Still from Thor: Ragnarok official teaser trailer. Image via Marvel/Disney (via Marvel Entertainment YouTube)
Has Thor: Ragnarok piqued your interest in the weird world of psychedelic comics? Read on for some of the most mind-bending and surreal comics out there
Have you already seen Thor: Ragnarok? Early reviews are effusive in their praise, saying that the movie has set a new standard for the Marvel Cinematic Universe with its smart story and dramatic visuals. Of course, we knew that having Taika Waititi at the helm practically guaranteed a great film. Still, it’s good to hear that Ragnarok is doing well with its wild, universe-ranging story.
Of course, a movie typically only lasts for a couple of hours. If you were absolutely drawn into the psychedelic visuals and spacefaring storyline of Thor: Ragnarok, what now? Consider dealing with your post-movie withdrawal by diving into the wide world of psychedelic comics.
“Psychedelia” originated in the 1960s as a subculture that was especially fond of mind-altering drugs. Soon enough, the term was being used to describe all manner of art and music. While we’re not encouraging anyone to indulge in psychoactive substances, the art that came out of this trend is especially fun.
What’s psychedelic?
Need some help identifying it? Psychedelic art often draws on wild, distorted visuals. It also takes quite a few cues from the surrealist movement. Think Salvador Dali, René Magritte, and some of Frida Kahlo’s more fantastic works. In psychedelic art, petty things such as borders, classical composition, and the laws of reality hold no sway.
Of course, comics are art, too. And while you may be used to the staid panel-by-panel format of the Sunday funnies or your favorite superhero series, that’s by no means the only way to go about it. Psychedelic comics often play with the form of the comic itself, transcending panel boundaries and color palettes.
The stories within these comics are also pretty wild. Many of the writers featured here dove deep into other common themes within the psychedelic movement. These include mysticism, non-linear plots, fuzzy boundaries concerning identity, and plenty of spacefaring adventures. Outer space, as it turns out, is ripe for trippy experiences.
So, if the visuals and setting of Thor: Ragnarok has gotten you curious, prepare your mind. Read on for some of the most hallucinatory, mind-altering, and dreamlike comics out there. It’s going to be a very interesting ride.
Cover of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1968) #1 (Image via Marvel)
20. Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
No, I’m not talking about the failed 1998 TV movie, wherein David Hasselhoff plays the title character. I suppose, if you consumed the right substances, it could be trippy, but we’re not in the business of encouraging quasi-legal trips here.
Instead, we’re focusing in on the already trippy art of the series by Jim Steranko. His art was, without exaggeration, truly groundbreaking in the comics world. His innovations broke open the conventions of comics art. Where, before, artists felt bound by the strictly sequential series of boxes seen in earlier comics, Steranko played with the form.
In the mid-1960s, Steranko brought his artistic innovation to “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, which was first featured in Strange Tales #135 (August 1965). Jack Kirby used this series to introduce now-standard features like S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Helicarrier and evil organization HYDRA.
Steranko was initially doing newbie Marvel artist work by penciling and inking over Kirby’s layouts. Two issues later, however, he began to do all the penciling for the series. With issue #155, he even began to take over writing duties for the series.
While the stories themselves were not necessarily trippy or psychedelic, the art certainly was. Steranko routinely ignored such petty conventions as panel edges and standard perspective. Rather than running through an enemy compound, Nick Fury might instead make his way through an increasingly psychedelic landscape of colors and shapes. Reality was oftentimes secondary to the art on the page.
American Barbarian cover (Image via IDW Publishing)
19. American Barbarian
While the art of American Barbarian is plenty strange, the series gets a fair chunk of its psychedelic strangeness from its concept. All of that, plus the unexplained commitment to red, white, and blue hair makes for some serious suspension of disbelief. Doubt in reality is encouraged, too.
The bones of the American Barbarian story may sound familiar, especially if you’re a fan of high-octane science fiction movies. It features Meric, the titular barbarian and the youngest of seven brothers. They’re led by their Pa, a grizzled warrior and patriarch whose family has protected its peaceable kingdom for generations.
Too bad, then, that the kingdom is ruled by a too-comfortable man. He’s not at all worried about the approach of Two-Tank Omen, a giant undead pharaoh with — yes, seriously — tanks instead of feet.
