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

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

Ed wrote: "Yes, I am getting them. (Be sure to click the "Notify me" button. It is no longer automatically clicked.)"

That was the first thing I checked and it doesn't make a difference.

So apparently this is only broken for some people? That makes it so much worse because the code is the code. It should be the same for everyone.

I'm just wondering, are people getting notified for updates to posts in this group? It's been completely broken for me for about 3 weeks. I contacted GR support. They said it was a known issue and then it's been crickets since then. It's weird because I do get notifications for when someone likes one of my reviews, but notifications for posts in my groups or when someone comments on one of my reviews. Nada.

Last week's adventures in comics.

Tomb Raider Colossal Collection Volume 1 ★★
This is pretty terrible. It gets even worse once Dan Jurgens and Andy Parks leave. The stories all seem more or less the same. Someone in Lara's life betrays her or a new love interest appears only to disappear and never be heard again after the end of the story. It's like this title exists in a vacuum. Then there's issue #25 which is missing, presumably because it was a crossover with Witchblade and The Darkness (Top Cow originally made all these before Dark Horse reprinted them.) The stranger thing is that Witchblade and the Darkness both appear in the issues afterward but only in their civilian garb. Anyway, Lara apparently dies in #25 and is in some kind of Egyptian underworld in #26 and you have no idea what happened. The whole series is nonstop poor writing and surprisingly poor art considering all these artists became much bigger after this was published.

Ain't No Grave ★★★★
Death comes for us all. Ryder has settled down to have a family. In the past she was an unrepentant outlaw. When she finds out she's dying, she seeks out Death to gain more time with her family. The art is absolutely gorgeous, both the line art and the colors. This book looks terrific. I like how each chapter was one of the 5 stages of grief too.

Sunday ★
I know almost everyone else that read this loved it, but I had to force myself repeatedly to stick with it. It's a day in the life of the author's cousin. It feels very indulgent as nothing happens. This guy just procrastinates the whole day doing nothing. There's pages where the words are just gibberish or the lyrics to "Sex Machine". (The latter happens multiple times.) The panels keep flitting back and forth between multiple threads that go nowhere. Plus it's about 500 pages long. If this is supposed to be Schrauwen's best work, it'll be the last time I check his stuff out.

A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance, Vol. 1 ★★★★
Don't expect answers here. Hopefully, they'll come in the second half. A man is taking contracts on the dark web and warning people before they are filled. then he has to go on the run with one of the people he helps to disappear. Some kind of Epstein stand in seems to be behind it all. There's sparse dialogue letting the art do most of the talking and it works.

A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance, Vol. 2 ★★★★★
I thought volume 2 stuck the landing. Our main character and Xavier are still on the run from this Epstein's wannabe's minions. It heads in directions I didn't expect and pretty quickly. Things that happen in an issue or two would be entire arcs in a lot of series. I'm surprised this wrapped up in 11 issues. The art is extremely well done.

The Thirteenth Floor, Volume 3 ★★★
This was interesting. Not too many British comics make it the this side of the pond. It's about an apartment building run by AI back in the 80s. It's told in 3 page increments. Most of the stories are morality tales where someone is behaving badly (stealing from residents, that kind of thing) and Max the computer talks them into coming to his 13th floor where he basically controls his own holodeck and sets them straight. Then there's some stranger stories where a portable version of Max heads out with two tenants to Russia where an evil computer is trying to corrupt him. There's also a story where Max has a chip go bad and starts to try and kill the residents so it certainly has a Twilight Zone vibe to it.

Adventureman, Vol. 1: The End and Everything After ★★★★
A new collection of the series from 2020, this time collecting the first 5 instead of the first 4 issues and it does work better because of it. Adventureman was a Doc Savage type, a pulp hero. Then something happened and he and all of his colleagues were forgotten. Until now. Now Claire and her son are realizing it was all real. The Dodsons make this book look absolutely gorgeous.

GhostBox Vol. 1 ★★★
Two sisters discover a music box that soon draws them into a world of ghosts and monsters. I quite liked this. It's not that far off from other Mike Carey things like Hellblazer and his Felix Castor novels.

Falling in Love on the Path to Hell Volume One ★★★
A male gunslinger and a female samurai die on opposite sides of the world and wake up on this island where warriors across time fight the undead. It's little light on story other than being the comic book version of Lost. Garry Brown's rough art works very well here.

7 Inch Kara Vol. 2 ★★★
A cute story for little girls. Fills that "The Borrowers" vibe. It's about a Lilliputian that becomes friends with the teenager who moves into the nearby abandoned house. It's a cozy kind of story where not a lot happens. The main thing is that Kara's father wants to move as soon as his leg heals because he's scared of humans.

Standstill ★★
Starts out decently about this guy who can stop time and is killing people around the world. Once Andrew Robinson leaves though in issue #4 and Alex Riedel takes over things go downhill. Not only is Riedel's art poor but the story then matches it as it turns to cliches. I did appreciate the widescreem approach to the art with every page being a double page spread. It was like the whole thing was in widescreen.

