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.

Chernobyl: The Fall of Atomgrad ★★★★
If you ever wondered about what actually happened with Chernobyl, this is a pretty good resource. The gross ineptitude, malfeasance and corruption that allowed this to happen is truly horrible.

X-Men: Hellfire Gala - Fall of X ★★★★
The actual Hellfire Gala is pretty shocking. Turns the Krakoa era on its ear and is all around pretty devastating. I was all hyped about Fall of X after reading this. (Then I read most of it and the miniseries to come were almost all crap. Still this was terrific.) Gotta bring it down a star for the terrible Infinity comics that got inserted here though.

The Secret Voice: Volume One ★★★
A sword and sorcery comic with a messed up superhero in it. He's been left scarred in more ways than what is just covered by his bandages, causing him to lash out at times without even realizing what he has done. Parts of this were interesting. Parts of this were odd.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Reborn, Volume 8 - Damage Done ★★★★
The Turtles are all being pulled in different directions after the bloated events of The Armageddon Game. Meanwhile Dr. Barlow is back causing problems again. It's pretty good stuff.

Cosmoknights, Vol. 2 ★★★★★
Just a bunch of badass women fighting the patriarchy. This picks up right after volume one ends. The girls may have saved a princess but did she want to be saved? I like how everyone has different ideas about what to do to change the politics of the galaxy. Even without the mech fighting in this volume, it's still terrific. Great art, terrific art, characterization and world building. That Hannah Templar knows how to craft comics.

Penultimate Quest ★
This started off decent but by mid way through I had no idea what was going on. It starts off with these people trapped on an island with a never-ending dungeon filled with monsters. It feels like an old-school Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Part way through though it changes to god like beings and all these different worlds and it get really incoherent.

Hellboy: The Crooked Man & The Return of Effie Kolb ★★★★
We're getting a new Hellboy movie this year with Effie Kolb as the villain. I'm hopeful it'll be good since Mignola wrote the script. The original story, The Crooked Man, with Richard Corbin on art is terrific. It's a very cool, hillbilly witch story.

The Midnite Show ★★★★
This is the best Cullen Bunn book I've read in a while. But then again Bunn has made some of his best comics with Brian Hurtt. Yeah, I'm looking at you The Sixth Gun. This is fun. I would have liked to see it be a little more decompressed. It would have been even more fun with 12 issues instead of just 4. It's about old monster movies that are clearly meant to be the old Universal monsters. The movie comes to life and the monsters start killing people.

Grim, Vol. 2: Devils & Dust ★★★★
Things are changing and not for the better now that Death is dead. Jess is really freaked out and resisting becoming the new Grim Reaper while Adira's all in on taking the position. Jess and her friends are on the hunt for a back door to Hell so they can normalize things. This is very much a story in transition. This story is so much better than Phillips's work for hire stuff at DC and Marvel.

The art is so flipping good. The best thing Flaviano's ever done complemented by Rico Renzi's best coloring job. Not only does the art pop, but it has a depth to it, particularly the coloring. These two are doing Eisner level stuff here.

The Flying Ship Volume 2 ★★
Just not very good at all. A manga for kids from the dialogue. The art is in the most generic manga house style. Basically 200 pages of fluff.

Earthdivers, Vol. 2: Ice Age ★★★
We find out what happened to Tawny when she went into the cave. She winds up 20,000 years in the past having to deal with mega fauna and Sulutreans warring through the Americas during the ice age. Tawny can't speak the language and is stuck on both sides of this conflict while she tries to save a boy. It's solid stuff but sometimes the storytelling is unclear, probably due to the different artists on this volume.

Skeeters ★★★
A small town gets attacked by giant mutant mosquitoes. Cheesy, B-Level, SyFy channel horror at its best.

Dune: House Harkonnen, Volume One ★★★★
This is pretty good if you are into Dune. It's pretty much a continuation of the prequel House Atreides with Baron Harkonnen and Rabban sublots thrown in and turns out both have always been completely awful.

Dune: House Harkonnen, Volume Two ★★★★
This is better than I expected even. Good lord, the Harkonnen's are complete bastards, particularly Rabban. I was unsure if these prequels would add much but they are quite good. Having the adaptations done by the writers of the books helps.

The Vampire Slayer, Vol. 3 ★★★
Willow's time as the Slayer comes to a head as we have another go at Season 6 of the TV show, just with Buffy without powers as Willow has them but doesn't really do much with them. It's still all about the magic.

