Chad’s Comments (group member since Mar 22, 2018)

Chad’s comments from the I Read Comic Books group.

Last week's adventures in comics.

007 Book One: Myrmidon ★★★
Decent story, crap art. Bond goes undercover when another 00 agent he respected is killed. I really liked the updating so that women 00's were just as capable as the men. Bond doesn't need to be stuck in the sixties. The art is pretty damn bad. Looks like simple sketches with zero backgrounds.

Madballs vs. Garbage Pail Kids: Heavyweights of Gross Collection ★
This was so unbelievably dumb. A new family moves in the house between the Madballs and the Garbage Pail Kids who are rivals. Terrible puns and stories ensue. If you're over the age of seven, you are probably too old for this.

Vampirella vs The SuperPowers ★★★
Dynamite really turned down the nipplely action in this Vampirella book. Vampy is under cover in one of the multiversal worlds established in the Project Superpowers comics. She's trying to find the source of a drug giving normal people superpowers. Powers have been banned there after 2 world wars over them.

Army of Darkness vs Reanimator: Necronomicon Rising ★★★
Eric Burnham is no stranger to crossing over properties. He's done a bunch of them over at IDW. Now he's over at Dynamite mixing it up with Ash and the Doctor from Re-Animator and it works surprisingly well. Nice mix of humor and horror for Evil Dead fans.

Immortal Red Sonja Vol. 2 ★★★
I liked the combination of Red Sonja and a twisted version of the Arthurian legend. It would have been better served by drawing it out into more issues though. The art is just OK too. Absolutely no backgrounds make it look like a poorly drawn manga at times.

Lord of the Jungle ★★★
A solid Tarzan book that can't be called Tarzan on the cover for some rights reason I'd presume. It takes place in two times, with Tarzan as a young man and turning decades later to right an old wrong he committed for a good reason. Jurgens can right this kind of stuff in his sleep. The artist also drew the newspaper strip. The art had the look of a Joe Kubert type.

Dejah Thoris: Crimson Genesis ★★
Apparently this is supposed to be a prequel to the Edgar Rice Burrough novel. However, there was no indication of that at all until I read the blurb on the back. Dejah Thoris is the princess of Mars. Her city is overrun but she escapes. Then she just gallivants across Mars for the rest of the book. Things are put together oddly, so issues don't really fit together. Characters are introduced as if you are already familiar with them. The ending is awful and just feels like the book was cancelled more than anything else.

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.

Vampirella Mindwarp ★★★
This was alright. That Benjamin Dewey cover is fugly though and some of the interior art was suspect at times. Something about how he sometimes draws faces. Vampirella and an old lady sorcerer get transported back into their own bodies 50 years in the past. Then it becomes about reliving your past and Vampirella's past takes place in the goofy but sexy old Warren comics era.

Draculina: Blood Simple ★★★★
This is not very new user friendly. There are many foot notes though to all of the other Christopher Priest comics where things originally occurred in. I do suggest figuring out the puzzle of current Vampirella universe comics and reading all of these since Priest took over. They are good, but complicated.

This one is about Vampirella's older and worse sister and her multiversal teenage version. It all does make sense. You just need to pay close attention. Michael Sta. Maria's art is really good. Much better than you find in most Dynamite comics.

Sainted Love Vol. 1: A Time to Fight ★★
Orlando couldn't decide if he wanted to make this a book about gays in history or explicit orgies. Making it both just made it a shallow mess. Adding a time travel angle just made it even odder. It's about two gay men who fight and then engage in an orgy, then time travel. Wash. Rinse. Repeat each issue. It also ends without any kind of resolution so it all just feels pointless. Here's these random plot points we brought up. None of them are resolved. Book is over.

Red Sonja: Black, White, Red Volume 1 ★★★★
Dynamite has decided to jump in on the black, white and red game. Red Sonja does make a lot of sense here for it. My favorite story was the opener from Mark Russell and Bob Quinn. That's no surprise though considering they had a great run on Red Sonja itself.

This week's trip to my LCS.

House of Slaughter #26
Nightwing #118 <-- The final Tom Taylor issue unfortunately. :(
Uncanny X-Men #4
World's Finest #32
Destro #5
Ultimate Spider-Man #10
Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu #1
Mystique #1
Flash Gordon #3
Spectacular Spider-Men #8

Last week's adventures in comics.

