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

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

A lot of lingering arcs some of which are already out. C'est la vie.

Me the People ★★★
A bunch of editorial cartoons skewering the first two years of the Trump administration. These are some powerful images. Pia Guerra of Y the Last Man fame doesn't hold back.

Perdy Volume 1 ★
This was terrible. It's a European comic set in the Old West that for some reason Image reprinted. It's about this woman who just got out of prison who is obsessed with sex and crime. She goes to find her daughter who has grown up on her own. They get in this competition over a French doctor in this small town. Perdy's main deal is that she has huge boobs. She even uses them to suffocate someone at some point. The art is awful. It looks like the artist of Ziggy made a bawdy Western.

The Black Bull of Norroway ★★★
This is supposed to be based on some Scottish folklore I haven't come across before. A girl has her fortune told that one day she'll marry a bull and she goes with it. When he arrives when she's older, she's already sold off all the livestock and is ready to hit the road. She discovers he has been cursed along with others in the court. It's a bit maddening how short in information the girl is even though she keeps chugging along with this bull.

Dry County ★★
A complete dud of a mystery. The only part of this mystery I cared about was how to get my time back. It's about a guy who starts dating a girl who is kidnapped and then gets absolutely nowhere trying to locate her.

Eternal Empire, Vol. 2 ★★
Better than the first volume but not by much. This seems like the kind of nonsense a cult would give its members about the true ancient history of the world with people descended from dragons and other assorted horseshit.

The Pervert ★★★
A series of vignettes about a transsexual prostitute in Seattle. They are trying to support their transition through being a nurse and a prostitute which seemed a bit contradictory since she has all kinds of unprotected sex. The jump between vignettes made this feel really disjointed at times.

Cyber Force: Awakening, Volume 1 ★★★
A reboot of Cyber Force that also involves Aphrodite. That's where it gets super confusing. I'm not sure what's going on with her involvement. It appears there's also time travel involved.

The Dead Hand, Vol 1: Cold War Relics ★★★★
I thought this was a pretty cool story of something someone would have actually came up with during the Cold War. It's definitely going to draw a lot of comparisons to Ed Brubaker's and Steve Epting's comics. Think The Truman Show if it had to do with spies.

Rose, Vol. 2: Ghosts ★★★
The plot in this book moves so slowly. This 15 issues series could have probably been condensed into half the issues and been a better book. Also, the women in this book are drawn with barely any clothes on. Very odd for a book written by a woman.

Dissonance, Vol. 1 ★
Sami Basri's art is always welcome but this overwritten and yet halfbaked story is the pits. Some aliens have given Earth technology and some people merge with these aliens because the author says we have to. There's a secret cabal running the world and one alien that I guess is worse than the others. I don't even feel like explaining any further because this thing sucks.

VS, Vol. 1 ★★
The only reason to check this is out is for Esad Ribic's terrific art. The story is bunk. It's your standard war has been taken over by corporations riff, complete with stoppages in the fighting for commercials.

Maestros ★★★★★
I can't believe I let this slip past me for this long. Steve Skroce doesn't do many comics these days but when he does they are terrific. This is about Will, a banished magician who becomes the new Maestro of a magical kingdom when his father and his many wives and kids are all wiped out. It's OK though because his father was a POS. Will grew up on Earth and wants to induce positive changes. The only thing is the people who killed his father are coming after him as well. This book is not for kids.

Underwinter: Queen of Spirits ★★
Follows two paramedics as they try and help the people in a building where a bomb went off. Meanwhile the dead are trying to decide to go meet this death creature for help or not. Lots of flowery language that doesn't say anything.

Ice Cream Man, Volume 2: Strange Neapolitan ★★★
This is OK. I haven't found the love for this series that others have. The horror in these stand alone issues feels more like random things happening than a focused story.

The Fade Out, Act One ★★★★
No one does comic book noir like Brubaker and Phillips. It's about a screenwriter who has had writer's block since the War. He secretly partners with someone who has been blackballed for being a communist. He realizes some shady things are going on when the star of his latest movie is murdered and covered up.

The Fade Out, Act Two ★★★★
Great stuff. Go read it instead of letting me spoil it.

The Hundredth Voice ★★
When I saw the only other creator listed other than the writer / artist was a sensitivity reader, I got a little nervous but it was fine. It's a comic for probably middle school kids about a vocal school on an island off England shortly after World War I. It seems like a lightened up take on Faust for kids.

Star Wars: Tales from the Death Star ★★★
Four spooky stories set on the Death Stars for Halloween.

Tomahawk Angel Volume 1 ★★★★
A solid new manga set in Greece in the new future. A girl with no memory wakes up in a world overrun by Kaiju. We find out what's happening as Valerie does. I was intrigued. Seems like a combination of Kaiju and maybe a Resident Evil type thing.

All Eight Eyes ★★★
Some homeless people fight giant spiders in New York City. There's not much to the concept other than that.

Macbeth: A Tale of Horror ★★★
Macbeth is the Shakespeare story I'd choose if I had to give it a horror slant. I mean, it honestly has one to begin with, with all of the witches and macabre visions in it already. The creators just expand upon it while maintaining a Shakespearian vibe.

Dying Light: Stories From the Dying City ★★★
Some solid comics of humans trying to survive in a world of zombies as a prequel to the video game Dying Light 2.

Brooms ★★★
A story set in the 1930's South. Everything is the same as normal history except there is magic. Given that everything else is the same, minorities are not allowed to practice magic just like the rest of the racist practices of the time period. So they have underground broom races like the underground race circuits of the time period.

Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher: The Lesser Evil ★★★
The Witcher goes up against a darker version of Snow White in this story about a wizard hiding in his tower because Snow White is hunting him down.

Dungeons & Dragons: Cutter ★★
Two half-drow siblings fight over a cursed blade. It's interesting at first but then spins its wheels in the middle issues to draw this out to 5 issues.

Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt - Neverwinter Tales ★★★
An original Drizzt comic that doesn't really stand on its own. Without having read the Neverwinter stories, it's hard sailing and seemingly not much happens. Drizzt and his companion search for a vampire while said vampire dwarf refuses to kill anything other than monsters.

