Welcome, dear readers, to another week of comics and commentary at Comics! The Blog! We kick things off, as always, by handing out awards for the Best of the Week - beginning with two Award postings, followed closely by the past week’s Best.

Terse narration cracks the story open while Toby Cyprus lays down stylized shadow and violence. A light seeping maroon denotes effects of previously encountered violence. The page turns, and the shot is taken. Bright red sprawls across the page, bleeding snippets of memory in a beautifully designed splash. Violence by way of art, mystery seeped in style.

The book pulls back to offer focus. Our mysterious lead (or co-lead, I’d wager) waxes poetic on memory and its various functions and malfunctions, a shock of neon red about to hit his lips. The man has a swag case of retrograde amnesia that seems to be tied to the book’s titular band of killers. He’s being followed by a woman who is searching for her father, another lost soul seeking answers using whatever and whoever they can to get them. Opening fast and strong, The White Suits doesn’t let up, not even for a moment. Momentum is carried by Frank J. Barbiere’s whip-smart script and the inimitable style of Toby Cypress who takes a decidedly Sin City style and plies it with liquid neon. The pair work together brilliantly to produce a taut Soviet spy story that couldn’t be replicated in any other medium, the comic format being used to it’s fullest with vibrant spot colouring, fluid line-work, and the resulting imagery.

With so many titles vying for the reader’s attention right now, you can’t really do any better than giving this a book a read, especially if you’re in the mood for an offbeat thriller. As such, we’re award this book and it’s creators with this week’s In Soviet Russia, The Joke Makes You Award. Keep up the amazing work!