The Incredible Hulk Visionaries: Peter David, Vol. 2 ★★★★
First, we get the Grey Hulk, Clay Quartermain and Rick trying to track down a gamma bomb before it goes off. All with the Leader manipulating things in the background. Then the Mr. Fixit era begins with the Hulk operating as an enforcer in Las Vegas. We also get Marlo's first appearance who sticks around the book for a long time. Those first several issues look terrific as Todd McFarlane finishes up his run. Jeff Purves jumps onboard for the last 2 issues. His art is fine but pales in comparison to McFarlane.

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.

Astro Boy, Vols. 1 & 2 ★★★
This was free on hoopla last month so I decided I needed to check this out. Astro Boy was one of the first mangas and one of the first properties to be exported from Japan to the U.S. It's got a lot of comic strips in the character designs. They are all caricatures and often look goofy. And they clearly had no idea how to draw a dog. The story isn't bad if you read it in the frame of an old cartoon. I do think it's hilarious that Astro Boy has machine guns that come out of his butt. That first story was really weird. They were called the Hot Dog Gang and were dogs that had been transformed into cyborgs.

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.

The Tipping Point: Slightly Oversized ★★★
An OK anthology. That's about the best you can say about it. It does have a nice combination of creators from Europe, Japan and America.

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.

Ghostlore Vol. 3 ★★★
Not bad. Suffers a bit from how fast Bunn flies through everything. Feels like a 36 issue series condensed into 12. The series is about a father and daughter who can talk to ghosts. They all want to tell their stories so they can move on. Meanwhile, there's some kind of evil version of the 2 of them who is gathering monsters. It all wraps up decently but quickly.

Garbage Pail Kids: Origins Collection ★★
Exactly what you'd expect from a comic based on the Garbage Pail Kids. Lots of gross out nonsense. The art is better than I expected. I did think this was odd that this was set in World War II.

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.

John Carpenter's Tales for a Halloween Night: Volume 9 ★★★★
A better than average Halloween anthology with some actual scary and dark stories. Good stuff.

Disney Villains: Maleficent ★★★
Soo Lee's art is fantastic. The story doesn't have a lot to say though. It's just Maleficent not suffering a fool and then beating the people who try and get vengeance for him each issue. Pretty simple plot. One of those things that fails to move the needle even if it looks cool.

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.

Bettie Page: La Dolce Vita ★★★
This was alright. Bettie heads to Italy to make a movie and finds out she has a double who is in the mob. Her double is trying to disappear with her boyfriend who is in a rival mob in a 20th century version of Romeo and Juliet.

Red Sonja Vol. 1: His Masters Voice ★★★
Red Sonja is handed a cursed diamond and pursued by a man who can take over people at will. It's alright. Geovani's art is always welcome.

Today's trip to the comic book store

Crocodile Black #5
Exceptional X-Men #2
Geiger #7
Scarlet #5
Space Ghost #6
Transformers #13
Ultimates #5
Absolute Batman #1
Murder Kingdom #1
Jonny Quest #3
X-Force #4

Last week's adventures in comics.

The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Ominous Omnibus Vol. 1: Scary Tales & Scarier Tentacles ★★★★
This massive tome is a lot of fun. The glow in the dark cover was a nice surprise too. If you like The Simpsons, you'll like this graphic novel collection.

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.

Hopcross Jilly Vol. 1 ★★★
I thought this was a pretty good introduction to Mercy Thompson's world even if you haven't read the novels. That's me. This is an original story to boot. Mercy is a werecoyote married to the leader of a wolf pack. Her stepdaughter is constantly bullied in high school because her father is a werewolf. The story revolves around a bunch of children's bodies found on a farm. They all died years ago. But it looks like their may be a fae involved.

The Incredible Hulk Visionaries: Peter David, Vol. 1 ★★★
Featuring Todd McFarlane before he become a superstar, you can see his art start to evolve into what it later becomes on Spider-Man and Spawn. The stories and characterizations are a bit clunky to start out. Peter David was saddled with a lot of baggage when he came on the book, like a Rick Jones Hulk and the Hulkbusters. He jettisons both during the book in favor of a Jekyll and Hyde version of the Hulk. We get the first Grey Hulk since his earliest days back in the 60's and he has his own distinct surly personality. No longer the Hulk of few words, this Hulk is cunning and all out for himself. By the end of the book, the stories are already getting more sophisticated.

I liked the little Easter eggs put in the book during the X-Factor crossover. They fight in the printing press where all Marvel comics were printed back in the 80's. I had friends whose parents worked in a sister plant in my hometown and they had boxes of comics we'd read from when they worked at the Sparta press.

