Tag Archives: Arkhaven

Comic Books for the Mentally Healthy

Plenty of people are fed up with how the self-righteous leftards at Marvel and DC have ruined pretty much every character they inherited from creators and writers who actually had talent and imagination. The good news is that they now have options–and so do you. If you like the medium but the GloboHomo Narrative isn’t your cup of tea, you can read some decent graphic literature…for free.

New content is added multiple times a week at Arktoons, which now has a substantial amount of content. Arktoons is the online comic reading site built by Arkhaven Comics. We have reviewed Arkhaven titles Alt-Hero, Avalon, and Alt-Hero: Q here before. Those titles have been re-launced through Arktoons, plus a whole lot more.

First of all, there are  three “Classics” series, introduced by Chuck Dixon, reproducing some of the comedy, adventure, and war comics from the Silver Age. Chuck Dixon has some of his own, original work (in addition to Avalon and Q) available. Go Monster Go is a horror/Supernatural series about a ghost car that appeals to me because it’s about the teenage rebel hot rod milleu in the era before hot rodding diminished into a subculture (and then disappeared altogether). He’s also got Shade, a superhero series set in Europe.

There are some titles based on the literary work of Vox Day. Midnight’s War is set in a city controlled by vampires, where a small resistance cell is interfering with black market  blood plasma trafficking, and saving some would-be victims in the process. A Throne of Bones is a fantasy set in a Tolkienesque (?) world in which Roman legions (?) are at war, not with Huns or Goths, but with armies of goblins. I find the military perspective interesting, as I did with some of Howard’s Conan adventures. Quantum Mortis, so far, looks like military sci-fi set outside our solar system.  I’m interested to see where it’s going. Something I saw or read made me think it would be a sci-fi police drama, like American Flagg! (but without Howard Chaykin’s avante gard leftist crap).

There are a few series from Jon del Aroz, including Clockwork Dancer, a steampunk series about an inventor who gets in trouble for building robots; Flying Sparks features an aspiring superheroine who doesn’t know her boyfriend is a crook; and Deus Vult is about a knight on a quest through some sort of underworld populated by cat and frog people, on his way to match wits with the devil himself.

Swan Knight Saga is a fantasy based on John C. Wright’s YA novel, about a young man who can talk to animals, who finds out the world is secretly oppressed by elves. It’s better than it sounds.

Arktoons has several other series; but the one I have the highest expectations for is Hammer of Freedom, about a homeless veteran fighting the power in a GloboHomo police state (Sao Paulo, 2045).

Superheroes only make up a fraction of the lineup at Arktoons. There’s a pretty good chance there will be something for most comic fans (unless the comic fan prefers reading about transgender Norse gods or some such). I’ve found that, rather than read each snippet as they come out, I prefer waiting until those (often quite short) snippets accumulate to the point that I can absorb a significant portion of the plot line at one sitting.

The artwork varies. Some is very slick, while  some looks rushed and amateurish. The writing that I’ve seen runs from solid to perhaps brilliant.  Time will tell.

Again, it’s free, though you may want to subscribe just to support the creative teams making these comics available.