Winston Rowntree's text-laden webcomic Subnormality frequently features demonic ladies, a world-weary sphinx, and the drunken bonding between Metroid's Samus and Tomb Raider Lara Croft. In this installment, he introduces us to Shango the Atomic Cowgirl, whose most fearsome foe is prejudice and society's strict adherence to traditional gender roles.

[Subnormality]

This is just one of Kate Beaton's many historical comics, which chronicle the events in the lives of historical figures (albeit with great artistic liberties). This is her second Jules Verne comic; the first co-stars Edgar Allan Poe. And she's also taken on the unhappy life of Mary Shelley.

[Hark, a Vagrant]

Joel Watson drew this strip for HijiNKS Ensue, his thrice weekly webcomic about technology and geek culture:

Naturally, this spurred an immediate demand for an actual Team Edward James Olmos shirt, and Watson has not disappointed. The Team EJO shirt is available for $20 at the HijiNKS Ensue store.

[HijiNKS Ensue]

The Tumblr blog Number One has a healthy obsession with images of Star Trek: The Next Generation's first officer. This week, a handful of webcomics artists have joined in on the fun, creating their own portraits of Riker (and in one case, his transporter twin Thomas).

[Number One via Kate Beaton]

by Kate Beaton of Hark! A Vagrant
by Kate Beaton of Hark! A Vagrant
by John Campbell of pictures for sad children
by Andrew Hussie of MS Paint Adventures and Jandrew Edits
by Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics
by Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics
by Patrick Edwards-Daugherty of Secret Vespers

Six days a week, Unshelved chronicles the daily lives and antics of a crew of librarians. Each Sunday, the focus shifts to the books themselves with the Unshelved Book Club. They cover a wide range of books and graphic novels, aimed at a wide range of audiences — with a particular leaning toward science fiction and fantasy. Here's just a small sampling of books the Book Club has covered:

We talked to Unshelved's creators, cartoonist Bill Barnes and pseudonymous librarian Gene Ambaum, via email about the inspirations behind the Book Club and the unexpected perks of doing comics about books:

Unshelved usually chronicles the daily lives of librarians. What inspired you to do the Sunday Unshelved Book Club strips?

We are both opinionated readers, so recommending books comes naturally. And given its setting, the strip felt weirdly empty without books - the hard part was figuring out how to talk about them without making fun of the books or their authors.

How do you go about selecting the books? You often revisit old classics, but do you try to keep up with the latest releases in the strip?

It's really just whichever books we're reading that are good enough to recommend. Over time we have forced ourselves to forage farther afield than we otherwise would have, which has yielded a few pleasant surprises. We do feature some new releases, but we are just as happy to pull an underrated classic from the backlist.

Have you gotten a lot of feedback from people who have read a book because of the strip who probably wouldn't have otherwise?

A daunting number of people have told us that the Unshelved Book Club is their reading list. We hope that's not literally true, but it makes sense that someone who enjoys our comic strip would also match well to our taste in books. But the best moment is when these same readers recommend books to us that we've never heard of — their recommendations are usually dead-on.

Do librarians ever use the individual Book Club strips to try to recommend certain books to patrons?

It's quite common for libraries, bookstores, and stores to post our strips in a display. They reportedly make books "fly off the shelves", especially for younger patrons.

What has the feedback been like from the authors?

Getting email from authors like Ursula K. LeGuin and Dan Simmons is one of the perks of the job. Bill keeps waiting for someone to tell him he drew their main character wrong, but it hasn't happened yet. We have, however, spelled an author's name wrong on more than one occasion.

Have any reactions from readers surprised you?

A few tell us it's their favorite part of the strip, a few tell us they can't stand it, and the rest seem to take it in stride. As you'd expect, most of our readers are pretty book-positive, so they're generally receptive to new titles (or a new take on a classic).

Do authors ever ask you to do a strip on their book?

Yes, in that we get a lot of review copies from authors. These days an author really needs to be their own P.R. department, so I love seeing them take the initiative to promote their work like that. Sadly we only do one a week, so the odds are kind of rough.

