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The 5 Comics You Need to Read Right Now

Fabio Moon

With dozens of titles hitting the print (and digital) stands each month, deciding which comics to read isn’t always easy. So we’ll keep it simple: If you’re only going to pick up a couple of comics or graphic novels right now, here are a handful that are worth your time and money. Of course, there’s no way to cover every worthwhile title, so consider this a monthly sampler—and leave your own suggestions in the comments.

Casanova: Acedia

Matt Fraction’s inter-dimensional superspy returns for the long-awaited fourth volume of this series, where an amnesiac Casanova Quinn walks out of a fire in the Hollywood Hills with no memory of the past, and no fear of the future. As he makes a new life in the heady, forgetful glow of Los Angeles, where he finds a way to put his specialized skills to use for a fatherly criminal figure. Indeed, he seems happier than he’s been—maybe ever? Maybe it’s better to forget. His past starts to catch up with him, however, when beautiful occult assassin starts trying to murder him in swimming pools wearing nothing but Louboutins. The art is a sumptuous delight, as always, and since cartoonists (and identical twins) Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon have been trading off for each volume this time around it’s Moon’s chance to shine. Throw in a backup story written by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon, and you’ve got yourself a party.

Price: $3.99

Where to Buy It: Image Comics (DRM-free digital) or your local comic shop

Jason Shiga

Demon

A pure mathematics major turned cartoonist, Jason Shiga has a tendency to make stories that feel like puzzles, from his superbly mind-bending choose your own adventure-style time travel comic, Meanwhile , to the amnesiac mystery of Fleep . This time around Shiga introduces us to Jimmy Yee, a down-on-his-luck man who kills himself in a motel room, only to wake up in bed the next morning no worse for the experience. After several more failed suicide attempts, things start to get weird—he finds bullets lodged in the wall and his own headless body on the floor, but somehow never ends up any deader. After stepping in front of a trailer truck, he wakes up in the hospital to find a daughter he doesn’t know and a life he never lived waiting for him. Half the fun of Demon is unraveling the mystery, and the other half is watching things go wild when Yee finally learns the truth. Although you can read the ongoing story for free at Shiga’s website, print or DRM-free digital versions are available for a modest Patreon contribution. And you should seriously consider the latter option.

Price: The webcomic is free, but PDFs cost $1/month, print editions $4.99/month

Where to Get It: Shiga’s website and store, Patreon

Michael DeForge

Michael DeForge’s Patreon Comics

Michael DeForge makes some of the most excellent and unnerving comics currently in print (see: his highly-acclaimed anthology series Lose and the drone body horror of Ant Colony ). He’s currently making original monthly comics for Patreon subscribers, which means that for three dollars a month you can watch a modern master of sequential art do weird, wonderful experiments. December’s “Wet Animals” explores the lingering heartbreak of love (and cruel fish) while January’s “Mars Is My Last Hope” follows refugees from Earth as they try to adapt to the red planet and get infiltrated by its native flora. These monthly comics are a bit of a limited-time offer, however: He’s only promised to continue them through May, so get on board while you can.

Price: $3.00 a month

Where to Buy It: Patreon

First Second Books

The Sculptor

Scott McCloud wrote the book on comics. Or more accurately, he wrote three of them: Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, and Making Comics. Now, he’s finally released what he considers his magnum opus, an original graphic novel about an ambitious young sculptor who makes a Faustian bargain for an unusual superpower: the ability to sculpt anything in his imagination with little more than a thought. Decades in the making, it explores some pretty ambitious ideas: nothing less than the meaning of art, love, and being human. It’s a high bar to clear—especially with the sky-high expectations that accompany his publication history—but McCloud delivers a solid, mature work worthy of the countless “best of 2015″ lists it will no doubt populate later this year. (Check out WIRED’s profile of McCloud here.)

