters into her own hands. This may sound like a gender-flipped version of Taken, but the creative team behind Bad Mother has assured Screen Rant that there’s much more at play here, both thematically as well as in terms of the plot. It actually helps to make the title a well-told, page-turning read that also manages to buck convention, to boot.
Old Haunts
Finishing the streak of Upshot’s crime stories, Old Haunts yet again takes a slightly different tack on the genre: the Mafia meets the supernatural. Three made men (Alex, Primo, and Donny) stand on the brink of retirement, transforming their ill-gotten gains into something approaching respectability, but their violent past is starting to unbury itself – literally – from the desert right at Los Angeles’s doorstep. A deliberately paced, atmospheric book, the creators have credited both The Sopranos as well as The Shining for their inspiration, showing mental deterioration step by painful step in a crime-infested world. It not only results in a finished product that is as interesting as that premise sounds, but it could also set up future “seasons” of tonally similar anthologies.
Archangel 8
Archangel 8 is a visually evocative, well-paced affair that is, in many ways, as polished as a comic could possibly get. What it lacks, however, isn’t in the execution department, but in the conceptual one – it reads as AWA Studios’s version of the Punisher from over at Marvel, showing a cold-blooded protagonist on a sanctioned (in this case, literally) killing spree to take down a whole host of unscrupulous antagonists. The only twist comes in the form of a religious overlay – Raziel is the eighth archangel, originating from the Biblical Apocrypha – who is on a mission from Gabriel himself to topple Michael, one of their own.
There is just enough here to make one hope that future Archangel 8 outings, if they arrive, may make better, more original use of their source ingredients, delivering something less conventional and more in keeping with all of the mini’s brethren on this list.
ET-ER
On the one hand, ET-ER is, perhaps, the boldest comic under the Upshot banner yet: it’s both sci-fi and a comedy, centering its action in a secret hospital, called (of course) Roswell General, that caters to all sorts of intergalactic visitors to Earth. And the art style – at least, in its opening story arc – is also quite a departure from all the dark and dreary other AWA titles, featuring a light-hearted, cartoony approach that’s much more akin to, say, Bob’s Burgers.
But while a breath of fresh air, all this comes at a cost: ET-ER doesn’t have any of the depth of its compatriots, and the humor – in typical Hollywood fashion – tends to come at the expense of character or narrative substance. This was AWA Studios’s first webcomic (which eventually will get collected in print volumes), and, actually, the free-to-read nature of it seems perfectly suited to the subject matter.
Red Border
If Year Zero is the Upshot Universe’s take on the zombie sub-genre of horror, then Red Border is its equivalent of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Eduardo and Karina, a young, middle-class couple from Mexico, become the next targets of the Juarez Cartel, which forces them to flee across the border. But when they (illegally) arrive in Texas, they instead find themselves in an even worse situation, as they’re scooped up by a deranged family that – the reader eventually discovers, beat by uncomfortable beat – seeks to transform Central American arrivals into trophies that can be hung on the walls of their ancestral home. Even with the socio-political overtones of America’s current debate regarding nationalism, symbolic heritage, and, of course, immigration hanging in its narrative ether, Red Border still comes across as a rather straightforward – and, one might even argue, predictable – horror tale.
The Resistance: Reborns
AWA Studios’s second webcomic series is also, despite its name and creative pedigree, its most limited. The idea was to take a number of the newly superpowered characters that get introduced, either directly or indirectly, in the mainline Resistance book and get a little look into their backstories, with the occasional tie-in to the originating miniseries. While the premise is a solid one, and while these mini-installments work best when writer Joe Michael Straczynski employs specific storytelling angles – such as the fifth episode’s Biblical parallelism – they are still hamstrung by the constant recycling of the same art panels; the reader can’t help but get the impression that The Resistance: Reborns was just an after-thought, slapped together at the last minute.
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Just in case these 10 comic book miniseries somehow weren’t enough, AWA Studios has already started talking about future waves of releases, with an equally impressive caliber of talent behind them. Most don’t have specific dates attached to them just yet, but each already looks to continue the young company’s already-impressive track record of consistent quality; keeping an eye out for them, at the very least, seems to be in order.
- Grendel, Kentucky (September 2020)
- American Ronin (October 2020)
- Byte-Sized
- E-Ratic
- Fight Girls
- Marjorie Finnegan, Temporal Criminal
- Moths
- Primos
- YT Savior