We had a big debut for Caligula by David Lapham and German Nobile last week, heard from a lot of shops about the book and got a great response to it at WonderCon. Reorders were brisk, so Caligula #1 should still be available at your local comic shop this week. Here’s what a few people had to say:
With the depiction of Junius, Lapham delves into some familiar, but subtle, territory thematically. All the gross depictions of depravity in the first issue of Caligula, and the fictional supernatural element of the story, might simply end up being metaphors for the old theme of the city vs. the country. Junius cannot believe how badly The City of Rome stinks and how vile it is. ?Surely this is not the great city my father spoke endlessly about. Surely Caligula?s corruption influences all.? Does it? Or has Rome always been a wretched hive of scum and villainy?
The first issue of a book is always a tricky one. There’s so much that has to happen to tell the story, to draw in the reader and overall makes things interesting to warrant the continuation of the story. David Lapham (Stray Bullets) does this without a hitch.
Well, David Lapham does not take the easy way as it shown in this first issue. He actually creates a story to show us who this crazed wanna be God was and does t with some violence and nudity, but in keeping with the story. In lesser hand this would be the comic equivalent of a slasher movie, but it actually seems to be setting up for a nice run showing the way it really was. New artist German Nobile does a nice job of creating a painted kind of look lending to the feel of history. I’m looking forward to more of this.