Rene Engström’s Anders Loves Maria is filled with language, nudity, and indecent everyday situations that are bound to offend many people, and it has soured the words of critics whose blogging I have read. It is also a hybrid work of English infused with occasional Swedish that has been an odyssey in of itself to follow, and its concoction of honestly confronted human confusion tinged with with just enough landmarks and words to designate Sweden as the locale made this a comic more or less targeted at me. Most importantly, however, Anders Loves Maria can now upon its ending count itself among a small but growing smattering of true graphic novels that have originated on the web, been created for the web, and are unique products of the webcomic creative process.

Over the course of a three-and-a-half-year history, the artwork has evolved, stuttered, and modulated with Engström’s own abilities, experimentations and biographical blogging, which is a dimension of the storytelling process that just doesn’t exist in the same way outside of webcomics. Seeing her bring the project and story to its planned point of completion felt like it reached a destination at the close of an extended transit period, and by those metrics of success I can’t see how anyone could regret investing themselves in Anders Loves Maria’s ongoing drama and miniature comedies surrounding two young lovers and a pregnancy neither of them were ready to deal with.

The character relationships twist and gnarl at a degree comparable to most Wes Anderson movies (even if motivations and eccentricities aren’t always as overtly stated), and Engström’s ability to ratchet them into such uncomfortable yet compelling places is commendable. Her ultimate accomplishment, though, comes in pulling them through to the narrative’s close with a few years of discernible aging. I don’t want to spoil anything on this one for people who haven’t read the ending, but it elicits the sensation of your heart turning into a medicine ball and falling about six stories.

Any message board trolls who have ever doubted the talents of Darick Robertson should take a long hard look at this one-shot that came out from Dark Horse in January. Conan the Cimmerian: The Weight of the Crown is a 40-page self-contained tale both written and drawn by the Transmetropolitan and Boys artist, and his ability to depict brutality with the force, motion and mass of a Jackson Pollock canvas painted in ink and blood is impressive enough. What’s even more apparent about this release, though, is how well this story works as a Conan short.

The morality and typical fable attributes of a fantasy tale don’t apply to the Conan universe, and in a way it’s like a prehistoric noir tale in that after Conan slays a corrupt king and confronts the surviving prince after receiving the crown to the kingdom, he ponders over a period of time what the violence and leadership role actually mean. I don’t want to spoil the conclusion for anyone, but the book ends without any tidied-up soul-mending moments of resolution. No one makes any discoveries that alter their lives. The prince may, in the end, but that’s doubtful given his character. Rather, the purpose of the story is mostly to get inside what drives Conan and where he searches for fulfillment.

I appreciate it when a book doesn’t try to moralize, but presents a character dilemma in the terms of its culture, and this one places a lot of trust in the reader to make judgments and assessments about where a compass of right and wrong points between its covers.

There was a distinct up-shift in story density and quality going from Batman and Robin #6 to issue #7. Watching the creative team from Seaguy reunite was a pleasure in and of itself, but the book as a whole just feels like a much better all-around product and closer to what I originally expected from this series.

The new “Blackest Knight” arc cuts to the chase about Dick Grayson’s plans to resurrect Bruce Wayne and brings a truly Morrisonian scale Batman cast into the action. The number of characters Grant Morrison can keep spinning and use assertively during large stories almost always impresses me. Looking at this issue, though, that strength spotlights my lingering problem with Batman and Robin right now, which is that the bigger tale playing out hasn’t had all that much continuity or epic of a tone as I hoped to see. Though Talia has popped up from time to time and Damian is in critical condition, the other villains and events haven’t found their places in the greater arc going on as seemed to happen during every other issue of New X-Men. And I feel bad constantly comparing Batman and Robin to New X-Men, but it’s the standard he’s proven himself capable of reaching in regards to leveraging continuity in new and interesting ways while forming a definitive new era in a series’ canon. My expectations have modulated a bit since he began writing Batman, and right now I’m anticipating a scattershot set of concepts like Damian and the Black Glove to be his legacy when all is said and done.

Without spoiling anything this time around, the ending is a great way to get things underway for “Blackest Knight.” The combination of Cameron Stewart’s artwork and Morrison’s plot implying more meaningful consequences ahead thanks to Dick’s actions made #7 feel like the book has found much steadier footing. My hope is that it can turn that success into a stride with #8.