Two-Tank Omen
Given that the tale is set in a brutal “post-post-apocalyptic world”, Two-Tank Omen makes quick work of the kingdom. Pa and his sons all die in battle, save for Meric. He swears revenge and carves the word onto his hands. Sure, “revenge” is only seven letters, but that just leaves two fingers and a thumb to hold more exclamation points.
So, Meric takes his magically-appointed weapon, the Star Sword, and proceeds to wreak havoc. He does so in a landscape that’s turned so far past 11 that the dial has broken and is now bleeding color and noise.
Everything — the sentences, the art, the plot — looks and feels as if it ends with multiple and exciting forms of punctuation. It’s the concept of an interrobang and vision trip turned into a comic series. It’s exciting and wild and fantastic.
Cover of The Cartoon Utopia (Image via Fantagraphics)
18. The Cartoon Utopia
With The Cartoon Utopia, Ron Regé, Jr. has established himself as a very distinctive and peculiar kind of comics artist. This magnum opus combines a wide variety of mystic traditions in a highly stylized comics package. After reading it, you may want to quietly lie down on the floor and contemplate the meaning of your own existence and of the universe itself. You know, like normal.
I’m not kidding when it comes to the mystical references in this book. In fact, The Cartoon Utopia begins with an introduction by Maja D’Aoust, the self-proclaimed “White Witch of L.A.”, who taught Regé in one of her “Magic School” lectures. The story brings together concepts from the occult, alchemy, poetry, science fiction, philosophy, and more.
The plot of the work is predictably hard to describe. Generally, The Cartoon Utopia shows a race of gentle, reflective humanoid people. They are spiritually and philosophically advanced, which typically means that they spend much of their time making spiritual breakthroughs and pondering the strange “time before people believed in peace”.
The plot
As such, there isn’t much of a standard plot. Instead, the Utopia moves towards more and more complex ideas. Occasionally, Regé brings in historical figures to illustrate the dense, dizzying topics. Take now-famous inventor Nikola Tesla, who had deep connections to his work and is now recognized as a formidable intellectual and creator. He also had strong connections with a pigeon, which Regé finds as meaningful as others might find it ludicrous.
How to sum up The Cartoon Utopia? Honestly, you can’t. It’s profound and confusing, beautiful and disorienting, all at once. Yes, you should certainly pick it up and experience it for yourself. Just don’t try to read it all in one go, unless you’ve got a taste for prophetic, mind-bending psychedelia.
Cover of Forming (Image via NoBrow Press)
17. Forming
At first, Jesse Moynihan’s Forming may not seem like the consciousness-warping book that should be included on this list. However, as you delve deeper and deeper into this Gnostic-style exploration of religion and the beginning of humanity, you’ll likely feel your mind starting to curl up at the edges (in a good way, we hope).
Moynihan brings together a bevy of creation myths and conspiracy theories to his tale. These include Zoroastrianism, Christian tales, Greek mythology, and of aliens hailing from the legends of Mali’s Dogon people. Like many myths of creation, there’s also a lot of inexplicable violence and plenty of modern-style cursing. Also, the archangel Metatron walks around with a mystical crystal for a head and calls Noah a “bro”. For all of the strangeness and mysticism of Forming, it makes plenty of room for humor and takes delight in its oddness.
The artwork, meanwhile, is wild and colorful in the best psychedelic tradition. There are very few subdued or desaturated colors here. Nor does it seem like any kind of movement is completely out of the question, be it for human or alien or god.
Forming walks a fine, fine line between the transcendent and the stupid and the crude. Far more often than not, it falls on the side of being intriguing and fascinating. As a reader, it’s perhaps better for you to go with the flow of Moynihan’s story rather than try to figure it out. It’s a wild, disorienting ride, but beautifully strange at that.
Cover of ODY-C (Image via Image Comics)
16. ODY-C
There’s something about age-old stories that prove themselves time and time again, no matter what format they’re in. Take Homer’s Odyssey, which has been around for so long that it’s become, for many people, a story so ancient and epic that it feels almost bound to your DNA. Phrases translated through many tongues and over many years feel oddly familiar — “wine-dark sea”, “gray-eyed Athene”, and so on. The bare bones of the tale — a man tries to make his way back home and encounters many different trials — echoes the stories of other epics in other world cultures.
