Chad’s Comments (group member since Oct 24, 2019)

Chad’s comments from the Edelweiss & Netgalley Reviewers group.

When to Mexico last week so not much in the way of ARCs, especially since my in-laws came along and my mother-in-law can't sit and chill.

Anfield Road ★★★★
Really good. It's about a teenager from Liverpool in the 80's. He's living with his grandmother after his parents abandoned him when he was a kid. His grandmother is really overbearing and he refers her as the Ogre. The city is obsessed with football even though he's never been to a game. All he wants to do is get into art school in London. It's a slice of life comic about growing up poor in the U.K. 30 years ago.

Killtopia: The Complete Collection ★★★
Even though there's a forward here by the author that he wanted to break some of the cliches of cyberpunk with this, I felt like it followed a lot of the same cliches. It's got all of the standard poor getting tromped on by the ultra rich here, kept in line by the hope of making it big in Killtopia where the winner of the battle royale strikes it rich while everyone else dies. There's also a robot faction that is being killed off due to a plague they unwittingly released on humans. It's not bad, but there's nothing new here either.

Star Trek: Defiant, Vol. 2: Another Piece of the Action ★★★
This new story taking place after the inclusion of the Day of Blood crossover feels like a prelude to something else. Worf and the crew of the Defiant are kicked out of Starfleet officially but operating in secret, going after characters seen across episodes of the various series. They are operating as bounty hunters in places where the Federation can't officially interfere. My issue is that they kind of just seem to be collecting characters instead of having any growth. It feels a bit stagnant.

Conan the Barbarian Vol. 3: The Age Unconquered ★★★
Conan gets thrown back in time where he meets up with Kull. Kull seems very bland and without a whole lot of characterization even though he's another Robert E. Howard creation. I'm not digging this run as much as Zub's time on Conan while at Marvel.

Star Trek, Vol. 3: Glass and Bone ★★★
Even though it's still an all-star crew of Star Trek characters, this is very much the Benjamin Sisko show. The crew of the Theseus gets stuck in the middle of this new race descended from dinosaurs and the Romulans. It all feels very cookie cutter Star Trek for the most part though. Like most things from Kelly and Lanzing, it's just OK.

Bristlemouth: A Cove Horror ★
Man, this was filled with filler. It was about one issue of comic worth of content stretched out to four 44 page issues. It's about these nurses who go out camping to relieve the stress of their jobs. Some weird creature starts biting them and turning them into creatures like itself. Much of it didn't make sense. The art was really bad and made it hard to follow as well. I couldn't tell what was happening a lot of the time.

Lotus Land ★★★
An OK future noir. It seems to get pretty dark but it's also very confusing as to why things were happening. Almost everything is left unexplained along the way. I was fine with the ambiguous ending but there were several other things I had questions about along the way. It often felt like they were pages or scenes missing.

Welcome Abbie.

Last week's ARCs.

The Terrifying Tales of Vivian Vance: A Graphic Novel ★★★
Not a bad monster story for junior high age kids. The backstory could be fleshed out more and there were numerous spelling mistakes which drove me nuts. But not bad. It's about a Veronica Mars type, who finds out these flesh-takers have infiltrated the community. There's some light body horror but nothing too gross.

Blacking Out ★★★
That sure does look like Keanu Reeves on the cover. He's nowhere to be found inside though and that's a good thing. This is a really dark book. It's about a washed up drunk former cop investigating the murder of a girl in a small Californian town. That ending. God! It certainly went down the darkest timeline. Works well as crime fiction.

Star Wars: Vader's Castle - The Deluxe Library Collection ★★★
Star Wars gets spooky with these Halloween tales for kids. The larger story revolves around some Rebels who wind up in Vader's castle on Mustafar. A story gets told each issue while the framing story progresses. There's nothing too scary here so it's an easy one for the kids to read at Halloween. There's enough fun stuff there for Star Wars fans of all ages though.

Magic Book One ★★★★
Some of this was intriguing, some of it confusing. Mackay could have done a better job of introducing this world. I mean it's based on a card game, you can't expect everyone to know the worldbuilding and history aspects of the game. (Yes, I know there are some novels and comics that were published elsewhere.) The sign of a good comic based on an existing property means I don't have to have read anything else to enjoy this and this doesn't do the best job of that. I did enjoy Ig Guara's art quite a bit. I did enjoy this more the second go around.

