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

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

Mike wrote: "I've gone with Justice League: A New Beginning as I figure it must've influenced the DCEU movie in some way. I read it 10 years ago, but enjoyed it a lot more this time than I remembe..."

Saying it influenced the DCEU movie may be a stretch. Batman is the only character in both and there's very little humor to be found in any of the DCEU movies (which is one of my biggest complaints about them. They are so dour.) That being said, any excuse to go back and reread that Justice League run is a good one. It's still my favorite JL run of all time.

Last week's adventures in comics.

Batman the Brave and the Bold: The Winning Card ★★★
Yet another version of Batman and Joker's first face off. Mitch Gerad's art is great when we get it. About a third of the panels though are just text made to look like a old timey silent picture reel where the Joker tells jokes or sings a nursery rhyme. King does this all the time and it's starting to drive me bonkers. It seems like a way to stretch out the story and help the artist draw less more than anything else. The way this story came out was really stupid. It's issues 1, 2, 5 and 9 of Batman's latest anthology comic.

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

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

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

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

Lore Olympus: Volume Five ★★★
There's this big revelation about Persephone but it's revealed pretty poorly and I have severe doubts to its authenticity. Then she disappears and everyone's looking for her and I just kept wondering what the Hell was happening. For such a simple art style, this book can get very confusing.

X-Men: Inferno Prologue ★★★★
This is a really terrific era of the X-Men. All three books are really good. This is the era of the X-Men after Fall of the Mutants. The world thinks the X-Men died saving the world. They are hiding out in the Australian Outback and can't be videotaped or photographed as they go on covert missions around the world.

The X-Factor issues are the weakest of the 3 titles. It's a book in transition after they saved NYC from Apocolypse during Fall of the Mutants.

The New Mutants are dealing with the death of Doug Ramsey during Fall of the Mutants. His funeral is just a great but sad issue. Reading these all at once though, Rahne gets over his death and fixates on Sam awful quick. I think that was a misstep. Illyana is trying to maintain her hold on Limbo without turning into the Darkchilde in another lead in to Inferno.

The X-Men just are consistently fantastic all through the Claremont era.

Batman: Wayne Family Adventures, Vol. 4 ★★
More fluff of little consequence. If you enjoy goofy short stories of no consequence featuring Batman's sidekicks this is the book for you. Otherwise, don't waste your time.

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

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

The Hood, Vol. 1: Blood from Stones ★★★★
The Hood gets his start in this Max book from Marvel. The Max line was for mature audiences and didn't bleep out the curse words. It's a great start. Parker Robbins is a small time crook working with his cousin when he stumbles across a hood that gives him powers. One with darker consequences in the future. Parker is a scum bag. He sees a prostitute on the reg with a pregnant girlfriend at home. I really like that the story doesn't mess around with bleeped out curses. That seems so juvenile these days. There is some derogatory terms especially towards the LGBTQ community that would not fly these days and it was a bit jarring to see it.

Ultimate Spider-Man, Vol. 1: Married With Children ★★★★
Hickman plays this pretty straight. There's not really any heady concepts in this. This version of Peter Parker is married to MJ and they have two kids when he gets the powers he should have gotten when he was a teenager. Things are subtly different and he clearly has bigger ideas for everything else, but this was surprisingly lowkey. Marco Checchetto's art remains top notch.

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

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

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

Marvel Monograph: The Art of Arthur Adams – X-Men ★★★
If you've never seen Adams's X-Men artwork this would be pretty cool. But this is mainly just interior art and covers lifted straight from the comics. Those can be found in collections already. There's some variant covers and a few pieces from the art boards or uncolored but overall there's just not much new here to make this interesting. Just go out and find the books Adams worked on. All of his X-Men stuff has been collected and it's terrific. I suggest you just do that instead.

Robin: Days of Fire and Madness ★★★
After Robin's dad was murdered, he moves to Bludhaven where he is recruited by a special ops group and he has to decide if he wants to join. It's an odd choice for any of Batman's sidekicks to contemplate joining a military group as they kill people. There's some OMAC tie ins too as they destroy a lot of Bludhaven and a whole bunch of D-level criminals escape.

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

Pink Lemonade ★★★
This gave off strong Madman vibes. Pink Lemonade is an amnesiac with a scar on her forehead just like Madman (although he actually died). She rides around on her motorcycle doing good. She makes friends along the way and then runs afoul of a movie producer who takes advantage of her. This part gives off strong Bob Kane / Bill Finger vibes.