The Vampire Slayer, Vol. 4 ★★★
This probably should have ended at 12 issues. These last 4 feel very tacked on. It's a weak arc with Drusilla. The problem with just rehashing past characters with all of these stories is that you instantly remember how much better the series was than these comics.

The End of the Fucking World ★★★
Charles Schultz draws Natural Born Killers.

MythSpace: Ignition ★
I was excited to read some new comics using Filipino mythology. However, changing the creatures to different races set in space kind of ruined it. Now it's just your standard space adventure instead of a supernatural story.

Fall Through ★★
The art's cool but the story is hard to follow. The panels don't always align to tell the story coherently and the lettering is all over the place. It made it real difficult to figure out the reading order. The lettering also sometimes ran along or got so small I couldn't read it. Lettering is one of those things you only notice when it's bad. The crux of the story is about a small time punk band on tour in the 90's. Often struggling with basics like finding a place to stay while on the road because they can't afford hotels.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Jennika ★★
Oof, this was the worst TMNT book I've read in a while. Starts off with a reprint of Brahm Revel's backup story of Jennika's past from TMNT Universe. It's impossible to follow. There's a voice over from Splinter about the history of ninja while the art flips back and forth between two stories alternating with each panel. One is Jennika spying on the Turtles while she was still part of The Foot Clan. The other is Jennika's past. To keep it straight I had to read it three times, just focusing on one of the stories at a time.

Then we get to the main story. All of the criminals she associated with in her teenage years have been mutated and suck her back in to a stupid search for a cure for mutation. I didn't like it at all. Jennika is very weak-willed in the story and doesn't assert herself at all.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Volume 22: City At War, Part 1 ★★★★
The creative team continues to keep TMNT fresh and exciting. Karai has returned from Japan and attempts to take back the Foot Clan setting up all out war between all the various factions running around New York. After some dishonorable moves, it becomes an all-out sprint to save one of the cast members lives as they are constantly pursued by Karai and the EPF. This series has consistently been great.

Kyle wrote: "I've been reading Cosmoknights Book Two by Hannah Templer. I forgot how much I loved the first book and the second has been great so far!"

I read this the other day. It's terrific. Now we probably have to wait 4 more years for book 3 dammit!

Yes, the comic is almost like a cozy mystery series, where the TV show is the batshit craziness of Alan Tudyk. BTW, season 3 of the TV show is coming out now. It's streaming each week on Peacock and probably syfy.com as well as the SyFy channel itself.

Today's trip to the LCS.

Ultimate X-Men #1
Free Marvel Must-Haves -> A free comic that reprints Spider-Man/Deadpool #1, Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant #1 and Immortal Thor #2
The Devil That Wears My Face #5
Captain America #7
Avengers #11
Doctor Strange #13
Shazam #9
X-Men #32
Void Rivals #7
Birds of Prey #7
The Spectacular Spider-Men #1

a.g.e. montagner wrote: "Although I haven't uploaded all the single issues I read back before TPBs (and narrative arcs) became the norm..."

Yeah, I quickly decided that was a waste of my time and just started adding what I read since I started using GR. Otherwise it would literally be tens of thousands of comics and books.

Welcome Alessandro. My wife and I met some people from that part of Italy around 10 years ago. We were having lunch outside at a cafe in Venice and they were eating at the table next to us and we started talking. The two of them were just down in Venice for the day. We had such a good time they invited us to go for a ride with them in a vaporetto with a driver they knew and we ended up on a private tour at one of the glass factories on Murano. It was one of the best days I've ever had on a vacation.

Last week's adventures in comics.

Medea ★★★
A retelling of Medea's story replacing most of the magic with science of the day making Medea a herbalist. It's interesting and portrays her as a complicated character, a strong woman trying to make her own way in a world run by men. Yet, she continues to make plenty of horrible mistakes of her own.

Whistleblowers: Four Who Fought to Expose the Holocaust to America ★★★★
Four powerful stories of people helping Jews during World War II. Each issue is a different story, all are true and important to keep in the zeitgeist to make sure they never occur again.

Blue Book Volume 1: 1961 ★★★
I'm not really sure why this exists. It's documenting one of the more famous cases of alien abduction without really adding anything new. Tynion tells the story mainly through exposition as if he's writing down the details clinically. Where this book shines is the art. I really like Oeming's art here. Using only shades of blue adds to the experience.

