In the days after the election of Trump, reading this has all sorts of odd resonances. An X-Files meets The West Wing mash-up - or, rather meets The Candidate, I suppose - about a Hispanic Governor making a run for the White House who has a traumatic alien abduction experience that throws her and her staff into a strange and shadowy world of illusion and half truth and sinister doings that can't be properly explained. It's intelligent, stylish, and plays masterfully with the imagery and conventions of the political drama, alien abductions and the conspiracy thriller. Naturally, it only lasted 14 issues, and though this second volume manages to bring it to satisfactory conclusion, there is a maddening sense of so much story left untold. Thankfully, Cornell and Ryan are taking the title to IDW where it will be continuing from July '17. Vertigo broke my heart so many times with so many of these great titles that didn't last, it's nice to see one of them getting another shot. It is a pity, though, that they went for the old Hunter S Thompson tag-line on the back cover without changing it to, oh, I don't know, 'Fear And Probing On The Campaign Trail?'

Every ninety years a bunch of young people find out they're reincarnated gods. They get fame and powers and adoration and two years later they're dead. Fan-girl Laura meets Lucifer herself after a god-gig and gets taken to meet more gods only to find herself in the firing line when someone starts shooting with some machine gods. That doesn't turn out well for the shooters, and the British legal system suddenly finds itself with the unenviable problem of having arrested a god. Laura is drawn deeper into the world of the Pantheon and its mysteries, driven by her own fascination and her own longing, no matter how dangerous.

This is one of those perfectly of-the-moment books that will be regarded in years to come as a snapshot of the contemporary zeitgeist. it's polished and gorgeous and funny and dark, about gods as pop stars and celebrities and their mortal immortality and the need for magic in our lives, even if that magic makes us look small. An amazing, dazzling, terrifying ride.

Visionary mythical alt-historical apocalyptic sc-fi western set in 2080, and Death of the Four Horsemen stalks US fractured into seven states since the end of the Civil War, seeking revenge with two shape-shifting Indian witches while the remaining Three Horsemen are reborn for the End Of The World only to find it delayed by their missing sibling. Utterly twisted tale by Hickman and amazing art by Dragotta, there's nothing else out there quite like this.

Genuine work of genius, dazzling in its formal craftsmanship, density of vision and in its control of huge numbers of characters, themes, plots, concepts and universes, executed in a way that seems gloriously, confusingly mess,y but upon careful reading appears to be generating that sense of teeming, overwhelming chaotic detail through sheer dint of good writing. Whether you're interested in a work of genius based around variations of the DC universe executing yet another variation of the Crisis On Infinite Earths is a whole other matter.

The story is about multiple realities being invaded by malignant higher life forms using comic books which provide glimpses of superhero adventures in different alternate realities as meta mental traps, allowing them to propagate across the multiverse. Between two bookends we explore the looming threat impinging on different Earths with different artists as appropriate to the style of each reality, Morrison showing off his rather intimidating imagination, skill and knowledge. The high-point is probably the Pax American issue with Frank Quietly, where the Carlton characters who were the basis for Watchmen find themselves on different sides of a conflict when one of them assassinates the President they were supposed to be protecting. In some ways the sprawling mess of Multiversity is a rebuke to the claustrophobic formalism of Watchmen, but the Pax Americana chapter in particular pulls of a whole slew of eye-popping experiments in graphic narrative without ever resorting to the rigid structures and layouts of Watchmen.

This was my second read-through of the whole thing, and I enjoyed it a lot more in one sitting and with an idea of what to expect. That the whole thing turns out to be a prelude to an epic adventure that has not yet materialised doesn't detract from it - comics are always barreling towards their next Crisis crossover anyway, might as well acknowledge it and conclude that even if that story is never told, it's happening right now, somewhere, out there in the Multiverse.

The plot thickens, but fiction's not well at all. Tommy Taylor's on a world tour bringing his message and his story to sold-out audiences. With an appearance scheduled in Brisbane, a police detective investigates a series of disappearances associated with a fringe Tommy Taylor cult. Meanwhile the destructive Wave washes over the lands of story, and the story-eating Leviathan's wound gets worse and worse. Pullman and the Cabal may be dead and gone, but the apocalypse rolls on.

In the middle of the angst and despair following Lucifer's death, Lauara is contacted by the god Inanna, who wants her help in looking into the questions surrounding the whole affair. Lauara is drawn back into the world of fandom and into the petty squabbling of the gods themselves, torn as they are between the joys of their amazing powers and the terror of their impending demise. We meet more of the gods and a twelfth member is added to the pantheon, but it's not who you might expect. Then there's one of the most incredible endings in modern comics and I don't have volume three yet aargh.

Just incredible. Blended superstar gods in soap opera, murder mystery and modern myth all projected onto the page and into your mind with amazing art, bright pop colours that can't conceal the occasional splashes of red. There's nothing else like it out there.

You may search near, you may search far, you may search high, you may search low, you may follow the first star on the right and go straight on till morning, but rare will you find a comic as packed to the rafters with sheer shenanigans as this. From the very first page and a night-time tussle with three-eyed foxes leading to a mysterious message about a holy kitten, Lumberjanes kicks off the shenanigans with all the joy and energy and impulsive insanity of a group of friends with not a moment of summer to waste on non-shenanigan-type activity. This comic charms, delights, thrills and warms the cockles of the hardest heart and melts the soul of the most frozen grouch. It's also a masterpiece of fast-paced story-telling that conveys character and setting and background with minimal effort and maximum effect, while pausing only for quiet moments and to take an occasional breath. Not a panel wasted, not an extraneous word-balloon, but every moment packed with everything you need need to know, and a fizzing, popping spray of sheer fun coming out of every page. This is the absolute best.

After a long time away, Earl Tubbs comes home to Craw County, Alabama to clear out the house of a relative moved to a nursing home. With a legendary father and himself a one-time legend on the football field, the place has a lot of memories and a lot of demons, but nothing as potent or dangerous as the living bastards in the here and now. Coach Buless Boss now runs the county the same way he runs the football team, and when Earl intervenes in an altercation he finds himself obliged to step up into his hated father's role of dealing out justice with a hefty stick.

Rich, redolent, soaked with raw passion secrets, crime and violence, Southern Bastards is a brilliant, brutal drama, and a tough, bruising thriller.

Death and company search for Death's son, the horsemen prepare for the apocalypse and the Chosen do as they're told, or not, as the case may be. Hickman and Dragotta's weird sci-fi western continues it's epic way to the end of the world with monstrosities and abominations and philosophies of power and politics and snappy, drawling tough-guy dialogue. Truly the comic for the darker side of 2016 - death, decay, corruption and the consolidation of horrible people in positions of power while the rest of us keep our heads down to avoid the random whims of the universe, embodied in the figures of unsympathetic if not downright hostile mythical avatars, or not.

Shenanigans to the max! Mysterious magical objects! Invasions of three-eyed dinosaurs interrupting wide games! Mean-girl lumberjanes and their mysterious secrets! Mythical gods squabbling over power and making life difficult for everyone! Our gang deals with them all, solving mysteries, sorting things out and making things right, and it's hard to believe it's possible to fall MORE in love with this series, but there you go! Lumberjanes to the max!