Planeta Blu: Rise of Agoo ★
This was incredibly bad. Poor story, poor art, ruddy coloring. It's about 4 kids who are on a school trip when some guys show up to kill them. They are wading in the ocean off Massachusetts, talking about cooling off when they get home even though they are standing in the ocean when they are saved by dolphins. All of a sudden the dolphins are talking and these kids are breathing underwater. They are taken to Atlantis to a conclave of talking animals at the bottom of the ocean where they learn some other some guy has poisoned 90% of humanity and is going to launch nuclear weapons. None of this makes any sense. Seeing talking bears at the bottom of the ocean is a real head scratcher.

The Matriarchs ★★
A comic about a bunch of vampire / snake women operating in secret. Needs to be a little less obtuse about what's going on, but has some potential.

Hellboy in Love ★★★
Back in 1979, Hellboy met and fell for for an archaeologist, Anastasia Brumfield. This details their adventures as their relationship develops. She's on the hunt for evidence of some ancient secret society.

Catching up on some arcs.

Men of Wrath ★★★★
This may be Aaron's bleakest story yet. It's about the Rath family and the cycle of violence passed from father to son. Each issue begins with the violence committed by another generation of Rath men. Ira Wrath is one of the baddest hitmen in the South. The book begins with him murdering an entire family. His latest job is to kill his estranged son who is a fuck up with a pregnant girlfriend.

Grendel Omnibus, Vol. 4: Prime ★★★★
This contains all of the stories with Grendel Prime. He's this bad ass cyborg Grendel who is the preeminent Grendel. The two big main parts are Grendel: War Child and Grendel: Past Prime plus a couple of smaller stories. In War Child Grendel Prime rescues the boy who will be the next Khan from his crazy mother and most of the book is spent on the run. Past Prime is actually a prose novel by Greg Rucka with illustrations from Matt Wagner. It's about a true Grendel from War Child who is on a quest to find the missing Grendel Prime. They are both terrific.

The Forged Vol. 1 ★★★★
Badass cloned women soldiers in mech suits fighting giant alien worms. Does it get any better than this scenario?

Prism Stalker, Vol. 1 ★★★
A sci-fi comic about a girl from a downtrodden people who is chosen for a school where she can become some kind of warrior. There's a lot of interesting visuals but the storytelling is often really hard to follow.

Wytches: Bad Egg Halloween Special ★★★★
A prequel to Wytches about a kid and his mom who are wytch hunters. Wytches are very different than your traditional witches and I'm here for it.

Flavor, Vol. 1 ★★★
A nice setup for a world that revolves around cooking, with a main character that I guess can make killer crepes. Unfortunately, this is all setup for a future volume that probably isn't happening now that it's been 4 years.

The Hchom Book ★
Even though Image put this out, it's not a comic. It's just little blurbs about the author's favorite foods and clothes with the occasional little goblin drawing peeking out along with drawing of her food or outfits. It was completely pointless and boring.

Twisted Romance ★★
Twisted romance that wasn't at all twisted. It was all very bland. You could definitely tell there was some indie creators involved. Some of the artwork was not at all good.

Paradiso, Vol. 1: Essential Singularity ★★★
I only have half an idea of what's happening yet I still dig it. It's a post apocalypse comic where technology is defunct except in this one city that no one can get into, Paradiso. We only get a little glimpse in this city of floating skyscrapers and basically no people other than a few robotic guardians. I hope things are explained better in the back half of this.

Paradiso, Vol. 2: Dark Dwellers ★★
Instead of answering all of these many questions, Ram V. raised in volume 1, we go off on a tangent with the Dark Dwellers that feels like an OK Star Trek episode. So the series just abruptly ends with zero answers to what is going on. Grrr!

Bloodstrike: Brutalists ★★
I get what Fiffe was trying to do here by filling in the gaps of some missing comics in the Bloodstrike run, but those issues are missing because Rob Liefeld's Extreme Studios was poorly run and the comic was terrible.

Death Or Glory Vol. 1 ★★★★
Glory's dad needs a new liver. She grew up an off the grid trucker princess with a penchant for badass driving. Enter her ex-husband who is selling drugs and she intends to rob. Don't stop too long to think about this one. The plot is bananas with all kinds of kooky and despicable characters. It's nonstop balls to the walls action with Bengal providing some killer artwork.

Hellboy: The Silver Lantern Club ★★★
This isn't really a Hellboy book. He only appears in the framing sequence of each issue. It's the 1950's. Hellboy and the Professor are meeting his uncle at the pub to hear old stories of the Silver Lantern Club. So it's really a Sir Edward Grey and Sarah Jewell story in disguise.

Rivers Of London: Deadly Ever After ★★★
At this point we are just farming out comics for minor characters and Aaronovitch isn't even writing it. In this case it's the twin daughters of the river god. They are vapid and uninteresting as they investigate this case where people's wishes are coming true. I'd say this is for completists only.

Green Monk: Blood of the Martyrs ★★★
An orphaned baby is raised by monks. As he grows up, he begins to have fantastical visions that go on for dozens of pages. I personally thought it was too much as this ends where the real story should be starting. Dayton does a great job of showing over telling as the words are minimal.

Isola, Vol. 1 ★★★
This book is filled with lush, gorgeous artwork by Karl Kershl and Msassyk. It's like looking at a Studio Ghilbi cartoon. Unfortunately, Brenden Fletcher's story can't keep up with the artwork. I had no idea what was happening half the time, you can't tell when we're in a dream sequence or flashback. I started getting frustrated because nothing is explained well.

Crude Vol. 1 ★★
The art certainly doesn't help this book. A lot of the characters looked the same. It's about a retired hitman in Russia who has a poor relationship with his son. His son leaves to find work in a company town (which is bad but aren't sure why.) Year later he returns in a body bag and the father heads there for vengeance.

Some arcs I read last week.

Parasomnia Volume 2: The Dreaming God ★
Makes even less sense than the first volume. Now we've moved into some kind of cyberpunk dream world. Nothing is explained. Nothing makes any sense. This is Cullen Bunn at his worst.

Dune: The Official Movie Graphic Novel ★★★★
A straight up adaptation of the new film version. All of the character likenesses are spot on. This isn't going to add anything new as there's no additional scenes but it does the movie and book justice.

Justice: A Tale of the Nepali Civil War ★★
This isn't a bad story, it's just too short to be a very interesting one either. The author tries to make it end on a cliffhanger so draws it out to where not much happens until the every end and then we have to wait for at least one more book for the rest of the story.

