Volume One of the library edition of Fear Agent by Rick Remender, Tony Moore, and Jerome Opena (my 14th book this year) contains three story arcs and some additional short stories filling in the world and character of Heath Huston.  Remender has created a wonderful character with this alcoholic, cynical, reckless and arrogant human thrown into a space war between alien races whose machinations Heath does not fully grasp.  Much of the art is incredible in these stories, with full page spreads of explosions, alien planets, and space ships accompanied by beautiful lettering.  The frequently interspersed quotes from Mark Twain and a great note of darkly comedic insight as Heath fights aliens, travels through time, gets cloned, and interacts with the AI in his rocket.  Heath’s luck frequently goes from bad to worse yet he somehow manages to muddle through the obstacles confronting him in a quest to somehow save the remaining people on Earth and maybe even his ex-wife.  This first volume gives a glimpse of a traitor in the midst of the Fear Agents – the group of humans fighting the aliens – but what that traitor plans will not be revealed until the second library volume; I will definitely be reading that one before long.

If you’d like to know about this book (and if you’re looking for a fun podcast about comic books in general) I’d highly recommend episode 160 of the Paperkeg podcast which you can find on iTunes and elsewhere.  For one of the hosts of that podcast, Fear Agent is the greatest comic book ever written – and it’s not hard to understand his perspective.