All of this is to say that, for all of the glorious colors and spacefaring madness, ODY-C is also deeply familiar. Writer Matt Fraction and artist Christian Ward have managed to create something that balances these seemingly opposed ends, and it’s delightfully weird.
ODY-C versus Odyssey
ODY-C follows the basic premise of the original Odyssey. However, it’s now set in space and features a largely female cast. Hence, Odysseus becomes Odyssia, Agamemnon becomes Gamen, and so on. Rather than a simple gender-swap of the characters, however, Fraction was more interested in “really exploding things and showing how different literature looks when you invert traditional gender politics”.
Thus, not only are a majority of the characters women, but they are bold, warlike women. Moreover, they live in a world where men are practically extinct. He (the male equivalent of Helen) is the first known man born in ten thousand years. He is therefore greatly treasured and simultaneously imprisoned for these rare qualities. No matter that there is also a third gender, Sebex, that can reproduce with the women of ODY-C’s world. He is still apparently worthy of war.
If all of this sounds rather un-psychedelic to you, don’t worry. Odyssia and her crew visit many strange worlds and travel throughout the universe in time and space-bending ships that provide plenty of weirdness. The somewhat all-powerful gods that mess with the mortals also make for ample strangeness.
Promethea cover (Image via America’s Best Comics)
15. Promethea
Alan Moore is known for being markedly odd by “normal” standards. He’s got the flamboyantly odd stories, intimidating stature, and real-life mystical, magical beliefs of an oftentimes defiantly different person.
However, some of Moore’s best-known comics work is fairly linear. That doesn’t mean Moore and his associates can’t bring some truly weird and wonderful concepts to their work. Think of Watchmen, especially Dr. Manhattan (of the glowing blue skin and scanty, sometimes nonexistent clothing). While everyone around him is bopping along in a standard timeline, Manhattan exists at all points throughout time and space. And, of course, the whole conceit of Swamp Thing (which Moore helmed for a while) is plenty strange.
But psychedelia is a very particular kind of strangeness. It delves into religion, history, and mysticism, often with a kind of wide-eyed edge to its sincerity. Moore especially seems to have a lot to say about it in Promethea.
Promethea begins with a magician living in Greek-colonised Hellenistic Egypt. Faced with an advancing angry mob, he tells his daughter Promethea, to run into the desert.
We then jump forward a few centuries to follow Sophie Bangs, a young college student. She thinks she’s going to interview Barbara Shelley about a recurrent pop culture figure named “Promethea”.
Sophie runs into trouble
However, not only is Barbara rude and unhelpful, but Sophie is later attacked by a strange creature. Barbara rescues her, though she’s dressed strangely and displays some seriously impressive mystical powers. Mortally wounded, Barbara explains that Sophie would only be attacked if she were to be the next vessel for the spirit and concept of Promethea.
Now, someone must use their imagination to make Promethea real. This means that Sophie has to write a really thoughtful poem about the ancient spirit of Promethea in order to become the next vessel. It’s a little more elegant than, but only one step removed from “clap your hands if you believe”. Then again, maybe Peter Pan would be less sugary sweet if it turned out that Tinkerbell was supposed to bring about the end of the world.
Afterwards, Sophie learns about all the previous people who have acted as vessels for Promethea. Meanwhile, she has to learn fairly quickly about her newfound powers, as a whole bunch of demons are knocking at her door. Oh, yeah, also the FBI is on her tail. Promethea takes her on a long, strange trip through the mystic world of her new spirit persona.
Shade, The Changing Man (Cover image via Vertigo/DC Comics)
14. Shade, the Changing Man
Like quite a few comics characters, Shade, the Changing Man has many different iterations. He first shows up in June 1977, in Shade the Changing Man #1. While creator Steve Ditko did create an originally weird concept, the really trippy parts didn’t come in until the 1990s. That’s when Shade was adapted by Peter Milligan and Chris Bachalo for DC’s more graphic, adult-oriented imprint, Vertigo.
This new Shade was part of the so-called “British invasion” of comics in the 1990s. That’s when British writers like Neil Gaiman (of the famous Sandman series) and Grant Morrison really started to make their mark in the comics world.