Maskerade Volume 1 ★★★
When Kevin Smith and his partner from the Edumacation podcast, Andy McElfresh, got turned down for a DC show, they reworked it into their own comic. (I'm dying to know what character this originally was. The Question, maybe?) It's a revenge story, set in a Gotham like city without a Batman. There's the typical Kevin Smith humor, though it's not quite Jay and Silent Bob level of juvenile for the most part. (There's still a couple of fart jokes.) I do wish the whole story was in one volume. It's only 8 issues. Instead we get 2 4 issue volumes.

Maskerade Volume 2 ★★★
Kevin Smith's and Andy MdElfresh's revenge story featuring someone who is batshit crazy doesn't pack many surprises in its second half. It is fun in a dark version of The Mask way, with a crazy protagonist cracking jokes while murdering people.

Silver Vessels ★★
This starts off pretty good before it goes off the deep end. Three friends go to spend the summer with one of their grandpas and his husband in Key West. They went down there to find a lost pirate treasure. That's when things get goofy. You'd expect it to be lost underwater. For some reason instead it's buried under three Civil War forts that really do exist. Put they are all way below ground and filled with dinosaurs for some inexplicable reason. The first time it happened I thought it was some strange museum display because they didn't seem to move at all until one of the kids took something. The bad guys are these ultra rich guys who wear shark hats. It's just the kind of dumb I've come to expect from Steve Orlando.

The Lonesome Hunters: The Wolf Child ★★★
Our two main characters come across a kid that needs help along with his giant wolf mother. It's a strange, roadside attraction story that doesn't advance the story much at all. Crook, of course, makes it look great. But it does leave me wanting another story with more substance.

The Day the Klan Came to Town ★★
While based on a real event, this is a fictional story. It feels a bit hokey. The art makes it look really hokey. Everyone has these oversized werewolf hands. It looks like the man hands episode of Seinfeld. The body proportions are all wrong. The story adds all of these unnecessary asides about where these fictional characters were before they came to America. None of it is explained well. I'm all for bringing the event to life. I just wish the creators had done a better job of it.

The Pull ★
I'm not sure that Steve Orlando and Ricardo Lopez Ortiz set out to make the world's worst manga, but they may have succeeded. The story is incomprehensible. The art is awful. At one point the main character loses his arm and I had no idea until pages later. The art is so filled with explosions and speed lines, I couldn't tell. Just way too chaotic and fugly.

Punisher: The Bullet That Follows ★★
There's a new Punisher in town and he's not very interesting. He's a SHIELD agent who's family was killed. Now he's out for answers. There's just not enough story here. I'm a fan of Pepose's and hate that I didn't care for this, but sometimes it happens.

Algernon Blackwood's The Willows ★★
I know the original story was supposed to have even frightened Lovecraft but I find the writing very dry. It's about two people on a canoe trapped on an island in the middle of a river. Most of it is just imagined and still told through the words. While the art was interesting, a lot of it was still so nameless that made it hard to make out details. It's only 60 pages long and I was still looking to see how much was left.

Scales & Scoundrels Definitive Edition Book 2: The Festival of Life ★★★★
The creative team moved this book over to TKO from Image so they could finish off this series. We start off with a solo story from Durgo, returning home with her brother's body. Then we see what Luvander has been up to, with some nice world building. Finally, Luvander visits Aki and Koro's desert kingdom for a story about someone trying to sow chaos in their country. It's a cool series with some fun art by Galaad.

Advocate: A Graphic Memoir of Family, Community, and the Fight for Environmental Justice ★★★
Eddie Ahn's parents immigrated to the U.S. from Korea. Eddie himself moved to San Francisco from Texas for college and decided to stay. He was a community activist before going to law school and starting a non profit. He's also a very skilled artist. I loved the artwork and coloring. The story though wasn't all that interesting and could have been edited down some. I'm a big admirer about what he's doing though.

Revenger and the Fog ★★
This was like watching a low budget 70's action, revenge flick. Revenger's lover is kidnapped by her crazy father and Revenger goes to get her back. The ultra-violent artwork looks like it's going out of its way to make everyone look ugly. The utter lack of backgrounds makes the clumsy art stand out even more.

Noblesse Volume 2 ★
I really don't get how this is popular at all. The English translation is so bad. I can't make heads or tails from the story. The move from Webtoons to traditional print doesn't help either. The panels are just randomly plopped on the page. Supposedly this is about Frankenstein in modern times but he's barely in it.

