Kablammo! Oh excuse us. We were just reading some comic books. This week, courtesy of Isotope’s guidance, we’re checking out Harvey Pekar’s new book, The Quitter; as well as Desolation Jones, a newish series inked by a central-valley artist who was recently in town; also the dizzyingly cute Bumperboy Loses His Marbles, by local Debbie Huey; an X-Men book written by dreamboat Joss Whedon; and a sad-scary zombie story called The Walking Dead.

First of all, can we just talking about how adorable Bumperboy is? It’s low on drama, but bursting at the seams with beaming best friends and faithful pups and a robot that says "Oh shucks." The story involves a lost bag of marbles and an upcoming marble tournament — there’s an oddly Pokémonesque scene around the end involving cute dueling creatures. The cast of characters involves a boy and his dog in pajamas, and a teddy bear thing, and a squirrel named Nuts, and an otter named Jeannie with a USA swim cap ... and oh my God we’re melting with adorableness right here in our pants. Oh man.

Okay, change of pace: the "Desolation Jones" series follows a grumpy hard-boiled former spy, subjected to some kind of horrible debilating experiment and imprisoned within the city limits of Los Angeles, along with a slimy crew of similarly crippled ex-spies. A withered old man hires Jones to find a stolen cache of porn produced by Adolph Hitler ... and then the story gets weird. A missing daughter, some more amateur pornography, and spooks-in-hiding all start leading our hero back to a murderous cult and some scary government-sponsored mind control. It’s not very cute.

After the jump: Pekar, zombies, and did you know the X-Men story involves space aliens? Yeah, it’s a little different from the movies.

So, of course hipsters are all gay for American Splendor, which frankly never really bowled us over. Whatever. But Harvey Pekar’s new book, The Quitter, really resonated us, possibly because it’s about how Harvey was a bit of an insecure loser, hey, just like us. It’s a melancholy confession of a seemingly endless stream of failures — football teams, clerk jobs, the navy, even his family. Each time he’d get involved with something good, his neuroses would take over and he’d blow it, from his early childhood all the way up into young adulthood when he finally buckled down, landed a solid job, and eventually started writing stories.

And then there’s the Astonishing X-Men series Gifted, written by Joss Whedon. Of course we love everything Joss touches, and as Isotope proprieter James Sime put it, "this is so Whedoney." The X-Men regroup under the leadership of Cyclops and mind-squishing Emma Frost, and are faced with a scientist who claims to have discovered a "cure" to mutation — poof, she says, everyone can turn back to normal. It’s a nuanced story with great, complex characters, some grappling with their own desire to shed their mutation, and others struggling to retain their community. Oh and also there’s a evil space alien. So, it’s a mix of cerebral and reptilian, really, and a fantastic read.

And last, there’s The Walking Dead, a zombie story with some comfortable standbys — man wakes up in hospital, having slept through zombie holocaust; family is missing; zombies must be shot in the head; they spread their infection through biting — but spends unexpectedly little time dealing with the zombies themselves. Instead, the bulk of the story is devoted to the survors’ new social climate. A small band of humans camps out, hiding a safe distance from civilization, and experience the same sort of troubles getting along with each other that humans have always faced — jealousy, love, family, property, that sort of thing. It’s unexpectedly human, for a story kicked off by an attack by the undead.