I was so stoked when I saw this - so many amazing comic writers and artists, many who've been a part of some of my favorite comics and series, all writing in a crazy sci-fi comic anthology?! This is so up my alley it's not even funny.

Some stories are better than others but I think that overall, Xino is a very satisfying and enjoyable read for science fiction fans... but then I read a lot of anthologies, and I am ok with not every story being a banger, so long as the product as a whole is a success. The stories themselves remind me of the weird stuff you'd see in the likes of Heavy Metal (the magazine) or the Netflix series Love, Death, and Robots. I just love all of that kind of stuff lol

I think this will be a draw for comic art lovers as well, because there is some incredible art in this book, and just beautiful, beautiful coloring. I honestly recommend checking the book out for the art alone.

Overall, if you like weird sci-fi and cool art, then you'll likely enjoy Xino.

“Xino” by various writers and artists is an anthology graphic novel of stories with unusual twists.
The stories are generally science fiction in nature but add in surrealism and the bizarre. There is the story of a man who creates bad luck wherever he goes and is used as a weapon. There is a bllind man who gets new eyes, but what he now sees is bizarre and strange. There are outcasts and aliens and weird futures that seem familiar and strange.
There is also some pretty good eye-popping art, but just like any anthology, every story and art style may not be for every reader. Still I’m grateful for a chance to review this wild book.

Pulpy and a lot of fun, and consistently good work for a compilation, but a few too many "horrifying twists."

This was quite an odd collection with pretty disjointed stories. The art is the highlight here and there's plenty of cool and imaginative eye-candy. it just seemes pretty tedious though minimally enjoyable.

Very weird scifi comic. Not sure the drawing style is for me but some of the stories are fun. I like the collection format so I can look out for the authors I liked best.

I know that anthologies can be hit or miss, but this was largely a miss for me and I'm pretty disappointed! "[S]ubversive, surrealist science fiction" is 100% up my alley, but I didn't find most of the comics in this collection to actually subvert my expectations or excite me as a reader.

But I do want to shout out two comics: Visceral (Justan Jordan, Molly Mendoza, Jim Campbell) and Sticky Tape (Dan McDaid) were phenomenal. Visceral blew me away with the gorgeous art and grusome concept. Sticky Tape was so tightly written and excecuted—the art wasn't quite to my taste, but I really enjoyed it.

Overall I probably wouldn't recommend this to many of my comic-reading friends... But if you're a fan of any of the artists or writers in this collection, support your local public library and pick up a copy!

Have you ever seen a zine? It’s a genre of intentionally unpolished, experimental hand-made magazines often associated with the twenty-something art scene. XINO is cleverly named. Its spelling looks like an alien species. It sounds like “zine-o”, like a psychedelic pill that contains the concentrated essence of zines. This collection of comic strip short stories is science fiction that’s curated to unsettle its readers. It has a very niche audience who will love it.

One panel in the story Free Hugs summarizes almost every story in this collection. It includes a colorful alien landscape with text that reads ‘so at best, we’ll have to live a week on a box of crunchies. Or worst-case scenario, our organs will liquify and we’ll die screaming.’

You want to go to this world and be washed in the visual effects. The stories are simplified down to only include the “what if?” setup and the worst-case scenario outcome. The creators of these stories are very fond of the “our organs will liquify and we’ll die screaming” eventuality.

The color work really was my favorite part of this. At some point, I realized that the story format isn’t my cup of tea, and I focused on the graphics. That’s when XINO started working for me, to a degree.

Content warning for gore and anything you might reasonably expect in the horror genre.

This was weird and strange. Not one I’ll be reading again. I’m sure it’ll find its audience, but unfortunately that’s not me.

XINO is a cool anthology with a big variety of sci-fi stories ranging from horror and cautionary tales to absurd stories with funny twists. The art styles found in this collection are diverse and consistently good and fitting to the vibe of each short. While XINO is a solid and entertaining collection, the quality of the stories fluctuates quite a bit, which is only natural. Some felt more like proposals for a comic book you'd give a publisher to provide a glimpse of what you plan on doing and barely scratched the surface, while some managed to pack a lot into a handful of pages (looking at you, The Testimonial). All in all, XINO was highly entertaining and I'd say the good segments outweigh the more mediocre ones. Definitely worth a look if you're into sci-fi anthologies!