Immortal Sergeant ★★
The creators of I Kill Giants return for a comic based on Joe Kelly's relationship with his father. If his father is like the character in this comic, he may be the most unlikable person on the face of the Earth. He's such a racist asshole and bully, that's it's hard to get through. It starts off and you think this is some kind of Archie Bunker situation and then it just keeps getting darker and darker. Ken Niimura's art is so loose and unfinished that it looks like thumbnails blown up to full scale. I hated it.

Minor Threats, Vol. 1: A Quick End to a Long Beginning ★★★★
A bunch of D-list villains from Great Value DC find themselves between a rock and a hard place when Not-Joker kills Not-Robin and Not-Batman goes off the deep end and starts murdering his rogues gallery. They decide to catch Not-Joker first. It's dark. It's fun. It's not too surprising that life long super nerds, Patton Oswalt and Jordon Blum (the guys behind the M.O.D.O.K. cartoon), can deliver comics as good as Patton's standup.

Resurgence of the Valiant Universe Omnibus ★
Valiant has been limping along for the last several years, getting bought and sold left and right and it shows in the quality of its comics lately. This latest push to fix things was just a band aid that ends with "Eh, we really don't give a shit". Now there's a multiverse so they can have their cake and eat it too. I hate multiverses like nobody's business. They make it so that nothing matters. But even leading up to that, these comics aren't good. They are very inconsistent. The first issue of Shadowman has nudity and f-bombs in it, the next issue has all the curses bleeped out. I don't care either way, just have some consistency in what you're doing. It just shows that no one cares as far as I'm concerned. And that's how I feel about Valiant these days. Who Cares? And that's really sad to me because for 5 or 6 years I thought they were the best comic company out there.

Gannibal Vol 6 ★★★
We finally get some of the crazy history of this clan who seems to be eating people. It's still some obtuse storytelling that makes it difficult to see how all the pieces fit together, but seeing some of Keisuke's past helped.

Paris ★★
A straight-forward LGBTQ love story where you know exactly what is going to happen on each page because you've read this story before. An art student falls for the debutante she's painting. It all falls apart due to misunderstandings and the English debutante is raffled off to the gay boy from a proper family. You can see where this is headed. Peppering French throughout this thing was an annoyance to translate. Just pick a language and stick to it instead of constantly needing to pull out my phone to use Google Translate. Simon Gane's art is incredibly detailed. The monotone color though tends to make it all blend together.

The Knives ★★★★★
The first new Criminal comic in 5 years! It's about time. I'm sure they did this one to more or less coincide with the Criminal streamer coming out soon on Amazon. It was worth the wait. Also, if you haven't read Criminal before, that doesn't really matter. The stories are told nonlinearly and can be read more or less in any order. You might miss some Easter eggs. Pretty much every character in this has appeared in previous stories.

I'm assuming this one pulls a lot from Brubaker's Hollywood experience. Jacob Kurtz is a comic book writer who has a show based on one of his comics coming out. Kurtz is hired for the writers' room for the show where things don't really go as expected. BTW, Jacob Kurtz is an ode to Jack Kirby whose real name was Jacob Kurtzman. Then there's Ang who has become a cat burglar out of necessity and often sleeps in Kurtz's basement when she needs a place to stay. Eventually the stories begin to weave together. All of it is super well done. Get aboard the Criminal train if you haven't in the past. You can thank me later.

EC Cruel Universe Vol. 1 ★★★
Eh, this was alright. Most of the stories felt a bit cliched and you knew exactly where they were headed as soon as you learned the premise. The old EC stories were honestly better but Oni gets points for trying.

Oh wow! That's terrible. I had a stroke 3 years ago and it took a long time to get back to normal. Some days certain words still are difficult to remember and then it'll pop into my head 10 minutes later.

Hopefully, Browne can make a full recovery.

I look at them as the new quarter longboxes of the 21st century.

They are newer. It's Humble Bundle without the charity aspect. I bought the Valiant one that ended yesterday and the Lone Wolf and Cub one you mentioned. The files were all PDF copies you can download. I typically download everything immediately and put them in a zip file on an external drive just in case they go under like some of the other online services have.

I do wish there was a way to filter out all those programming bundles and just see the comics. I'm a programmer and even I don't want them.

Adam wrote: "That's an interesting line up at any rate."

That's what I thought. A mixture of creators I'm interested in and a couple I'm always disappointed with.

Fanatical has anew bundle. All of BPRD and a bunch of other Mignoliaverse comics. You can get all of it for $15 or the nice thing about Fanatical is that you can just buy what you want piecemeal.

https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and...

I also got some ashcans from a new comic book company, Ignition Press. It's run by Jamie Rich, someone from Boom and Jeremy Haun.

These ashcans had Leah Williams, David Baldeon, Jeremy Haun, Cullen Bunn and Marika Cresta listed. I saw Si Spurrier, Stephanie Williams, Joe Eisma and the Miranda Brothers also listed as having projects coming out there.

Flipping through one of these Jeremy Haun's book has a sequel to The Beauty coming out.

Today's trip to my LCS.