Though Shade appeared in the DC world, he soon broke away from his 1970s origins. Shade becomes a lovelorn poet who is also working to keep his planet away from a tide of insanity, the “American Scream”.
Shade also wears a “Madness-Vest” that can warp reality. He forms an alter ego, Hades, that isn’t evil so much as a manifestation of Shade’s desire-driven id.
Of course, like many trippy and psychedelic comics, reality and identity are only paper-thin concepts. Thus, Shade is killed many times over. Each time, he (or she) returns in a different form. Sometimes, Shade is a dark-haired madman. Other times, a red-haired hipster, or a woman sharing a body with its previous, murdered owner. That mod hipster personality, by the way, once removed his heart and locked it in a metal box to alleviate his own suffering. Like you do.
BodyWorld (Cover image via Pantheon Graphic Novels)
13. BodyWorld
Now published in one volume by Pantheon, Dash Shaw’s BodyWorld got its start as a free online comic. Originally serialized online from 2007 to 2009, it wowed readers with a tale concerning a strange city, a psychedelic plant, and the possibility of telepathy.
Every bit of BodyWorld is worth examining. That goes for even the copyright page, which proclaims that the volume is for “ideal readers only!!!” and requests that you read the whole thing in bed while naked. Physical copies are also bound at the top of the page, making for a new reading experience.
The plot, as such, focuses in on gross, beleaguered Professor Paulie Panther. Professor Panther is a real creep. He’s mostly interested in eating up and smoking certain substances while trying to convince himself that he’s an intellectual behemoth. He arrives in Boney Borough, a post-future war planned community, to learn about a psychoactive plant growing near the town’s high school.
Turns out, if you smoke that plant, you can think the thoughts and feel the feelings of anyone near you. Smoke it with someone, and you can effectively communicate your feelings back and forth.
Things get dark
Too bad humans are as human as they are; meaning, Panther and his associates lead the story into dark territory fairly quickly. The identities of an aging quasi-intellectual, a sports star, a young girl, and a high school science teacher all start to meld together. The art begins to reflect this melting of borders, with its splotches of color, mixed facial features, and superimposed outlines, one on top of the other.
A comic is a pretty adventurous way to bring across this set of ideas. It’s maybe more easily experienced than explained. After all, how can you elucidate pure feeling on a page? Still, the gusto of Shaw’s art, writing, and execution of concept get as close as anything else.
The Incal (Cover image via Epic Comics/Marvel)
12. The Incal
The Incal is a French series originally illustrated by Jean Giraud and written by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Some of you may already know of the Chilean-French Jodorowsky for his writing and directing work, filled to the brim with wild and sometimes violent surrealism. In 2013, the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune was released, walking through his strange and ultimately failed film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi novel, Dune.
At least The Incal was presumably a little easier to produce than a full-blown movie. Like many other psychedelic comics on this list, it deals in mysticism, science, satire, politics, debauchery, and pretty much everything else under the sun.
It’s all set in a backwater planet’s dystopian city, where a man named John DiFool is tossed from an alley towards a huge lake of acid. He’s saved by the police, who are wondering if DiFool has the “Light Incal,” a stupidly powerful crystal. This Incal is understandably precious and desired by many different factions, from humans, to churches, to guerrilla groups, to flightless bird-like aliens known as the Berg.
Almost inevitably, DiFool is caught up with a group seeking to vanquish the Dark Incal, which is worshipped by the Church of Industrial Saints (also known as the Technopriests). As if that weren’t confusing enough, the Technopriests are dead-set on ending the universe. At one point, they create and launch into space a “Dark Egg” that can eat suns.
Along the way, the protagonists encounter cosmic god-like beings. In a later volume, Final Incal, DiFool also deals with a metallic virus that can clone people. He also splits into at least four different personalities and realities, who all must work together to save the universe.
The Bulletproof Coffin (Cover image via Image Comics)
11. The Bulletproof Coffin
Image Comics’ Bulletproof Coffin is about as weird as they come. It draws on its bold artwork, courtesy of artist Shaky Kane (also a writer for the series, along with David Hine) to tell a very strange, very meta story.
The series focuses on Steve Neyman, a comics collector, who learns that his beloved comics may be sort-of set in reality. That’s thanks to a trove of golden age comics he discovers in an old man’s house. See, Steve is a voids contractor, someone who inventories the belongings of recently deceased people.