A lot of the books in your strips are science fiction, fantasy, or graphic novels. Are those particular favorites, or do you feel they translate particularly well in the comics medium?

Mostly that reflects our immense nerditude, but it is true that they tend to yield good illustrations.

You occasional have guest cartoonists do their own Book Club strips. Do you approach other cartoonists about doing a possible guest strip, or do people approach you with books they're dying to write about?

A little from column A, a little from column B. We love love love seeing cartoonists do their own take on a book. And if it saves us little work, well that's nice too.

What upcoming books are you looking forward to tackling in the Book Club?

That would be telling.

[Unshelved Book Club]

If you're not familiar with Kate Beaton and her hysterical (and often historical) comics, go go go to Hark! A Vagrant! or Beaton's LiveJournal for more comic goodness. She even has more Wonder Women for you to ogle.

Be a Hero [Kate Beaton's Livejournal]

[xkcd]

[Wondermark]

[Diesel Sweeties]

I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.

This isn't Raby's first foray into xkcd animation. In addition to "xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel", Raby also animated "Letting Go," one of xkcd's many heartbreak-meets-programming strips:

Letting Go from NoamR on Vimeo.

[NoamR via Metafilter]

These shirts all come from TopatoCo, which sells products from various webcomics creators. There are plenty more science and science-fiction themed shirts to be had, but here are some of the latest and greatest:

The awesome science kitty t-shirt is by Jeph Jacques, creator of Questionable Content, a webcomic about friendship, coffee, and perverted robots. $18.75 from TopatoCo.
Kate Beaton writes hilarious and irreverent comics about famous (and occasionally obscure) historical figures in Hark! A Vagrant. She's also a big believer in love in the face of radiation sickness, as evidenced by her Curies shirt. $19.75 from TopatoCo.
And this bit of Schultzy humor comes from Dresden Codak's Aaron Diaz, who drew it as a tribute to Kate Beaton's historical liberties. $18.75 from TopatoCo.
Now come on, did you really think that mammals survived the dinosaur apocalypse by burrowing underground? Zach Weiner of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal reveals the very real debt we owe our reptilian saviors. $18.50 from TopatoCo.

Perhaps because Marvel were worried that we'd be bored otherwise, the House of Ideas is putting out a star-studded week of new releases this week, with the special Deadpool #900 issue, a new Spider-Man anthology series (Web of Spider-Man), the one-shot Iron Man: Iron Protocols (written by Surrogates creator Robert Venditti!) and the collected edition of long-running-but-that's-only-because-it-was-horribly-delayed-in-the-middle Ultimate Wolverine Versus Hulk, as written by Lost's Carlton Cuse.

IDW keeps the big name action going: The publisher puts out Star Trek: Countdown (the surprisingly enjoyable prologue to the JJ Abrams movie, starring the crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation.) Also, there's Star Trek: Crew (Another surprise, as John Byrne follows the early career of Number One - from "The Cage" - and makes it work.) Plus Seduth 3-D from Clive Barker (as previewed yesterday) and Left Undead, a new take on that old "cop-killed-then-brought-back-by-voodoo" idea from Lost writer Paul Zbyszewski.

If you'd rather read some George Lucas-inspired comics, Dark Horse has a special #0 issue prologue for Star Wars: Invasion, as well as the deco noir of Dean Motter's Mister X: Condemned.

DC, meanwhile, corners its own version of the horror market, with the massive Absolute Death slipcovered collection of Neil Gaiman's goth avatar of release, a new collected edition of Judd Winick's vampire story Blood And Water, and the fun House of Mystery Hallowe'en Annual, showcasing some of Vertigo's current and upcoming series.

All of that, however, is just an appetizer to the Act-I-Vate Primer, a hardcover collection of work from the self-styled "premier webcomics collective". Offering 16 original stories by some of webcomics' brightest and best, it's easily the best of a strong bunch this week.