Book of Evil ★★★
When I saw Scott Snyder and Jock were working together again, I thought "Great, we're finally getting that long delayed sequel to Wytches." It's even put out by a comic book company, first on Comixology, then in print from Dark Horse. But nope. This isn't even a comic. It's prose, written like a journal, with illustrations from Jock.

It's about a dystopian future where 92% of people turn into psychopaths when they hit puberty. All of the kids work in a special part of the city that's cordoned off until they become "adults" and join the rest of the population. There's a group of 5 kids who yearn to escape and join a mythical place where there is a cure. The 2nd half of this the pacing feels off. Every time they get somewhere something immediately happens and they have to run again. Plus I didn't think the ending was very good. Again it felt very rushed without a real ending at all. Still, if you're a Scott Snyder fan it's not a bad read.

Where Monsters Lie ★★★
Ever wondered what movie killers do between killing sprees? Apparently they live in this gated community. Things go awry when one of them starts capturing and killing off boys at home and one gets away. Enter a nonstop gory killfest when the police are called in. There are analogues for most of your famous villains, Jason, Michael Myers, Leatherface, Chucky, etc. It does end in a nice twist for a volume 2. Dark Horse's insistence on 4 issue miniseries keeps this from being better than it could be though.

Last week's ARCs.

Medusa ★
This was completely incoherent. I had no idea what was happening for the most part. Something about Medusa acting as an action hero who fights some kind of infection. There's some other Greek mythological creatures involved too but their appearances didn't really make any sense either.

John Carpenter's Night Terrors: Blood of the Taken ★★
Two best friends get turned by an old vampire and meander through their new lives. The storytelling was a mess in this. Sian needs to learn some more from their parents (Tom Mandrake and Jan Duursema) on how to tell stories. Sian's art is considerably sloppier than their parents as well. I was also aggravated on how this ended on a random cliffhanger instead of telling a complete story too.

Satan's Swarm ★★
This was OK. Like a lot of Niles's stuff these days, it seemed more like an idea than a fully fleshed out story. It uses the trope of bringing a bunch of strangers to an island under false pretenses. Then it gets even weaker as we almost don't even bother with a plot, just some random kills.

Mortal Terror Volume 1 ★★★
Dracula but flipped on its ear. Everyone are now vampires living below London. Dracula is mortal and some kind of terrorist. Jonathan Harker and Lucy are vampire soldiers working to stop the humans. It's an interesting take. I do wish this had went farther than the normal 4 issues Dark Horse likes to collect in order to have more of a complete story.

Third Shift Society, Vol. 2 ★★★
A burgeoning witch and a guy with a pumpkin for a head investigate the supernatural. There's a larger plot going on to with these two demons up to no good. Not bad, especially for spooky season.

This Land Is Our Land: A Blue Beetle Story ★★★
Blue Beetle's origin story again. It's pretty much the same as the last 5 times it's been retold. This time though they added in Jaime dealing with white supremacists marching in Texas as well. I found it to be heavy handed but I get it. There are plenty of people living in border states that have been citizens for generations that are treated as lesser because they aren't white even though they ARE American citizens.

Star Wars Adventures: Tales from Vader's Castle ★★★
Star Wars goes spooky for Halloween. These are meant for children so nothing too scary here. A rebel crew crash lands on Mustafar and tells ghost stories while they try and escape. It's fun for kids but a little light for adults. Since these are ghost stories told by IDW for a Marvel property I don't think any of it can be considered canon.

Star Wars Adventures: Return to Vader's Castle ★★★
More spooky stories for kids set in the Star Wars universe. The main story is a continuation of volume 1. One of the crew from the first story got left behind and is being tortured by the Sith. Stories come out more or less naturally as the story progresses. Not bad, and certainly something the kids can read without having nightmares.

Star Wars Adventures: Ghosts of Vader's Castle ★★★
More spooky stories for kids set in the Star Wars universe. The framing sequence for these stories is a bit of a stretch to try and tie it into the first two. Great for kids, not bad for older kids and adults.

