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

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

Today's trip to the LCS.

Justice League Vs. Godzilla Vs. Kong #1
Incredible Hulk #5
Crypt of Shadows #1
Big Game #3
Big Game #4
Batman / Superman World's Finest #20
Fables #160
Invincible Iron Man #11
Nightwing #107

Lewis wrote: "That's some list! I absolutely love Doctor Who, Tom Baker is my favourite doctor. Do you have any 4th doctor graphic novels that you would recommend?"

Yes, I read it last month. There's only one out from Titan Comics. There may be more some older ones in the U.K from other publishers. Gaze of the Medusa It is on Hoopla if you can access that through your library in the U.K.

Long ago when I was in junior high, a kid from school moved in down the block. He found out I also watched Doctor Who on PBS and unveiled a remote control K-9 he was building and a Tardis that unfortunately was not bigger on the inside. It was the coolest thing.

Lots of Doctor Who Hoopla borrows in last week's adventures in comics.

Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor, Vol. 1: Terrorformer★★★
Contains 2 pretty generic stories featuring the Twelfth Doctor and Clara.

Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor, Vol. 2: Fractures★★★
Two more OK stories with Clara and the Twelfth Doctor. Morrison gets the voices of the characters down. The art though especially in the first story suffers from same face.

Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor, Vol. 3: Hyperion★★★★
After a one off story with Charlotte Bronte, the Hyperions have taken over Earth in current time, leaving the Doctor, Clara and a fireman to save the day. The Hyperions were pretty cool, sentient suns who eat a solar system's sun and move on to the next one.

Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor, Vol. 4: The School of Death★★★★
I really liked the main story about a remote elite private school in Scotland. It had a Village of the Damned crossed with Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe to it.

Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor, Vol. 5: The Twist★★★★
George Mann takes over the writing for this volume and I dig it. It's the first volume after Clara's demise. The Doctor is travelling by himself when he meets a female bass guitarist in the future.

Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor, Vol. 6: Sonic Boom★★★
A companionless Doctor has some ho-hum adventures. First he heads to King Louis XVI era France where Cardinal Richelieu is taking over humanity.

Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor, Time Trials Vol 1: The Terror Beneath★★
These stories could be a bit more original. They tend to all be very similar with just a alien swapped out. The punk bassist Hattie returns for a story set in the English seaside with some seaweed monsters mucking about.

Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor, Time Trials Vol 2: The Wolves of Winter★★
Bill finally joins the comic. They go back to the Viking era and fight Ice Warriors along with some other older Whovian villains. I did like how it tied into a story from the 7th Doctor. Then there's a dumb 1 issue story about Bill getting lost in an alien supermarket.

Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor, Time Trials Vol 3: A Confusion of Angels★★★★
Finally in the last volume, we get a longer story that builds off elements of the series. You've got two different angels and the Judoon mixing it up in what starts as a spooky stranded spaceship story.

King Of Spies★★★
Millar does his version of old James Bond. He finds out he's going to die soon and goes after all the evil bastards who've been protected by the British government. It's, of course, crude and bloody like Millar's other stuff. It also feels like the one minute elevator pitch of a movie that's he's become known for since starting Millarworld.

The Magic Order, Vol. 3★★★
Volume 3 seems to be all set up for the future. It also has the weakest art as some Italian artist I wasn't familiar with takes over.

Scarlett Couture★★★
Kind of a modern day Charlie's Angels. It's about a group of mainly female spies working undercover at a modeling agency.

Avengers, Vol. 1★★★
Starts off a bit lackluster compared to Jed MacKay's other Marvel work. It's fine. Part of it is these new villains aren't all that interesting. Mackay does bring over the creative team from Black Cat to work with him.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor, Vol. 3: Conversion★★★★
This is exactly what I was missing from the 12th Doctor's run. I'd much rather have these larger stories with original companions than trying to squeeze everything between episodes and have it all try and make some kind of sense.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor, Vol. 5: The One★★★
So much better than the previous volume. The story problems I had have been rectified. Seems to be headed in a good direction now.