- ARC provided by NetGalley -

I received this ARC from NetGalley.

Xino is a collection of scifi/speculative fiction stories that each have a twist at the end. I really enjoyed it. I liked the different art styles and the breadth of topics the stories covered. It has an Electric Dreams or Black Mirror vibe.

Interesting work. Quite original and weird. Maybe not for everyone, but I enjoy it and would recommend it to my curious readers!

Thanks to NetGalley and Oni Press for the ARC. This collection was a lot of fun to read, if you like sci-fi and comics.
The stories vary in narrative style, content, and artwork. I enjoyed the majority of the stories.

There are three stories that I would give 5/5 to, "The Ballad of MEGaVORTEX", "Easy Beazy" and "Hue". Anthologies are always a great way to explore new writers and illustrators and I highly recommend this one! Entertaining, thought-provoking and bizarre!

XINO is sort of an anthology - a set of short stories. Each of this dystopian, sci-fi, thrilling story gave me the chills and left me wanting more. All the authors/artists are very skilled at what they love to do and are great story tellers. Of course, there were stories that pulled me in more and some less. But that's the issue with short story collection - how do you rate them? I think my review is going to boil down to - I wish they were longer. I was sucked into their worlds from the first page, but they all ended too soon. I am looking forward discovering these amazing creators and their works in longer formats.

A big thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sharing this book with me in exchange for an honest review.

This blog review will be posted on Back Shelf Books on January 18, 2024, at the following link (also linked below): https://backshelfbooks.com/2024/01/18/graphic-novel-review-xino-by-phil-hester-melissa-flores-alex-segura-and-more/
------
This anthology blew my socks off. XINO is the most groundbreaking and far-reaching anthology of weird fiction I’ve ever read, regardless of format. The fact that this anthology is a graphic novel and has incredible art is the cherry on top. While the stories are vastly different in scope and narrative style, all of them are weird, subversive, and speculative as all get out. So many of the short stories turned out to be five-star reads for me. The following list details the stories that were my favorite, with a short description of each, limiting spoilers to a minimum.

- “Rabbit Trap,” written by Jordan Thomas and illustrated by Shaky Kane: a man in 1963 keeps a close eye on his neighbors, but maybe looks in the wrong place.
- “Visceral,” written by Justin Jordan and illustrated by Molly Mendoza: four hikers get a little lost and find something not on their map.
- “Free Hugs or The Ballad of MEGaVORTEX!,” by David and Maria Lapham and colored by Francesco Segala: a man must make important life decisions about marriage, having children, and changing his username.
- “Easy Beazy,” written and illustrated by David Hahn: in which a robotics college student field-tests a robot with his friends.
- “Testimonial,” written by Hagal Palevsky and illustrated by Carson Thorn: a man’s testimony of how he came back from the dead isn’t exactly what it seems.
- “Buster,” written and lettered by Andrew Carl and illustrated by Sophie Franz: a police department overlooks important clues in a murder investigation in a near-future world.
- “sticky tape,” by Dan McDaid: a man is special but for the worst possible reason.
- “The People,” written by Francois Vigneault and illustrated by Artyom Trakhanov: an ancient people group discovers a scientific device well beyond their time.

If it’s not obvious, it would be a whole lot easier to tell you about the stories that weren’t five stars for me. This anthology was that impressive. I enjoyed this collection cover to cover, and I hope we see more volumes in this series.

Art: The art in this collection is varied and diverse, and I enjoyed that the art was never quite the same from story to story. While some stories had clean, 60s-style art, others were purposely sketchy and rough. I appreciated these contrasts throughout the graphic novel and never felt bored stylistically. Although I liked some of the art styles more than others, the worlds were all challenging, weird, and meticulously crafted.

Final Thoughts: This collection is a must-read for lovers of speculative and weird fiction, even if you don't typically read graphic novels. This anthology is filled with wonderful writers and illustrators, and these stories are incredible. I can't wait to see more from these creators in the future.

Rating: A gigantic 5/5 stars. Although not every story was 5 stars for me, most were. I've also added XINO to my Goodreads Infinity Stars shelf, where I collect my favorite books.

