Dean Haspiel

"Issue #1 of The Fox still had one foot firmly planted in a reality readers could hold onto, but opening the cover on Issue #2 revealed this image and a promise that all bets were off. For the reader, it’s sink or swim from this point onward into the psychedelic and shifting realities of a bizarre psychological adventure in the mind of a hero divided against himself. The use of the Beatles lyrics was a move so ingenious that I’m still trying to process the second shift in the narrative here where the Fox clarifies that these kind of realities are both terrifying and his “life”. Passalaqua’s colors are saturated and cloying like the overpowering world the Fox is entering and resisting. In combination, Haspiel’s linework, the colors, and the monologue strike the reader as being entirely alien, strange, and disorienting. For me, a panel that asserts the strangeness comics are capable of represents the ongoing vitality of the medium." --Hannah Means-Shannon

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/12/31/the-years-best-comics-panels-2013/

"The Fox is all-out super-hero action with all the joy and energy and thrills and spills that you want in a comic book. It's a shot of the good stuff, straight no chaser, with plenty of boldness and flash that will have you smiling but none of that annoying angst that will bring you down.

I was just talking with my friend Mike, who often laments that there are too few comics on the stands that are truly joyful. He sounded excited when I mentioned The Fox and praised Dean Haspiel's wonderfully animated figure drawing, the charming way that Haspiel creates the odd creatures, and the smartly rendered layouts that he creates. Haspiel's art is a perfect fit for this book – bright, animated, energetic, and always well composed with the Fox at the center of the frame."

Read the rest of the review here:
http://www.comicsbulletin.com/reviews/6404/singles-going-steady-123113-ringing-in-the-new/

"I don’t think that anyone could have predicted that Red Circle Comics, and Archie Comics in general would have become the breakaway trendsetters of New York Comic Con in 2013, though those who were hearing rumors about The Fox and keeping their eye out for other Archie developments might have hoped, if not counted on that kind of sudden confluence of new approaches. The Fox is here in our “best of” list not because it sold out in its first issue very rapidly, nor because it looks so radically different from any other comic on the shelves this autumn, but because it represents something very rare in mainstream comics: a company giving what amounts to free reign to a strange idea passionately believed in by a creative team. A Silver Age hero revamped and given the energy rarely evidenced in “retro” properties that are often handled a little too sentimentally, the Fox combines many of the elements of a classic hero, but he faces a post-modern, often crippling rejection of a hero role. All this is handled lightly in Haspiel’s non-stop motion style, making the book simply a pleasure to look at. And the storyline is blissfully unencumbered by that bane of resurrected properties: heavy self-awareness of its own place in comics history. For that reason, each panel of the book feels fresh and new. The colors buck the trend, too, and aren’t even self-conscious enough to be called “hipster”. They are a return to the sensibilities of Pop Art at its height and a celebration of the role of tone and hue as a key part of comic storytelling."-- Hannah Means-Shannon

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/12/31/bleeding-cools-top-10-comics-of-2013