Stitch and the Samurai Volume 1 ★★
The art in this was surprisingly good. The story though? Nothing happens. Stitch lands in feudal Japan and the Lord who is in the middle of a war becomes besotten with Stitch treating him like a new pet. It's intended for younger audiences. I think anyone older than 7 or so will be thoroughly bored with this.

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.

Watchmen Companion ★★★
The only Watchmen material actually sanctioned by Alan Moore. Most of it is 2 modules for a Watchmen roleplaying game along with an extensive sourcebook that gives you more background info on the characters than you could ever imagine. They are original prequels and were actually written while Moore was writing the series. That being said, you are going to need to be a fan of the old DC RPG from the 80s to play these. (BTW, there are Watchmen lead figures too. I have them.) In addition to a bunch of promotional material there's a reprint of The Question #17. It gets a bit meta because you have The Question reading a Rorschach comic (with Rorschach being based on The Question). But outside of that it's just an OK comic book. While this is cool to flip through, it's probably really only for the hardest core of hard core Watchmen fans.

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.

Marvel Graphic Novel #29: Hulk/Thing - The Big Change ★★
The great Bernie Wrightson drew this so it looks great, but this is a nothingburger of a story. The Hulk and the Thing get transported to another planet where they basically become bounty hunters looking for some alien. It's basically the two of them on a road trip. This is not the grey Hulk of the current time period either. It's the dumb and uninteresting Hulk so I guess this is supposed to be from somewhere further back in the timeline than in the late 80s.

Fire Force, Vol. 1 ★★★
Actually a half decent comic. It's about a Tokyo where people spontaneously combust and the firefighters who come in and put them out of their misery while also putting out the fires. Some of the firefighters have powers as well. There's some of the cliches that you typically find in manga. The one that really irks me though is the oversexualization of women. I don't get why characters in these things act like they've never seen cleavage before and this comic goes out of its way, actually drawing arrows pointing at them.

The Incredible Hulk: Ground Zero ★★★★
The grey hulk comes out at night as Bruce, Clay Quartermain and Rick Jones try and track down a missing gamma bomb before the Leader can set it off. I love Todd McFarlane's art in this, especially the issues he does his own inks. The book just doesn't look as good when another inker tries to finish off his pencils. I still remember that cover he did with the Hulk's reflection on Wolverine's claws. Just terrific looking stuff.

Hulk: Giant-Size ★★
This is the Giant-Size book of Hulk crap. It's four one-shots and 2 reprints, one of which is about the Fantastic Four instead of the Hulk.

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.

Incredible Hulk Epic Collection Vol. 15: Ground Zero ★★★
The beginning of Peter David's epic 100+ issue run on the Incredible Hulk. You can tell at the beginning of this David is finding his footing. The humor is missing and the focus of the story keeps changing. Still the Leader is a strong villain when he's around and most of this is by Todd McFarlane doing his first regular book.

Yesterday's trip to the comic book store.

Something Crawled Out #1 <-- Something Vault gave away for free
Absolute Power #4
All In Special #1 <-- DC's new jumping on point spinning out of Absolute Power. It also sets up the absolute universe DC is doing.
Birds of Prey #14
Immortal Thor #16
Redcoat #6
Ultimate Black Panther #9
X-Men #5
Hyde Street #1 <-- Ghost Machine's latest comic from Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis.
Get Fury #6
Storm #1

Jacob wrote: "I realize I’m late to this party, but I am reading a run of core Batman storylines that includes The Long Halloween… and it just occurred to me that I’m doing that in October. A curious riddle to b..."


Jeph Loeb has just started a sequel to Long Halloween and Dark Victory called Last Halloween. There's a 0 and 1st issue out so far. Each issue is a different artist.

Last week's adventures in comics.

Cruel Summer ★★★★★
You could consider this the last volume in the Lawless saga as we finally see what happened to Teeg and Ricky. Teeg continues to be piece a shit. But now he's in love for the first time. His son feels threatened and she's a piece of work herself. It's Criminal after all, there are no good guys here.

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.

Batman and Robin 1: Father and Son ★★★
Batman and Damian Wayne team up again as they try and get closer as father and son. Damian is forced to go to high school while Bruce attempts to be more of a father figure. Damian's annoying attitude has been toned down along with the humor that occurs out of this. Simone Di Meo and Nikola Cizmesija handle most of the art and it's OK. The nonstop crazy angles start to annoy me and the panel layouts are REALLY hard to follow.