The Boy from Clearwater: Book 1 ★★★
This is an important and true story about a Taiwanese boy put in prison for 10 years, but it's REALLY long. The first half is about his childhood growing up under Japanese rule, then Chinese after the end of World War II. It's way too long and not very interesting. He's sent to prison for joining a book club in high school. The second half is about his ten years in prison, moved to an island become prison. The style of writing sometimes made it hard to connect as it felt just like a list of facts.

Lonesome Days, Savage Nights ★★★
A werewolf goes after the gang who killed his girlfriend. It's OK. It's got that Steve Niles thing of not trying too hard to escape clichés thing going on. Unfortunately, Kudranski still hasn't run out of black ink. This guy could be a decent artist if you could actually see his art.

a.g.e. montagner wrote: "Chad: I love Sunstone! But I haven't read the Šejićs' other kinky series.
I was looking forward to Invisible Kingdom, did you find it underwhelming?"

It's fine. Between the three volumes it winds up kind of all over the place not delivering what the first volume seemed to be about. Even Christian Ward's art couldn't keep me that interested. It should be on Hoopla since Dark Horse published it.

Shane wrote: "Chad wrote: "Kind of depends on what you are into Shane.."
I didn't know Kelly Thompson did a Sabrina run - that's a serious contender! Honestly, I'll probably note all of those for future referenc..."

Sabrina is its own thing. It's not based on the TV show from the 90s or even the Sabrina that appears in Archie. It's more like the horror line except it's all ages. There is a Sabrina horror comic that the Netflix show is based off of, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

Then there's a Afterlife with Archie comic that's about zombies. That kicked off the whole genre. There's a Blossoms 666 comic that's kind of a take on Rosemary's baby. Jughead: the Hunger is about Jughead being a werewolf. Those aren't great. Vampironica is fun with Veronika becoming a vampire. There's also 2 Archie and Predator comics that are hilariously gory.

a.g.e. montagner wrote: "G. Willow Wilson also wrote Invisible Kingdom and is writing both Poison Ivy and The Hunger and the Dusk.

What about Linda Šejić, or [author:Eve E..."

I forgot about The Hunger and the Dusk and I just read an advance copy last week. What is wrong with me? It is a really cool fantasy story and Chris Wildgoose's art is terrific. Volume 1 ends with nothing resolved though. Given that IDW is stopping publishing original comics, I don't know if it will finish before their contract is up. Poison Ivy and Invisible Kingdom I thought were just OK.

Linda Sejic did do a really sweet retelling of the Hades and Persephone story called Punderworld. It remains unfinished though. Be careful what you pick up from the Sejic's (her husband Stejpan also writes and draws comics) though unless you have a very open mind. They've done some bondage comics and very sexually explicit comics so just be forewarned if that bothers you. They are by no means all like that. I'm thinking specifically of Sunstone and Fine Print.

Shane wrote: " I also need to read something from the Archie-verse. I’m leaning towards the Harley/Ivy/Betty/Veronica crossover, but open to suggestions from you fine readers"

That crossover is good. All of the Archie comics Mark Waid wrote are very good. Same thing with Kelly Thompson and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Then there's Archie's horror line which are all really good except for Jughead: The Hunger. Kind of depends on what you are into Shane.

Ms. Marvel or Air would fit well. Wilson did a good Sandman comic too.

DeConnick's Captain Marvel run is the best run from that character. Her Aquaman run was good as well. Bitch Planet was interesting but just kind of faded away before it really went anywhere. Not sure what happened there. Wonder Woman Historia is a terrific miniseries. I didn't get Pretty Deadly.

Today's trip to the LCS.

Punisher #4
Dead X-Men #2
Duke #3
Beneath the Tees #1
Avengers: Twilight #3
Immortal Thor #7
Invincible Iron Man #15
Resurrection of Magneto #2
Wolverine #44
Fire and Ice: Teegra <-- Bill Willingham's current comic. Not sure when it will become public domain.

Last week's adventures in comics.

The Banks ★★
Neat premise but doesn't execute all that well. It's about 3 generations of women in the Banks family. The family business since Grandma's day has been being a high end burglar. Now these 3 generations are on to one big score. The problem is Roxone Gay in no way did her homework on how anything technological works. She just waves her hands like Obi-Wan Kenobi to tell us "These are the not the hackers you are looking for." She doesn't have the first clue about how any of it works and doesn't even try and explain it. It's just "Oh, I put the thing on the thing and I'm done."

Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia Part 1 ★★
I just don't understand the purpose of this. It's a straight up adaptation of an episode of the TV show, beat by beat. The manga adaptation didn't add anything at all new. It's like the artist just watched the episode and then drew it. Just go watch the show instead. It's great. This is not.

Speak: The Graphic Novel ★★★★★
A powerful story about a girl who is raped the summer before her Freshman year in high school and can't find the words to speak to anyone about it. Carroll takes Anderson's words and gives them a voice with her art.

Soul: No Saint’s Day ★★
This is the first of these to actually have something to do with "Night of the Living Dead". It takes place right after the end of the movie. There is a long scene in the cemetery that's directly lifted out of one of the other comics and never pays off why it's even in here. Otherwise it starts off fine but then does this Groundhog Day thing with Ben getting killed over and over that's never explained. The dead people in the basement who'd been shot in the head wake up and have their full faculties and again isn't at all explained.

Spring: Sink or Swim ★
Another day, another Double Take graphic novel that makes absolutely no sense. There's no zombies here at all. It's about a bunch of people at a lake, telling stupid stories that drone on and on and serve no purpose. Then some swimmers disappear and they surface somewhere else that's more jungle like with toucans and stuff but no one seems to notice. Then there's somehow a spaceship from Venus. blah. blah. blah. None of it makes any kind of sense anyhow. I can't believe no one at this company ever said, "Hey, none of these comics about Night of the Living Dead make a lick of sense. Maybe we should consider rewriting this instead of having monkeys banging away on typewriters to write the script."

Slab: The Doctor Is in ★
Thank god I'm finally done with these turkeys. This one should probably be read last even though they are supposed to be able to be read in any order you want. It's about a doctor experimenting on the dead in order to discover a vaccine. But he's killing live dogs on TV to see if they return from the dead. WTF! Half the book is college kids partying it up and covering themselves in ketchup as a joke. There's some Venusian aliens here behind the scenes helping with the cure too. I still think all of these Double Take books were written by aliens trying to pass themselves off as human.

The Mystery Boxes ★★★★
A bunch of really good short comics for kids who are into slightly darker stories. The Emily Carroll story was terrific. So were a bunch of the others. They all had to do with a kid finding a mystery box.

Curses ★★★
A collection of short stories of various quality. The opening story really dragged on. It was a Victorian story about a man who saw visions of a monkey that wanted him to kill himself. It droned on and on. My favorite was the story about a man from Michigan who was trying to get pregnant with his wife. Nothing was working so he sought out the feather of an ogre to make them pregnant.

Storm King Comics Dark & Twisted: Long Haul ★★★
Bunn's horror is hit and miss but I thought this was pretty solid. It's about a trucker family whose sister has went missing. Now her brothers are trying to find her as they come across a group of serial killers called the Nine who are all truck drivers. It's the kind of thing where people can easily disappear and never be seen again so it's a perfect setting. My only complaint really is that it wasn't longer.

Fire Power, Volume 6 ★★★★★
That was excellent. Things are looking really bad. This freaking huge dragon is destroying cities around the world. Meanwhile, our kung-fu fighters are trying to level up to the point they can fight it and win. I especially loved issue #28. That issue just about wrecked me.

Tokyo Rose - Zero Hour (A Graphic Novel): A Japanese American Woman's Persecution and Ultimate Redemption after World War II ★★★
This was interesting. It's a true but dramatized story about the woman scapegoated as Tokyo Rose during World War II. (Tokyo Rose was actually several women. It was a radio broadcast from Japan made towards American sailors.) She was an American that was trapped in Japan while visiting family when Pearl Harbor was bombed.

Incredible Hulk Epic Collection, Vol. 13: Crossroads ★★★
This is alright. I find the brutish Hulk completely uninteresting and a Hulk that's basically the universe's most powerful pet dog is even less interesting. Dr. Strange is forced to banish the Hulk to the Crossroads where he randomly goes to a different world each issue before something goes wrong and he returns to the Crossroads. These issues take place between Secret Wars I and II.

Suzy Samson: The Gorgon and the Basilisk ★★★★
This was terrific. It takes place in a city full of super beings and a police force willing to use excessive force to stop them. Suzy Samson was the premiere superhero 10 years ago but gave it all up to get married. Now she's hit forty and her husband just asked for a divorce. When one of her friends does something really bad, she has to get back in the game.