Price: $29.99 print, $14.99 Kindle

Where to Buy It: Macmillan/First Second

And Then Emily Was Gone

Chances are you missed this offbeat comic about a detective who sees terrifying visions of monsters, travels to the remote Orkney Islands in Scotland to find a missing girl, and finds hell instead. Published by a very small indie press, And Then Emily Is Gone is written by John Lees with art with by Iain Laurie, and it’s scary as hell. Readers with more conventional tastes might be put off the misshapen faces and thick-lined monsters of Laurie’s atypical art style, but that’s exactly what will make it irresistible to everyone else. Horror fans take note: This might be the best creepy comic of the last year to slip under your radar.

Price: $7.99

Where to Buy It: ComiXology (digital)

Design FX: How the Agent Carter Team Creates Movie-Quality Effects Every Week

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Scientists turn the tables on drug-resistant bacteria by infecting them with bacteriophages (bacterial viruses)

Can a bacterial virus found in Jerusalem sewage prevent infections after root canal procedures?

Every year, drug-resistant infections kill more than 50,000 people across Europe and the United States, and hundreds of thousands more around the world. According to the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance commissioned by the UK Prime Minister, failing to address the growing problem of drug-resistant infections could cause 10 million deaths a year and cost up to $100 trillion USD by 2050.

Now, researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Faculty of Dental Medicine propose a way to turn the tables on harmful bacteria that infect humans, by infecting them with tiny viruses called bacteriophages. In a strange twist, one such virus, cultivated from Jerusalem sewage, may help prevent infections following dental procedures.

Just a few decades ago, antibiotics were considered wonder drugs. Ironically, because they worked so well, they were used too often, leading to the rise of drug-resistant bacteria. These untreatable pathogens evolved mutations enabling them to resist the antibiotics that doctors prescribe to fight them.

One such pathogen is Enterococcus faecalis, a bacterium inhabiting the gastrointestinal tracts of humans. This life-threatening pathogen causes diseases ranging from endocarditis (a potentially fatal heart infection) to bacteremia (harmful bacteria in the bloodstream), as well urinary tract infection, meningitis, and post-treatment root canal infections.

E. faecalis is a highly durable strain, and is especially hard to target when grouped in a sticky bacterial cluster called biofilm. E. faecalis is often recovered from persistent infections associated with root canal treatments, and infection may persist in 20-33% of root canals.

The frustrating rate of infections reflects the limitations of current treatment options. Thus it is essential to develop additional ways to target highly virulent bacteria such as E. faecalis, especially when in biofilm form.

A promising alternative approach to traditional antibiotics is bacteriophage therapy. Bacteriophages, or "phages," are viruses that infect bacteria. Phages play a key role in maintaining the natural balance in their predator-prey relationship with bacteria. They co-evolved with their bacterial hosts to be highly effective specific "professional bacterial killers."

Now, a research team -- led by Dr. Ronen Hazan from the Institute of Dental Sciences at the Hebrew University, and Dr. Nurit Beyth from the Hebrew University-Hadassah School Of Dental Medicine, together with their co-workers and students, Dr. Shunit Glaser, Leron Khalifa, Daniel Gelman and Yair Brosh -- has identified a way to use phage therapy to target E. faecalis biofilms.

The researchers isolated an anti-E. faecalis phage from sewage effluents retrieved from a Jerusalem sewage treatment facility. The phage, named EFDG1, is capable of infecting the V583 strain of E. faecalis, which is resistant to vancomycin, the most effective anti-E. faecalis antibiotic.

The team evaluated EFDG1's efficacy against E. faecalis cells both in a liquid culture and in biofilm form. Since there are currently no effective ways to eradicate E. faecalis biofilms, the researchers' goal was to target E. faecalis in its most robust form, as a biofilm.

In both cases EFDG1 almost entirely eradicated the bacterial cultures. EFDG1 was found to be highly efficient against various E. faecalis and E. faecium isolates, regardless of their antibiotic resistance profile.

Moreover, the researchers showed that EFDG1 was highly effective in root canal infection, both in vitro and ex vivo in tissue samples. These findings suggest that phage therapy using EFDG1 might be an effective way to prevent E. faecalis infection following root canal procedures.

To see whether the EFDG1 is safe to use in fighting E. faecalis infections in humans, the researchers examined EFDG1 phages for the presence of hazardous genes. By visualizing the phage using electron microscopy, followed by whole genome sequencing, the researchers found that it belongs to the Spounavirinae subfamily of the Myoviridae phages, which include other promising candidates for therapy against Gram positive pathogens. Moreover, they found that the EFDG1 genome does not contain apparent harmful genes.

