This week’s must-read digital comics in the Sunday Digest features a new instalment of our Digital Comic of the Year 2013 runner-up, Captain Stone is Missing from Madefire, the half way point in a epic climb to the summit of High Crimes #6 and a new UK anthology that is 100% Biodegradable!

Captain Stone is Missing #7 (Madefire)

The runner up in this year’s Digital Comic of the Year poll, Liam Sharp’s Captain Stone Is Missing completed its first story arc this week with the release of episode #7 and more revelations about Charlie Chance including a flashback to a confrontation between her and the Cap. If you’re after the kind of season ending climax or earth-shattering revelation that you’d get in a more traditional superhero adventure you may find this issue a bit lacking as it is high on introspection and (relatively) low on action. However Captain Stone is not your traditional superhero story, it’s much more about familial angst and the nature of fame than it is about superhero bombast. This can make the book a bit of an acquired taste as it does tend to ramble at times, but fortunately the imagery is as stunning as ever with Sharp getting an assist from Daredevil legend Bill Sienkewicz in some of the inks (invoking the look of  his classic Elektra Lives at times). The motion book elements as always are the real star with every pages coming to the life and showcasing the sheer versatility of bespoke comics in this format. We’ve often criticised the licensed Madefire titles for lacking the ‘x-factor’ of some of the Madefire originals and it is books like Captain Stone which are what set the bar so high!
Captain Stone Is Missing #1-7 are available for free via the Madefire iPad & iPhone app

High Crimes #6 (MonkeyBrain Comics)

One of the more under-apreciated titles in the MonkeyBrain Comics library, Christopher Sebela and Ibrahim Moustafa’s Mount Everest set climbing crime thriller is now half way through it’s 12 issue run and so is as far from the metaphorical summit as they are from base camp. With the action now firmly established on the mountain, Zan’s mission to get to the top of Everest and find the truth about Sullivan Mars and hopefully save Haskell from the sinister government agents took a decidely icy twist at the end of issue 5 as she was buried in an ice fall. With a clever use of landscape and portrait pages to disorientate the reader as well as several bleached out white pages, this is slick, smart digital comics story-telling at it’s best. With a two stranded narrative featuring Zan on the mountain, manipulating her way through various obstacles, as well as flashbacks to the mysterious Mars’ past via his diary, High Crimes is as nerve-shredding as being 20,000 feet above sea level yourself so be warned, it may leave you as short of breath and with a sky-rocketing heart-rate as if you’re hanging from an icy precipice!
High Crimes #1-6 are available from ComiXology for £0.69/$0.99 per issue

100% Biodegradable #1 & 2 (Biomekazoik Comics)

Another fantastic digital anthology from the UK this week in the shape of 100% Biodegradable from Biomkazoik Comics. The first issue of this bi-monthly series was released at the end of last year and issue #2 is released this week via Comicsy and DriveThru comics for the bargain price of £0.69/$0.99. 100% Biodegradable is the brain child of writer Dave Hailwood, and is a mix of smart one-shots alongside regular characters like Marren Kane, almost all of which are written by Hailwood himself. The series owes an obvious debt to UK anthologies like 2000 AD with it’s mix of smart sci-fi and quirky, sometimes dark, humour. This is especially true in stand out stories like ‘A Better Place’ (which sees an advertising executive tormented by a psychic taxi driver)  and Slayer Keith (where mad geneticists get drunk and unleash giant kittens on the world) from issue #1 and Expendable Eddie (the dissectable clone who feels no pain – or does he?!) from issue #2, all of which have the kind of smart script and stylish art that would feel right at home in the pages of the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic!
100% Biodegradable is available from Comicsy and DriveThru comics for £0.69/$0.99