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.

Old Gods & New: A Companion to Jack Kirby's Fourth World ★★★★
This was a really cool companion piece to read after reading all of Kirby's Fourth World comics from DC in the 70s. It covers how Kirby had grown dissatisfied with Marvel, how the Fourth World characters were originally intended to be the New Gods to replace Thor and the Norse Gods after Ragnarok. It goes into how Kirby's enthusiasm to create something new at DC and how it soon turns into disappointment as editorial cuts most of it after a dozen issues. It touches on how once he returns to Marvel the Eternals were meant to be the Fifth World and the stuff he did at Pacific Comics in the 80's was a thinly veiled return to the Fourth World before a new regime at DC decided to make things right by bringing Kirby back for the Super Powers toy line allowing him to recoup some of that lost money for creating so many terrific characters. If you want to learn your comic book history this is the book for you.

Today's trip to the LCS.

Uncanny X-Men #3
X-Force #3
Wolverine: Revenge #2
Eternal Warriors: Last Ride of the Immortals #1
Eternal Warriors: Last Ride of the Immortals #2
Feral #6
Outsiders #11
Titans #15
Ultimate Spider-Man #9
Predator Vs. Wolverine #2
Thundercats #8
Defenders of the Earth #2

Last week's adventures in comics.

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.

Incredible Hulk Vol. 3: Soul Cages ★★★
The Hulk searches for a way to remove Charlie from the cursed doll she's trapped in. Meanwhile he makes Bruce Banner's life miserable while there's lots of body horror and monsters. Not much plot advancement in these 5 issues though. The Blood Hunt one shot could have just been a regular issue if you hadn't told me it was a tie in to Blood Hunt.

Batman: Justice Buster, Vol. 1 ★★★
A generic armored Batman runs around Gotham. He has some A.I. he relies on called Robin. The Joker in this iteration is more like Red Hood, he's a vigilante that kills the bad guys. He looks pretty stupid though. Right now, the story is very unfocused. Plus, the Justice Buster is actually the Batboat which I thought was weird

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.

Geiger Volume 2: The Nuclear Knight ★★★★★
This book looks so freaking good. Gary Frank is such an outstanding artist. In this volume, we get a 2 issue origin and then the first 6 issues of the ongoing Geiger series (finally). Geiger is roaming the countryside like David Carradine in Kung Fu righting wrongs and looking for a cure to his radioactivity. He's accompanied by his two headed dog Barney and a well-meaning but kind of useless knight he's inspired to be better. This book instantly goes to the top of my pile each time it comes out. Just terrific stuff.

Ghost Machine #1 ★★★★
Little teases for all of the new comics Geoff Johns is putting out with his Ghost Machine imprint at Image. Good stuff. You should check it out.

Transformers, Vol. 2: Transport to Oblivion ★★★★
Daniel Warren Johnson's takeover of the Transformers continues and he continues to excel. Jorge Corona has taken over on art though and I don't think it's as good. There are times in the action sequences where I couldn't tell what was happening. It was just too busy. I'm still not clear where Cliffjumper ended up at the end of issue 12. He's there and then he's not unless he just blended in with Optimus. It was interesting seeing Shockwave in charge of the Decepticons though. Good stuff!

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 In Your Face 3D Special ★★★
A tour de force of storytelling with these 2 reprints in 3D. The fist one had Allred's art style change in each panel as he keeps changing art styles. Neither one of these stories are all that great, but that art? Chef's kiss.

X-Ray Robot ★★★★
Like a lot of Mike Allred's stuff, it's very trippy. Deals with time travel and alternate dimensions. The Allred's make interdimensional travel really sing with their inventive art. I love the little easter egg thrown into issue #4.

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.

Today's trip to my LCS. (2 weeks of comics since I was away last week.)

X-Factor #2
Galactor #2
Fire and Ice #3 <-- Took 10 months for this to come out. Get with the program Bill Willingham.
Cheetara #3
Transformers #12
Uncanny X-Men #2
Ultimate Black Panther #8
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #2
Geiger #6
Captain America #13
Death in the Family: Robin Lives #3
Jonny Quest #2
Space Ghost #5
Gatchaman #3
Wolverine: Revenge: Red Band Edition #1 <--- For some reason the red band version was almost a month behind the regular one.
Avengers #18
World's Finest #31
Destro #4
Incredible Hulk #17
X-Men #4

Last 2 weeks' adventures in comics. Sorry, went to Las Vegas for a work conference last week.