Devon wrote: "It was nice to read a GN with a First Nations protagonist"

There's quite a few Canadian comics with that scenario. Most are historical comics about how poorly they were treated. I read two of them this year. There was a horror comic by a First Nations creator too. That was pretty good because they all used First Nations mythology.

Today's trip to the LCS.

The Hunger and the Dusk #3
World's Finest: Teen Titans #4
The Devil That Wears My Face #1
Avengers #6
X-Men Red #16
Wolverine #38
House of Slaughter #18
Zomvikings #1

Last week's adventures in comics.

Kick-Ass: The Dave Lizewski Years Book Two ★★★★
Formerly Hit-Girl #1-5 Is there anyone who draws children worse than John Romita Jr.? Hit-Girl is supposed to be 12. She looks like a bobblehead version of a 5 year old girl. Even with that said. this is great. Mindy is trying to navigate Middle school while taking out the Mafia and training Kick-Ass, all while trying to hide what's she's doing from her parents.

Kick-Ass: The Dave Lizewski Years Book Three ★★★★
There are some major changes to tone down some of the over the top graphic violence between the original Marvel edition and Image rerelease. I'm not a fan of Millar censoring himself even if the changes did make it a more palatable story. Overall it's still an interesting story, even neutered. Kick-Ass joins the first superteam while Hit-Girl tries to appease her stepfather and live a normal life.

Kick-Ass: The Dave Lizewski Years Book Four ★★
Kick-Ass goes a step too far, because most of this book is just a slog. There's enough content for about a 3 issue series dragged out to 8.

Cages ★★
Finally got around to reading this after letting it set on the back burner for years. Yes, McKean was the cover artist for Sandman and the artist for Arkham Ayslum which made a mint for him and Grant Morrison. But he's a very divisive artist. And not all that skilled of a writer. This is 500 pages long and there's enough story here for less than half that. It suffers from the flowery verbal diarrhea that a lot of the early Vertigo comics did.

The Many Deaths of Barnaby James ★★★
This was odd, because it wasn't so much about Barnaby Jones. The first issue is. Then the perspective changes to a new character with each issue and the book gets darker and darker with things like cannibals and slavery involved.

By the Horns Vol. 2: Dark Earth Part 1 ★★★★
By the Horns is back! Magic hasn't returned with the death of the sorcerer that was bottling it all up. Things are getting worse on the continent so time for a new quest to save this realm. Elodie has to find a way to go to the other continent where her unicorn friends went with others on her trail who blame her for the continent's problems.

By the Horns Vol. 3: Dark Earth Part 2 ★★★★★
Yes, this series is terrific. Markison Naso and Jason Muhr have only made great comics so far. Go read By the Horns and then go find Voracious as well. This is about the badass fighter Elodie, her telepathic wolf-pony, some unicorn friends and Evelyn the floating eyeball as they try and find pure magic so they can save their continent where the blight from a lack of magic is expanding.

Cosmic Detective ★★★
The story is pretty much what I expected once this got going with few surprises. It's about a detective who is investigating the death of a God. The writing isn't great. What is great is David Rubin's art.

After Lambana: A Graphic Novel: Myth and Magic in Manila ★★★
An urban fantasy set in Manilla. It takes course over the span of a night. A boy finds out he has some kind of supernatural plague around his heart that is going to kill him after meeting up with a man who is from another land or dimension who becomes his guide. Basically the Filipino version of Faerie I think. They walk around the city all night finding out more about what has happened to him.

The Magic Order, Vol. 1 ★★★★
This is Millar's best idea he's had in years, perfectly executed by Olivier Coipel and Dave Stewart. Yes, it's a simple concept. Evil magicians start murdering good ones in order to obtain an all-powerful book.

The Magic Order, Vol. 2 ★★★
The plot is a lot like the first one. A bunch of oppressed, old magicians are rising up to challenge the new leadership of the Magic Order. You get the Eastern European and British gangster versions of magicians. Things get bigger even as more macguffins are pulled out of their asses to solve things.

Midnight Western Theatre ★★★
This is about a monster hunter and a reluctant vampire traveling from town to town righting supernatural wrongs in the Old West.