John Carpenter's Tales for a HalloweeNight: Volume 10 ★★★
Back for a tenth year, most of the same group of creators return for more spooky goodness. This year's crop isn't quite as good as some of the previous iterations but still worth a read for spooky season.

Last week's ARCs.

Blasfamous ★★
This book seems to have a hard time getting to a point or just going anywhere in general. It's a world where church is not only the most important thing but it's merged with celebrity. There's this singer who is at the top of her game but also miserable. She's immortal and being propped up by demons. They keep her around for 30 years or so, fake her death and start over again as another identity. A lot of my problems with the book is the sheer amount of mindnumbing dialogue. There's so many word bubbles that I'm honestly surprised you can see any of Andolfo's art. This DSTLRY company could certainly benefit from hiring some editors instead of just letting these creators do whatever they come up with.

Assassin's Apprentice, Volume 1 ★★★★
A really good adaptation. That should be no real surprise though. Jody Houser seems to be the queen of adapting media to comics. The bastard of royalty grows up neglected in the keep, eventually being trained to become the assassin for the king.

Bloodborne, Vol. 6: The Bleak Dominion ★★★
I thought this worked well even without having played the game. It's about two hunters seeking out a third green hunter who has set off on their own to a dungeon full of monsters. The Bleak part of the title is well earned. This book is dark.

Holler ★★★
A comic about starting a high school band in a small town in Virginia in the 90s. It's not bad. Sure it's small town stakes. But it does capture the hopelessness of going to school in a small town well and things like being made to go to church by your parents. You can tell Massie put a lot of himself into the story.

Underheist ★★
I thought the Laphams were better writers than this. It starts off about a heist gone wrong under Manhattan. Then it turns into some Jacob's Ladder scenario except I couldn't figure out what was actually happening through most of this. It's written so poorly. It's hard to believe this is from the same people who wrote Stray Bullets.

The Road: A Graphic Novel Adaptation ★★★★★
An excellent but extremely bleak adaptation. The artwork really brings out the hopelessness of this father and son duo on the road to get to the ocean. Why? I don't really know. Humanity is almost completely gone. Most of the pockets left have turned to cannibalism, keeping people like livestock. This father and son remain the "good guys", mainly by just hiding away from everyone else. The artwork tells most of the story with few passages of dialogue. And the artwork really conveys the starving bodies of these stragglers who remain alive. It's extremely well done. Just not one of those things I'll find myself returning to reread due to how it makes me feel.

Rare Flavours ★★★
Ram V. and Felipe Andrade return for a tour of the food of India, driven by a documentary by a failed director documenting the foodie adventures of a rakshasa. I didn't like this as much as some others. I found the panels on dishes kind of boring and began to skip them because they interfered with the actual story. I also didn't think Andrade's art was very good.

Last week's ARCs.

The Awl Vol 1 ★★
A manhwa about forming unions in Korea. It's about a grocery store chain that is trying to treat its employees so badly they quit. So they try and form a union. This thing is so dry, boring and dense though. There's also all these asides about the manager's time in the military that to me felt like a waste of time. The talks about how unions operate in Korea is so dense.

The Rebel Army (Shades of Magic - The Steel Prince) ★★
These 4 issues are so shallow and unimaginative. A pirate army is coming to conquer the cities the prince has been left in charge of. What will they do? Exactly what you'd expect. This could have been saved with a better artist. The art is so sloppy that I often couldn't tell who was who. It sucked any thrill out of reading it.

Andy Warhol: A Graphic Biography ★★★
A nice, quick drive by of Andy Warhol's life. It touches on a lot of Warhol's life but none of it in great detail. It really doesn't convey how odd of a person he was. You're better off searching the internet for old interviews to gather that on your own.

ATTABOY ★
This looks and feels like something created by a 10 year old boy. It's something to do with a video game that no one else remembers. There's no real story here or I couldn't follow it.

Time Traveler Tales ★
This was terribly written. It's about a kid randomly travelling through time and the watch that allows him to travel through time just keeps randomly disappearing for no reason. Then it turns out there's some other kid trying to steal his watch along with the watches of other travelers. Nothing is explained at all. It's a frustratingly bad read. It feels like a web comic that existed without an editor that Dark Horse published in desperation.

Last week's ARCs.