X-Men Epic Collection, Vol. 17: Dissolution & Rebirth ★★★★
This is a time of the X-Men in transition. It's the end of the Australian Outback era. The X-Men get scattered, mostly through the Siege Perilous. There's some great stuff to be found in here. Psylocke gets a makeover to become an assassin with a psychic knife. (I still don't understand how she became Asian though.) One thing I had missed in past reads, Psylocke predicts where all the X-Men wind up after going through the Siege Perilous while undergoing brainwashing by the Hand. Destiny bites the dust even though her visions continue to pop up for decades. The first appearance of Gambit. Even if it's not the most focused stories at times, it's still a great time to read the X-Men. Plus Marc Silvestri and Jim Lee draw most of the issues so the book looks fantastic.

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.

Captain Universe: Power Unimaginable ★★
A bunch of random stories where normal people in the Marvel universe get the Captain Universe powers for a short time. Marvel didn't have the rights to the Micronauts when this came out so Captain Universe's first appearance isn't here. Nor are the issues of Spider-Man when he got the powers.

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.

The Immortal Thor, Vol. 3: The End of All Songs ★★★
It may be time to drop this title from my monthly pull. It's just not very exciting, entertaining or interesting. Thor wins some more runes in this one. Yawn.

Archie Horror Presents: Terrifying Tales ★★★★
7 of the Archie horror one shots get collected. They get better once Archie Comics finally figured out 3 stories in a 20 page comic makes for crap stories. The last story, the Madam Satan one, inexplicably ends on a cliffhanger. Why would you do that in an anthology? It makes no sense.

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.

Hunt for the Skinwalker ★★
An adaptation of the 2005 "nonfiction" novel. It's a supposedly true story about a ranch in Utah that is plagued by a skinwalker. A bunch of cattle mutilations happen. Gateways into other dimensions. You mention it and it's all in there but with no proof.

Alexandro Jodorowsky's Screaming Planet Vol. 1 ★
I don't know what this was supposed to be but what it turned out to be was a bunch of shitty stories that made zero sense. It has that old world sci-fi vibe of just random things happening with some stupid message about society that doesn't really say anything.

Birds of Prey, Vol. 2 ★★★
The team gets sucked into a portal that keeps flipping them through little made up pocket dimensions. It's a good way to use a bunch of artists without looking like the artists can't keep up. The story is just alright though.

Deprog ★★★★
Some modern noir with a queer bent. The main character works as a deprogrammer for cult victims. She grew up in a cult herself and has dealt with a lot of trauma. A femme fatale hires her to get her brother out of a cult that sounds a lot like the one she grew up in. Along the way, we visit lots of BDSM and steamy explicit same sex scenes.

Codename: Action Volume 1 ★★★
A new spy and an old one teamup in the cold war era spy thriller. Dynamite slips in some of their characters of the era like the Green Hornet and The Spider. It’s decent but I enjoy their Golden Age stuff more.

The Night Never Ends ★★★
A bunch of twenty-something idiots break into an abandoned house where satanists then try and kill them all night. The art isn’t great but the story is alright.

Mob Psycho 100, Volume 1 ★
This was f%cking terrible. The art looks like someone rich’s nephew who can’t draw drew it. The story and translation makes little sense. It feels like comics made by two twelve year old boys who got a participation trophy. How does this make it 16 volumes, it shouldn’t have made it 16 pages. I don’t care if it’s the same person who did One Punch Man. This is awful.

Memorial ★★
An alright comic about a woman who has lost her memory. One day she comes across an old curiosity shop and things get nutty in the standard way these types of stories seem to go these days. It's fine but nothing special.

Assassin's Creed Dynasty, Volume 1 ★★
An OK Assassin's Creed manga set in China. It's real unclear what's going on at the beginning. I'd love to have seen more of an introduction. I've played the games and this should be a series that is easy to adapt but this makes me maybe think otherwise.

The Thing on the Doorstep Part One ★★★
An adaptation of the Lovecraft story told in three parts. A man enters an asylum and shoots his best friend in the face at which point we flashback to their lives growing up. One seems to be a loner, the other getting married and having a child. Just as it gets on a bit of a roll it ends.