Ultimate Wolverine #9
Ultimate Spider-Man: Incursion #4
Transformers #24
Thundercats #18
Space Ghost #2
Redcoat #14
Racer X #1
One World Under Doom #7
Gatchaman #12
Feral #16
Exceptional X-Men #13
Captain America #3
Birds of Prey #25
Aquaman #9
Absolute Batman #12
X-Men of Apocalypse: Alpha
Blue Falcon and Dynomutt #1
Nocturnals: The Sinister Path #1

Yeah, but that's how it should be. There's even some Waid, Busiek and Hickman books in the mix.

Last week's adventures in comics.

Hope Never to See It: A Graphic History of Guerrilla Violence during the American Civil War ★★
I have a feeling this worked better in its original text more than in comic book form. There's so many different military figures mentioned in this, especially during the trial that I couldn't keep them straight. It's a neat idea, detailing some of the events of the Civil War that occurred in Missouri. It was just a chore to keep it all straight in my head.

The Bend of Luck ★★★
Two men in the Old West find some rocks that infer luck. This is the story of what happens as this story intersects with a man who jumps off the Golden Gate bridge leaving his wife behind. It's fine. Not as good as some other Hoey stories.

Second Chances, Vol. 1 ★★
The story can be a muddled mess at times with too much focus on a drug that can erase memories. The main character is a man who helps people get second chances, except it's more about his crazy assassin girlfriend. The story isn't all that great but the art is. It's really detailed and dynamic giving me Steve Epting vibes.

Green Lantern 2: Love and War ★★★★
Jeremy Adams is doing a very good job of making the Green Lanterns relevant again. We finally find out what happened to Kilowog in the first issue. Then the deep state stuff with the United Planets comes to light over the course of this. Adams seems to have some cool plans there. The back up stories are actually relevant. The Guy Gardner ones tie into House of Brainiac if you're a completist. I like how each of the other Lanterns get some screen time and it's not Hal and no one else. My one nitpick is that there are a LOT of artists on this book.

Art Brut, Vol. 1: The Winking Woman ★★★
The creative team behind Ice Cream Man create the most Vertigo comic I've read since that imprint folded. This isn't a horror comic like Ice Cream Man though. It's all meta with someone being able to change paintings like the Mona Lisa who is now winking. There's a crazy guy called the Art Brut who can step in and out of paintings who this FBI like organization uses to fix these kinds of things. It's like this story just stepped out of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol run.

Echolands, Vol. 1 ★★★★★
This thing is an absolute treat to gander at. Williams art is so fantastic and inventive. Every character looks like they were plucked out of a different comic, Kirby, Wrightson, a comic strip. They all mix together to tell this story of a group of criminals on the run after one of them stole a gem and didn't realize what they'd taken from the local wizard in charge.

This thing has a unique layout, stapled and bound on the narrow side of a comic and oriented in double page landscapes. It can be a chore to read digitally if you don't have a very large screen. Try and get a physical copy if you can.

X-O Manowar: Invictus ★★
This got real bad towards the end as there was a mad dash to tie up all these plot threads and get Aric back to Earth for Resurgence. You can actually hear the record scratch when Ivar shows up on the last page and teleports Aric out of there and Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad's story before it's really settled. There's are also 3 different artists and multiple colorists on the book and it shows.

Radiant Red, Vol. 1: Crime and Punishment ★★★★★
Radiant Red operates way more in the grey than Radiant Black. Her fiance has gotten them into a ton of gambling debt and the only out she sees is to rob banks. And it turns out she kind of enjoys the power. Then she gets forced into a job to steal something dangerous. There's a lot to like here. LaFuente's art is often quite good and then he'll do something like draw someone with great big huge hands the size of boxing gloves.

Fall of Deadworld ★★★
The Judges fight a bunch of the undead in this ongoing war. It's got some Dead Space type stuff in it as these aren't strictly zombies and are almost impossible to kill. Still like a lot of 2000 AD stuff if you haven't been reading it forever, I didn't know why any of this was happening.

Radiant Black, Vol. 2: Team-Up ★★★
Marshall continues as Radiant Black as his best friend sits in a coma. The first 2 issues are a slobberknocker between the Radiants without any story progression. The second half of this is more interesting as Marshall is a little more out for himself and tries to do things his way as he struggles through life. The last issue is an origin for Radiant Pink and Yellow. Overall, pretty good.

The Crumrin Chronicles Vol. 1: The Charmed and the Cursed ★★★★
Courtney Crumrin is back, this time in the background while her little brother / great uncle (It's complicated.) takes center stage. There's high school, magic and a vampire involved in this one. I thought it was every bit as good as the original series even as we move onto a new chapter.

Phoolan Devi, Rebel Queen ★★★★★
A biography of the controversial Phoolan Devi. A fierce advocate of women's rights in India. At the age of 11, she was married off to a man 20 years older and then raped. The police later raped her as well. Eventually, she meets some bandits and takes control of her life, meeting out justice to those who abuse women with her gang acting as a Robin Hood to the villages in the area. There are some truly horrible scenes in this so be forewarned. But it is an incredible story of perseverance and ultimately justice. I had no idea who Phoolan Devi was before this but I'll be looking out for more biographies about her now.

Choose Your Own Adventure Eighth Grade Witch ★
I used to love Choose Your Own Adventures as a kid and had a ton of them. This doesn't really work as a comic book though. It's more difficult to flip back and forth without accidentally cheating and revealing the wrong paths. Plus, most of the endings were plenty lame and felt intended for a much younger audience.

