With legendary sword and scabbard in hand, Avalon departs the Guardian’s lake to continue her quest along with her new cohorts, Lancer, Trystan, and a reluctant Gawyn. Elsewhere, the Red Clan prepares for their duel with the White Monks, with the scheming Black Sun Templars behind the scenes. Despite Merlin’s many protests that the challenge is a trap, Lord Huss of the White Monks elects to engage the Red Clan, relying on the will of the gods and the long-established sacred laws to ensure his victory. En route to the White Monks, Avalon and company happen upon the immolated and crucified remains of the slavers. (See issue one.) Distraught by the scene, Avalon makes haste and finds the White Monk’s citadel surrounded. With the aid of Gawyn’s invisibility granting stealth pins, Avalon is able to make it to the citadel just in time to see the treachery of the Red Clan and the Black Sun Templars unfold.

In the second installment of American Gods: My Ainsel, Shadow takes a break from actively traveling through America. The modern epic myth seems less magical and, instead, like a day in real world, small-town America. But this issue still has a dreary atmosphere to it, where the climate continues to deteriorate as it leads us to some upcoming battle, a battle that could possibly be between man and god, weather and land, or life and death—or perhaps some contest between any of those.

So… did you see it?

Scott Larson’s Visitations #3: Mayhem at the Levee displays a slightly different storytelling style than his first two explorations into the ghostly history of Chicago.  A mysterious woman known only as The Aviator receives a visitor who asks her to use the mysterious book, The True Annals of Chicago: The Victoria Era, to look into a tale from the city’s sordid past, when debauchery was confined to a region known as The Levee.

If Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000) was the film to resurrect the sword and sandal genre back into mainstream limelight, then Zach Snyder’s 2006 adaptation of Frank Miller’s 1998 graphic novel, 300, was the genre’s follow-up boost of literal and figurative testosterone. With cheers of “This is Sparta!” entering the pop culture lexicon, interest in the original comic was rejuvenated while a mini-media empire was born; a video game, 300: March to Glory, was released on the PlayStation Portable, NECA released figurines of some of the film’s characters, and a sequel film, 300: Rise of an Empire, was released in 2014.

In a book in which things go south quickly all of the time, it's worth saying that things are headed in that direction with haste after the revelations of the last few issues. With everything happening and things coming to a head, true identities are revealed, intentions are dug up, and the gods we've spent so long with are truly reaching the final days of their two-year lifespan. Without giving away too much, Minerva's recent admissions are bringing out the worst in some of the gods, and Woden's antics are actually beginning to show some promise for the first time in quite awhile.

Creator Joss Whedon returns to the Buffy-verse with Dark Horse Comics' new Giles mini-series. Joined in the story department this time by Erika Alexander (Concrete Park) and paired with artist Jon Lam (Gotham Academy: Second Semester), Whedon and company take everyone’s favorite Watcher, Rupert Giles, back to high school. Only two issues have been released so far, but, as I'm sure we all remember from the early season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, high school is hell (and a whole lot of hormones).

The Black Hammer universe is one in which the superheroes aren’t always very super, and Doctor Star falls into this category. Jeff Lemire has created a universe in which personal regret is the main reward for spending your life saving other people's lives – that’s not a bad thing for readers. In issue one of Doctor Star, we learned two things: one, how the para-dimension was discovered which plays into the larger world of Black Hammer, and two, how Jimmy Robinson became Doctor Star when he discovered the para-dimension. The story jumps from the Golden era of superheroes, as Jimmy throws himself 100% into being a hero, then to the present, with Jimmy visiting his son who is dying of cancer. What happened exactly to get him to the point in which he’s watching his son die? I present to you issue number two...

Inertia can be one tricky bit...

Welcome to Earth.