Kriss: The Gift of Wrath ★★★★
The story of a young boy, found as a babe, and raised in a village where no one likes him, except Anja, the blacksmith's daughter. When a tiger attacks the village he goes out and kills it. That's when he starts seeing visions of old dark gods that fuel his power and rage.

Some arcs I read last week.
God Complex, Vol. 1: Dogma ★★★
A cyperpunk series about a police officer investigating 3 murders of a religious faction. The world is ruled by some version of the Greek gods with cool character designs. The problem is it moves way too slowly and it's really dense. These 6 issues are really the intro to the series and that looks like all we'll get as this was published in 2018 and never went anywhere else.

Chronicles of Hate Book 1 & 2 ★
This is fine if you are okay with random, bloody battles and no explanation of what's going on. The art is so dark and murky that's it's often difficult to tell what's happening.

The Red Hook Volume 1: New Brooklyn ★★★
This is a comic where if you don't know anything about Brooklyn or New York in general you might not get it. Most of the characters are named after places in Brooklyn, including the Red Hook himself, Benson Hurst, the Green Point, etc. Brooklyn secedes from the Union and all of its bridges roll up and tunnels flood as if Brooklyn is alive anthropomorphically. It's all very Silver Age and Jack Kirbyian in its execution.

It Will All Hurt ★
This makes about as much sense as a bunch of monkeys banging away at a typewriter would. Then you compound it with the Godawful hand lettering and get quite the clusterfuck. There are some great illustrations. If you look at this purely as an art book, you may get more out of it.

A Girl Called Echo Omnibus ★★★
Turns out America isn't the only country to commit crimes against their indigenous people. Canada has a poor track record as well. This follows a girl of Métis heritage as she learns about the history of her people in Canada throughout the Pemmican Wars and beyond. It's told in the present but as she gets in the story with each installment, she's pulled into the past reliving it with the people of the time period.

Barbaric Vol. 2: Axe to Grind ★★★★
Not the most original fantasy series, but it may be the most fun one. Owen and his talking cursed axe are hilarious. This one expands the world as an old friend partners with Owen and Soren as an old foe of Owen's returns.

Break Out ★★★★
A heist story about an Earth where flying cubes have arrived that abduct kids between the ages of 10 and 20. When the main characters little brother gets abducted, he decides to do something about it and puts together a team of kids from his high school to get him back.

Murky World ★★
The art in this is just plain fugly. The proportions are all exaggerated and wrong. Corben's art is typically better than this. The fantasy world he's created is fine.

Elixir ★★★
A slapdash world that's all about the art. It's a world dominated by science but there's this Macguffin elixir that can convert everything to magic.

Indeh: A Story of the Apache Wars ★★★
A story of the Apache Wars from the view of the Apache. America has committed a great many atrocities against Native Americans since becoming a country. This is another one. It's a shame this wasn't made into the film Ethan Hawke was going for because then a more polished writer could have cleaned up the unclear parts of this book. There were times where I was lost as to who was who early on and then times where scene changes seemed to leave parts of the story out. Where the story really shines is in Greg Ruth's terrific black and white art.

Lot 13 ★★★
Another one of those Steve Niles stories where he doesn't really want to explain anything. This one is about a family that somehow ends up in a haunted apartment building.

Fortune and Glory: A True Hollywood Comic Book Story ★★★
Brian Michael Bendis gives us a humorous, first-hand account of his initial foray into Hollywood. This was from when Bendis was still an indie darling, before he become the comics juggernaut he is today.

The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot ★★★
Originally published back in 1995, long before it became a cartoon, this was a take on the Godzilla story. With this giant kaiju that absorbed the people of Japan turning them into monsters. It's a Lovecraftian take on it. Geof Darrow brings it on art while Frank Miller drones on and on with the exposition.

Occulted ★★★★
The true story of a young girl raised in a cult and how she came through it.

Another slew of arcs from the past week.

The Daughters of Salem: How we sent our children to their deaths: Part 1★★
A sensationalized version of the Salem Witch Trials (Although we don't get to any trials in part 1.) It's honestly kind of boring.

Memories of a Crappy Pooch★★
A strange story about an old woman whose dog dies in an oddball accident. Then it's about her friends trying to comfort her and we get some flashbacks into her life that are somewhat difficult to put in the proper timeline.

White Claw - Volume 1: The Egg of the Dragon Queen★★★
This may be titled White Claw but the main character of this first volume was the rogue, Taho the Quick. He's part of a dragon clan that kills dragons and after wounding a dragon is tasked with carrying a dragon egg to the rest of the dragons.

Vizilsan: Blue Rabbit's Crystal★
Oof! This was real bad. I'm not sure why this even became a comic. There's so much text. It's written as prose and the art is bad. Real bad. Some generic fantasy claptrap that I couldn't be bothered to keep up with. Reads like someone wrote some fan service thing like Turkish Star Wars. (That's a real thing. Get drunk and watch it in a MST3K way. It's beyond awful.)

Rage★★
An overlong story about an extremely unlikable boxer from the French projects rising to fame. It's the same story you've seen in Rocky with nothing new to add except the guy is a grade A ass.

Keepers of Lost Time★
I have no idea what was happening in this science fiction comic from Serbia. It's about two cultures, one advanced, one primitive that swap items once every set amount of time. Who knows why? Who knows why one of the primitives gains powers? Who knows who half the cast was as they came and went? This is just terrible.

1066: William the Conqueror★★
A retelling of William the Conqueror based on a tapestry. Even though I knew the basics, I found this really hard to follow. The characters tended to look the same and there were quite a few of them. Their motivations weren't really provided which didn't help.

Hearts at Sea★★★
A comic about a neurotic guy with a good job working at the family's company. He lives a small life and has an overbearing mother. He's also very lonely. So he sneaks away on a singles cruise where he meets a bunch of old ladies and train wrecks.

Bérézina, Vol. 1: The Fire★★★
Follows Napoleon's campaign into Russia. The book begins after three grueling months where Russians have fled while destroying all their crops and taking their livestock with them leaving the French tired and hungry as they enter a deserted Moscow. A deserted Moscow that is really one big trap...

Flora And The Shooting Stars★★
Flora is now in her forties and recently divorced. She's considering getting back on the horse again and begin dating. So she does the whole online thing to various results. This felt really superficial with little new to say.