As usual, you can see the full list of everything reaching comic stores tomorrow here and then find your local comic store here. Just remember to support the internet in your analog purchases, if you know what I'm saying.

Lovecraft is Missing by Larry Latham: Latham takes the trope that HP Lovecraft was actually writing true accounts of vile cults and ancient gods and turns out a rousing mystery. Orwin Battler, factory worker and mildly successful writer of weird stories, has struck up a penpal friendship with the famed Howard Lovecraft, and has traveled to Providence to meet his idol in person. The trouble is, Lovecraft vanished just before Orwin arrived.

But Orwin isn't the only person desperately seeking Lovecraft; after Howard stole the plates out of a rare book in the John Hay Library, Nan Mercy, Brown University librarian and hater of all things occult, is hot to track him down. But as they team up with demon-fighting priest Father Jackey and delve more deeply into the mystery of Lovecraft's disappearance, they begin to realize that all of Lovecraft's strange tales contain a grain of truth. In addition to referencing Lovecraft's work (we see statutes of Cthulhu, of course, but we also see Richard Pickman's paintings and meet Thomas Malone from "The Horror at Red Hook"), Lovecraft is Missing contains the occasional Easter egg for eagle-eyed fans of non-Lovecraftian horror.

Raising Hell by Andy Belanger: Another talented member from the Transmission X collective, Andy Belanger plays the zombie apocalypse as pure pulp, backed by a love story that's a volatile as as zombies on fire. Kitty and Aries are that couple that's always fighting. They're pretty much either clawing each other's eyes out, or doing it in the coat room upstairs. But one Halloween night, when they're on the verge of breaking up, the dead begin to walk and attack the living. It's the end of the world — and it may just save their relationship.

Belanger has a wicked sense of visual humor. Setting the zombie uprising on Halloween makes for some images that are at once horrifying and hilarious (look out for the dismembered kid dressed like Robin, not to mention what the survivors are wearing). And he knows how to have fun with his human-on-zombie violence; the razor-edged hockey stick might just be the greatest zombie-killing weapon to date. Plus, he has an intriguing color cue throughout the entire comic: tempermental Kitty is always rendered in red, while preternaturally strong Aries is always in blue, just like the zombies he fights.

The Zombie Hunters by Jenny Romanchuk: Romanchuk takes a very different tack on zombies, with a comic that focuses less on the undead than on post-apocalyptic life. Years after the zombie plague began, the last of humanity has settled on an island, where they live in some semblance of their former society. Meanwhile, so-called zombie hunters venture into infected territory to find supplies to bring back to the island.

Romanchuk originally wrote the comic as a goof for some of her friends, so the first few chapters are a bit of light-hearted author (and author's friends) insertion. But once the zombie hunters return to the island, it becomes a more complex apocalyptic tale. People infect with a dormant form of the zombie virus are segregated from the uninfected population, and live under intense restrictions, largely at the mercy of unscrupulous military personnel. At the same time, scientists at the island's research lab are performing strange experiments on the dead. And there's the mystery of how such an advanced facility ended up being the last safe place on Earth.

High Moon by Matthew Macgregor and Steve Ellis: If you can get past Zuda's slow-loading interface, High Moon offers a blend of Western gunslinging, steampunk technology, and supernatural horror. Matthew Macgregor is a former bounty hunter with a dark past who's come to rid a depressed Texas town of its more violent troubles. While the town contends with drought and famine, its nights are plagued by werewolves and other supernatural beings.

Zuda comics are selected by a monthly contest, with creators submitting eight pages each and readers voting for their favorite. Thus, comics like High Moon get rolling right off the bat, with fangs bared and guns blazing.

Family Man by Dylan Meconis: Dylan Meconis brought vampires into the French Revolution with Bite Me, and with Family Man, she introduces werewolves to post-Reformation Europe. Luther Levy is a talented young theologian of Jewish descent whose recent questioning of his Christian faith got him expelled from his theological program. Just as he's considering a life as a tutor, he receives an opportunity to lecture at a small college, where he finds a modicum of acceptance for his unorthodox background and manner of thinking. He's also struck by Ariana, the school's librarian and the chancellor's daughter. But Ariana holds a strange secret, one that forces her to disappear for a few days each month.