The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn, Vol. 1 ★★★★
This certainly evokes Hellboy and I mean that in a good way. There's no big right hand of doom that he uses to beat down the occult but this person with a floating skull for a head doesn't need it. He thinks things through a bit more maybe and there's a lot fewer pages of fisticuffs. That's not to say it's boring because it's certainly not. It just has a different aesthetic.

Father and Son Issues: The Secret History of Spider-Man ★★★★
This was just terrific. Ever wondered about the lives of John Romita Sr. and Jr. and their days working as artists for Marvel. If so, this is the book for you. I didn't realize Senior worked for DC for several years at DC drawing romance books before moving to Marvel and becoming THE Spider-Man artist. Or that Daredevil villain, Typhoid Mary, was based on JRJR's ex-wife. Then there's cool things like JRJR breaking a Guinness world record by drawing sketches for 48 hours straight. (Man I wish I could have gotten one of those.) The book also devotes a large part to Virginia, Senior's wife of 60+ years and how she also worked at Marvel until they both retired. I love this inside baseball look into comic book creators.

Don Coppola ★★★
Surprisingly not as good as Ameziane's comic about Quentin Tarantino's career. This mainly focused on Coppola making the Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now. Some passages like those about Coppola's Dracula was completely in prose which I hate to see in comics. Mainly there's just not any new or interesting information in this.

Canto III: Lionhearted ★★★★★
I love this story of the little clockwork knight with the does not quit attitude so much. In this third volume, Canto has determined he needs the help of their former slavers in order to defeat the Shrouded Man and seeks them out. Meanwhile, the Furies are looking for them as well to make sure that doesn't happen.

UFO Mushroom Invasion ★★
This feels dated because it was written in the 70's. It's about alien mushrooms that land on Earth and start growing on everything. I thought it was kind of stupid and very boring.

The Agent ★★★★
This combination of spies and magic has been done before but I thought this was done well with great art. The story is a serious take on spies with a magic bent mixed in.

Last week's ARCs.

Houses of the Unholy ★★★
Any collaboration between Brubaker and Phillips is worth a read. I just don't think this was one of their best. It's about the satanic panic that took place in the U.S. in the 80s. (I still remember being forced to watch the videos in church. It introduced me to lots of great music like The Cure which is probably not what they were going for when they made us watch it.)

Natalie Burns rescues people from cults. (The opening is excellent.) But when she was a child, she was part of the Satanic Six, a bunch of school children who faked that they were being taken and molested by a cult. Soon, an FBI agent arrives informing her that someone is murdering the six of them and takes her along on his investigation to protect her.

The premise is good. The execution is bogged down by two many flashbacks that all do the same thing.

Pathways: Chronicles of Tuvana Volume 1 ★★
A web comic that seems more concerned announcing each character's gender and sexual preferences than telling a good story. It's about a very conservative and secretive country that wants to keep other countries from exploring some shared ruins that may contain links to their gods. That whole part wasn't very clear. There's a whole lot of characters and I had a hard time keeping them and their sexual identities in mind, mostly because I didn't care.

Bloodshot ★★★
Valiant gets in on the prose novel game. It's a variation of the Valiant universe. Bloodshot is now a teenager and his dad is the original Bloodshot. He meets up with Generation Zero from the comics after getting his mind wiped and it more or less adheres to the comics from there except for the end. It was alright. It's not the best thing Van Lente has written, but nor is it the worst.

Scoop Vol. 2: Buried Leads ★★★
Scoop volume 2 picks up where volume 1 left off while delivering it's own mystery. I thought the mystery was a bit weak in this one, about who murdered some guy's wife. A lot of the fantastical stuff takes a back seat and I can imagine you'd be confused when the alligator men from volume 1 show up. Still the time travel story from volume 1 is lurking in the background and looks like it will rear its head again in volume 3. I do think this is a fun series and I'm looking forward to volume 3 with that ending.

Drafted: An Illustrated Memoir of a Veteran’s Service During the War in Vietnam ★★★★
A memoir from Rick Parker, longtime letterer and cartoonist for Marvel comics. He's written and drawn his first comic, about when he was drafted during the Vietnam War after flunking out of college. Somehow he never got sent overseas, getting transferred from base to base all across the U.S. It's a story about how naive and dumb he is as he entered the Service, like pretty much everyone is at that age. How he fumbled through 3 years in the military. It's really interesting.