According to Dr. Ronen Hazan, "The idea of using phages as anti-bacterial drugs is not new. Phage therapy was first proposed at the start of the 20th century, but then abandoned for various reasons, including the striking success of chemical antibiotics. Now we stand on the verge of a new era with the limitations of synthetic antibiotics and the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. Thus it is the right time to look again into what Mother Nature offers in the battle against bacteria. As this research shows, bacteriophages may prove an effective tool in the development of much-needed new antimicrobial drugs."

The research will appear in the April 2015 edition of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology as "Targeting Enterococcus faecalis biofilm using phage therapy."

The research was supported by a Hebrew University / Yissum startup grant.

The 5 Comics You Need to Read Right Now

Fabio Moon

Casanova: Acedia

Jason Shiga

Demon

Michael DeForge

Michael DeForge’s Patreon Comics

First Second Books

The Sculptor

And Then Emily Was Gone

Design FX: How the Agent Carter Team Creates Movie-Quality Effects Every Week

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.

Why Weed Gives You the Munchies

Benjamin Rasmussen/WIRED

Marijuana is a gateway drug. Those gates open to reveal things like chocolate-dipped pretzels, salted-caramel ice cream, and tacos made out of tortilla chips. But while the junk food industry has been content to stay on station just outside the gates, with a wink here and there in advertising, the research community is obsessed with figuring out how they open.

A hit of weed triggers a bunch of cellular switches (in addition to coughing fits), and not a few of these are responsible for sudden burrito cravings. Scientists had long known that one of the most important of these was a receptor called CB1. But they’d been missing a crucial part of the chain reaction leading to munchies. New research shows that CB1 makes you feel hungry by activating a neuron that’s usually associated with making you feel full. What is this, some kind of conspiracy?

No man, it makes sense if you really think about it. (Like, really think about it!) The researchers used two different kinds of mice to show that the CB1 receptors were activating a certain type of neuron—called POMC—usually associated with making people feel full. These cells release an appetite-suppressing enzyme called a-MSH. But, when these cells have their CR1 receptors triggered, they also release a feel-good enzyme called b-endorphin, which has been shown in some studies to induce hunger (though it’s normally associated with dulling pain). “So, having the CB1 activate these neurons was a bizarre discovery,” says Sabrina Diano, a professor at Yale and co-author of the study. Wait, what was I talking about? Oh yeah. Mice.

Half of the mice in this study were genetically modified to have their POMC neurons blocked. When these mice had their CB1 receptors activated, they ignored their food. Meanwhile, the mice with active POMC neurons pooled their money together and ordered a huge pizza. Just kidding—they ate mouse food. But this is only one piece of the pie—I mean, puzzle. The researchers found that the POMC cells activated by CB1 had high levels of free radicals, which are created by cellular engines called mitochondria as they convert oxygen and food into energy. These extra free radicals indicate that the mitochondria in stoned POMC cells are working overtime. The researchers believe that this points to a certain mitochondrial protein that is telling the POMC cell to create munchie-inducing enzymes—they’re called beta-endorphins, in case you forgot—in addition to the a-MSH party killers.

Weed makes people hungry, and drug companies figure that if they understood how, they could parlay this fact into making people not-hungry. So far, the biggest effort at inventing a reverse-munchies pill was a flop. In 2006, Sanofi-Adventis rolled out an anti-munchie drug called rimonabant in Europe, but they had to pull the drug off the market within a few years, after people started reporting big side effects, most notably anxiety, depression, and general bad vibes. Because of this, other drug companies have been reluctant to develop weight-loss drugs based on CB1, says Kenneth Mackie, a biologist at Indiana University who was not a part of this research. “But if POMC shows there’s another way to change neuron activity, it may give them another way to manipulate receptors for weight loss,” he says. Along the way, researchers are bound to find a lot more things that will make them say, “woah….”

Why Weed Gives You the Munchies

Benjamin Rasmussen/WIRED