Certainly Family Man has thus far had more emphasis on history than horror, but then again, it's just getting around to the werewolves.

Eerie Cuties by Gisele Lagace: Eerie Cuties is not a comic for those who lament the defanging of vampires. Instead, it's a light-heated look at monster mythologies, set at a prep school for things that go bump in the night. Nina is a young vampire just starting her first day of school, but she feasts only on chocolate, not on blood (much to her sister Layla's dismay). But she's at home with the misfit monsters of Charybdis Heights. Her friend Chloe is a succubus who's more adorable than seductive, and werewolf Ace retains his furry hands and feet even in his human form. Add in a teacher with a possessed arm and a groundskeeper who looks like Jason, and you've got an interesting school day.

Scary Go Round by John Allison: Following on the heels of John Allison's Bobbins, Scary Go Round is an ensemble sitcom framed by B-movie sendups. The protagonist is zombified in the first arc (she gets better), and everyone takes the run of nefarious cults, mad scientists, parallel dimensions, and mad scientists in stride.

Scary Go Round just ended its seven-year run last month, though Allison has followed up with a new comic, Bad Machinery.

Split Lip by Sam Costello: The webcomics answer to anthology series like The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery, Split Lip is a series of self-contained horror stories, each written by Costello and illustrated by a different artist. The stories are sometimes supernatural, sometimes not, but, like its inspirations, out to create a sense of unease.

Costello has just collected eleven of his stories in print as Split Lip Vol. 1.

Estrada has provided dozens of guest strips for other creators' comics over the years, as well as creating his own strips Aki Alliance, Frank, and Welton Colbert. Chillin' Like Villains follows inept supervillains who have to compensate for their inferior evildoing, whether by getting a day job or adopting a popstar as their nemesis instead of a superhero. He has launched with the story "Real Heroes," in which a past-his-prime supervillain (who takes his fashion cues from MODOK) decides to take on his city's real heroes: the firefighters.

Chillin' Like Villains updates daily, but impatient readers can purchase a hard copy or download of the entire anthology of supervillainry.

Chillin' Like Villains [via Fleen]

[Dresden Codak via Reddit]

[Wondermark]

Munroe, who just released xkcd: volume 0 last week, appeared at last night's Electronic Frontier Foundation's Geek Reading fundraiser. Munroe talked a bit about the experience of publishing the book, which contains strips from the site as well as annotations, the centerpiece of the event was a question and answer session. Users on Reddit submitted and voted on questions to ask Munroe to create a sort of crowd-sourced interview. Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian (who also founded breadpig, the company that published xkcd: volume 0.

We were at the event and took video of the ten questions (plus one non-question) Munroe answered over the course of the evening, questions ranging from topics he won't write about to one fan's take on the Traveling Salesman Problem:

[xkcd]

Each month, Zuda, the online branch of DC Comics, selects 10 eight-page comic pitches to compete. The winner, based on reader votes and ratings, receives a contract for a 52-page run on Zuda, with the possibility of renewal after that.

Unfortunately, there are a number of firm and near misses in this round. Mystery Jungle is a Lost World pastiche so straightforward it's dull, Incarna loses its narrative thread in a sea of ninja zombies, and Wheeljack Union resembles Atomic Robo without the charm. More promising is the rather twee My T-Shirt Fairy Tale, which uses the interesting concept of narrating through novelty t-shirts, but doesn't quite have the art or story to back it up, and The Symptoms, about a superpowered punk band that battles a zombie-like menace, but could use a little more attitude.

There are, however, some real standouts in the pile. One of the clear frontrunners for this month is the dreamily rendered Goldilock, a science fiction drama about the exploration of a newly discovered planet. After the people of Earth have long searched for a new home, the planet Goldilock seems perfect for human habitation, and a team has been dispatched on a two-year mission to explore the planet and determine if it holds any sentient life. Goldilock features an unusual color palette and a beautifully strange array of creatures, and manages to introduce a large cast in its eight pages without feeling overly busy.