As he delves further and further into this realization, Neyman’s mental state either unravels or ascends to a higher plane (depending on the reader’s interpretation and generosity of mind). He’s soon drawn into the strange world of fake golden age heroes and villains. These include the Unforgiving Eye, Coffin Fly, Red Wraith, and Ramona, Queen of the Stone Age.
There isn’t a fantastically complicated plot to The Bulletproof Coffin, as there might be in other series mentioned here. But, strangely enough, that works towards this series’ advantage. You see, without the intricacies of a heavy duty plot, Hine and Kane are free to go totally wild with the art and insanity of the remaining story.
That even extends to the creators themselves. Kane and Hine insert themselves into the story, depicting themselves as reclusive cranks driven into obscurity as the comics industry passes them by. This meta focus adds yet another layer to this multi-textured, challenging, and rewarding work of boffo weirdness.
Patience (Cover image via Fantagraphics)
10. Patience
At first glance, Daniel Clowes’ Patience looks like it’s going to be one great, big fridge-fest. I’m referring to the unfortunately established comics practice of “fridging” a hero’s loved one (nearly always a woman) in order to give them purpose. Never mind that many other non-murder motivations exist out there.
It got so bad that writer Gail Simone helped establish the Women in Refrigerators website to help people understand how dangerous it could be to be a female character in comics. Even today, sexism in comics remains a pervasive issue.
However, Patience is far more complicated than a horrible throwaway plot line like fridging. Yes, the title character is the wife of the protagonists. Yes, she dies and that does indeed set the plot in motion. Yet, thanks to time travel and Clowes’ questions about love, life, and how someone’s experience creates them, Patience is much deeper.
Jack is the aforementioned protagonist of the story. He’s coming to terms with his wife’s pregnancy, learning to anticipate their coming child with joy. Patience herself is a cipher. When she alludes to her “horrible reality show” life before meeting Jack, he closes his eyes and asks not to hear about it.
Their happiness abruptly ends when he finds Patience dead on the floor of their apartment. And though seventeen years pass, Jack remains devoted to the image of his dead wife.
Things change dramatically when Jack manages to steal a time machine from its inventor. He heads back to pre-Jack Patience, hoping to learn who might have wanted to kill her. However, he soon learns that Patience — or this version of Patience, anyway — might be better off without him. Those extra-strange dissociative episodes don’t help clear things up, either.
Descender (Cover image via Image Comics)
9. Descender
Though many of the comics discussed here deal with science fiction themes and the problem of consciousness, few look at it from a robot’s perspective. Maybe it’s just that us humans appear to be a quasi-random assemblage of urges and electrical impulses. Perhaps robotic life is too ordered to let a comics creator get really strange with the art and the story. Descender, however, puts the lie to this concept.
Descender, written by Jeff Lemire and illustrated by Dustin Nguyen, is plenty strange. It’s also really, really well-reviewed — it even got a movie deal before the first issue was officially published.
It’s all set in a far, far future, where a giant robot force called the Harvesters attack throughout the galaxy. They lay waste to a series of solar systems and very nearly wipe out organic life.
Fortunately for us meatbags, the Harvesters weren’t successful. Organic life persists, though humanoid people have taken a serious hit to both their infrastructure and confidence.
In the aftermath of the attack, humans ban all androids. That doesn’t stop young TIM-21, who comes to consciousness on a distant asteroid. He’s been asleep for a decade, while all of his android compatriots were essentially massacred.
The trippy, psychedelic portion of Descender comes in large part from its questions about sentience and consciousness. TIM-21 escapes from bounty hunters by encountering a hivemind of robots, who view him as a savior figure. Young TIM-21 himself may even be coming to his own kind of unprogrammed sense of himself and the world around him. Whether or not he will be a savior or agent of mechanical revenge remains to be seen in this ongoing series.
Divinity (Cover image via Valiant Comics)
8. Divinity
“Divinity” is the name of both the comics miniseries (created by Matt Kindt and Trevor Hairsine) and its central character. Originally, however, he was a standard human being by the name of Abram Adams.