Under the Cottonwood Tree ★★★★
A Spanish story about a family in New Mexico. The youngest brother is a pest and runs afoul of the local curandera. She's had a tragedy in her life and let it turn her sour. She turns little Carlo into a cow and things continue south for the family from there. There's a lot to like in this original story and I thought the art was great as well.

Tomb Raider Colossal Collection Volume 1 ★★
This is pretty terrible. It gets even worse once Dan Jurgens and Andy Parks leave. The stories all seem more or less the same. Someone in Lara's life betrays her or a new love interest appears only to disappear and never be heard again after the end of the story. It's like this title exists in a vacuum. Then there's issue #25 which is missing, presumably because it was a crossover with Witchblade and The Darkness (Top Cow originally made all these before Dark Horse reprinted them.) The stranger thing is that Witchblade and the Darkness both appear in the issues afterward but only in their civilian garb. Anyway, Lara apparently dies in #25 and is in some kind of Egyptian underworld in #26 and you have no idea what happened. The whole series is nonstop poor writing and surprisingly poor art considering all these artists became much bigger after this was published.

Violent Flowers ★★★
A group of vampires fight over an old feud and strike a lot of sensual poses. My favorite part of this is that it took place in one of my favorite cities, Barcelona, and large portions of it take place in Park Guell and La Pedrera, two of the most fabulous works of architecture you could ever visit, both by Gaudi.

Deep Cuts ★★★
An anthology of stories revolving around the American music of the 20th century. Some worked better than others, as did some of the artwork with a different artist illustrating each issue.

The Dark Room ★★★★
This completely reminds me of something that would have come out from Vertigo if Vertigo still existed. It's about a private curator of cursed objects hired to find a cursed camera. Then she has to go on the run. It's got breakdancing skeletons, coke fueled werewolves and disco loving elves in it too. It's just a hell of a lot of fun.

The Bone Orchard Mythos: The Passageway ★★
This feels like the first issue of a comic where you expect to get answers in later issues, except those don't exist. A geologist comes to a tiny island that houses a light house when she calls in that a large deep whole appeared over night. Then a bunch of weird nonsensical stuff happens without any answers. In retrospect, this is not where you want to end a volume with the reader having no idea what's going on.

Tomb Raider, Vol. 1: Saga of the Medusa Mask ★★★
Chase Carver is super cringey. The rest isn't too bad though, better than I expected. Still it's early 2000s Top Cow so keep your expectations low.

Tomb Raider, Vol. 2: Mystic Artifacts ★★
This thing begins to slide downhill when Lara Croft goes back in time with the dinosaurs. It was better than these goofball Midnight Squire wingnuts though. They are so over the top macho and then they meet the old guy who has his own underground lair complete with harem straight out of a James Bond film. I don't know how Dan Jurgens wrote this without snickering.

Tomb Raider, Vol. 3: Chasing Shangri La ★★★
The Shangri-La story was actually not bad. Some good artists early on in their careers here.

Tomb Raider: Pieces of Zero ★★
This story is goofy as hell. It's got reality stars getting swallowed up by tentacles. Then time travelling to the future. Plus, the old guy with the harem who is "fated" to wind up with Lara is back. All of it is dumb.

There's a new Image Humble Bundle out. There's some good stuff and some crap. But I think it's worth your $30 just for Chew and Fear Agent if you haven't read those.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/im...

Today's trip to the comic book store.

Batman #1
Absolute Superman #11
Absolute Green Lantern #6
Avengers #30
Thundercats / Powerpuff Girls #3
Captain Planet and the Planeteers #4
Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Justice League #2
Justice League vs Godzilla vs Kong 2 #4
Flash Gordon #11
Rocketfellers #8
Sisterhood #3
TMNT #11
Thundercats: Lost #6
Uncanny X-Men #20

Last week's adventures in comics.

Masks ★★★
A fine book for younger readers. It's about some monster kids who are being hunted by basically a version of the klan but for monsters. These three monster kids live in an abandoned building on the outskirts of society. On Halloween, they venture out to find Haven, a mythical safe place for monster kind. For some reason, these kids know nothing about Halloween even though it's the one day they could walk around without hiding themselves. The other thing I thought was odd is that the main character has horns but never tries to hide them with a beanie even though the boy in the group wears a beanie nonstop. It would be a lot easier to walk around undetected without those horns sticking up.

Fishflies ★★★
There's beginning to be a sameness to Lemire's comics, especially those taking place in Essex County, Canada. This one is about an armed robber who turns into a giant bug and befriends a preteen girl. Of course, her dad is a piece of crap because every one of Lemire's main characters have daddy issues. This is fine. It doesn't have the breadth or scope of his more ambitious projects like Descender / Ascender. But it's an easy read.

Lady Mechanika Volume 6 ★★★
A deluxe edition collecting volumes 7 and 8 of the regular run. The Ministry of Hell explores Lady Mechanika's origins after she is found pretty much feral with her metal limbs as a child. She's put in a Victorian asylum with a bunch of other mutants. It's not bad.

The Devil in the Lake sends Lady Mechanika to Russia to investigate some missing scientists and word of a monster in Siberia. Siya Oum steps in for the artwork and her art is similar to Benitez's.