Madman Library Edition Volume 6 ★★★
This is kind of the tangential Madman volume. It begins with some of Allred's earliest work. These two anthologies that are presented in a way that's very confusing. One of the stories eventually turns out to be an early, less refined version of Madman that is more about the G-Men from Hell. There's also a confusing vampire story and a story about a guy who is reliving his life. He's a young child through all of it even though he's drawn as an adult. It's kind of dumb. Then there's a 3D special that is just 2 earlier issues in 3D. A Mr. Gum short. And then X-Ray Robot which just came out 3 years ago. It has a Madman cameo at one point but it is it's own story which I quite liked. This volume is really only for Allred fanatics though (That's me!) and definitely not where you'd go to start checking out Madman.

The last 2 weeks' ARCs. Sorry, went to Las Vegas for a work conference last week.

Godzilla: War for Humanity ★★
This was not very good at all. The story seemed to take place back in the 70s era of Godzilla movies. It was terrible. The art while quite detailed couldn't get human proportions correct. It looked like a bunch of little people with limbs and heads larger than their bodies.

The Sunny-Luna Travelling Oracle ★
Wow, this is one of the most boring things I think I've ever read. It's some alt future where the Heartland of America is like the 1930's. There's this travelling duo who are looking for someone. Then there's a girl in this town that really likes books but I guess this other woman is giving her banned books but that's never mentioned until the end. This whole thing is unfortunately a slog with a story that only comes out at the very end. I think it's meant to be a dig at totalitarianism but it's written so poorly that I'm not really sure.

Feral Volume 1 ★★★
The creators of Stray Dogs are back, this time with animals infected with rabies. Our three main cats are house cats taken away by animal control when they crash in the woods. From there, they are on the run from rabies infected animals as the story plays out. This is actually an ongoing book so don't expect an ending here.

Beirut ★
This trilogy of stories about Beirut makes no sense without knowing the history of the city in great detail. If it had footnotes, they'd be as long as the actual book itself. The storytelling is extremely fragmented, really just little snippets. The first story was written 20 years before the other two and it shows. The artwork is rudimentary and the lettering is atrocious.

Ava'S Demon Vol. 2 ★★★
Our main characters are trapped on a cargo ship for the length of this. Time for 300 pages of exposition dumps. Some of it was fine. Some of it dragged like you wouldn't believe.

Somna ★★★
A gorgeous looking book about a neglected wife during the Salem witch trials. She's having erotic dreams where she's visited by a demon. Tula Lotay illustrates the dreams while Becky Cloonan does the reality parts. The story does where you'd expect it to from there. It was fine but not sure why it got all the Eisner love.

Deja Ross Speaks to Freaks ★★★
A middle school aged girl goes on a cross country vacation with her family. While on vacation she meets an urban legend and decides to interview them along he way to show how they are mistreated. However, no one else knows they are real until a dusty old prospector gets wind of that's she's doing. It's a decent Middle school aged book but it is clunky at times.

Enola Holmes: The Graphic Novels: The Case of the Missing Marquess, The Case of the Left-Handed Lady, and The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets ★★★
Graphic novel adaptations of the first 3 Enola Holmes novels. Enola is the younger sister of Sherlock Holmes. She's in London solving crimes while hiding from her 2 older brothers who think she needs to go to finishing school after their mother's disappearance. The mysteries can be slight but I got the feeling this is for younger audiences while the movies are more all ages. The art was highly stylized but it did grow on me.

Last week's ARCs.

Gunnerkrigg Court Volume 1 Limited Edition ★★★
Gunnerkrigg Court is a web comic about a mysterious girl who is sent to a Hogwarts type school after her mother passes. Her father has disappeared and while the school is supposed to be based on science there are plenty of ghosts and gods of the afterlife lingering around. It's a fun enough book even if it's short on details through these first 500+ pages. This edition is larger and combines the first 2 volumes of the earlier editions.

By Fire: The Jakob Hutter Story ★★
This was alright. It's about the Anabaptists who were persecuted for not believing in original sin. A ruler in Europe chased them around and had them burned at the stake for refusing to believe it. There's lots of filler pages in the art and it shows the group seeing demons in places which seems kind of dumb and subjective for something that is supposed to be a true story.