Yallah Bye★★★★★
This was intense. It's about a French family with a Lebanese dad. They head to Lebanon on vacation to visit family in 2006 when Israel starts bombing the country. You can feel all of the tension as their fear and terror grows, knowing everything is out of their control and if they are going to survive all of the random but continuous bombings. I can't even imagine going through this like the Lebanese did.

Dodin-Bouffant : Gourmet Extraordinaire★★★
A conic that will make foodies' tummies grumble. When a food connoisseur's chef dies, he goes through a lot to find a worthy successor. She is in no way what you'd expect and both love and great food ensue. A nice little story based on a century old book.

The Wolves of La Louvière★★★
World War II from the perspective of a Belgium family. It's based on the diary of one of the girls. The story starts as Germany is invading Belgium and details life in occupied Belgium throughout the war. Some people try to get by, some people resist, some collaborate.

The Grande Odalisque★★★
Two female, high end art thieves rob paintings from famous museums. Alex is the impulsive, unreliable one. Carole is always in control, bailing Alex out of trouble. When their next job is a heist at the Louvre, they bring in a third girl, Sam. Their's little characterization here. It's all nonstop action.

Tentacles at My Throat★★★★
Zerocalcare returns with three stories revolving around his school, all about 10 years apart. They are all very funny and irreverent. They are certainly embellished or maybe just completely made up.

Tebori - Volume 1★★
This is about a young man in Japan who has gotten himself into some trouble with a gang. He's sent to learn from a master tattoo artist. Years later, he's become as good as his master. That's when he finds out that his master secretly tattoos Yakusa in the room above the store.

The Forgotten Slaves of Tromelin★★
A true story about slaves shipwrecked on an extremely small island in the South Pacific for 15 years. There's two stories really as it goes back and forth between this story and the story of the scientists excavating the island in 2008. The story of the excavation is overly packed with detail and drones on and on without providing any new details. There's not much point to it other than making the reading very dry and tedious. This would have been considerably more interesting had it only focused on the story in the past.

In Search of Peter Pan★★★
A writer hides out in a small village in the Alps with writer's block. The village has the threat of an avalanche any day hanging over it. Over the years counterfeit coins have continued to pop up here.

The Roots of Chaos, Volume 1: Lux★★
It's 1953 and a British man working at Scotland Yard gets a call that his mother has just died in a hit and run with a bomb on her even though she's supposed to be in a nursing home. He begins to find out about a secret life she had involving Yugoslavia. I should have liked this but it was all boring, complicated info dumps that left me struggling to finish.

El Mesías★★
A rich man in Spain falls from grace during the 2008 recession. He hears about a town that has enveloped communism and seems to be doing well. At times this almost seems like a farce. I do think this is something that you'll only get if you understand Spain's history of dealing with fascism, communism and socialism throughout the 20th century and beyond.

Body and soul★★
A look into a handful of unsympathetic people's lives in Paris.

Ark Land★★★
A girl, her two dogs and robot live as scavengers in the future where people live off of the alien tech falling out of the sky.

The World Book of Records★★★
It's about a man who works at the World Book of Records who is bored with his job. He's tired of people who think they need to come up with a way to get their name on some obscure record they just made up. Then he gets a letter from someone who goes a much darker path to make the list...

The Last Jungle Book - Volume 1 - Man★★★
An adaptation of The Jungle Book broken into 4 segments. This first volume is the story we know of from Disney, Mowgli as a child growing up among the wolves while Shere Khan tries to get to him.

Sykes★★★
Your standard Old West tale of a Marshall tracking down the outlaws. The ending that showed the rest of his life after the main story was over felt really tacked on and actually detracted from the rest of the story.

A ton of arcs from last week.

Seven Places Without You ★★
Seven vignettes taking place after a woman breaks up with her boyfriend for unknown reasons. Nothing much happens in this. It's random little interludes as she copes with being without Jorge.

Taxi Tales: The Fragrant Lady ★★★
Gündüz started these Taxi Tales after working as a cab driver in Istanbul. I doubt this one is true as it reads like a letter to Playboy or something.

The Only Living Girl #1: The Island at the Edge of Infinity ★★★
In this sequel to The Only Living Boy graphic novels for kids, Zee awakens in this weird amalgam world of her father's creation. She and her friend Erik are the only two humans left in a dystopian world populated by fantastical creatures.

The Art of Dying ★★★
A Parisian cop learns that he may have a daughter from his ex-wife upon the daughter's death. It's been labeled a suicide but it's soon realized that's not the case as the worst gang in Barcelona is involved.

Malaterre: Part 1 ★★
An awful man has kids and then abandons them for five years. He then returns and sneaks off with two of them to a jungle plantation his family owned when he was a boy. This is only the first half of the story and the shady things going on are vague at this point.

Malaterre: Part 2 ★★★★
This 2nd volume is more from the perspective of the children than the delinquent father who desperately wants to reclaim his family business in the jungle but in no way knows how to manage it. The whole thing is a downward spiral as it all gets worse and worse and the father secretly dodges creditors and the government.

Renée Stone: Murder in Abyssinia ★★
Seems to be trying for a 30's mystery vibe. Renee Stone is a mystery writer in Ethiopia to see the coronation of Haile Selassie. While there she and a new friend stumble upon some kind of mystery. This really wasn't very interesting and Stone was vapid and shallow.

Aldo ★★
Aldo may be immortal but no one believes him. Or he may just be a crackpot. I found this too out there and often unclear about what was happening.

Blossoms in Autumn ★★★★
This is one of those books where I'm mad at myself for letting it set on my shelf for so long before reading it. It's about two older people who find each other later in life. One has just lost her mother and is dealing with never having married but runs her own business. The other has recently been laid off from his job as a mover. The first half of the book can be pretty dour as these two struggle to deal with their bodies getting older and being alone. Then when they meet the book turns to joy.

Arale ★★
Very nicely illustrated but a confusing story that you just get dropped into. It's a world where World War 1 never ended and Russia is doing well. Rasputin has some mages keeping the Czar's body alive. Baba Yaga is on the opposite side (of what I'm not entirely sure).

The Defender - Volume 1 - Legal Eagle ★★★
A legal story about an Iraqi woman accused of war crimes in France for 20 years before when she was still in Iraq. Our legal expert heads to Iraq to investigate.