And, on the somewhat lighter side of things is Revenge of the Homicidal Pumpkins a B movie-inspired horror comic that doesn't skimp on the blood and guts. Thirteen year-old horror movie buff Robbie Jarvis lives in a small town suddenly plagued by bizarre and gory accidents, accidents suspiciously accompanied by a trail of pumpkin seeds. The comic tempers its sinister squash with an animated look and a wicked sense of humor, ending on a wonderfully gruesome one-liner.

Voting for this month's Zuda contestants will close around noon on Wednesday, September 30.

[Zuda Competition]

Along with Karl Kerschl, of the previously mentioned The Abominable Charles Christopher, Cameron Stewart is part of Transmission X, a small collective of enormously talented professional comics artists who are trying their hand (with great success, I might add) at webcomics. Stewart has, among other things, provided artwork for Catwoman, Grant Morrison's Seaguy, the Eisner-nominated Vietnam series The Other Side, and the high-energy, post-apocalyptic punk rock book The Apocalipstix.

In Sin Titulo (or simply, Untitled), Stewart puts on his writer hat as well, telling the story of Alex Mackay, an emotional dysfunctional young fellow about to spiral down the rabbit hole. Alex has been having a strange recurring dream, one in which he sees a dead, gnarled tree on a beach. Sometimes he sees someone on the beach, but the image is never clear, and he always wakes before he can see who it is.

He gives little thought to the dream until one day when he goes to visit his grandfather in the retirement home, only to discover that he's been dead a month. And, when he goes through his grandfather's effects, he discovers a recent photograph of his grandfather with an attractive young woman, a woman Alex has never seen before. When he asks the retirement staff about the picture, however, their strange and terse reactions make him suspect that something sinister is at work. As he begins to investigate the woman in the picture and Wesley, the retirement home's menacing orderly, Alex is quickly drawn into a series of ever-deepening mysteries involving coma patients, murder, teleportation, and the mysterious tree, and finds his life, liberty, and girlfriend all placed in jeopardy.

Stewart is well-versed in the language of comics, and Sin Titulo is at its very least a prime example of expert visual scripting. Each episode is set in a rigid eight-panel structure that neatly conveys the suspense and noir tone of the series, and that Stewart can so easily convey small emotional shifts through his thick black lines makes it fantastically jarring when a character displays genuinely intense emotion.

Sin Titulo is far grittier than most webcomics currently running, and when violence occurs, it's not the stylized violence of many comics, but very real, very present violence. Characters get beat up, get in car accidents, and when they do, their bones break and blood gets everywhere. When a punch becomes a frightening thing, characters who throw them become all the more terrifying, as with the squat, muscular orderly — even before we get the sense there may be something supernatural to him. This sense of realism pervades the comic; cubicles, diners, hospital rooms are all stark and unfriendly, but utterly familiar.

But what makes reading Sin Titulo an intriguing and unnerving experience is the way Stewart, borrow a page from the likes of David Lynch, juxtaposes this realism with the fantastical. On panel, we see plenty of punches thrown, but off-panel, we learn that characters have been ripped to shreds. Alex's vivid childhood memories are haunted by a monstrous apparition, and he begins to encounter surreal visuals: a network of cinderblock rooms where the blond woman speaks over a monitor and an old telephone, and a beach front dinner setting , where a blindfolded waiter serves up an unappetizing crustacean. And then there's the fact that Alex isn't the only one visiting the beach and seeing the mysterious dead tree.

Sin Titulo is not a comic for those who like quick and satisfying answers to their mysteries. Just as Alex's head has stopped spinning from the latest series of unexplained developments, a new wrinkle emerges. But for those willing to sit back and watch the story unfold and the protagonist unravel, it's a well-paced and often unsettling read.

[Sin Titulo]