Ace of the Diamond, Vol. 1 ★
Another crummy sports manga. I love baseball. I watch games multiple games a week. I could barely finish this. It's boring. There's not much of a story and what is here is muddled. It's about a junior high pitcher whose team gets farther than they expected in their final year of the school's existence. Then he gets recruited by a big high school for sports in Tokyo. That's pretty much the plot in this first book. Plus, there is lots and lots of slapping for some reason.

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.

Today's trip to the comic book store.

Absolute Power #3
Birds of Prey #13
Immortal Thor #15
Incredible Hulk #16
Rook Exodus #5
Scarlett #4
Get Fury #5
Ultimates #4
Archer and Armstrong #2
Exceptional X-Men #1

Last week's adventures in comics.

The Goon: Bunch of Old Crap Volume 3: An Omnibus ★★★★
This continues the darker turn in The Goon when we saw how the Goon was scarred. Labrazio's back somehow and has created his own Legion of Doom. It's still an interesting story with fantastic art. I just like when there's a better mix of humor and horror.

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.

Predator: The Last Hunt ★★★
A decent ending to Brisson's Predator trilogy. Theta is back. She's wiped out every Predator she's ever found and now they are on the run. She hasn't seen one in 6 years. Time for a trap. I really liked how Brisson tied this into the original Dark Horse Predator comics.

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.

Ms. Marvel: Mutant Menace ★★★
Like most of the Fall of X comics, this isn't great. It lacks focus, floating to a new local each issue. Then it ends trying to somehow tie in the comic version and the MCU version of Ms. Marvel and not succeeding. Also, when did Lila Cheney become stereotypically British?

Alien, Vol. 2: Descendant ★★
It's 13 years later in this sequel to the first story. The little girl has returned now as an adult with her own agenda. All of the crew are little more than cannon fodder. The Annual is just a big wordless fight between traditional aliens and their evolved counterparts. It all adds up to not much. Declan Shalvey needs to go back to doing his own stuff instead of these bland Alien comics. Give this license back to Dark Horse. Marvel doesn't seem to know what to do with it.

Alien: Black, White & Blood ★★★
This book is black and white with red and green thrown in for the colors of blood, human and alien. The anthology itself is OK. I didn't think the main story that continued throughout all 4 books was all that great. It's about an alien queen who gets on a generational ship full of socialists. That last part doesn't really play into things other than how they speak as "comrades". Overall, it's your standard Alien stories with the humans being worse than the killer aliens for the most part.

Aliens: What If...? ★★★
Much better than I expected in that it's OK. Given that Paul Reiser and Adam F. Goldberg (creator of The Goldbergs) were involved it shouldn't be to anyone's surprise that there is more humor than you'd expect. Don't worry. It's an Aliens comic, there is still death. What happens if Carter Burke from Aliens lived and got blamed for the planet being destroyed?

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.

Beware the Planet of the Apes ★★★
When I saw this was a prequel to the original movie, I was leery. Why would you do that when you have the 4 new movies to set this in? But it wasn't half bad. It brings characters from both of the first two movies into the story in a way that stays true to the original films. I liked that they brought in pages and panels from some of the original comics as well. That was a neat idea.

X-Factor Epic Collection, Vol. 9: Afterlives ★★★★
This honestly isn't very good. After Peter David left this book was floundering. It begins with a miniseries by Kurt Busiek containing a crossover between Spider-Man and X-Factor. It surprisingly stinks. Then in the main book they are dealing with the Multiple Man's death from the Legacy virus. There's 3 different writers and the writing is all over the place. Jan Duursema and Al Milgrom handle most of the art. I typically like Duursema but this was the time of superhero excess and these pages are so overly busy. There's a Phalanx Covenant crossover and then only part one of Legion Quest. I'm assuming that has its own collection since that was the lead in to how the Age of Apocalypse happened.

Monica Rambeau: Photon ★★
Monica gets involved in some cosmic weirdness that isn't really explained well or even resolved well. It just seems like an excuse to keep modifying her history for reasons. I did like how when Dr. Druid shows up, he's still a dick. I just don't get why they finally give Monica Rambeau her own book and it's this nonstory.

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.

Captain America, Vol. 2: Trying to Come Home ★★★
Straczynski's return to comics has been a mixed bag so far. This run of Cap has been kind of boring and this current arc is out there for a Cap book. Cap meets this woman Lyra who is the embodiment of life. Her brother is of course Death who they are at odds with. She has Cap gathering some new mutants for some big battle or something. There's a lot of talking in this without saying a lot. It all kind of gets bogged down.