Adventures of Kid Lucky by Morris - Volume 1 - Cowboy in Training ★★
These one page strips of Lucky Luke as a kid feel really dated.

Percy Shelley ★★
Percy Shelley would definitely be considered an awful person these days. Someone who because of his money and charisma was able to slide through life, getting away with being an incorrigible human being.

Secret Elites ★★★
In 19th century England a bunch of strangers are scooped up and dropped into a secret program working for the Crown. They (and us) are given very little information as they have to figure out puzzles to keep moving on. It has the feel of a video game.

Pierre ★★★★
I thought this was a really strong beginning. It's about a boxer who uses math to calculate how to beat his opponents. His best friend T.J. and T.J's new girlfriend, Anne. All three are keeping secrets about who they really are and that begins to play out.

Authorised Happiness ★★
Contains 3 stories of government run amok in a Kafkaesque setting.

Sun Vol. 1 ★★
A wealthy family with a coffee business has two daughters vying for control of the business. When one loses out, she gets pregnant after a drunken rampage. The mother is cold and wants nothing to do with the son while his grandparents dote on him. The story just keeps getting darker and darker.

The Angels of Nostradamus (Arthus Trivium #1) ★★★★
This was very good. It's about Nostradamus and his three disciples who canvas the countryside righting wrongs and the like. A plot to kill the king is revealed leaving the three to figure out how to stop it. There's a supernatural element that I wasn't expecting either.

A Hell of an Innocent ★★
Great art but a strange off-putting story. It's about an Australian man who has been in hiding for the last 27 years for killing his wife. In the 70's, his brother confessed to the crime on his death bed and the brother heads home. He's plagued by visions of his dead wife graphically talking to him about all the men in the town she slept with.

A real job ★★
A slice of life comic about a young Spaniard who moves to Berlin to pursue his dream to be a comic book artist.

Theodore Poussin 1. Captain Steene ★
This was terrible. I don't understand how there are so many volumes. It's about a paper pusher that longs for adventure and joins the crew of a ship sailing to Asia in 1927. He keeps getting visited by this shady character as things get worse and worse for him. None of it makes any sense and it was dull as can be.

Double 7 ★★
This story set during the Spanish Civil War was hard to follow. The characters and story kept shifting to something different so that the blurb on the back only really applied to the second half of the story. The first half was about 3 mercenary pilots from France, America and Russia who are in Spain fighting against Franco's forces.

Miles Morales Suspended ★★
This go around Jason Reynolds really wanted to write a book of poetry disguised as a Miles Morales book. You can't go more than 2 pages without there being another one.

The Regiment - The True Story of the SAS, Vol. 1 ★★
I was looking forward to this one but the articles at the end were more informative than the comic itself. The story was disjointed, skipping chunks of time without notice.

Melvile: The Story of Samuel Beauclair ★★★★
A writer in a small town has hit a block he can't get past and he has the added stress of a pregnant wife to take care of. He answers an ad to paint a house in order to bring in some money. There he meets a brother and sister who he becomes friends with and maybe more with the sister. The twist was well done and I didn't see it coming.

Spirou - The Diary of a Naive Young Man ★★★
This was OK. It's about Spirou working as a bellhop at a fancy hotel in Belgium right before World War II. Within the hotel, Germany and Poland are negotiating Poland's surrender to avoid war.

Legends of the Pierced Veil: Izuna ★★★
A decent but dense read set in Japanese mythology of some sort. But this isn't Manga. It's put out by a French publisher. There are a lot of terms that weren't familiar to me. But it's about two different realms, one of man and one where the Kami reside, these fox creatures with antlers. The two realms end up clashing together due to the humans, of course. Some of the motivations and reasonings were hard to decipher with this first go through. Where this book really shines is the art.

I get it Dorie. Who says no to free books? Sometimes, there's a reason they are free though.

Kristine wrote: "Chad~Pretty Impressive. Wish overall you liked some of the books more, but great and honest reviews. You put me to shame. I am trying to finish a couple overdue ARC’s and have about 5 overdue reviews. Glad you got caught up.."

Oh, I'm not even close to being caught up. You may be seeing these mass updates once a week for awhile. I let some of these things linger for an extremely long time. Trying to get more diligent about it.

Donna wrote: "Wow, Chad, you never fail. I love your pithy comments. "The Neverending Story for bored teenagers.."

The snark is maybe the only worthwhile part of reading a bad book.

A bunch of old arcs I made it through this week.

Zombillenium Volume 1: Gretchen ★★★
An introduction to a monster theme park staffed by actual monsters.

The Kingdom of the Blind - Volume 1 - The Invisibles ★★
A story about the surveillance state in the near future that doesn't have much to say.

Kivu ★★★★★
The story is about a young brother and sister in a small village in the Congo. Their whole village is brutally murdered. Meanwhile a young employee of a Dutch multinational is sent there to find a new warlord to take over. Once he gets there and finds out what is really happening he decides to help. This book will absolutely wreck you.

Tosca Vol. 3 ★★★
The princess is still kidnapped with her father laying siege to Florence. He doesn't know where in the city she is though and won't commit to an attack in fear of harming her.

La Isabela (Jakob Kayne, #1) ★★★
This reminded me of Assassin's Creed. It's about a man and his brother who are the last hippocrats. They are memory eaters meaning that no one can remember their faces. The main character is sneaking into a besieged city to rescue a family before Sulieman can sack it.

Of Gods and Men: 1. The End of the Beginning ★★
While the artwork was quite good, you're thrown into the middle of a confusing story that's only somewhat explained by reading the one-page character sheets at the back. That's not how I want to read my comics.

Shelley 2. Mary Shelley ★★
This veers from historical fiction to Mary Shelley's other novel, The Last Man in the second half of the story and it's so off-putting. To go from a real world story to an end of the world scenario just doesn't make any sense.

Nhun the Huntress ★
I found this story of cave people a complete waste of time with terrible art.

Theatre of the Wind (Nanami #1) ★★
The Neverending Story for bored teenagers.

The Revenge of Count Skarbek (1. Two Golden Hands) ★★★
A painter returns after everyone thought he died 10 years before. Now he's out for revenge against those who wronged him. His plan is to get the men to implicate themselves during a trial.