Today's trip to my LCS.

The World of Nebulon Preview <-- Kickstarter from one of the guys working at my LCS.
Spectacular Spider-Men #4
Blood Hunt #4
Ultimate Black Panther #5
Absolute Power: Ground Zero #1
Feral #4
Red Coat #3
Rook Exodus #3
Something Is Killing the Children #38
Void Rivals #10
Gatchaman #1

https://www.instocktrades.com/ has it new for $58. That's exactly 42% off which is their motto. They're a really good site for buying in print stuff.

Mike, have you read Pollack's Doom Patrol run? I bought it as it was released back in the 90s and remember liking it.

It's a great TMNT run a.g.e. Those bigger editions include all of the miniseries as well and there are a ton of them. My only caveat is that it's not the complete run yet because it ended with #150 and these go through #124. But it is all of the IDW collection to date and they are all in the proper reading order which can be a pain to figure out with all of the minis and TMNT Universe. It'll probably be a few years before this is completely finished with these editions. I'd buy it if you haven't read it yet.

Last week's adventures in comics.

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

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

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

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

Billy the Kid's Old Timey Oddities ★★★★
Billy the Kid hooks up with a carnival sideshow to go treasure hunting. Hotz fills this book full of strange looking mutants. The art is really good. It's one of the rare times where Powell doesn't draw his own comic but it works here.

Illuminations: Stories ★★★
Alan Moore of Watchmen and Swamp Thing fame has written his first collection of short stories. Short stories is a misnomer in at least one of the stories though as there is an entire 240 page novel sandwiched in the middle of this. Moore's prose in the past has typically bored me. It got to the point where I started skipping the stories in the back of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Providence because they were starting to make me hate the comics.

These nine stories were fine. What We Can Know About Thunderman is Moore's crack at the comic book industry. All of the names have been changed and there's no linear story. It's more just snippets of time at fake DC over the last 60 years. Others liked this much more than I did. I may have just reached the end of my Alan Moore phase after 40 years. Who knows.

Crisis on Infinite Earths: Paragons Rising The Deluxe Edition ★★★
This was fine. It adds a little bit to the Crisis event in the Arrowverse from the CW. It was cool that Guggenheim got Marv Wolfman to come help him write it. Guggenheim does talk about how there's some minor continuity errors in it. They had to write all of the episodes and this comic at the same time so some things may be slightly out of sequence with the shows.

Superman, Vol. 2: The Chained ★★★★
More of Luthor's secrets come to light, leaving Superman to clean up the messes. It's solid stuff. I do like that Williamson is leaning into some longtime continuity from 20 years or so ago. This leads directly into House of Brainiac too and now I'm interested, especially since the ramifications of that are used in DC's summer event, Absolute Power.

Fantastic Four, Vol. 2: Four Stories About Hope ★★★
4 fine stories. That's about all you can say about this. It's fine. Nothing special. Just fine.

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

Last week's adventures in comics. (Belated edition because I just got back from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown last night.)

Godzilla: 70th Anniversary ★★★★
A better than normal anniversary celebration of Godzilla. Most of the stories are told from the viewpoint of humans as they struggle to survive while Godzilla fights various monsters.

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

Magic, Volume Two ★★★★
Three planewalkers who run their guilds in Ravinca have banded together to uncover a conspiracy, one that threatens all dimensions. It all comes to a head in this second half of the story.

Mycroft Holmes and the Apocalypse Handbook ★★★
Turns out the all-time leading scorer in NBA history (well, 2nd most now to Lebron.) is also a writer. This was fun. It's about Sherlock Holmes's older and maybe smarter brother. He's even more insufferable than his brother. He's a real prick for most of this but gets away with it by being right.

Afterlife with Archie, Vol. 2: Betty R.I.P. ★★★★
The coolest bits about this volume are actually the first and last issues where we step away from the Riverdale folks who are travelling the countryside like The Walking Dead. Instead we get some C'Thullu stuff with Sabrina and a different monster type story with Josie and the Pussycats. I'd love to see how these ultimately came together. Unfortunately, the Riverdale and Sabrina TV shows got in the way and this eventually petered out.

Bacchus, Vol. 5: Earth, Water, Air, and Fire ★★★★
Another very good story. Bacchus, Joe Theseus and the Eyeball Kid cross paths for the first time.