The Tribute ★★
Apparently this was a major influence on Avatar and I get it. It has some of the same basic story. The storytelling is kind of obtuse considering these are also the guys who created Snowpiercer.

DC/RWBY ★★
Even though this was set in the DC universe this time, this was much more a RWBY comic because I had no idea what these girls were talking about half the time. The worlds were merging and people were getting powers for some reason along with these random animal things running around. Meghan Hetrick's art is always welcome but she only sticks around for the first 2 issues. Then Soo Lee takes over. Her art always looks sooty, like everyone has part time jobs as chimney-sweeps.

The Marble Queen ★★
340 pages long and hardly anything happens in it. It moves SOOO slowly. It's about a princess who becomes betrothed to the princess of another land in order to bail her own made up country out of debt. So you've got something of a Sapphic love story, just not a very interesting one.

Blood Oath ★★★
Vampires vs. gangsters? I'll allow it. During Prohibition, vampires had a difficult time finding alcohol to preserve the blood they drink, so they created a truce with the gangsters of New York.

Bad Dreams in the Night ★★★★
I quite liked these short stories with a darker bent. I thought they worked both for adults or teenagers. I was surprised at how good the art was too. I've never heard of Ellis before and his illustrations were quite good.

Once Upon a Workday: Encouraging Tales of Resilience ★★
A little Dr. Suessian book for adults about dealing with anxiety, self doubt, etc. If you like self-help books you may be into this. I was not.

The Last Session ★★★
A group of diverse friends who have been playing role-playing games since high school get together one last time before they all graduate college, move away and get jobs. The DM now has a girlfriend who wants to play and she disrupts the group dynamics during their last campaign. It's a story that's been told before, probably because it's happened so many time before. It's really difficult for someone to join these types of close D&D cliques after so many years of playing together. I still remember what a disaster it was when our girlfriends asked if they could play with us in high school.

Cowboys by Gary Phillips ★★★
An FBI agent and a cop both go undercover in two different organizations to take down the bad guys. Both of them are cheaters with families. Their individual cases are on track to meet for a bloody end. Some decent crime fiction but no real surprises here.

The Lonesome Hunters ★★★★
The rare artist turned writer who succeeds at doing both. With this new series, we've got this scared old monster hunter who has been hiding for years. We also have a teenage girl who has lost all her family and is quite brave when thrown into the fire while also being terrified. We kind of step right in the middle of this, so at 4 issues, there is still a lot to learn. But I'm sure as hell looking forward to more.

kaitlphere wrote: "Berlin, Vol. 1: City of Stones ★★
I bought this book about a decade ago on someone's suggestion and only just got around to reading it. It's about the social unrest in Germany that leads up to the creation of the Nazi party. That pre-war period is an area of history I know nothing about, since most war stories start a few years later. There are multiple timelines and protagonists in this, which was hard to follow because a lot of them look very similar. I would have benefitted from a glossary of terms as well. I really struggled to follow this book. However, chapter 4 stood out to as very good, as you saw the different ways that the different political parties educated their youth, and that was very insightful.."

I'm sorry Berlin didn't do it for you Kate. A collected edition of the entire series came out in 2019. Jason Lutes started it back in the 90's and didn't finish it for 22 years. He's a professor in his day job so I'll cut him a break. I loved Berlin, his first comic, Jar of Fools, and Houdini, the Handcuff King. I should dig those up out of the basement and read them again.

Today's trip to my LCS. Got a surprise when I got there that there was an author there signing copies of his new comic so I had to pick that up.

Zorro: Man of the Dead #2
Animal Pound #2
Cobra Commander #2
Rise of the Powers of X #2
Ultimate Spider-Man #2
World's Finest #24
Fire Power #30
G.O.D.S. #5
Incredible Hulk #9
Justice League Vs. Godzilla Vs. Kong #5
Nightwing #111
The Crying Boy #1 <-- signed by the author
Titans #8
X-Force #49

Last week's adventures in comics.

Spider-Gwen: Shadow Clones ★★
Bring in the clones because everything needs to be derivative. Gwen gets crossed with each member of the Sinister Six. Getting real tired of bad Spider books from Marvel. Maybe slow down and work on quality over quantity.

Sh*tshow ★★
A demon came 10 years ago and killed off this world's superteam. Only the Superman character is left. Now he's a drunk at a circus with the next generation of heroes when the demon returns. Meh.

