#awa studios

[theartofthecover]

Hotell Vol. 2 #3 (2022)

Art by: Kaare Andrews

[maxsindiecomics]

Hotell Vol. 1 #2 - Room 2: The Three Deaths of Muriel Stansfield (June 17, 2020)

writer: John Lees | artist [penciller and inker]: Dalibor Talajić | colorist: Lee Loughridge | letterer: Sal Cipriano | publishing company: Upshot [AWA Studios]

[ultrameganicolaokay]

They Choose Violence #4 by Sheldon Allen, Mauricio Campetella and Daniele Caramanico. Cover by Rahzzah. Variant cover by Chris Ferguson and Campetella. Out in September.

"The controversial revenge thriller continues! Laneka, Deidre, and Karen, three HBCU besties turned killers in the name of racial justice, have tracked down their copycat adversary and are ready to find out just how, and why, their rival killer got started."

[superheroes-or-whatever]

CamGirl by Sarah H. Cho & C.P. Smith

[have-you-read-this-comic]

Have you read Gatsby (2023) by Jeremy Holt and Felipe Cunha?

Yes

Partially

No

I've never heard of this

Voting ended onMar 8, 2025

Propaganda under the cut

[towritecomicsonherarms]

The Ribbon Queen #1

[earth-1218designate]

There's a lot of great things here for Illuminati's debut issue :

I've seen DMX's "Flesh Of My Flesh, Blood Of My Blood" cover paid homage to before by Keron Grant (during Marvel's Hip-Hop Variant promo admist my community college days), but the black colorway this time around with a black woman on the A cover speaks volumes as to what AWA has in store for this series.

The premise is simple : a sexpot moves down from Missouri and gets caught up in the L.A. music industry scene, turning up dead and triggering an investigation from her sister that will lead her sister to a first hand experience with L.A.'s underworld - both criminal and metaphysical.

There's nothing fresh to that story, but AWA is giving the artists a pass to do what they want here and that means tits are out and asses are up - even if initially the only naked women in this adult comic can be found on an autopsy table.

Denys Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz are reunited from their Hardware run over at Milestone for interiors - and it cant be overstated that these two have resumes that stretch into classic album covers for the likes of GZA and EPMD. Sanford Greene is no slouch either (just check his work with Chuck Brown) he gets the B cover and Bryan Edward Hill ties it all together in between writing duties with his far more complex run over at Marvel on Earth-6160's Ultimate Black Panther.

This is a solid team for an indie dedicated to showing off beautiful black women in comic books raw and unfiltered.

For this weeks "Check Me From Earth 33", I could have easily chosen one of the many Marvel books that had Storm in it like Hellfire Vigil or Avengers No.794; or said something about Doc Mid-Nite and Scandal Savage's undeniable chemistry in Jeff Lemire's JSA No.9.

But though those Big Two books had black women in them, none of them had down to earth scenes of a black woman indulging in the coping mechanism of a shot of whiskey in a sorry attempt to forget the pain of losing someone close to her or playing her sister's guitar to invite those memories to flood back - along with her sister's corporeal (and vengeful) spirit !

That scene in particular is why I would pick up the Greene variant over the Grant cover this time around, because Greene repurposing that interior on the cover is far more poignant than retouching up the Mexican Wolverine in an unrelated ploy to get people to touch the book because it's the closest most readers (including myself) will get to touching some boobs this week.

AWA has been on fire this year, and I am happy to see they are not stopping after wrapping Johnson and Palmiotti's wildly entertaining "Pop Kills".

The only name I would like to see detatched from this book is it's main benefactor, Charlamagne Tha God :

From the coon character he regularly exudes as his on air personality whenever he goes live on syndicated urban radio to his sexually deviant nature that has made issues for him off the mic - I have no idea why he has been allowed into this medium other than paying to have an executive credit on a blaxploitation comic book.

It pisses me off because Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys got the axe on it's penultimate issue and Ed Piskor took his own damn life - both over sexual allegations, but Charlamagne can waltz into this culture just because he can throw some money around, while creative minds unlike him have lost their lives or had their lives work tarnished by the same hersey?

That's another reason why I prefer Greene's virgin cover : I'd prefer Charlamagne's name off the cover.

He's done major damage to the black community and the image of black males in particular and if the allegations are true the physical bodies of black women have not been safe from this clown either.

I dont care how much money he threw at AWA to kickstart this project. Charlamagne's name messes up the legitimacy of this book that otherwise has a solid team and a cool story - but a terrible investor far from an angel.

Want to talk about shadowy figures in the entertainment industry. Well, with Charlamagne funding this passion project, readers can go as far as the cover and get that conversation started.

Love him or hate him (like I do), that is excellent marketing. And after picking up issue one, I dont find myself dropping Illuminati before it's five issue run is done, just because an asshole has found a way to attach himself to AWA Studios.

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V.V.

7th/Jun.2k25

[bad-comic-art]

New Think #3 (2022)