by Jarrod Jones. Subgenre is a detective story that knows you’ve read detective stories. It knows you’ve heard ’em all. You? You are a connoisseur of tales, fables, legends, and yarns; you can discern classics from IP dross. Subgenre is here to entertain you, which is no easy feat, what with your smarty brain telling you you’ve read it, seen it, streamed it all before. Feel lucky Subgenre doesn’t disconnect your synapses, you think you’re so damned smart.
Subgenre is Matt Kindt and Wilfredo Torres working creator-owned magic in a corporate comics world. It is how they air their frustrations and vexations over the commodification of art, their worries about machine learning rejiggering their work into lesser stuff without their say-so — or, worse, getting smart enough to strip-mine their craft into something better, more entertaining, transcendent in a way their human thoughts and skills could never achieve.
Subgenre is stories within stories, a murder mystery that knows you’ve read Philip K. Dick and Sam Kieth and so acknowledges that you’re sharp enough to keep up, keen to crack its secrets, enjoy a little comic book bloodletting, share in its frustrations. Subgenre is out to break the cycle of commodification into a million-jillion shards and have a bit of fun with its sulky hero, mysterious dames, and that chipper, floating AI that looks like Hedy Lamarr. In Subgenre, intellectual-property hounds are grunting, homogenous thugs that will ruin your much-needed sleep, and Decipher Cosmics owns all the entertainment that keeps us beasts sedated. Print has neared its end. It doesn’t have to be that way here.
Courtesy of Dark Horse Comics, this exclusive preview of Subgenre #3 showcases the latest missive from creators raging against the machine. It’s also going to be a lot of fun. Subgenre realizes 8 bucks is a big ask, so Kindt, Torres, colorist Bill Crabtree, and letterer Jim Campbell put in the work to make it the best possible comic you could spend 8 bucks on. Invest and be entertained. And, maybe, enlightened. Who knows. You’ve read it all before, right?
JANUARY 10 | $7.99
From Dark Horse Comics: From the New York Times bestselling creators of BANG! comes a mind-bending, multi-dimensional murder mystery presented in a pulp magazine-sized format!
Our hero realizes he’s been jumping through dimensions, between the ancient world of sword and sorcery to the high-tech cyberpunk dystopia, he is determined to discover his original world–his one true birthplace and reality.
Subgenre is the latest release from Flux House Books, a new boutique imprint that will feature the writing (and sometimes) art of acclaimed comics creator Matt Kindt, with crime, science fiction, horror, and humor stories, all told and presented in startling and untraditional ways.
SUBGENRE #3
Written by Matt Kindt.
Art by Wilfredo Torres.
Colors by Bill Crabtree.
Letters by Jim Campbell.
Cover by Matt Kindt.
Variant by Sumeyye Kesgin.
For ordering information, click this.
For ordering information, click this.