Seoul Before Sunrise ★★
A pointless story about a girl who feels abandoned by her friend after they go to different colleges in Korea. This girl starts working at a convenience store overnights as a way to put herself through school. She meets this older woman who talks her into repeatedly sneaking away from the store when she should be working. There's never really any chemistry between them and the girl is twice her age but she randomly realizes she's a lesbian and declares her love for her friend which of course goes poorly.

Ancient Dreams ★
Everything about this is a complete mess. There are passages of text that go on for multiple pages. The story is indecipherable. Something about a woman with a twin who is tied to someone from the Iliad and the Greek gods. Clearly Roth doesn't understand that comics are a visual medium. This is a novel with illustrations around the prose (and terrible prose at that). It was like they took Roth's novel, translated it to Japanese in Google Translate and then back to English. It makes absolutely no sense. It does have some pretty pictures though.

JP Roth's Theory Of Magic ★
Oof, this was horrible. This had to be written as prose first and then adapted into a comic. There are so many text boxes peppered over each page. And good luck trying to determine the reading order. They just seem randomly plopped on the page. There's also a ton of text pages that are written in cursive on top of art. They were almost impossible to read.

Huda F Cares? ★★
This looked pretty interesting. A comic about a girl growing up in a Muslim family. I used to live near Dearborn, MI and there is a large Muslim community there. It's about Huda and her sisters going to Disney World. For a book that's supposed to be funny though, this just wasn't really. The art is REALLY poor too. Huda looks like a slug with magic hands floating in the air.

Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation ★★★★
This is an extremely tough read. It's about a black woman who keeps time travelling from 1976 (when Octavia Butler's book was written) back to the South about 50 years before the Civil War. Even though she's educated (more educated than the owners of the plantation even) the only thing that matters is the color of her skin. She's able to gain some special privileges after saving the owner's son, Rufus, becoming his tutor. Things are further complicated when on one of these journeys back to the past, her white husband is dragged back with her. There is no white washing here. Black people are treated awfully, whipped and sold at their master's whims.

G.O.D.S. ★★★★
This was cool. I've heard it billed as Marvel's Sandman but I don't think that's true. It's clearly setup for something much larger, probably some big event in the future. If I had to compare it to something, I think it might be a toned down Planetary. It's got that same operating behind the scenes vibe.

Rabid World ★★★★
A solid end of the world comic when a rabies virus breaks out that turns people into rage zombies similar to 28 Days Later. The story focuses on a doctor trying to find a cure and four regular people trying to survive on a boat.

Acursian ★★
I was curious about this. A comic written by John Barrowman, Jack Harkness from Doctor Who. Unfortunately I couldn't tell what was happening half the time. It has to do with Celtic mythology and a curse upon the male lineage of this family.

FIREBRAND: THE INITIATION OF NATALI PRESANO ★★
This just isn't very good. It's about a girl who has magic. She goes to live with her mom's side of the family to learn how to control it. She returns to Seattle as an adult to fight magical enemies. She isn't allowed to kill even though the bad guys are draining the life force of people left and right, leaving stacks of bodies everywhere. The story is really confusing and often contradicts itself.

Sirens of the City ★★★★★
This was just terrific. It's set in the 80s counter culture scene in New York. A teenage girl gets kicked out of her house when her foster parents learn she's pregnant and she heads to NYC. There she meets some other people and learns there's more to her than one first thought (see the title). It gives off Lost Boys vibes on the East Coast. My only complaint is that it should have been many more volumes.

Yasmeen ★★★★★
This was very good and also harrowing. It's about a teenager who was separated from her family when ISIS took over Mosul, Iraq. The rest of her family made it to the U.S. while she was forced to become some older man's wife that she didn't even know. She's made it to her family at the beginning of the story and we flashback to her time in captivity as the story moves along. It's really horrible but never graphic. She doesn't let it break her though and we see how she and her family adopt to life in a small town in Iowa.

I Am Legend ★★★★
A great adaptation of the book. Niles mainly just cuts Matheson's prose into panels and lets Brown do the work telling the story visually. This is very text heavy as book adaptations tend to be. In fact each page typically has one or two panels that are completely text. The story is great. It's about the last human on Earth. Vampires have taken over the world and for some reason, Robert Neville is the only one left unaffected.