Side Quest: A Visual History of Roleplaying Games ★★★
This can be more about the history of games than the history of roleplaying games. Dungeons and Dragons isn't even talked about until page 120. It's still interesting. I just didn't need to know about games from a thousand years ago that had little to do with roleplaying or RPGs. I expected this to go more into various types of RPGs which it didn't at all. Dungeons and Dragons is the only one mentioned. If you are already a gamer, this probably isn't going to give much in the way of new information. If you're a novice, this would be a good entry point. Of course, your best way in would be to just talk to someone you know who is into gaming.

Murdervale ★★
This was a dumb half baked story about a couple in a rough patch. They go on a road trip and visit Murdervale where they are plagued by some kind of witch. They then keep coming back in 2 sequels. It was just all kinds of poor writing. This was one European comic that probably should have just stayed over there.

Blacksad: They All Fall Down · Part Two ★★★
Part two feels padded out so they could make this two parts. All of the heavy lifting happened in volume one. Still, I do really like Blacksad's anthropomorphic detective.

Whodunnit? ★★★
An anthropomorphic whodunnit. It was kind of odd that one of the characters could see ghosts in this given the rest was more of a traditional mystery. Still it's not bad.

Dark Spaces: Dungeon ★★★
A serial killer takes people and tortures them for years, burying them in torture chambers around the country. They finally get a lead when someone stumbles onto a hatch in the middle of the woods. Now his family may be in danger after reporting it to the FBI. Parts of this are quite good. Other parts felt skipped over in order to fit this into 5 issues. Part of the problem may be that Hayden Sherman is not an artist I really care for either.

Spinal Cord ★★★
A comic about a heavy metal band getting a record deal by travelling through these weird towns where they fight monsters. It reminded me of the video game Brutal Legend.

Goblin Volume 2: The Wolf and the Well ★★★
A solid fantasy adventure for people of all ages. A goblin and wolf have bonded and become friends. The problem is in this realm, there is a large bounty on wolves. After they are saved by an older woman and her troll servant, they go to a school for non-human children where things aren't all that they seem.

Last week's ARCs.

Total Suplex of the Heart ★★★
This was a nice surprise. I hate wrestling so I was pleasantly surprised to like this book. It also had more heart and humor in it than I expected. It's loosely based on the author's life. The main character is trying to make it writing for online websites and goes to write about the local wrestling circuit in New Jersey. She quickly gets embroiled in the life and it becomes about her circling around the wrestlers, male and female.

Fate: The Winx Saga Vol.1: Dark Destiny ★
Apparently, this is a continuation of a Netflix series that ended on a cliffhanger. This could be a master class on how not to write a licensed comic book though. There's no entry point for new readers. It starts up as if you were a superfan of the series. It just felt they were speaking nonsense for 100 pages. I picked up that it's some kind of Hogwarts for fairies, even though they just seem like normal magicians. I had no idea what was going on and still didn't by the end really either.

Earthdivers, Vol. 3: 1776 ★★
This go around, the Native American youth from the end of the world head back to the signing of the Declaration of Independence to try and alter it slightly to include all races and genders and not just land owning white men who are created equal. This thing gets really complicated though and I didn't know what was happening half the time. The constant flipping back and forth between 1776 and 2112 made it really difficult to follow. The other thing I didn't like is that this ended with an oversized issue to clean everything up that wasn't sold on its own. I'd be really pissed if I bought this in singles and had to buy this whole trade just to read the final issue.

Singularity ★
To be honest this seemed like a waste of time. It was created as a companion to Bear McCready's new concept album. It's about a person that keeps getting recreated and living lives that keep getting cut short by the Red and this golden woman only for it to start all over again. Just go read one of DC's many Crisis events instead. They've done all this much better. (Never thought I'd say that.)

Monsters Are My Business ★★★
Your standard dystopian future comic. Demons have invaded the Earth. A tough guy, a koala with a chain saw and a necromancer fight some demons. Bunn seems to be going down the Mark Millar road of making comics these days. It's more elevator pitches than fleshed out and well thought out comics.

