I find that the best way to get someone interested in a new comic is to compare that book to not one, but TWO things that they already love. Not anything as obvious as peanut butter and jelly time, which Dan DiDio titled his editor's note in DC books last week when he discussed bringing together Superboy and the Legion of Super Heroes once again in Adventure Comics this August. More like their favorite movie and their favorite comic.
I don't remember much from Ms. Kenan's geometry class back in 9th grade. Tim Cunningham lit his hand on fire by breaking a lighter on his desk. You got a zero if every problem on your homework wasn't completed. Proofs were the devil. And there were a lot of angles. But the transitive property of equality stated if a=b and b=c, then a=c.
That's how I like to sell comics.
I think my math might be off, but the name is cool. I bring you some of my most time-tested, tried and true transitive property of equality comic equations.
 + 
 = 
Storywise, with the Royal Tenenbaums and Hellboy you're talking about a family of prodigious children pushed to their fullest potential and then crumbling in the face of fame of fortune, serving up neuroses all around. In both, the critical health/death of the father figure brings all of the children back under one roof for the first time in years, forcing them to rise above their own problems and dysfunctional relationships for the betterment of the world.Â
Creatively, Umbrella Academy writer Gerard way is a large Hellboy fan and artist himself, composing many of the character designs for the books in his own sketchbooks. Artist Gabriel Ba's stylized art, alternating between heavy and light lines and often making fine use of negative space and shadow, can easily be compared to Mike Mignola. And Dark Horse editor extraordinaire oversees both Eisner award-winning series.
 + 
 = 
One of the last great sorcerers in the world disguises his true intentions as a performing illusionist and travels the globe and other dimensions with his companion, Delfi, a role filled by an ever-changing roster of inquisitive, adventuresome, and sometimes beautiful assistants. Generally detached from the non-mystical problems of the rest of the world, seemingly immortal, and endlessly self-involved, romantic relationships with the Delfi of the past haven't lasted, causing him to now keep his newest ward very much at arm's length.
If you've read Doctor Strange the Oath, Mysterius even has a magic gun capable of breaching magical defenses with its ties to the Other Side.Â
 + 
 = 
Phonomancers are witches, wizards, and warlocks of a sort, drawing on their love of particular genres, songs, and bands to perform comparable spells and enter themed dimensions. Like in Fables, the phonomancers are a dying breed, exiled and unnoticed in a world of decadence and pop unlike those they were used to, dependent on the fandom and devotion to their particular genre from power and fortitude as the Fables rely on the belief of mortals.
While the musical snobbery in the John Cusack movie will give you an idea of how things work in Phonogram, if you've read Nick Hornby's High Fidelity novel, complete with hundreds of its own classic rock, R&B British club scene references, then you're really ready for this one. At its heart, like the book and the movie, Phonogram is about the transforming power of music and the hold that a note or a woman or a period in your life can have over your entire being.
 + 
 = 
Like in Ex Machina, an extra-terrestrial power falls to Earth and possesses an unsuspecting citizen, in the case of Omega, a borderline autistic high schooler named Alexander. Mayor Hundred was raised by a single mother, Alexander was brought up by androids. The Great Machine has his nemesis Pherson, Alex has viral robot nanites that infect humans and his foster mom's questionably "heroic" boyfriend the Mink.
The troubled tone and muted colors, similar to those in Noah Baumbach's Squid and the Whale, brings across a definite independent vibe on a mainstream budget, a claim backed up by the art of Pop Gun War's Farel Dalrymple. New York feels more like New York than it ever has in a Spider-man comic.Â
 + 
 = 
I've said since Arrested Development that Michael Cera was set to be the John Cusack of a new generation, and he began to realize that in Juno and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. With his titular role in the upcoming Scott Pilgrim movie directed by Edgar Wright, Cera is probably set to redefine the romantic, unconventional hero as Lloyd Dobler did 20 years ago.
River City Ransom, along with Double Dragon, Super Dodge Ball, and Street Fighter, were the main video game influences that Bryan Lee O'Malley cited during his Acme interview way back in Living Wednesday to Wednesday #14. Throw in some skill points, power-ups, and extra lives and you have the perfect comic entry point for the gamer in your life. Â
 + 
 = 
Imagine current Secret Warriors, rankless renegade Nick Fury (our Casanova) falls through a rift that puts him in an alternate reality where everyone thinks of him as good ol' Director of S.H.E.I.L.D (their Casanova). All the power and respectability, zero practice with the responsibility. Then the alternate universe's equivalent of Hydra figures things out first and blackmails Cass. And X.S.E., or A.I.M., makes sexy LMDs to keep everyone on their toes.
Where does the Hunter S. Thompson come in? In issue #2, Cass heads to an island where the drugs are pumped right into the air that everyone breaths, and Gabriel Ba's art pulls on all of the psychedelic delight that Steranko swirled onto the page, seen especially in #6 and #14.