Usagi Yojimbo Saga Volume 7 ★★★★
Another fantastic massive tome of Usagi Yojimbo. One of the things I like is that these stories can pretty much be read in a vacuum. Even though this contains volumes 26-28 of the series, you can start here without missing a beat. The nature of the story is that the main character is a ronin roaming from town to town helping people. There are recurring characters but not a whole lot of mythology that you have to remember unlike most other comics.

If You'll Have Me ★★★
An overly cute light romance between two women in their first year of college. One has never dated before and doesn't pick up on social queues at all. The other has a reputation for one night stands. I found this overly long at 300 pages, considering it doesn't have anything deep to say.

Kolchak The Night Stalker Volume 1 ★★
I do like that this volume is new stories instead of adaptations of TV episodes. Still, these original stories from the show that inspired the X-Files doesn't feel very inspired itself.

Bloodline: Daughter of Blade ★★
This was better than I expected. I rolled my eyes when I saw it on the shelf at my comic book store. Blade's daughter gets his powers when she's in high school and also finds out Blade is her dad. Lore does a great job with the dialogue. The story though kept feeling like there were pages missing though. Both in the action sequences and with missing scenes. I half expected a few panels to say "Scene Missing" throughout this.

Darboe's art is pretty good. However, I can't stand the lack of backgrounds. Swirling colors and speed lines can't replace a lack of details. This is one area where I can't stand manga's influence on Western art.

Last night's trip to my LCS.

The Writer #1 <-- Josh Gad wrote a comic and the main character looks just like him. Plus Ariel Olivetti drew it. Needed to check this out.
Ultimate Spider-Man #6
Titans #12
Nightwing #115
Invincible Iron Man #19
Immortal Thor #12
House of Slaughter #24
Doctor Strange #16
Captain America #10
Batman / Superman: World's Finest #28
Destro #1
Faith Returns #2

I don't remember that but I sure do remember parents being in an uproar about Mighty Mouse crushing up a flower and snorting it like cocaine.

Max wrote: "I'm going to go with All Star Superman, it's supposed to be the main inspiration for James Gunn's Superman movie."

If it is, that will be pretty out there for a main stream superhero flick.

Today's trip to my LCS.

Avengers #15
Geiger #3
GODS #8
Incredible Hulk #13
Outsiders #8
Transformers #9
Ultimate X-Men #4
Thundercats #5
Blood Hunt: Red Band #3
Deadpool / Wolverine: WWIII #2
Crocodile Black #2

Mike wrote: "PSA: Humble Bundle have nearly the entire volume 1 of the IDW Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a Kobo bundle. The deal ends in a couple of days and is a steal.."

They also have one going for Dynamite for their 20th anniversary. It's 20,000 pages for $20. It's got stuff from Gail Simone, Garth Ennis, Al Ewing, Grant Morrison, Andy Diggle, Christopher Priest, Rick Remender, Duane Sweirzyncki, Keiron Guillen and Kevin Smith. I've read a lot of it and I'm tempted to get it just so I can have digital copies of all of it for $20. This one ends in 23 hours.
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/dy...

The one Mike mentioned ends in 2 days.
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/te...

Also ending in two days is all of BPRD. For $30 it includes the Hellboy bundle they did last year too which even includes some of the novels. Or just get the BPRD stuff for $18.
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/mi...

There's also a Kodansha manga bundle for $30. Most of this isn't my thing but to each their own.
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/sp...

I have a ton of Humble Bundles from over the years. The nice thing is that the files are always accessible so you don't need terrabytes of local storage to store them all. You can just download what you want to read and then delete it afterwards. Plus, it's a terrific way to check out comics you've never read before. With $20 for $1.500+ worth of comics you can't really go wrong. Even if you only like one or two things you've got your money's worth. If it's something I'm at all interested in, I'll go ahead and get it and then read it during lulls. Plus, part of the money goes to charity and you get to choose how much that is via a slider bar.

Mike wrote: "I only recently learned of DC's Pride collections, which I intend to read as it's Pride month, but I had missed Star Trek! I've been picking up the Eaglemoss collection off eBay and have been planning to jump into the new runs, but this will make a good start. I'm also glad to hear that it's a fact of their character, like having feet, rather than it's their character."

Yeah, DC does a Pride one-shot every June. So does Marvel for that matter. The story quality varies a lot as they typically get one bigger name writer or artist (I think Grant Morrison did a story in last year's.) and then it quickly turns into try out stories for writers and artists with a few LBGTQIA creators thrown in.