Arkangel ★★★

For the latest Sigma Force novel, Tucker and Cain return with a new dog Marco in training. This time the team is out to find Hyperborea up in the Arctic. Of course Valya is back in the picture as well. After 18 of these novels, they are starting to get a bit formulaic. I enjoy them still. It's just that no one ever really seems in peril these days as the same characters are kicking around in each book and it tends to be the same schtick. They have to find some lost ancient area that also has something foreboding there and at the end it's going to get destroyed just as they finally discover it.

Jane Jet: Book One - Nuclear Shadows ★★★★
This was actually pretty good. It's based on some public domain characters, Rocket Man and Rocket Girl. After WWII, Jane Jet as she's known now has finally had enough of her abusive husband. She goes on the run after their confrontation and is pursued by other science heroes of the fifties.

Last week's ARCs.

Sparks Volume 1: Portals ★★
A fluffy webcomic about two satyrs in training who may fall for one another in this LGBTQIA+ story.

Beyond Mortal ★★★
This world's version of the Justice League fights some Elder Gods as they begin to destroy the Earth. Nothing new here but well done. Luckert is an underrated artist.

Skinner ★★★
A sci-fi channel level horror story about some influencers who crash land in Canada and come across a killer. I almost immediately wanted them all to die. There's nothing special to this. It's all sizzle at three issues. I'm also not sure why one of the influencers brought their dog. That just seemed like the dumbest thing ever.

Moebius Library: The Major ★
The art is fine but this story is just gibberish. I couldn't follow it at all. Maybe it's a translation thing. Maybe it's just too existential for me to pay enough attention.

Silk Cotton ★★★
This wasn't bad. It does rely on the reader knowing an awful lot about African and Caribbean mythology and horror. The art's technically pretty good. It doesn't always tell the story well though. Still, if you're looking for something different, this just may be it.

Navigating With You ★★★★
A queer romance between the two new girls at a high school in the South. Whitley handles this so well. But that shouldn't be any surprise. He's written a ton of great comics. Neesha has CP and stands up for herself like most New Yorkers. Gabby is a surfer girl from Florida. They bond over a manga they both never finished.

Eden ★★
Well I can certainly see why this screenplay was unproduced. If you think about it at all, none of it makes any sense. It's about a family of criminals in the near future where the world is severely overpopulated and dying. They trick their way onto a generational ship where they find out things aren't what they seem to be. It took me as long as it took to read the blurb about the comic to figure out what this would actually be about. Then it just gets worse and worse as Sebela keeps trying to put artificial twists in this.

Alexander wrote: "Also, no characters.."

There's Keanu. Do you need anyone else?

Alexander wrote: "On the other hand, barely anything happens in them, so it probably doesn't matter!"

Lots of people get dismembered in them. But if you mean in ways of plot, you are correct. Just spout some gibberish that means nothing and move on.

Last week's ARCs.

Space Usagi: Death and Honor ★★★★
The rare in color Usagi even if it is about his descendant instead of himself. It's got everything you expect in a Usagi Yojimbo comic, just set in space and in full color.

Canto Volume 3: Tales of the Unnamed World ★★★★
Two smaller stories. More of a volume 2.5 than a volume 3. I will just say that I love this series. Canto is just full of so much heart. It gives off strong Wizard of Oz vibes. This is the series that made me follow anything Booher does.

The Deviant Vol. 1 ★★★
The first half of Tynion's story about a Christmas serial killer who strings people up on Christmas trees. It happened 50 years ago and a writer is investigating the killings for a story. It's a bit of a slow burn and ends on a cliffhanger. Thankfully it's only 9 issues so there's just one other volume to wait on and see if Tynion sticks the landing.

Space-Mullet Volume 1: One Gamble at a Time ★★★
If you think you may have read this before, well you may actually have. This started off as a web comic back in 2017 and probably finally made it to print because of Johnson's popularity these days. This is your kind of by the numbers, down on your luck, space comic. The two main characters are space truckers. One is hiding out from a military he went AWOL from. The other is an alien that certain planets look down upon.

Last week's ARCs.

Dandelion ★★
Disjointed vignettes about a dystopian near future where the poor are given housing in the sky that floats on the breeze like dandelion seeds. The caveat is that they give up their citizenship to any country and can never return to Earth. There's just not enough story here to keep me interested.