Tokyo Underground (Otaku Blue, #1) ★★
A sociology student in Tokyo is investigating Otaku for her thesis. Otaku is some kind of fetish that girls dress in cosplay or something, it wasn't explained well at all. Her relationship with her boyfriend is also falling apart as he's filming a J-horror film. Then there's two police detectives investigating a series of murders where a different body part is cut off a young woman. This should be exciting but it's all very boring.

Noir ★★
A crime writer finds out his life isn't what he thinks it is and decides to take revenge. This heavily inked black and white artwork looks like it was put through a xerox machine a few times.

Snitches Anonymous - Mission 1 ★★★
Tom and his young friend get involved in investigating a burglary ring that Tom's father (who is a police captain) has been trying to solve for a while. Tom recognizes a kid in a photo as someone who goes to his school and the kids eventually figure out what's going on.

Yasmina and the Potato Eaters: Part 1 ★★★
The only thing Yasmina cares about is cooking vegetarian food, mainly for her father. He works at a pommes frites (french fry) restaurant but only eats Yasmina's masterpieces. She runs into trouble when the community gardens she gets her food from are taken over by a company that makes these strange addictive potatoes.

Yasmina and the Potato Eaters: Part 2 ★★
Part 2 of this story goes off the rails as the people who eat these potato chips begin to act like dogs, including Yasmina's father. It gets really goofy and you can see how much this is meant for kids as opposed to all ages.

John Life is Worth Fighting For ★★
This is a PSA to get your colon checked out at 50 because colon cancer strikes early. It reads like a PSA too.

Colored: The Unsung Life of Claudette Colvin ★★
This is a case where the original book this is based on works a lot better than the comic book translation. The story is about Claudette Colvin, a teenager who refused to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama in 1955 a few months before Rosa Parks did. The art is incredibly poor.

Aristophania 1. The Kingdom of Azur ★★★
Some very good art to go along with this story of 3 children growing up rough in the 19th century. There's some kind of magical element involved as well as this old woman tries to protect them from this man who seems to be invincible and both hangs out and eats rats.

Timo the Adventurer Book 1 ★★★
What's a boy to do when he's read every book in the village? Time to head out on your own to do some exploring. He documents all the odd creatures he meets in his notebook, describing each one. Younger readers will enjoy this a lot.

Spirou in Berlin ★★
Spirou and his friends get stuck in East Berlin (in the days right before the Wall came down) after voluntarily heading there when their friend disappears. I had a hard time following parts of this. It was really goofy at times too.

The Bugle Boy ★★
An old soldier wishes to find the bugle he lost in WWII. He heads north with his granddaughter where he buried it only to find a whole other thing going on with it. This was a strange story. Straight up goofy at times and not very interesting for a WWII story.

The Year of Loving Dangerously ★★
This was OK. I liked it more as a book about living in New York in the 80's than about this guy sleeping with different women every night because he couldn't afford a place to live after getting kicked out of Columbia.

The Man with the Monkey Face (Kid Noize #1) ★★★
Good art. The story was just OK. It's part of some concept album by an artist I've never heard of.

Irons 1. The Engineer ★★★★
I quite liked this mystery. It's about a engineer who investigates the bridge between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick in Canada when it fails. It's a neat idea and the kind of thing you come up with when you have to drive on a crazy long bridge like that every day.

Some recent reads.

Lucky Luke - Saddles Up ★
Everything about this was bad. The art is terrible. I needed context clues from the story to realize one of the villains was a woman. The art was so goofy and poor I couldn't tell. The story is dumb. It's goofy wannabe slapstick about a cowboy trying to get the first bicycle across the Old West to San Francisco for a race.

Little Witches: Magic in Concord ★★
A reimagining of Little Women where they are witches. Most of the story beats are the same, the story just now includes magic and Laurie and his grandfather are now witchfinders.

The Black Mage ★
Oh my god, this was so terrible. I can't believe how on the nose this story about a racist world of magicians is. The people who liked it call it a parody but I think it's written in earnest. This is the kind of thing conservative hillbillies will hold up to make fun of because of how "woke" it is. It's about the St. Ivory school of magic that opens up its doors to its first token black student actually named Tom Token. He has a crow familiar named Jim. The headmaster actually wears clan robes and is named Lynch.

Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator ★★★★
Don't let the title fool you. The book has very little to do with socialism. It's a year spent in the trenches with a freshman state senator from New York City. It's very much about the political process of getting legislation passed and just how incredibly difficult it is. I live in the NYC metro area and a subject that concerns everyone that lives there is gentrification and how incredibly high rent is. Elected in 2018, the Senator's main goal was to get rent reform bills passed before the current bills all expired in June of that year. Pretty much the entire book is about trying to get that passed as a whole.

A bunch of recent graphic novel arcs that I'm catching up on:

Zaroff★★★
I'll just start by saying I don't know that we needed a sequel to "The Most Dangerous Game", (This is a sequel to the movie, not the original short story.) but if we are going to get one at least it's good.

Elma, a bear's life - Volume 1 - The Great Journey★★★
A little girl who is being raised by a bear go on a big journey. The story is pretty slight but the illustrations are a delight.

Hedge Fund - Volume 1: Money Men★★
It's interesting I guess. Movies have done this type of financial crisis type thing so much better while making it easier to follow. You probably need to actually work on Wall Street to follow some of this.

Last of the Atlases★★★
I liked what I read of this but this volume was too short, maybe the length of an American comic. It's mainly about some gangsters running hidden poker machines in France. But it's also about some birds that aren't migrating.

Operation Copperhead Chapter 1★
A story about Peter Usinov and David Niven's time in World War II. The framing sequence set during Death on the Nile and just the storytelling in general made this hard to follow. It's also incredibly short even for a European comic. Harambat's terrible art also made this a chore to read.

Atom Agency - Volume 1 - The Begum's Jewels★★★
I loved the pop art look of the book. The story though, relies on the detective agency fumbling around until things fall in their lap without much detective work or it relies on Dad's contacts from the war helping out.

The Battle, Vol. 1★★
There were so many characters in this with similar uniforms that it was really difficult to maintain who was who. I know it was one of Napoleon's main battles but it was extremely difficult to keep up with what was happening.

Glory Days (1. Chaos)★★
Flits back and forth between three women in their twenties. One is depressed after breaking up with her boyfriend. The second incredibly stressed out about writing her dissertation. Finally, the third girl screwed her roommate's boyfriend and has been ostracized from her social circle.