A mixed bag of stories and artwork styles. Some I enjoyed more than others, but a pretty solid collection overall. Some of the art reminded me of Rich Tomasso, elsewhere it had that old school 2000AD feel, and there was a great splash page in there by Andre Araujo which I've definitely seen before (maybe in his newsletter). It gave the book a varied feel, especially with some of the coloring choices.

The stories themselves dealt in a lot of the familiar sci-fi tropes - invasion of the body snatchers, virtual reality, robots, space opera - but puts a humorous twist on them.

If you're a fan of sci-fi comics with that pulp feel, definitely check this one out.

This was entertaining and really cool, I enjoyed it. It's an anthology of sci-fi horror stories and they're not all great, but most of them are and all of them are well illustrated. I enjoyed the unique style of each one and had a lot of fun with this.

Received as an ARC on Netgalley:

This was a really vibrant and creative comic book anthology.

All of the stories have a very classic 80s Heavy Metal vibe but the tones/perspectives are incredibly diverse.

From evil Bunnies to cyborg cats, this really has it all.

Fantastic artwork and great storytelling. I hope this book gets more entries in the future.

I can’t give a star rating for the whole book because it was a book of short stories and each story has a different rating.
This book was like watching a bunch of little episodes of black mirror. If you’re a fan of black mirror, you’ll enjoy this.

Story one: the chip
4.5 stars. I enjoyed this one a lot! I actually wanted more of this one. It was so cool. The whole idea of the story could be a movie! Would be 5 stars if it was just a tiny bit longer with a bit more of a twist. I have so many ideas running through my head now about the movie this could make.

Story two: rabbit trap
1 star. I hated this one. I don’t have anything nice to say about it.

Story 3: b&b
2 stars. This one was really silly. Just some guy lost in space and messing stuff up because he thinks he’s at a b&b. No point at all to this story, but it was kind of funny.

Story four: visceral
Four stars. This one could be a movie as well. It was spooky and creepy and cool.

Story 5: free hugs
3 stars. Ok, what the fuck was that?

Story 6: easy beazy
5 stars. This one was morbid but really fucking awesome.

Story 7: testimonial
4 stars. This was depressing, but has a good point. I like things that have a good point to them so that gives this one extra stars. I feel bad for this guy (the character in the story).

Story 8: buster
3 stars. It was going somewhere but ended nowhere. Good idea, bad ending.

Story 9: (I think it’s called “finale”)
I don’t even have a star rating for this one because it felt like the beginning of a story. It didn’t have a conclusion or anything. I would’ve enjoyed the story if it kept going… or explained more… but it was like a chapter 1 of a whole novel and it was missing a lot of context.

Story ten: she took the air
1 star. I have no idea what this was even about.

Story 11: sticky tape
2 stars. I don’t get it. Why the tape?

Story 12: chateaubriand
2 stars. It was weird and random and had no depth. Could’ve been a cool story if it wasn’t so short. Much like most of these stories.

Story 13: the people
2 stars. Ugh. Another one that just seems like the beginning of a story and left me feeling like the story was incomplete.

Story 14: hue
5 stars. This was my favorite one. This one would make an amazing horror movie! The idea, anyway. If you took this idea and stretched it into a movie, it would be incredible!

In conclusion, a few of the stories were alright, most of them were very incomplete, and a few made no sense whatsoever.

Side note: the pictures in between stories were really cool.

XINO will be released January 23, 2024. Oni Press provided an early galley for review.

As a teen of the late 70's/early 80's, I grew up on sci-fi comic anthologies like DC's Timewarp, Marvel's Epic Illustrated and, of course, Heavy Metal magazine. Each issue would always bring something new, engaging, wild, and eye-opening. XINO carries on that proud tradition.

The fourteen stories here have a very hit-and-run nature to them. With an average of ten pages apieces, they have to get right to the point and yet still leave the reader with ideas to ponder (something all good short stories do). They provide tantalizing tastes to satisfy the reader's hunger for sci-fi goodness. We also get some otherworldly single-page pieces of art between stories, just to further tease our imaginations.

If you're looking for some interesting comic tales with a sci-fi flare from a wide array of rising comic talents, XINO might just be what you need.

Thanks to Netgalley for sending me an arc of this book! I absolutely loved the whole concept of this short story comic collection, some stories were definitely more engaging than others but I thought the illustrations were really captivating and I love the various styles depending on the kind of story it was