gail simone

One of the hardest things about reading comics is knowing where to start. Comics shops carry hundreds of titles and get dozens of issues in every week on new comic-book day. On top of that, many comics have complex mythologies and backstories that make it hard to just pick up any random issue and have a clue what is going on.

That’s why Heroic Girls recommends comics every week that are excellent “jumping on” points for new readers. Without further ado, here are our picks for the week of December 3, 2014.

Angela: Asgard’s Assassin #1

Angela, Heven’s finest warrior, was raised from birth to hate Asgard with every fiber of her being. And then she learned the truth: she is Thor’s sister and an Asgardian herself.

Cast out from Heven, and wanting nothing to do with Asgard she is truly on her own for the first time in her life.

Or she would be except she has something that both Heven and Asgard desperately want. Can Angela figure out what they are after and who she should trust before she gets killed?

Fight Like A Girl #1

I’m going to be honest. I’ve never heard of this book. I am not familiar with the writer, David Pickney. I do not know the artist Soo Lee. Here is what I do know:

• It has a bad-ass girl on the cover.
• The aforementioned bad-ass girl is standing in front of a mother-flippin’ T-Rex.
• Did I mention the girl is black? Because she is. Hooray for more women of color in comics!
• I am so buying the crud out of this.

It is quite possible the cool title and cover are selling me on a book that isn’t that great, but for now I am a complete believer. I mean, she had a baseball bat. She’s gonna fight a dinosaur with a Louisville Slugger! How could you pass on that?

Secret Six #1

Gail Simone’s Secret Six was one of the many sad casualties of DC Comics’ New 52 reboot. Secret Six was a book that dared you to root for the bad guys every month and never took the easy way out by making them heroic.

Simone fleshed out her team of misanthropes so that one-dimensional characters like Bane or Deadshot were suddenly complexed and nuanced, she reminded us that punchline villains like Ragdoll and Catman were menacing, and she gave us strong new characters like Scandal Savage that became instant classics.

None of that old history ever happened in DC’s bold new universe, so readers will have an opportunity to get in on the ground floor as Simone puts together a new team of villains to root for including old favorites and new members alike.