Void Rivals, Vol. 2: Hunted Across the Wasteland ★★★★
This arc starts slowly but finishes strongly. Our two outcasts are trying to cross a wasteland to escape their worlds. Or course, we are going to see some more transformers characters but I won't spoil who for you. We finally get some shape to what is going on here. Bring on the next arc!

Night of the Living Cat, Volume 1 ★★
This is so dumb and it's played absolutely straight. People are attacked by cats and when they are touched by them, they turn into a cat. And yet, all of the people can't keep themselves from going to pet them because they are so cute? Also, the art is surprisingly good and well-detailed.

Spider-Man Visionaries: Todd McFarlane, Vol. 1 ★★★★★
Michelinie's writing isn't the best but once McFarlane gets turned loose, the book just looks so gorgeous. I love how he puts Spider-Man through all these impossible poses as he's flipping through the air. It gives you a real sense of how lithe and acrobatic Spider-Man is for the first time really. And it only took 300 issues. Plus you have the first appearance of Venom in here. I also love how issue #300 and #301 is the exact same cover, one with the black suit and one with the traditional red and blue. So simple yet so iconic.

Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection, Vol. 18: Venom ★★★★
After a terrible 3 part crossover from Ann Nocenti that goes through the 3 Spider-Man titles, Todd McFarlane enters the picture and his art just makes this book sing. I love that McFarlane put in little doodles where the UPC barcode went for books that were sold on the direct market instead of news stands. It's also refreshing to see McFarlane draw every issue once he takes over without missing a beat. It's always surprising to see how these Image guys who'd maybe put out 2 issues a year stick with a monthly book for years.

Zero Hour 30th Anniversary Special #1 ★★★
A petty solid story set during the collapse of worlds during the end of Zero Hour. Jurgens came up with a good way to insert material into the narrative without changing the original story.

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.

Marvel 85th Anniversary Special (2024) #1 ★★★
A bunch of random original stories tied together with a Wolverine and Deadpool team-up in the 85th century. My favorite story was Alan Davis returning to Excalibur to give us an untold story.

I don't know that you will find them in GL. Guy Gardner was kind of a blank slate until he showed up in the Justice League. The ongoing GL book that springs up is specifically about Hal Jordan. Guy Gardner does eventually get his own comic for awhile but it's not for a few years and he even stops being a GL for most of the run.

Green Lantern was certainly a lesser tier thing after Crisis. There wasn't even a GL book. Then they brought it back with the two Emerald Dawn miniseries which led to an ongoing. I don't think any of the regular run was collected until the Death of Superman tie in. There is a John Stewart book from 92-93 too. It's called Mosaic. I don't even think it's even on DC Infinite. I really hate when your only option is searching for alternate methods. I mean, I'd buy it if DC would let me.

If you haven't read Giffen and DeMatteis's Justice League run, you may want to check it out. Both Batman and Guy Garner are regulars and are written so well. It's my all time favorite JL run.

Today's trip to the LCS.

Something Crawled Out #1
X-Men #3
X-Force #2
Void Rivals #12
Captain America #12
Zero Hour 30th Anniversary Special
Marvel 85th Anniversary Special
Batman: Dark Age #5
The Hunger and the Dusk: Book Two #2
Aliens Vs. Avengers #1
Something Is Killing the Children #40 (I'm surprised there are any children left at this point.)
Ultimate X-Men #6
Marvel Must-Haves (Some free thing they gave me with 3 Marvel comics in it.)

Good luck reading any Green Lantern stuff for a long time after that Mike. Gerard Jones wrote most of it and he's currently in prison for child porn. Because of that DC has pulled anything he wrote making it difficult to find and he wrote like the first 50 issues of the ongoing Green Lantern run that came after these 2 miniseries. You'd probably need to skip ahead to the Kyle Rayner era.

Last week's adventures in comics.

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.

The Goon: Bunch of Old Crap Volume 2: An Omnibus ★★★★
This collects volumes 4-6 of the original trades, which is really 2 collections of trades and the OGN Chinatown and The Mystery of Mr. Wicker. If you've never read The Goon, what are you waiting for. Powell is an excellent cartoonist. He has this way of mixing comedy and action that feels unique. The Goon is about the title character and his friend Franky. They run a local old-timey gang and fight monsters that threaten their neighborhood.