Sengi and Tembo ★★★
Something of Animal Farm set in Africa. An aging elephant and a mouse became friends in the Savannah while being beset by lions, hyenas and lizards.

Baba Yaga's Assistant ★★★
Masha's mother passed away ten years ago and her father has been remote and distant ever since. She was mostly raised by her grandmother who passed away more recently. One day, her father comes home and tells Masha he's getting remarried and her new step sister is an evil little brat. Feeling abandoned she answers an ad in the paper to become Baba Yaga's assistant. That's where the real fun begins as she goes through a series of trials to get the job.

Scarlett Couture: The Munich File ★★★
There's quite a bit to be reminded of for this modern day, spy version of Charlie's Angels. Taylor's animation style art really works for me. I see Archer every time I see it.

The Cold Ever After ★★★
This is a really messed up queer fairy tale story every bit as dark as the Grimm fairy tales. It's about a captain of the guard who was banished for the last 12 years. Her queen and lover recalls her when the princess disappears from her tower and her betrothed gives the kingdom a week to find her or he'll raze it all. I was shocked at how dark this got.

CAPTAIN MARVEL: THE SAGA OF MONICA RAMBEAU ★★★
Some solid stories from the 80s and 90s featuring Captain Marvel, well the Monica Rambeau version that is. She never really had her own book so this collects most of her appearances and one shots outside of the Avengers.

Conan the Barbarian: Bound in Black Stone, Vol. 1 ★★
Hearkens back to the old school Conan comics of the 70's which I thought would be a good thing. But this thing is packed with so much overwrought prose that it drags and drags. I'm really surprised because Zub's wrote a bunch of good fantasy comics. De La Torre seems to be channeling some John Buscema on art too. But this thing was a stinker.

The Nightmare Brigade #2: Into the Woods ★★★
An Inception like comic. It's about these kids and their scientist father who go into people's nightmares and try to fix them. The stories can get confusing into what the root story is and if you're actually still in a dream or not.

The Hunger and the Dusk, Vol. 1 ★★★★★
Not the most original fantasy story, but a very well done one. Orcs and humans have been fighting over dwindling resources for generations. When a third race, the Vangol, comes to their shores, they'll need to put aside their differences and create an alliance to stop the Vangol threat. I love how different the races are and that the Orcs aren't just dumb warriors. They have their own society that's actually better off than humanity.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vs. Street Fighter ★★★
Your standard crossover affair from IDW. The Turtles head to Atlantic City to fight in a tournament and meet up with some of the Street Fighter folks.

Rise: Sister’s Keeper ★★
Another one of these Night of the Living Dead remake comics where it's hard to tell what's happening because they make no sense. A brother and sister are attacked in the cemetery and wind up at the hospital. There for some reason all the patients are put outside in the grounds of the hospital where they are fenced off. They don't seem to be zombies but seem to be converted almost like a cult by kissing and band together to escape. Meanwhile there's interludes with the President that seem to have very little to do with all of this. God, these books are terribly written.

Remote: Dead Air ★★
Another one of these Double Take books that goes off the rails. A woman runs a radio station while zombies are all around and she puts them to work. Meanwhile her boss keeps showing up in different places in the Western Hemisphere partying and telling the same story. Over the course of one day, he's partying it up everywhere from California to Machu Pichu. Then at one point, the DJ turns into the 50 foot woman.

Z-Men: All the President's Men ★★
This almost begins coherently with 2 Secret Service agents being sent to Pennsylvania to investigate the rumors of zombies. Half way though things go off the rails again though with people getting turned by a kiss into something other than a zombie and then they are all working together to take out a power plant.

Cat Fight ★★★
I think the blurb fails this book. It is in no way "John Wick meets Kill Bill meets Cats". But it is an entertaining story about a notorious thief whose grandmother is killed and he's framed for her murder. And almost everything having a cat motif just seemed silly.

Degas & Cassatt: A Solitary Dance ★★
The visuals are much better than the tedious, droning words. You'll certainly get that Degas was surly and hard to be around, if you're like me to the point of wanting this to be over.

A Guest in the House ★★★
Emily Carroll gets a longer form story and doesn't seem to completely know what to do with all that extra page count. This book seems to be in a holding pattern for a long time. It's something of a ghost story. A plain woman in a small Canadian town has recently married a dentist in town who is a widower with a child. She begins to be visited by the dead wife and things are maybe not all they seem.