The Marvel one this year was about Mystique and Destiny renewing their vows. The best part of it was the interview Chris Claremont did where he talked about putting them in a relationship back in the early 80s where he had to be really subtle. Like there's an issue where Destiny walks into the kitchen in Mystique's apartment one morning and it's clear she spent the night but nothing is said.

Last week's adventures in comics.

Star Wars: Darth Vader - Black, White & Red ★★★
Nothing special short stories about Darth Vader. I did really like the oversized art this was printed on. It was more the size of art boards the pages are originally drawn on or those old treasury size comics from the 70s. I'd probably say differently though if I had to store this on a shelf instead of getting it from the library.

The Last Fall ★★★
This was actually pretty good. The story is about a sergeant who has lost it all during a religious war between 2 planets.

The Explorers (Snowpiercer, #2-3) ★
Apparently there's an unknown second train travelling the Earth. It's called Icebreaker but a better name would have been Cashgrab.

Kolchak The Night Stalker: Monsters Among Us ★★★
Two stories of Kolchak the Night Stalker. One of them by the former writer of Amazing Spider-Man. The first one is about zombies in a small town. The second is about a monster running around in Oregon.

Rogue & Gambit: Power Play ★★
A kind of crummy and by the numbers miniseries where Gambit and Rogue don't trust one another yet again. The whole thing is just to set up Manifold for the Fall of X even though he's hardly in it.

Afterlife with Archie, Vol. 1: Escape from Riverdale ★★★★★
The Archie comic that started a whole new genre at Archie comics. We wound up with just about every horror variant of Archie possible after the success of Afterlife with Archie and it's well warranted. This is great. We start off with a little variation of Pet Cemetery. Turns out Hot Dog started the whole outbreak. I'd forgotten how much more adult this was than the regular title. These kids are off having sex, brutally putting the undead out of their (or maybe our) misery. It's all just terrifically gruesome stuff.

Afterlife with Archie, Vol. 2: Betty R.I.P. ★★★★
The coolest bits about this volume are actually the first and last issues where we step away from the Riverdale folks who are travelling the countryside like The Walking Dead. Instead we get some C'Thullu stuff with Sabrina and a different monster type story with Josie and the Pussycats. I'd love to see how these ultimately came together. Unfortunately, the Riverdale and Sabrina TV shows got in the way and this eventually petered out. Maybe one day Aguirre-Sacasa will pick this back up now that his TV shows ended.

DEN Volume 1: Neverwhere ★★★
Back in the 70's, Corben hooked up with Heavy Metal to publish Den in its magazine. This person gets a brand new, ripped but naked body after going through a portal to this fantasy realm. Kind of just ignore the plot and the fact that no one wears clothes for some reason, men and women just letting everything float in the breeze. Corben's visuals are terrific. All of the art has been retouched and the terrible lettering completely replaced.

Star Trek: Celebrations ★★★
This was alright. I didn't think most of the art captured the likenesses of the actors very well so I had a difficult time telling wh0 was supposed to be from the shows other than Seven of Nine and Sulu. I did really like that the stories weren't about being gay or being in a relationship. They were just about living their lives as everyone else does and they just happen to be LGBTQIA.

Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain ★★
Just terrible. A miniseries should be able to stand on its own. This instead requires you know 30 years of Marvel UK history to know what's happening. I know most of it and this book is still just a mess.

Shades of Magic Vol. 1: The Steel Prince ★★★
An OK prequel story about the King from the books when he was just a prince gathering experience. His father sends him away to a lawless port city.

Fall of the House of X/Rise of the Powers of X ★★
What a clusterfuck. My first thought was "Would this have been any better had Hickman stuck with this or did he jump ship because he saw the nonsense writing on the wall?" Everything about it is a mess. A lot of the story occurs in ancillary miniseries. If it's a crossover, why didn't you number all the issues Marvel? Even the artwork isn't very good. They go to great lengths to try and hide the lack of backgrounds with special effects from the production team.

X-Men #35/700 ★★★★
A much better send off of the Krakoan age than the actual culmination of Fall of X. That was a shitshow and this was actually pretty good. It also made way more sense. It's mainly one big story about the mutants who disappeared when Krakoa left for 15 years while only a short time had passed in the main universe.

Agent of W.O.R.L.D.E. ★★★
It's about an agent for some weird spy organization like Agents of SHADE. He has a secret family that know one knows about and will be killed if he's found out. The issues are more one off. It doesn't tell a complete story or anything but I wanted to read it now that Deniz Camp is writing The Ultimates over at Marvel.