Abram began life as an abandoned baby in the Soviet Union. After a long childhood as a ward of the communist state, he joins the Army and eventually makes his way to the USSR space program. However, this is like no Soviet rocket adventure you’ve ever heard of.
Despite dealing with 1960s technology, scientists in Divinity have discovered how to keep cosmonauts alive for extended trips through space, though it’s still dangerous. Abram is asked to join a 30-year expedition. Officials think Abram is perfect for the job, as he has no known family ties. However, he actually has a secret partner who, though she confesses that she’s pregnant, is still not enough to keep him Earthbound.
At some point during the journey, Abram and the other cosmonauts encounter a mysterious place called only “The Unknown”. While exploring the Unknown, Abram removes his helmet. Miraculously, he survives breathing the air of this strange, too-bright place, but it gives him god-like powers. Sure, it also feels like he’s passing through the moment of his own death, but he remains alive.
The now-godlike Abram decides to return to Earth 55 years after his departure. Everyone back on Earth proceeds to freak out over his strange new powers. Think Alan Moore’s Doctor Manhattan, but with way more clothing and a standard human skin tone for Abram.
Eventually, everyone decides that Abram/Divinity is too strong, and sends a team to defeat him. Though this sounds almost like a standard superhero plot, the oddness of the Unknown and Abram’s transformation and powers is plenty strange for our purposes.
The Zaucer of Zilk (Cover image via IDW Comics)
7. The Zaucer of Zilk
Like some of the best comics-based psychedelia, The Zaucer of Zilk combines traditional hero narratives, bright and oftentimes confusing visuals, and sharp social commentary. It is also, like many, many psychedelic tales, frequently strange for the sake of glorying in its own indescribable weirdness.
The thing about many psychedelic, trippy stories is that it can only ever get as weird as you want it to be. Your mind can force practically anything into a cohesive story. Our brains are pattern-recognition machines after all.
If you really want to get the most out of these stories, you’ve got to simultaneously dig in and let go. So, for all that Brendan McCarthy’s art and the promotions for The Zaucer of Zilk prime you for the strangeness within, you have to mentally agree to ride along.
It begins with the Zaucer (a kind of wizard) of the Zilk family. But while this Zaucer is going on reality-hopping adventures, it’s also very meta. The story (by Al Ewing) looks back in on itself and the process of storytelling, even when it surprises the narrator. The concepts of time and aging, of fame and obscurity, battle it out on multiple levels. It’s enough to make you so dizzy that you start to think you’ve gone up to another level of consciousness.
On a more shallow note, McCarthy’s art really does draw on some of the best traditions of psychedelic pop art. All the colors are hyper-saturated and often just on the edge of too dark or too bright. Meanwhile, proportions are often stretched and twisted to their extremes. It’s a visual treat as much as it is an intellectual one.
Rogan Gosh (Cover image via Vertigo/DC Comics)
6. Rogan Gosh
Speaking of Brendan McCarthy, his art shows up again in Rogan Gosh, a British science fiction comic series that shares both issue space and creative DNA with some of Grant Morrison’s 1990s work.
First, we have to wade through some necessary backstory. Rogan Gosh was serialized in Revolver, a 1990 spinoff of 2000 AD. 2000 AD is a weekly comics anthology which has been around since 1977. Revolver lasted for seven regular issues and two specials before it was canceled due to poor sales. If you really get into the stories there, be sure to check out the conclusions of two of its stories in Crisis (another comics magazine). Vertigo later released Revolver as a collection.
With writer Peter Milligan, McCarthy here created Rogan Gosh, an Indian science fiction series. It draws heavily from postmodern and psychedelic conventions (as much as you can call them “conventions”, anyway). It’s also supposed to be partly autobiographical, though good luck teasing out the reality from the fiction.
Essentially, Rogan Gosh follows the titular character, a young man who is also the current incarnation of the blue-skinned “Karmanaut”. The Karmanaut is an Indian warrior who can cleanse people of their wrongdoings — that is, their accumulated bad karma.
Along the way, characters begin to exceed their edges and merge into one another. Also, time has little to no meaning for many of them. We see them travel through modern-day London, a highly futuristic India, and even the opium-addled dreaming mind of Rudyard Kipling. All of that, plus what many consider to be a pinnacle of McCarthy’s artwork, make for a beautiful and unsettling ride.