Fairy Tale Comics: Classic Tales Told by Extraordinary Cartoonists ★★★
A bunch of comics creators do their little versions of fairy tales.

Today's trip to my LCS.

Fall of the House of X #2
Beneath the Trees #2
Beneath the Trees #3
Transformers #5
Abbott 1979 #4
Wolverine #43
Outsiders #4

Last week's adventures in comics.

Immortal Red Sonja Vol. 1 ★★★★★
A Red Sonja take on Arthurian legend. Sonja has been cursed with chain mail that restricts anytime she tries to remove it. It talks to her, telling her it can only be removed once the curse on Arthur's land is listed. The chain mail in an unreliable narrator and constantly puts her in danger.

The Rift ★★★
Begins with a strong time travel story that's been done before, with a World War II pilot coming through a rift to the present. But as it goes along it gets needlessly complicated with all these unnecessary side characters and B plots.

Butcher Queen: Black Star City ★★★
Some solid but dark sci-fi about an Earth where aliens are not only treated as second class citizens, but supremacists are kidnapping and experimenting on. There's a lot of this that can be applied to today's society and certain groups' fear of outsiders.

Medic 1: Flatline ★★
These comics continue to fail to impress. It's supposed to still be a remake of Night of the Living Dead still set in the 60s even though everything else about it seems to be current. Black people not only aren't oppressed, they are doctors. I can't stand whitewashing of history. Characters at this hospital drone on in meaningless stories for pages while people are being operated on. There's something going on with NASA here for whatever reason. Plus it looks like some kind of future or alien tech is involved. None of this makes any sense. I can see why this company didn't last long at all. Their comics suck.

Vengeance of Vampirella Vol. 3: Ghost Dance ★★★
Vampirella's love of her life returns as Nyx catches a disease. But could there be more to Adam Van Helsing's return from the dead?

Vengeance of Vampirella Vol. 4: After The Fall ★★★
I'm not sure how much this needed to exist since the main villain, Nyx, is now gone. Vampirella goes all hard travelling heroes and hits the road.

Zombies of Mass Destruction ★★
The U.S. government has engineered zombie soldiers to deploy in the Middle East and things go awry. Never could have guessed that. This just isn't put together very well. Not only is there lazy writing but the book needed an editor. One character is referred to as General Dax at one point and Colonel Jax in another.

Birds of Prey Vol. 1 ★★★★
A great start and more grounded into the rest of Dawn of DC than I expected. Black Canary puts together a new Birds of Prey team, one without Barbara Gordon and we don't find out why until the end of the arc. Her adopted daughter, Sin, is in trouble and the team has to go to Themyscira to save her. Good stuff.

Fictionauts ★★★
Packed with heady metafiction. It's about a team who goes into books to fix plots gone awry. There's a lot more to it than that, but dems the basics.

Star Bastard Vol. 1 ★★★★
This was actually a lot of fun. Captain Grieves is a piece of crap that gets his small crew in a lot of trouble, mainly by sleeping with the wrong alien. They're typically on the run from whatever culture they've just visited, typically by someone's father. There's a bigger story about who the Captain really is.

Impossible Jones, Vol. One ★★★★
Karl Kesel mentions in the book that he missed writing Harley Quinn so he basically brought her back and gave her Plastic Man's powers. Jones is a thief who gets powers and is mistaken for a hero. Powers she uses to steal from other thieves when she thinks she can get away with it. This is a boatload of fun.

Dead or Alive ★★★
Three kids go after a killer for the reward money. Unfortunately, said killer also crossed a Comanche who puts a zombie curse on him. So we get what you'd expect for a zombies in the Old West story.

Chasing Hitler Vol.1 ★★★
Two allied officers realize Hitler and Eva Braun faked their deaths and try to track them down. It's actually a neat premise. It wastes a lot of time for a 4 issue miniseries though. This is clearly set up for a future volume that certainly isn't happening.

The Penguin Vol. 1 ★★
This is something of a bait and switch. It's billed as the government forcing the Penguin to work undercover for them after he was kicked out of Gotham by his kids. It's really about how he's setting himself back up to force his way back into Gotham. And what it really is, is very boring. It's the worst Tom King book I've read in a while.

Today's trip to my LCS.
The Devil That Wears My Face #4
Birds of Prey #6
X-Men #31
Shazam #8
Docor Strange #12
Avengers #10
Captain America #6
Thundercats #1 <-- Got sucked into this because Declan Shalvey wrote it.