X-23: Deadly Regenesis ★★★
These flashback Marvel stories don't interest me a whole lot but I'm a completionist so there you go. It's set in the Utopian era of X-Men. Laura has just left X-Force (one of the best iterations of that team IMO.) She heads to Minnesota and of course Kimora goes after her.

Bite-Sized Tales Of Terror #1 ★★★
A 50 page one shot with three shorter horror stories. The first two were pretty good. The third one not so much.

Deadpool, Vol. 1 ★★★
Even though this is stated as being part of the Krakoan age of X-Men, Deadpool gets kicked off Krakoa in New Mutants #30 and never looks back. He gets invited to join a group of assassins and has to kill Dr. Octopus within 24 hours to join. Meanwhile a crazy woman has put a Carnage symbiote inside of him.

Deadpool, Vol. 2 ★★★★
Deadpool's in love with a psycho and has a new symbiote dog in tow. Time to be attacked repeatedly by an assassin's guild.

Wasted Space: The Cosmic Collection ★★★
This started off pretty bad. The story was confusing and the art was terrible. But it does get better. The story straightens itself out. Sherman's art gets better over the course of these 25 issues.

Usagi Yojimbo, Vol. 26: Traitors of the Earth ★★★
I couldn't get into this volume as much as I have with other Usagi stories. I know there's been magic in the series before but the use here was too over the top for me and took away some of the realism. It's still solid, just not one of my favorites. Once people start floating over rivers that's too much for me when the story is typically pretty well grounded.

New Mutants: Lethal Legion ★
This was a chore just to get through. Anders wrote the last 3 issues of the last New Mutants series and it's pretty clear this was meant to be the next arc. It's so boring. It's about a dumb ass Count Nefaria trying to put a new Lethal Legion together for no real purpose other than to give this a title.

Magneto: Magneto Was Right ★★★
Another one of those flashback series from Marvel and again, one where nothing new is gained. Magneto is now running the school with the New Mutants in tow. DeMatteis tries to retcon his past behavior to declare he was purposely playing a character with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in order to make the X-Men look better and that is just so much nonsense.

Brother Nash ★★★★
I like the idea of this Ancient travelling the highways in a semi helping people. I love all the Native American lore in here and just the general strangeness of this story.

Bacchus, Vol. 1: Immortality Isn't Forever ★★★★
Bacchus has been around for 4,000 years, drinking wine and telling stories. Most of the other gods are gone but someone from Greek mythology occasionally shows up and causes problems.

Bacchus, Vol. 2: The Gods of Business ★★★★★
I love the mix of Greek mythology and gangsters. Bacchus is barely even in this volume and it doesn't even matter. Joe Theseus and the Eyeball Kid versus the Telchines is where it's at.

Bacchus, Vol. 3: Doing the Islands With Bacchus ★★★★
Bacchus takes center stage again in this volume. Most of the stories consist of Bacchus drinking with his buddies while telling stories from Greek mythology with his twist on them or the histories of wine or the like. Hermes also makes his first appearance in the story. This is also when I started buying the book in single issues when I could find it at my LCS. Good stuff.

Bacchus, Vol. 4: The Eyeball Kid: One Man Show ★★★
Those one man monologues from the Eyeball Kid are tough to sit through. It's much more interesting whenever the story focuses on the Telchines. So Telchines, good. Eyeball Kid, bad. Even though they are all bad.

The TV show only has a very limited connection to the comics. I also think the TV show is kind of terrible. Secret Invasion is the only show on Disney+ that I thought was even worse.

Those 6 issues from Warren Ellis are terrific. The Lemire run is pretty good. There's some really horrible runs after that one but the current one by Jed Mackay is good. Of course Marvel did its bullshit thing where it restarts the series in the middle of an author's run with a slightly altered title, now it's Vengeance of Moon Knight. Makes it so hard for readers to follow.

Today's trip to the LCS.

Space Ghost #2
Get Fury #2
Scarlett #1
Birds of Prey #10
X-Men #35/700
The Ultimates #1
Crocodile Black #1 <--- New Boom comic from Phillip Kennedy Johnson

I'd read them in order Jessica. I really liked the G. Willow Wilson series. The Saladin Ahmed one is just OK. He changes some things and it's not as good IMO.

a.g.e. montagner wrote: "Love that you love Monstress. It's one of my favourite recent series and in my opnion deserved the Eisners and Hugo."

Most definitely. Well deserved.