Stranger Things: The Voyage ★★★
The rare Stranger Things comic from Dark Horse with an actual story instead of fluff. Russians have hitched a ride on a cargo ship to go back to Russia. They've also snuck a demigorgon aboard which of course gets loose and starts killing people.

Eerie Archives, Vol. 5 ★★★
Fun stories of the macabre from the 60's. These collections are a lot of fun and run the gamut from fantasy to horror to sci-fi.

Dracula Book 1: The Impaler ★★★
Wagner and Jones attempt at adding to Dracula's lore, fleshing out things that aren't explained in the original novel. This is about how Dracula gets his powers, studying at Satan's teat to become the most evil and powerful he can become.

Borealis ★★★
This was alright. It felt very rushed with only 3 issues and left a lot open. It's about an Inuit woman who is a cop. She gets sent back to her home town to catch the local gang there. Meanwhile there's some kind of tribal supernatural thing going on with her too.

Census ★★★
A slacker living in New York takes a job as a census taker, except it turns out this census is for supernatural beings living in the 5 boroughs. Irreverent and humorous.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla: The Hidden Codex ★★★
Not bad. A monk is set free after being captured by some Vikings. He becomes part of a secret society when his brother goes missing. Some of the more mystical stuff doesn't make a lot of sense but it starts off pretty strong.

Subgenre ★★★
A meta story about a private detective who then starts jumping into a fantasy world and back. You can tell that Kindt thinks this is way more clever than it is.

The Change ★★★
For a comic book written by a celebrity, this is the rare one that doesn't suck. The main character is clearly supposed to be Whoopi Goldberg. She's going through menopause and randomly starts getting powers as the book progresses. It's surprisingly pretty funny as I've never been a fan of hers. I have nothing against her, just not my thing. Her husband is running for State Senator in New York City. The bad guy is very undeveloped. I'm surprised he wasn't sporting a mustache he twirled. The book here is all setup and ends just as its really beginning.

Hellsing, Vol. 8 ★★
Plenty of action in this. Too bad it doesn't really flow together. I couldn't tell what was supposed to be happening half the time. A bunch of catholic priests in Klan robes can't getting stabbed with dozens of spears randomly. That was interspersed between all the fighting between Alucard, Nazi vampires and crazed Catholic priests.

Last week's ARCs after a trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Grendel: Devil by the Deed, Master's Edition ★★★★★
This new version of Devil by the Deed is terrific. The original appeared as backups in Mage and totaled only about 40 pages. Wagner has completely redone this with new artwork (It’s around 120 pages now). It maintains the feel of the original. It’s still illustrated prose. It’s supposed to be a biography of Grendel written by his ward’s daughter years later. The artwork is just gorgeous and Matt’s son Brennan does a bang up job coloring this solely in black, white and red.

Shades of Magic Vol. 2: Night of Knives ★★★
Better than volume 1. They are cool prequel stories but could have been better with an expansion from 4 to 6 issues.

Japan's Longest Day: A Graphic Novel About the End of WWII: Intrigue, Treason and Emperor Hirohito's Fateful Decision to Surrender ★★
This is an interesting story. It's about the last few days before the end of World War II in Japan and the attempted coup by hardliners who wanted every man, woman and child in Japan to fight to the death. My problem is that it's hard to follow. The art is good. But there's a gazillion different people in it, most of which look very similar so it's difficult to keep track of who is who. There's also some translation issues that made it more difficult to follow.

The Art (and Many Other Mistakes) of Eric Powell ★★★★★
Not a comic but a look at the creator of The Goon's artwork. This was great. Lots of original art and sketches. Powell's trademark humor written by a fake author who thinks Powell is an overrated hack who failed his way into an art career. I love the oversized nature. The book is about the size of an old school record and really showcases Powell's art.

Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? ★★★★
The true story of one of America's first mass murderers. Schechter is a true crime writer and I got the impression that this is an adaptation of one of his books by Eric Powell. The book goes through Gein's entire life and you can easily see how he was an inspiration for Psycho with his verbally abusive relationship with his mother. Later on, when the book gets extremely graphic after he is caught you'll see how he also influenced The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs as well.