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A Vicious Circle #[nn]
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeA Vicious Circle #1 represents one of the more formally adventurous single issues BOOM! Studios has ever published: Lee Bermejo deliberately shifts his painting and drawing style from era to era within the same issue, treating the comic page itself as a historical artifact rather than a neutral container for story. That structural conceit — art style as time-stamp — is rare in mainstream genre comics and earned the issue two 2023 Eisner Award nominations, for Best Single Issue/One-Shot and Best Painter/Multimedia Artist. The series also demonstrates the growing creative weight of BOOM! Studios' original imprint, which positioned A Vicious Circle alongside titles like BRZRKR and Something is Killing the Children as proof that non-Big-Two publishers could sustain prestige-format, creator-driven work at a high commercial and critical level. When Universal Pictures acquired film rights with Ryan Coogler producing, it further cemented the book's place as a defining comics-to-screen property of the mid-2020s.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
The series grew out of a collaboration between screenwriter-director Mattson Tomlin — best known at the time of the book's announcement for Project Power (Netflix) and his co-writing work on The Batman and its sequel — and Italian-based American artist Lee Bermejo, whose reputation rested on a run of prestige DC works with writer Brian Azzarello, including Joker, Luthor, Before Watchmen: Rorschach, and Batman: Damned. Bermejo described the book publicly as a passion project and 'the most deliciously challenging thing' he had undertaken, because the shifting-style conceit forced him to work outside his signature photorealistic mode in every sequence. BOOM! Studios Executive Editor Sierra Hahn shepherded the title, and the three oversized issues were published across a roughly two-year window: issue #1 on December 14, 2022, issue #2 on July 19, 2023, and issue #3 in August 2024. Issue #1 sold out at the distributor level and returned with a second printing in May 2023 featuring new cover art by Andrea Sorrentino.
Trivia · 9 facts
- Written by Mattson Tomlin and illustrated by Lee Bermejo, with lettering by Becca Carey; published by BOOM! Studios as a prestige three-issue limited series.
- Issue #1 went on sale December 14, 2022 in an oversized prestige format.
- Central premise: protagonist Shawn Thacker is a future-born assassin whose every kill involuntarily teleports both himself and his rival across vastly different time periods — from 22nd-century Tokyo to 1950s New Orleans to the Cretaceous Era.
- Bermejo shifts his artistic style to evoke different historical master painters and comics luminaries with each new era visited within the series.
- Issue #1 was nominated for two 2023 Eisner Awards: Best Single Issue/One-Shot and Best Painter/Multimedia Artist (Bermejo).
- Issue #1 sold out at distributor level and received a second printing in May 2023 with a new cover by Andrea Sorrentino.
- Variant covers for issue #1 were produced by Alex Garner, Jae Lee, Rafael Grampá, and InHyuk Lee.
- Universal Pictures acquired the film rights; Mattson Tomlin is writing the screenplay adaptation and Ryan Coogler is producing via his Proximity Media banner, alongside BOOM! Studios.
- A hardcover edition collecting all three issues was solicited for the direct market in 2025.
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