The Midlife Crisis★
This was very dated, originally written in 1996. It's about how all husbands leave their wives in their 40's (except I never did). The art style is terrible. It looks like caricatures from a comic strip. It's about how the wife gets through life after her husband leaves her but the storytelling is very disjointed.

Bob Marley in Comics!★★★
A succinct look at Bob Marley's life. The comics are written by Gaet's while the text that sometimes appears between chapters is by Sophie Blitman. The text does provides a bit more depth to what you've already read.

The Undertaker, The Vagrant & The Assassin (Stern, #1)★★★★
I quite liked this tale from the Old West about an undertaker in a frontier town in Kansas who no one really talks to. He becomes more involved with the town members when he autopsies the recent death of a drunk.

Welcome to the New World★★★★
This began as a connected series of comic strips that appeared in the New York Times. It was later turned into a book with many more strips after winning the Pulitzer. It's about a real family of Syrian refugees who came to America the same day Trump won the election in 2016. That however is not the main focus. It's about the family itself and how they had to quickly acclimate to life in Connecticut. Learning English, sending the kids to school, finding a job so they could support themselves, etc.

Forbidden Harbor★★★★
The story of a teenage boy who wakes up on a beach with no memory. He's taken on as part of the crew of a ship when he's discovered by its captain. There he travels from Asia back to England. Along the way he picks up all of the duties on the ship as if he's done them before. When he returns to Plymouth, he's taken in by three sisters who are trying to run an inn after their father was accused of treason and disappeared. He also meets a madame that he reads poetry to every day. It's a good story if a little long at 300 pages. Like a lot of European comics there is plenty of nudity and adult situations. It's all illustrated in gorgeous, highly detailed, black and white pencils.

Some reviews from the weekend.

The Hardy Agency - Volume 1 - The Vanished Perfume★★★
A European comic about a woman in 1950's Paris who starts up a detective agency after her husband goes missing. She's looking for a missing chemist from a perfume company who has designed something that may have other more lucrative capabilities.

Bootblack - Volume 1★★
There's an interesting story here. It just needs to be told linearly. There's no transition to time jumps just leaving you confused. It starts off with a soldier in World War II flashing back to when he used to shine shoes in New York as a kid. He's in love with a girl who thinks he's beneath her and doesn't do much to prove her wrong.

Reading Quirks: Weird Things that Bookish Nerds Do!★★★★
Little comics about the idiosyncrasies of bibliophiles. I loved these comic strips of going crazy over new book smells or how you're instantly attracted to another lover of books

Frank - The Story of a Forgotten Dictatorship★★
This is presented almost like a picture book. It's abstract to the point that it doesn't really get the point across that it's about the Franco who ruled Spain with an iron fist for decades.

The Passenger - Volume 1★★
Two young Newlyweds are caught in the middle when the husband is forced to drive around a mafia capo as he takes care of business. His pregnant wife is held somewhere unknown.

Mockingbird: Strike Out: A Marvel: Heroines Novel ★★★
Aconyte's Marvel Heroines line continues with a spy novel about Mockingbird. Instead of following the comic continuity, this one is an amalgam of the comics and Agents of SHIELD. Mockingbird has just divorced Hawkeye and returns to SHIELD for a mission in Oxford, England. A scientist she worked with early on at SHIELD has gone missing while working as a professor at Oxford. She meets Lance Hunter from Agents of SHIELD.

I Am Stan: A Graphic Biography of the Legendary Stan Lee
Even though this is the first graphic novel biography, I do think other biographies give you a better sense of who the man was, good and bad. These feel like a series of one page strips in Lee's life more than a coherent look at his life.

Sorceline Book 2 (Volume 2) ★★
The illustration is great but the story feels like it was written by a kid. I know this is meant for children but the story has a stream of consciousness feel to it and is all over the place. Very little makes a bit of sense.

The Tyrant Skies: A Marvel: Untold Novel ★★★
Finishes the trilogy of untold prose stories about Dr. Doom by David Annandale. This one is about the Red Skull invading Latveria for a second time.

Night of the Ghoul ★★★
A story told back and forth in two time periods. One is happening now while the other is a flashback to a legend of film that was never released. The main characters are a film historian and his son. They've found the man who created the film in a rest home and what's left of the film in an old vault at the studio. The best thing Scott Snyder has written in a while.

Never Sleep by Fred Van Lente

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
A prose novel about the first female agent working for the Pinkerton Detective Agency and her new protege. This was quite good but also very triggering anytime a slave is in a scene as it takes place in Maryland shortly before the Civil War began. It is a fictional novel based on a real attempt to kill President Lincoln. The end promises this is going to be a series.

Some graphic novels I read last week.

Hex Americana ★★★
An LGBTQ+ book about a teenage monster who gets involved with racing. Along the way a romance with a ghost develops.

Constellations ★★★★★
I thought this was terrific. It's about a teenager in upstate New York who is trying to determine their identity in the 80's. They were born a girl but likes to dress as a boy and hang out with boys. They cope with their unhappiness by drinking which eventually gets them in trouble sending them to rehab. Most of the book takes place at rehab as they find theirself and delves into the lives of some of the other kids there.

Merry-Go-Round ★★
A bunch of short stories revolving around some college students in Bologna, Italy. The stories are mainly about them changing relationships and being untrue to one another. It was a quick but unfulfilling read.

The Rock Gods of Jackson, Tennessee ★★★
A ridiculously over the top story about 4 losers in high school getting an opportunity to open for a washed up rock star while a horror movie about mutant pigs slowly develops in the background. It's a tropey ode to the 80's.

The Little Red Fish ★★★
The story of oppressed fish in a Persian reef, beset by herons. The book is an allegory to the Iranian Revolution in 1979 up to when the Khomeini takes over. However, unless you know the history very in-depth, you probably wouldn't realize it.

The Faint of Heart ★★★★
June wants to grow up to be an artist. The problem is no one else cares. Everyone else has had their hearts removed to make life easier. Now she's the only one left who cares about anything until one day she finds a heart in a jar sitting in an alleyway...

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Return of Effie Kolb and Others★★★★
A bunch of very good Hellboy one-offs. There's some bigger artists drawing Hellboy like Adam Hughes this go around.