Free Agents Volume 1 ★★
I typically really like Kurt Busiek's stuff but this was an absolute dud. It's about a superhero team from another dimension that after a war is trapped on Earth. There's way too much focus on language and terminology from these other worlds. It made it really boring because I didn't care about any of it. The art seemed muddy here too when I've liked Mooney's art in the past.

Count Crowley Volume 3: Mediocre Midnight Monster Hunter ★★★★
David Dastmalchian just gets what I like about horror. Basing the story around someone running a late night monster movie show is genius. This is the exact same kind of thing we'd have come up with as kids and also similar to Fright Night, an unsung horror movie from the 80s if you haven't seen it. Jerri has all kinds of her own problems, especially with alcohol. Plus, all of these old guys think she can't kill monsters just because she's a woman and are huge a-holes to her even though she takes no gruff from them either. This clearly ends with the intention of there being more, so Dark Horse please keep these going. They are terrific.

Road to Resurgence: Ninjak vs. Roku TP ★★★★
Easily the best of these Road to Resurgence comics, both in story and art. All of these seem to be about tying up loose ends from previous series and setting up a confrontation with Dr. Silk in Resurgence.

Road to Resurgence: Dark Magic ★★
The Punk Mambo story was crap with bad art. The Darques wasn't any better. Just give this a pass.

Road to Resurgence: Allies ★★★
This was alright. Faith returns wasn't as good as the previous stories Jody Houser wrote (which were great) and the art was suspect.

Road to Resurgence: Eternal TP ★★★
The Archer and Armstrong story was my favorite of the three here. The Rai one was a bit of a waste. The Eternal Warrior one had Gilad and the rest of his siblings meet up and travel to the old West. I loved the jokes about the movie Tombstone. It's worth reading just for those.

DC Finest - Superman: The First Superhero ★★★★
I was a little surprised with how much I liked this, just because a lot of gold and silver age stuff just doesn't hold up in the modern age. It's very formulaic. Superman fights a LOT of gangsters. He's sometimes a menace more than a hero. In one issue he tells everyone to get out of their homes in a Metropolis slum and then knocks all the buildings to the ground because they cut corners in the construction. Then he just leaves. Another issue, a shady guy runs a plant so Superman just destroys it. He constantly bursting through walls like the Kool Aid Man. The Ultra-Humanite was the actual first supervillain of Superman's. Luthor shows up later but with a full head of hair. Clark and Lois work at the Daily Star until it inexplicably turns into the Daily Planet around #23. There's a different Chief and Jimmy Olson is nowhere to be found. Both Superman and Lois roofie people in this. It can get bonkers.

The Freeze ★★
A cool idea that doesn't go far enough and leaves way too much open ended. I want answers dammit. It's about a world wide event where everyone suddenly becomes frozen except for one man. And that man's touch can unfreeze people. You never find out the mystery of why this happened. Even though in the first issue there's crashed planes and cars everywhere, the next issue the few people left are driving around like nothing happened. There's power. The internet still works. The food in the grocery store is still good. They even get meat there. It's just not very well thought through and then it leaves you hanging.

Aquinnah ★★
The first 2/3rds had way too many time jumps and the storytelling made things very confusing. The last 50 pages was just a big infodump where everything is spit out at us. You could literally skip the first 100 pages and have gotten the exact same story.

The Nasty ★★★★
I liked this quite a bit. It's set at a failing video store that specializes in horror movies. To save the store, they put on a horror festival showing a movie that's so gruesome it's not allowed to watch at home. I'm not sure what the laws were in Great Britain at the time, but this seems like it could have been legit. There's also some crazy woman who is part of some League of Decency who is trying to put a stop to it. I remember those stupid groups here too, always in everyone else's business. Anyway something happens to this horror movie and the kids decide to make their own since no one has actually ever seen it. Oh yeah, the director of this film also has a slasher imaginary friend who is becoming real as they start filming. I know it's a lot but John Lees makes it work.

Wifwulf ★★★
A pretty short story about a woman who marries a Civil War veteran. At first they are happy but he becomes jealous of her time spent outside in the woods with some wolves and begins to drink. It seems allegorical and moody. It's interesting but as I said short for $20. There's a lot of pinups and behind the scenes stuff that fill up over half the book. I wasn't familiar with Ogden's art but I quite liked it.

Supper Club ★★
Three friends start a supper club senior year as an excuse to get together every week. Problem is, after the initial meeting supper club takes a back seat to the random drama each of the girls go through during the school year and it just becomes your typical Raina Telgemeier experience.

The Ghost in You (Reckless, #4) ★★★★
Ethan's girl Friday, Anna, takes center stage while Ethan is out of town living the next book in the series. Fake Elvira comes in and hires her to investigate a house she's inherited with a long history of being haunted. The haunted house is only part of the story as we see all the drama with Anna's mother unfold. It's all very well written and well drawn just like you'd expect from a Brubaker and Phillips project.