SpaceRiders (Cover image via Black Mask Comics)
5. Space Riders
Science fiction is clearly a rich vein for comics creators. Even for those who are more interested in straightforward storylines can find a lot to get excited about in sci-fi. Even if you’re a hard sci-fi fan (for example, if you think the ultra-realistic travails of everyone in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars is the best the genre has to offer), there’s still room for wonder and speculation. Science fiction trades on the impossible or near-impossible.
This all makes science fiction easy ground for growing mind-bending psychedelia, too. Think of all the real-life ways to bend time in the universe (what with near-lightspeed travel and all of those time and space-warping black holes) and the hope that you could meet some really weird-looking aliens, too. It’s practically begging for a gloriously strange tale. Who are we to blame the artists that answer the call?
Artist Alexis Ziritt and writer Fabian Rangel went this genre route when they created Space Riders. This series revs up to a high octane level that will leave you practically breathless in places.
The basic plot follows Captain Peligro and his crew and they travel through a Technicolor cosmos in the skull-ship Santa Muerte. Yeah, that’s a spaceship shaped like an actual human skull. Just go with it.
There are plenty of grand space battles, very odd and very beautiful landscapes, and plenty of action-style gore. Beyond that, it’s hard to accurately describe the depth and energy of Space Riders. Reviewers have variously called it “[expletive] sublime” and said that “it looks like it came directly out of Jack Kirby’s id”. Perhaps you should just experience it for yourself.
The Invisibles (Cover image via Vertigo/DC Comics)
4. The Invisibles
If you were to stroll into your local comics store and ask for the weirdest, most psychedelic comic there, you’d almost certainly be handed a copy of Morrison’s work.
Grant Morrison has certainly earned his place as one of the most daring and intellectually challenging comics writers alive. Morrison is also a playwright, musician, noted occultist, and a member of the Order of the British Empire. He gained significant attention for his work with DC Comics, first with a little-known character and title, Animal Man. He then worked on titles like Batman, JLA, All-Star Superman, and a surreal interpretation of Doom Patrol in 1989.
Even though he was gaining success in the mainstream comics world, Morrison continued to contribute to independent presses. These were also some of his more controversial works, including The New Adventures of Hitler and the anti-Margaret Thatcher St. Swithin’s Day.
But we’re not here to talk about Morrison’s superhero comics work, or not exactly. For, as much as he bent the edges of the superhero universe, you can only take Superman and Batman so far. That said, I’d pay a pretty penny to see Batman go on some sort of ODY-C type of adventure.
The Invisibles
No, we’re here to talk about The Invisibles. The series was published under DC’s Vertigo imprint, starting in 1994. It follows the exploits of a cell of The Invisible College, an organization that fights against psychic and real-world forces by using a whole mental toolkit of psychedelic and occasionally violent methods. The first volume follows Dane McGowan, a troubled British teen who learns magic, is abducted by aliens, travels through a few different dimensions, and feels the collective suffering of the human race.
It also introduces us to the decidedly odd team of The Invisibles. They’re led by King Mob, a former horror writer. They also include a time-traveling madwoman (Ragged Robin), a former NYPD officer (Boy), and a Brazilian trans woman sorceress (Lord Fanny) whose patron deity is Tlazolteotl, the goddess of filth (and who also provides purification for her believers).
Along the way, there’s plenty of mysticism and conspiracy theories, wherein the team visits the fabled underground, alien-hosting Dulce Base in New Mexico. The Invisibles is legendarily weird for a reason.
Kaptara (Cover image via Image Comics)
3. Kaptara
If the old-school callbacks of Bulletproof Coffin intrigued you, then you may want to consider Kaptara. Described as a “gay He-Man” story by co-creator Chip Zdarsky, Kaptara recalls some of the operatic arcs and sagas of Flash Gordon and other early science fiction offerings. It’s also completely ridiculous, to the delight of its readers (and, we suspect, its creators).
At first, it seems as if Kaptara is going to be a very standard sort of space adventure. Protagonist Keith Kanga is a self-centered spacefarer whose ship goes right through a spatial anomaly. He finds himself stranded on the bonkers world of Kaptara. It’s full of some of the best sci-fi beasts in comics, including at least one space moose and a few different beaver ladies. Keith, however, just wants to get home. His way back to Earth is littered with the stuff of hallucinations and dreams.