Prism Stalker: The Weeping Star★★
This was alright. It's a continuation of the Prism Stalker series that Image published in 2019. It's about a woman going through some kind of training to be a space police officer with other aliens.

Past Tense★★★★
I really liked this. It's about some technology in the near future that allows us to see anything in the past. The woman running the session realizes her client is a serial killer that no one knows about. Then we get a game of cat and mouse as the two try and take the other one out.

Mariko Between Worlds★★★
Mariko and her alien boyfriend Rem are breaking up because Mariko has lost her Visa to the Portal of Worlds or whatever it's called. They have one last day to spend together before Mariko needs to leave. What follows is something of a stream of consciousness adventure through dimensions because it can be difficult to connect the dots between story elements.

Naji and the Mystery of the Dig, Graphic Novel★★
This story for young children didn't do much for me. It's about a little girl in Iran whose family needs a new well dug for their house. She's afraid of monsters being everywhere until she realizes they aren't real. Then the diggers find some underground bazaar where the story ends feeling unfinished.

Hansel and Gretel★★★
For this version of the Hansel and Gretel story, the illustrator drew all of the drawings first for an art event. Then Gaiman came along and basically gave the traditional telling of the short story with the darker spin on it. Gaiman never likes to lighten up the original Grimm versions. So the book alternates between two pages of prose and a two page illustration. The illustrations are terrible. It's just black on black and then add some more black. I thought they were a waste of time. Gaiman's prose, of course, is delightful in his own demented way.

A bunch of arcs from the last week.

Tank Girl: King Tank Girl★★
This is one of those things where if you'd always enjoyed Tank GIrl, you'll probably like this. If you haven't, you probably won't get this at all.

Mage and the Endless Unknown★★★★
An almost wordless comic about a mage wondering through a dark and dangerous world. At first glance it may seem this is for younger readers, but it becomes more dark and violent as it goes along.

The Talk★★★★★
Wow! What a powerful graphic memoir. Darrin Bell and I are of a similar age. The difference between us is I'm white and grew up in a small Midwestern town. He's of mixed heritage and grew up in L.A. He discusses the times throughout his life we was made to feel less than, the times he was frightened or threatened by the police or others in authority from the time he was 6 until now.

Dungeons & Dragons: Ravenloft--Orphan of Agony Isle★★
A mediocre return to Ravenloft with a Frankenstein motif. The only difference is the roles are gender swapped.

Sapiens Imperium★★
Some generic, old-school sci-fi about an oppressed group of people and a stereotypically evil emperor's son.

Robyn Hood: Outlaw★★★
Robyn Hood is a female version of Green Arrow with a harder edge. She's been framed and discovers the Underground, a place under New York City for those with powers.

Quick Stops★★★
Kevin Smith returns to tell 4 solo tales set in the Askewniverse. It answers questions like where Holden came up with the idea of Bluntman and Chronic and why Elias thought there was a troll in girls' pants.

A Legacy of Violence Vol. 1★★★
A guy in a Great Value Punisher logo mask is torturing and killing people in a village in Honduras. Enter a team of doctors from Doctors without Borders. One of the doctors had some kind of tragedy happen with his grandfather when he was a kid. (This is only the first four issues of a 12 issue maxiseries.) Now the killer seems to be focusing on him while murdering others for some reason and he keeps hearing the words Unit 731 (which is a unit of the Japanese military that experimented on prisoners in World War II).

Frontera★★★
Mateo is a Dreamer. He was brought to the U.S. by his parents at the age of 3 without his knowledge. While in high school his family was discovered and deported back to Mexico. Now all he thinks about is getting back to Phoenix in time for his senior year to live with his grandmother. So he crosses the border on his own where he comes across a ghost who attempted the same trip 70 years before. Guillermo now does his best to help those making the trip across to keep from dying. Even with a ghost, the book felt pretty realistic until the jaguar showed up.

Silver Sable: Payback: A Marvel: Heroines Novel★★★★
Fresh off her excellent prose book about Black Cat, Cath Lauria shows us what she can do with Silver Sable. It's about Silver going after a gambler who has the Clairvoyant, a device that allows you see possible futures.

A bunch of arcs I read last week.

Einstein ★★
A very detailed look into Einstein's life at a 300 page graphic novel. The majority of it focuses on his advances in physics. They are certainly remarkable. They are also very dry and sometimes require repeat reading to understand. Depending on your interest level, they may go completely over your head. I was already familiar with most of them and have a background in science and engineering so I was OK. The book seems to be written for those in advanced sciences.

Breath of the Giant ★★★
A middling story about two sisters striving to make it all the way North to defeat a giant whose breath can restore their mother to life. It's a common story trope, a struggle to bring a loved one back only to find out they no longer belong in this world.

Barbaric Vol. 1: Murderable Offenses ★★★★
A twist on Conan the Barbarian. Owen was the baddest barbarian around until he was cursed to only do good and to aid anyone who asked for his help. Now he and his magic axe that only he can hear are forced to help those in need whether he likes it or not.

Camp Pock-a-Wocknee and the Dynomite Summer of '77 ★★★
A graphic memoir about the author's senior year in a Jewish summer camp in 1977. Yes, it's raunchy. There's talk of scoring, poop, farts and jerking off. It's about teenage boys after all. But it can also be fun. It reminds me a ton of the movie Meatballs which is also about a summer camp in the 70's, although it never achieves that level of humor.

GremoryLand Volume 1 ★★
This isn't very original or even very well done. It's about a group of friends who go to a new amusement park as influencers or something and have to get through all the rides without dying. It has a lot of the same elements as Five Nights at Freddy's and the Nic Cage movie Willy's Wonderland.

ZVRC: Zombies Vs Robots Complete, Volume 1 ★
This was awful. It didn't even make any sense. Zombies have taken over the world leaving not just robots but dumb robots as the only ones left to stop them. At some point after nuclear bombs have destroyed the world but not robots or zombies, Amazons show up. Presumably so they can run around naked before being eaten.

Bruce Wayne: Not Super ★★★★
A middle school graphic novel where Bruce goes to a school full of what will be DC's superheroes and villains. He's the only kid with no powers (other than being rich.)

Tank Girl: King Tank Girl ★★
This is one of those things where if you'd always enjoyed Tank GIrl, you'll probably like this. If you haven't, you probably won't get this at all. I fall in the latter category.