Last week's adventures in comics.

Venom, Vol. 3: Dark Web ★★★
The first half of this was solid with some new revelations for Dylan and then Eddie's involvement in the Dark Web nonsense. Those issues are uneven because the setup for it isn't in this collection. Grrr.

Venom, Vol. 4: Illumination ★★★
I think it's ironic that this volume is called Illumination when this run has been anything but illuminating. The 2nd half of this arc does get more straight forward as Eddie finally returns to Earth and really amps up his power level. Now he finally feels like the new King in Black.

All Talk ★★
Some dummies in a street gang in Berlin try and up their game. This was kind of terrible with really bad art.

The Web of Black Widow ★★★★
A straight forward noirish story where Black Widow is trying to catch the person who is impersonating and framing her. Each issue has a cameo with a different friend of Natasha's.

Matt Wagner's Grendel Tales: Four Devils, One Hell ★★
The story of four Grendels whose stories converge in New Orleans. The story is disjointed and unfocused. The art is terrible.

Grendel Tales: Devil's Hammer ★
Some Grendels wipe out a village and leave one survivor who trains to be a Grendel so that he can exact his revenge one day. Not a very compelling story. The art is nothing special.

Grendel Tales: Devils and Deaths ★★★★
Grendel Draco has radiation poisoning and goes on one last mission to save the village from the monster eating livestock. The late Biuković's art works very well with the rustic setting and theme.

Grendel Tales: Devil in Our Midst ★★★
A suicidal Grendel washes up on the shores of Antarctica where he meets up with a team charged with protecting a large toxic waste dump. The crew are contracting a virus that makes then ultra-violent and bleed from the eyes in the shape of Grendel's mask. (Looks cool but doesn't make a lot of sense.) Borrows heavily from The Thing.

Grendel Tales Omnibus: Volume 1 ★★★

Daredevil: Gang War ★★★
Starts off pretty strong but starts to meander as it kind of just becomes check ins to what Elektra is doing during Gang War. Mainly she's randomly fighting The Heat who is a repurposed X-character we haven't seen for a while.

Luke Cage: Gang War ★★
A really weak tie-in to Gang War. Luke Cage is the Mayor of New York City now but there's that pesky anti-vigilante law in place that keeps him from helping stop criminals during the big gang war. So Cage gets a terrible new costume and then gets his wife and best friend to help out but they don't bother to wear masks. So dumb. Then they fight some generic Spider-Slayer robots.

Deadly Hands of Kung Fu: Gang War ★★★
Meh. Some standard ancillary story for Gang War. Shang-Chi tries to keep Chinatown safe while the ten rings are locked away from him.

Sabretooth & The Exiles ★★
The Exiles here are not your old Exiles traveling dimensions. They are the other mutants who were banished to the Pit along with Sabretooth. Now they are free and on the run from Orchis. This whole series is just kind of a mess with this team hitting up another Orchis station that gets ruined with each issue. The bad guy is a doctor with no ethics. A Dr. Mengele for mutants basically. The last issue does lead in to Sabretooth War over in Wolverine.

Wolverine, Vol. 8: Sabretooth War, Part 1 ★★★
Finally a Wolverine comic by Percy that's not about Beast. This is about Sabretooth out for revenge. You are going to want to make sure you read the 2 Sabretooth miniseries that Victor LaValle wrote. This spends directly out of that and X-Force #50. LaValle is actually a cowriter on this.

Wolverine, Vol. 9: Sabretooth War, Part 2 ★★★
The Krakoa era of Wolverine ends with this long fight between Wolverine and Sabretooth. It's OK. Healing factors don't mean much in this story. That's what you can say about the artwork and the backup stories in issue #50. It's all OK.

Pound for Pound ★★★
A female MMA fighter has to go after the cartel who took her little sister. There's a lot of twists and turns here, some of them not making the most sense. It's over the top graphic action. It reminded me some of Machete but less cheesy.

Snowpiercer - The Prequel: Part 1: Extinction ★★
Full of a lot of fluff for a 100 page story. It feels like it was padded out to get two volumes of content out of this. Adding in unnecessary historical things like the Krakoa volcanic eruption added nothing to the story except filling out that page count. Surely the story could have been made long enough just with these ecoterrorists and the lead up to the coming disaster. A better explanation for how this train stays operable and free of snow would be great too. Both my parents worked as engineers on the railroad and snow is an issue, especially when it's dozens of feet deep.