Ghost Roast ★★★
A kind of fluffy YA book about a teenager who can see ghosts while working for her ghostbuster father who thinks all spirits are evil but has never seen one.

Know Your Station ★★★
A murder takes place on a space station for billionaires. One of the help is left in the lurch to figure out who did it while she's also suffering hallucinations from weaning herself off drugs. There's too much going on with the side plots and not enough with the main plot.

Love Kills ★★★
Helena is a loner vampire who meets a human chef who helps her when her old coven comes after her.

Specs ★★★★
A new spin on The Monkey's Paw. It's the Eighties and Ted is the only black kid in this small Ohio town. His best friend Ken is secretly gay and in love with Ted but never told him. They find an ad for a pair of X-ray specs in the back of an old comic and the specs mysteriously show up on their porch in the middle of the night. They discover that the specs grant small wishes. But when their high school bully finds them in the woods one day, something bad happens and that's where the story turns darker.

Bettie Page Unbound ★★★
Bettie gets sent to other dimensions where she replaces Red Sonja, Vampirella, Dejah Thoris and Tinkerbell while looking for some Macguffins to keep Cthulhu from invading our dimension.

Bettie Page Unbound Vol. 2 ★★★
Dynamite finishes up its Bettie page run with Bettie getting stuck in an Invasion of the Body Snatchers scenario with some alien bees.

Playthings ★
It's about a mother whose daughter is abducted by toys. It's got kind of a Five Nights at Freddy's vibe to it. The art is terrible. I couldn't tell what was happening in half this book. I think the artist's uncle may be the publisher of Scout Comics or something because he needs a lot of practice.

Red Sonja Vol. 1: Mother ★★★
Red Sonja finds a kid with fire powers who wants Sonja to be her mother. She's pursued by a bunch of different nefarious bad guys looking to make use of the child's powers.

Peggy wrote: "Hi, I'm Peggy and I'm from Iran.
I like horror and fantasy comics and of course any batman or X-Men comic I can get my hands on.
Haven't read much but hopefully that'll change soon."

Welcome Peggy. I see you've been reading Locke and Key. That's one of my favorite series of the last 20 years. Did you read the crossover with Sandman? I thought that was really well done and fit in to both universes pretty seamlessly.

Today's trip to the LCS.

The Plot Holes #2
Abbott 1979 #1
Alien Annual
X-Force #45
Doctor Strange #8
Immortal X-Men #16
Shazam #4
X-Men #27
Birds of Prey #2
G.O.D.S. #1
Transformers #1

Unfortunately, that Thor run peters out. Cates has had some personal issues and dropped off the book before he finished. It was great up until then though.

Evilblacksheep wrote: " I also read Basketful of Heads after that and liked it even more. Strong recommend if you haven't read it yet."

Just don't read the sequel. It's by a different creative team and it is terrible.

Last week's adventures in comics.

Young Alfred: Pain in the Butler ★★★★★
This is how you do a comic for kids. It's a flashback story to when Alfred went away to servant school. It's fun and smart with terrific art by Sam Lofti.

Clark & Lex ★★★
A middle school story about a Clark Kent with powers who is kind of a jerk. He's very full of himself. He gets invited to be part of a contest to be an intern for the Daily Planet over the summer which quickly and very obviously becomes something else. Clark and Lex become friends and Lex does a heel turn that isn't earned.

The All-Nighter Season Two ★★★
This is very much a middle volume. Other vampires start using the superhero loophole while the bad guy also builds an army in secret. You can see this isn't going to last long before the Takers arrive again. The story may have well ended "To be continued".

The Black Bestiary: A Phantasmagoria of Monsters and Myths from the Philippines ★★★★
A prose book from the creators of Trese in the vein of World War Z. It's part Monster Manual of the Philippines, part untold stories of monster hunters. It's written as if by a long time monster hunter in the area, giving accounts of stories of encounters he's been told.

Survival ★★
30 Days of Night done poorly. Some Russian vampires with no rules come to Alaska and meet survivalists who aren't at all threatening.