Criminal, Vol. 6: The Last of the Innocent ★★★★
I never would have guessed that the next installment of Criminal would be a dark, twisted version of Archie and Veronica where the two have gotten married and have it all. Except that Archie isn't happy and decides to off Veronica for her family's money. Jughead (Freakout) is a junkie trying to escape drug addiction. Betty, Moose, and Reggie analogues appear in the story as well. Just in case you think you are imagining things, Sean Phillips pencils the flashbacks in a cartoony style reminiscent of Riverdale.

Criminal, Vol. 7: Wrong Time, Wrong Place ★★★★
This volume only has two stories in it, somewhat interconnected. The first is about Teeg Lawless. Someone has put a hit out on him while he's in county lockup for the last month. It's interspersed with a Conan knockoff comic that he's reading.

The 2nd story is about Teeg's son, Tracy, when he was 12. His dad takes him on the road on a job. You really see what a piece of shit Teeg is while Tracy just struggles to be a kid. This one is interspersed with a kung-fu werewolf comic.

My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies ★★★
Brubaker and Phillips return to the world of Criminal and it's just OK. It plods for the first half as this girl drones on and on about how she likes famous people known to be drug addicts. It's about a girl who gets sent to rehab where she meets a boy and they fall for one another. The ending really saves it from being an overall dud.

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.

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 2 ★★★★
This thing is a tome. It looks like an old Sears catalog. It's even thicker than my Cerebus trades. It's very good though, especially the illustrations. I love the use of pen and crosshatching on pages meant to look like a kid drawing in a notebook.

The story does meander at times. Others, it's just taking its time to get places. And most of your questions from volume 1 don't get answered which can be frustrating. But I always enjoyed the ride. I love the fake covers for monster comics as chapter breaks. I was never bored with this even though it's over 600 pages. It's pretty clear Ferris has more in store for us and I, for one, can't wait.

Weapon X-Men ★★★
This was alright. A bunch of Wolverines from alternate timelines fight a version of Onslaught consisting of Magneto and Jean Grey. It's fine but I'm sick of alternate timeline stories that don't really matter.

Gunnerkrigg Court, Volume 1: Orientation ★★★
Antimony Carver is sent to on odd school supposedly for science. But fairies, dragons and demons and other magical elements soon raise their heads. This reminds me a lot of Harry Potter if JJ Abrams had gotten a hold of it. There is mystery box after mystery box introduced but we don't get any answers in this volume.

Gunnerkrigg Court, Volume 2: Research ★★★★
The art has gotten much better from volume 1. Much more expressive and defined faces. The world building is also starting to come together. Instead of just introducing mystery box after mystery box, Siddell has picked up those threads from volume 1 and started to weave a cohesive mythology out of them. A great all ages title for both kids and adults.

Batman/Superman: World's Finest Vol. 5: Secret Origins ★★★
An odds and ends package of stories. #18 and #19 are a new origin story for Batman and Superman's first meeting. It's very good. Then issue #25 is the Joker and Lex Luthor's first team up and it's OK. The annual isn't even about Batman or Superman. It's got stories for Metamorpho, a young Bumblebee and the Challengers of the Unknown instead.

The Goon, Volume 7: A Place of Heartache and Grief ★★★★★
A new threat has even the zombie priest scared. These five issues are mainly groundwork for the future. Still, great fun fighting monsters and collecting ill-gotten gains and The Goon and Franky aren't the good guys either, just the less bad guys that take care of their friends in the neighborhood.

The Goon, Volume 8: Those That Is Damned ★★★★
The 2nd book of Labrazio's return remains very dark. The bad guys seem to be forming their own Legion of Doom against the Goon. This volume is a little smaller at 4 issues and then a bunch of backup stories by other creators. Some of them are fine but none of them are what I want to read. I want Powell all the time.

The Goon, Volume 9: Calamity of Conscience ★★★★★
The Labrazio story comes to a crushing end. These last few volumes continue to get pretty dark. Hopefully some more humorous days are ahead and we can mix some laughter in with the crying and heartbreak. Regardless, I still dig this book and plan on jumping right into the next one.

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.

Spider-Man/X-Factor: Shadowgames ★★
A very flat team-up between Spider-Man and X-Factor that is more about Spider-Man and X-Factor gets zero characterization. The bad guys barely even get names too. I honestly expected more given it was from Kurt Busiek.

Today's trip to my LCS.

Get Fury #4
Crocodile Black #4
Thundercats #7
Archer & Armstrong #1
Jenny Sparks #1
Predator Versus Black Panther #1
Destro #3
World's Finest #30
Nightwing #117
Redcoat #5
Titans #14
Ultimate Spider-Man #8