Hellsing, Vol. 7 ★★★
A volume all about Seras Victoria which was cool. It's also pretty much one big long fight. The panels though are so overfilled with crap that it's sometimes really hard to pick up what's happening. Sometimes less is more. I also can't get over how ridiculous the soldiers for the Catholic church look in their Klan robes.

X-Men by Gerry Duggan Vol. 6 ★★★
I'm not sure who at Marvel think this is a good idea. All of the X-titles at the moment seem to be all part of a puzzle where the pieces are all blank. You have no idea what order you are supposed to read them in and they all have spoilers for other titles. It really grinds my gears that all of these aren't numbered properly if they are more or less all part of one big crossover.

X-Men: The Wedding Special (2024) #1 ★★
I feel like this was a bit of a bait and switch. It's billed as the never before told wedding of Mystique and Destiny but it's really just a renewal of their vows. I wanted to see this be all about their original wedding. This is all just a bunch of fluff, padded out with two reprint stories to drive up the cover price.

Avengers: Twilight ★★★★
Kind of a by the numbers future Avengers story we've seen before with the current Avengers. And if you've read Captain America you've seen this same story multiple times. The O.G. Avengers have been outlawed after a day where a lot of people were killed. Now Iron Man and Wasp's kid work for an Avengers team run by the government. The government is fascist and what you see in the media is being controlled. Sound familiar?

Shook! A Black Horror Anthology ★★
This was a real mixed bag for me. Some stories had solid art, some I couldn't even tell what was happening or didn't assist with telling the story through sequential art. There are some authors I enjoy in this like Rodney Barnes and David F. Walker. It's a real shame that this didn't work more.

Star Wars: Darth Vader - Black, White & Red ★★★
Nothing special short stories about Darth Vader. I don't think this format works very well for Marvel. Only one story, the one by Marc Bernardin took advantage of the limited color palette. Of course they were also only one of two stories that actually used a color artist and it showed. Every other story just looked like uncolored art that didn't use any shading or techniques a book intended to be black and white would use to give the art more nuance.

Monstress, Vol. 1: Awakening ★★★★★
A breathtaking new series. Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda are firing on all cylinders with this series. Takeda has taken the best of Eastern and Western comics and created an original world with a somewhat steampunk look mixed with the lands of fairy. An uneasy truce exists between humans and Archons (basically fairies). Humans have discovered an Archon's essence can be distilled down to give humans magic. Those on both sides are hunting for a teenage girl trying to control the elder god hidden inside her.

Monstress, Vol. 2: The Blood ★★★★★
The closest thing I've read to a true illustrated fantasy novel. The art and story combine with Manga and Lovecraftian influences for a unique experience. I'm not sure how a book can look both ethereally beautiful and gut-wrenchingly bloody and awful at the same time. Reading this often feels like the first time I read Sandman back in the day, like we're in on something uniquely special that no one else has discovered yet. BTW, I love Kippa. At first, she comes across as this stupid little girl and then says something insightful or profound out of the blue. Everyone seems extremely annoyed by her, but then finds themselves looking after her.

Monstress, Vol. 3: Haven ★★★★★
I will say that this reads much better in big chunks. Reading this straight through has made things clearer. There's a ton going on with a lot of characters weaving in and out. In this volume. Maika Halfwolf heads to a new city that was able to sit out the previous war due to a magical dome over the city. That dome though is on the fritz now with factions approaching. Queue up Maika and the old one inside her Zinn to get it back up and running again. Takeda's art is just as lush and gorgeous as the previous volumes.

Monstress, Vol. 4: The Chosen ★★★★★
Maika meets her father who she immediately doesn't trust. We get a lot of backstory into what's been going on as everyone prepares for war. I love that Kippa gets a chance to shine too. She's my favorite character in this harsh, violent world. Takeda's art is just perfect. Such a terrific blending of East and West.

Monstress, Vol. 5: Warchild ★★★★★
The war between humans and the arcanics begins with the humans invading the city of Ravenna. Maika helps out in a hopeless cause to defend the city. The story continues to be dense and fantastic. The art is amaze balls.

Monstress, Vol. 6: The Vow ★★★★★
A few volumes in, I feel like we're finally getting some shape as to what is going on here. Although there are still a ton of factions here and some of them flit back and forth frequently. Starts off a bit slower with some smaller stories while there's a lull in the war in Ravenna. Then things heat up again towards the end with more revelations.