Port of Earth, Vol. 1 ★★★
I thought this was a cool premise. Aliens visit Earth and make a deal with humans to basically put a gas station for spaceships out in the ocean. The Earth gets renewable clean energy, the galaxy gets a truck stop. Earth is responsible for security though. While aliens are not allowed to depart their crafts while on Earth but if they do, an agency needs to bring them back with the least amount of violence possible. This has led to the death of over a thousand humans since the agreement was made.

Port of Earth, Vol. 2 ★★★★
It finally comes out that these aliens might not be so benevolent just like everyone reading this expected to happen. Hopefully they can nail the ending with only 4 issues left.

Port of Earth, Vol. 3 ★★★★
This was a cool series. The plot thickens as it's becoming apparent that the Consortium is seeding these tragedies, laying the groundwork to take over. There's a lot of cool stuff here. Too bad it got cancelled before the story could be finished.

Mindset ★★★
A pretty cool story about a college student who discovers mind control and they decide to sneak it into an app. I could easily see this being a Black Mirror episode. Gets a little confusing towards the end with all the back and forth about who is controlling who, but still a cool idea.

Maniac Killer Strikes Again! ★★★
A bunch of Sala's short stories put together over the last 20 years. Most of them feature a maniac killer on the loose. Putting them all together kind of makes them less interesting instead of more. Sala's early lettering kind of drives me nuts as well. Please use a ruler.

Night Fever ★★★
A literary agent heads to Paris for a book fair. He can't sleep and has grown weary of his happy domestic life. So he starts wondering the streets at night when he follows a couple to a party where he pretends to be someone else. Then he meets Ranier who take him on a surreal and gritty journey through the seedier side of France. Interesting but nonessential compared to other Brubaker/Phillips comics.

Night Mary ★★★
Originally published in 2006 over at IDW and now given a new edition by Image. It's OK. It's got that Nightmare on Elm Street vibe with lots of it occurring in dream worlds. It's about a teenage girl whose father is helping people through dream therapy. His daughter is helping by going into the patient's dreams and helping them work through their issues. However, these same people are now killing people in the real world. The most interesting part about this is Dwyer's shifting art as he uses different styles for dreams versus reality.

Mirka Andolfo's Sweet Paprika, Vol. 1 ★★
I don't understand the point of drawing everyone in your book as angels or demons if you aren't going to give each race different traits or strengths and weaknesses. This is a trashy romance novel in comic book form. One with as many words as prose though. It's bogged down by so many words.

I'm guessing Sea Serpents Heir would count. I liked that one.

By the Horns came out in 2022 from Scout and it's terrific. It's about the last of the unicorns in this universe.

The Bendis New Avengers era is really good. So is the Hickman era but that's more involved as it contains half of Marvel for several years.

Today's trip to my LCS. Big week this week.

Bring on the Bad Guys: Dormammu #1
Bring on the Bad Guys: Mephisto #1
Gatchaman: Joe - Bloodline #1
Absolute Martian Manhunter #6
Absolute Wonder Woman #11
Avengers #29
Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees: Rite of Spring #2
Deadpool / Wolverine #8
Geiger #17
Herculoids #7
Hornsby & Halo #9
Incredible Hulk #28
Justice League Unlimited #10
The Sixth Gun: Battle for the Six #2
Speed Racer #2
The Mortal Thor #1
Ultimate Spider-Man #20
Void Rivals #22
West Coast Avengers #10
Uncanny X-Men #21

Last week's adventures in comics part 2.

Blood Squad Seven Vol. 2: Con Season ★★★
A solid super hero soap opera. Blood Squad Seven has basically replaced Youngblood in Image history as its original super team and now it's back 30 years later with a new government sponsored team.

Punk Mambo: The Punk Witch Project ★★
Not sure why this was one big issue instead of 2 regular sized issues like the other Valiant titles of this era. Punk Mambo keeps hearing punk music and tracks it down to London. It's really boring though. Too many going ons about punk. 40 years ago that discussion would be relevant. Today? Not so much. It's a shame too because this is one of the few characters Milligan has written well in the past. Ponce's art is good but it's boring. Just figures plopped on the pages floating in the ether with a bunch of magic effects around them.

Faith Returns ★★★
It's a follow up the Faith and the Future Force that ended with Faith getting framed for murder. Now she's out to catch all of the members of the Faithless and clear her name. This isn't bad but it's more basic than Houser normally writes. The art is alright. You can see where corners were cut with the colors and lack of backgrounds.

Cat Burglar Black ★★★★
This is upper tier Sala for me. It's a more grounded story than some of his more out there, horror influenced stuff. It's about an orphaned girl who is sent to a boarding school. She used to be a thief and she and her new classmates get turned back towards that life again. It's got some of Sala's go-tos in it like his penchant for shadowy organizations. Good stuff.

Madi: Once Upon a Time in the Future ★★★★
This was cool. It's a dystopian future comic about a croup of cyborg mercenaries who get sucked into something shady when one of them does a job offbook to try and earn some extra cash to pay off the debt for their cybernetics. Nice world building in this. This is written by Duncan Janes and apparently set in the same world as his movies Moon and Muted. There are a ton of different artists on the book and some of the shifts in style can be jarring. That's my one complaint. Otherwise it's really good.