Kaptara certainly calls back to several preceding science fiction properties, from Star Trek, to Flash Gordon, to Conan the Barbarian. It does so in a way that is ultimately silly and original, without ever really feeling like a ripoff of its inspirations.
And Zdarsky really wasn’t kidding about the LGBTQ content in this series. In a tongue-in-cheek response, Zdarsky has also called Kaptara a “gay Saga, just to get more sales”. At any rate, Keith is clearly interested in same-sex romance. Moreover, this isn’t just a kiss ‘em and leave ‘em series. Kanga’s relationships and sense of self mature and grow more complicated as the series continues.
Jack Kirby’s Fourth World (Image via DC Comics)
2. Jack Kirby’s Fourth World
This doesn’t encompass a given story or even a specific series. Rather, this entry takes a wide focus onto a group of interconnected titles collected as Jack Kirby’s Fourth World.
It all began, ignominiously enough, with an October 1970 issue of Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #133. The concept took on a greater head of steam with the later introduction of the series, The New Gods, Mister Miracle, and The Forever People. Surprisingly, this grand tale was published from 1970 to only 1973.
So, what’s so freaky-deaky about this collection of series? It all deals with a grand, cosmic battle between good and evil. This is in part represented by the “good” planet and people of New Genesis and the “bad” planet and people of Apokolips.
Echoes of Earth
The stages include highly advanced technological societies populated by the so-called “New Gods”. These space-based deities are echoes of the gods of our own human mythology. For example, New Genesis is ruled by the Highfather, who is really named Izaya. The name’s reminiscent of the Biblical Isaiah, but Izaya takes nods from Zeus, Odin, and many other patriarchal figures throughout myth, religion, and legend.
Izaya’s counterpart, Darkseid, rules Apokolips and draws uncomfortable parallels with fascists from Earth history, down to his authoritarian rule and love of jackboots. Together, the pair are seemingly fated to play off one another, using their people as pawns, for centuries upon centuries.
Good and evil aren’t clear in this strange world, however. Darkseid and the Highfather sometimes work a little too closely for comfort, as when they exchange sons in a peacemaking pact. All along, the Fourth World series trades in breathtakingly large and strange ways of life and tale-telling.
Nameless (Cover image via Image Comics)
1. Nameless
As you may well have guessed by now, Grant Morrison is one of the modern kings of comic psychedelia. He’s warranted two different entries on this list on the strength of their strangeness alone. Honestly, it took some pretty serious mental back-and-forth to avoid adding Morrison’s Doom Patrol as a third example. If you want your comics to warp your mind and make you stare at your bedroom ceiling in mingled awe and horror, Morrison’s your guy.
Of course, Grant Morrison also clearly thinks deeply about his subject matter. Moreover, I believe Morrison will be remembered at least a little more for the breathtakingly odd one-offs and original series in his repertoire.
All of this to say: you really should read Nameless. It’s full of Lovecraftian beasts and uncanny geometry, as well as space stations and advanced rocketry. Sure, those fancy spacesuits are covered in magical sigils, but you’ll see why soon enough.
A warning
Oh, and there’s plenty of gore. Morrison isn’t afraid to bring on the blood and guts, so be prepared for some pretty realistic and very broken anatomy in between all of the ageless, evil gods and communications with the dead.
Like nearly everything else here, it’s very hard to encapsulate Nameless in such a small space. This is Morrison at some of his absolute weirdest. By the end of the series, you’ll start to wonder if it would all make more sense to read it upside down, or perhaps backward.
Here’s my best go at it, however: Earth is due to be struck by a huge asteroid named Xibalba. In due course, Xibalba is revealed to be a fragment of the planet Marduk, which was destroyed millions of years ago in a battle between huge, uncaring gods.
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As Xibalba approaches Earth, it begins to affect the minds of all humans with its ancient madness. A group of scientists (and one occultist) are tasked with approaching the asteroid and attempting to save Earth.
What they encounter, however, will be far more challenging than changing the course of a big space rock. Between the layers upon layers of story and perception, Nameless also trades on the cosmic despair and genetic level of dread carried forth by Marduk. It’s intense stuff, to say the least.