Lady Mechanika Vol 7: The Monster of the Ministry of Hell ★★★
We flash back to when Lady Mechanika was first found as a child. She is pretty much feral and is put on some kind of asylum like they used to do in England in the 1800s. My one question I'd have is if she received artificial limbs as a child, how did they grow along with her body. I'm guessing you aren't supposed to think about that. Otherwise this was interesting and we see more of her backstory than we've ever seen before.

Lady Mechanika Volume 8: The Devil in the Lake ★★★
Lady Mechanika is hired by a Russian princess to go rescue some scientists in Siberia who have disappeared. They were investigating sightings on a monster in a remote lake. It's basically the story of Nessie transported to the frozen north of Siberia. Joe Benitez doesn't draw this one but Siya Oum's art has a similar look to it.

Monolith Vol. 1 ★★
I think you need to be completely caught up on Spawn to get what's happening here. Apparently Monolith is a Spawn from the future who fights Omega Spawn a lot and moves through history. I don't know. This is confusing on its own. It feels like the cliff notes version of what was going on with Monolith over in Spawn.

The Domain ★★★
Chip Zdarsky gets a bit meta by making the comic within his comic Public Domain, the comic about bringing back on old comic that the artist worked on for the majority of his career. It's straight up super hero fare. Three friends find a crashed spaceship and find a suit that grants them powers but only one of them can use it at a time causing all kinds of problems as they yank it off each other left and right. Then there's the matter of the aliens and the government who both want those suits. It's a neat idea, but it's hard to make it more than that in only 5 issues.

Last week's adventures in comics part 1.

Catwoman: Her Sister's Keeper ★★★
Pretty much an extension of Batman: Year One. The first issue weaves in and out of it and the whole thing digs into Selina Kyle being a teenage prostitute. Then we see that paralleled with her sister being a nun. We see her morph into Catwoman although the element of her becoming a thief is completely absent. It's a real dark story with no punches pulled so be forewarned.

Big Book of Horror ★★★
This is not a graphic novel like I expected. It's 3 condensed classic prose stories with illustrations. Frankenstein, War of the Worlds and Dracula. The writing is like the Cliff Notes version for kids. The art in the Frankenstein story by Scott Morse looks like Picasso drew it. Ted McKeever's art for the War of the Worlds segment was awful as well. Richard Sala drew the Dracula segment which was the best of the three.

Wolverine: Revenge ★★★
An alt-future where Magneto's death sets off an EMP that destroys Western civilization. Wolverine is out for revenge against a bunch of old foes and one friend. It's a real simple story. I honestly expected a bit more from Hickman. The real shining star is Capullo's artwork. It looks glorious.

Local Man Volume 2: The Dry Season ★★★★
That Gold one shot was hilarious, especially if you are aware of the intercompany crossover Image had with Valiant years ago, Deathmate. This still works without knowing anything about that disastrous crossover. That cover really brought me back though. This one shot is hilarious because Crossjack meets his douche bag younger self and is constantly embarrassed about how he used to act.

The main series reveals who is behind what is going on in the small town of Farmington, WI. It's got me really interested in the 3rd arc. I really like how this adds a bunch of fake Image lore that is right in line with how the company was back in the 90s.

Local Man Volume 3: Lost Ones ★★★
A solid third and looks like maybe final volume to the series. There's a lot of the same subjects Seeley tackled in Revival. I love the wry humor and the odes to 90's Image that never actually happened.

Superman: The Warworld Saga ★★★★
All of Warworld, all in one place. The main story is terrific. PKJ gets Superman, who he is at his core, how he will never give up hope. PKJ throws Clark through a gauntlet a trial by fire and it works wonderfully. The backup stories and Future State stuff can be skipped as they add little to the story and only add confusion, especially the Future State issues if you don't know what that is.

East of West, Vol. 2: We Are All One ★★★★★
This series is just the best. An alt-history look at a future U.S., one heavily influenced by the Civil War. But now there are those trying to end the world. There's also Death searching for his son. The other three horsemen are out there as well. Everyone has their own agenda. I love how they all cross over and intersect. Dracotta's art is top notch. The best of his career. Frank Martin's colors makes everything pop off the page.

Catwoman: Defiant ★★
Peter Milligan continues to reinforce my opinion that he is not a very good writer. Mister Handsome is a mobster who likes to collect beautiful things and then destroy them. He sets his sights on Catwoman. Blah blah blah. This stinks.

DC Horror Presents: Creature Commandos ★★
Well, that was disappointing. I liked Dastmalchian's Count Crowley series. This is a new team of Creature Commandos unrelated to the cartoon or past iterations of the comics. It's real generic, boiler plate stuff. Some monsters get forced into doing Suicide Squad type stuff for the government. Braniac is the villain for some reason. The art is terrible. It has this retro but utterly messy look that makes it hard to determine what's happening.

Into the Bewilderness ★★★★
A delightful childrens graphic novel about two friends (a bear and a mole) who live in the woods and one day win a trip to a performance in the big city. Eventually they are off on an adventure. I love the discourse between the two as they mainly do nothing but sit around and talk and get the occasional visit from their friend Bigfoot who is always lost.

Black Cohosh ★★★
An interesting memoir about a kid who grew up unconventionally in the Appalachians. He has a severe speech impediment and some out there parents. You can tell this was Brosi's first work. It starts off pretty rough. You're just thrown in there and not a lot makes sense at first particularly because there are no panels. I was completely disoriented for the first 20-30 pages before I picked up on how this works. Plus some of the early work is rough. It's long at 360 pages but moves fast since it's typically a couple of word balloons on each page.

Manga Biographies: Charles M. Schulz ★★
A manga biography made for kids even though I doubt most kids know what Peanuts is these days. To be honest, this was kind of boring. But then again, so was Charles Schulz who dedicated himself to doing nothing but drawing Peanuts for over half his life. I can admire that.

DC Finest - Catwoman: Life Lines ★★★
Pretty much all of the early solo Catwoman stories from the 80s and into her own first ongoing in the 90s. The early stuff from Mindy Newell is good. It's a weekly story from Action Comics when it was an anthology title and an early hard to find Catwoman mini that's a companion series to Batman: Year One. These both lean into Year One where they establish Selina Kyle was a prostitute. In the mini the antagonist is her pimp as she attempts to break away from him and establishes her relationship with her sister the nun.

Then we get the Catwoman story from Showcase 93 which is pretty good, where she's protecting her neighborhood. Next up is a graphic novel from Peter Milligan, Catwoman: Defiant and like most things he writes, it's terrible.

Finally, there's the first year of Catwoman's ongoing by Jo Duffy and Jim Balent. It's solid. Too many tie ins to all of the Knightfall stuff though. You can see how it derails all of the Batman books of the era. Jim Balent is a really talented artist. Yes, he draws Catwoman with enormous knockers. But that's how every female character of the era was drawn and the book looks great. Plus she rarely loses her clothes. They are just really tight so I give it a pass. In the midst of this, Christopher Priest writes an Elseworlds story for that year's annual.

Buff Soul ★★
A memoir from a Swedish influencer who accompanies her best friend on a trip to the U.S. She's in a band that is recording in L.A. and then going to South by Southwest. These girls like to party hard, doing all kinds of drugs and waking up with strangers. Romanova is a talented artist. Her character designs were off putting though. She draws everyone to look like Alice the Goon from Popeye.

Hack/Slash = Body Bags ★★★
I was excited to see this was a crossover with Body Bags, Jason Pearson's old comic that I liked from the 90s. It's not bad with Tim Seeley in the driver's seat and Stefano Caselli always makes the pages sing.

Rowlf and Other Fantasy Stories ★★★
Three werewolf stories from Richard Corben plus the adaptation of a Japanese legend. The first story, Rowlf, is actually about a dog who is turned into a dog man and it's wild because in addition to the fantasy stuff are demons driving tanks. This is known as one of first masterpieces and it is interesting as are the others. This collection is short, only about 80 pages of stories and then filled with other art including a comic Corben created as a kid.

The Moon Is Following Us Volume 1 ★★★★
They say when you're a parent, you'll do anything for your kids and these two are put to the test to see if that is true. Their daughter is trapped in a dream world and they'll do whatever they need to to bring her back. I have to say this was probably the first time that I did not hate Riley Rossmo's art. Having him draw a dream world make his quirky art work. Then we get DWJ drawing the real world and there's at least one cool transition between the two.

The Deviant Vol. 2 ★★★
Volume 2 has Michael in prison, the killer still presumably on the loose and his boyfriend, Derek, left trying to figure out who is setting them up. This is a slow burn true crime story and I think it works well. I like that there's no gotcha twist either. The killer shows up and you're like, who is that, just like it would be in these cases in real life. There's a lot of subtext about how gay men are treated in the world today but I'll leave that to the fellow readers to debate.

Spider-Man: Octo-Girl, Vol. 2 ★
This 2nd volume was just trash where the first one is goofy and fun. Just a bunch of little girl drama with Doc Ock and Superior Octopus in the background. Who was this for? 6 year old girls?

The Uncanny X-Men: Days of Future Fun ★★★★★
This kids book was a delight. Jeffrey Brown hearkens back to the 70s X-Men era for a bunch of strips where the X-Men are kids again with Professor X in charge. They are really funny for kids and even funnier if you've read any X-Men comics from back then. It's full of little things like Kitty being scared of a monster in the basement and there's a n'garai demon hiding under the stairs. That was the first X-Men comic I ever bought and I remember it well where she had to fight the N'Garai alone on Christmas Eve in the mansion. Or there will be something as simple as Kitty using magnets to hang pictures on Colossus's back like he's a fridge. It's only going to take about 10 minutes to read but I do think it's something you can pull off the shelf and read again.

Blood Squad Seven Vol. 1: Perilous Relaunch ★★★★
So since Rob Liefeld has been kicked out of Image and Youngblood with him, enter Blood Squad Seven. Casey propositions the team as an alternate past where Blood Squad Seven rose to prominence at 90s Image instead. Now it's 30 years later and the government is bringing a new team into the public eye. But this isn't really a superhero team book. It's an operating behind the scenes of power type thing. It was surprisingly good. Maybe along the line of what he did with WildCATS 3.0. Paul Fry's art was quite good too. I wasn't familiar with his work previously.

The one thing I hated about the book is the team name. Blood Squad Seven is a terrible name. And there's only 6 members in this.