Parker Girls Omnibus ★★★★
The Parker Girls from Strangers in Paradise are hired when an employee steals 10 million from a tech billionaire. Meanwhile his wife shows up drowned on the beach. So they start looking into things and uncover so much more going on. This one gets pretty wild.

Hellsing, Vol. 1 ★★★
This was OK. It felt very 90's. Big on action and short on story. It's about an organization in the UK that hunts down and kills vampires with the main vampire hunter also being a vampire. There's some odd rules. If you're not a virgin and get bit by a vampire you become a ghoul instead (which in this is really just a zombie. It has no will of its own.)

Ultimate Invasion ★★★★
The Maker gets free and creates a new universe where he has meddled and prevented most of Earth's heroes from becoming heroes. It's done well and I'm curious to see what Hickman has in store for the Ultimate Universe.

Tales From Nottingham ★★★
Some ancillary stories set in the Nottingham universe. None of them are essential. I may have liked this more had it come out sooner after volumes 1 and 2 as it may have connected to those stories more then my memory did.

Confetti Realms ★★★
This was fine. It's yet another comic about being queer and a teenager. (This in itself is no longer enough. It also needs to be good.) This one's set over Halloween. 4 teenagers get portalled to another world where teeth are currency, yet everyone still has a full set of teeth. If teeth were currency everyone would be getting mugged and have their teeth pulled out. A lot of it just seemed odd just to be odd instead of having a purpose in the story. The kids have to get 5 molars to leave because "reasons".

Lovesick ★
This has every trigger you can imagine. It's extremely nihilistic and depraved. It's about a woman who talks people into coming onto her private internet show where she proceeds to murder them and eat them with the caveat being that they are asking , no yearning, for it. I kept waiting for some kind of story to develop but it seemed to be more about how many different fetishes could be put on display more than anything else. If seeing people get off while covered in blood and gore is your thing, this may be the book for you.

Danny Ketch: Ghost Rider ★★★
It was nice to see the writer of the 90's Ghost Rider, Howard Mackie, back in the saddle again. The story is fine, but nothing special or of impact like all of these other Marvel flashback series.

Halina Filipina: A New Yorker in Manila ★★★
A Filipino American goes to the Philippines for the first time to get in touch with her heritage where she meets a man with some self-esteem issues. Strangely the passages with few words were the strongest scenes. There are some sections where there is a lot of untranslated Tagalog. I found those very frustrating but I also didn't care enough to pull out my phone to translate them either. It's a decent enough rom-com story but too long at 225+ pages.

Wanted ★★★★
f you've seen the movie, just throw that completely out the window. The comic it's based on is far different. I decided to revisit it 20 years later before reading Big Game where Mark Millar is crossing over all his characters. This is about Eminem. He's working a deadend job. His girlfriend is cheating on him with his best friend and he knows about it. He's just too weak to confront them. Then his dad who he's never met dies and he gets thrust into a hidden world of supervilliany. That's where Halle Berry comes in as The Fox. She helps this kid throw off any moral implications and become an amoral asshole as he wades into this world.

Nightwing, Vol. 5 ★★★★
Nightwing and the Titans take on Neron for the soul of a little girl. There's also a backup story with Nightwing training Superman and they investigate some sabotage and a murder attempt at the circus. Then Bruno Redondo returns for another inventive issue with the whole issue through Nightwing's eyes. You only see his limbs and reflection. It's good stuff. I'm sure it'll get nominated for Best Single Issue at the Eisner's.

Planet of the Apes: Fall of Man ★★★
Fits right in with the rebooted Planet of the Apes movies by Matt Reeves. Solid stuff. Dave Wachter's art is great.

Today's trip to the LCS.

Void Rivals #3
Void Rivals #4
Fire Power #27
Immortal Thor #2
Invincible Iron Man #10
Ultimate Invasion #4
Parker Girls #10
Flash #1
Avengers #5

Last week's adventures in comics.

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor, Vol. 5: Arena of Fear ★★★
There's a certian sameness to all of these stories from Nick Abadzis. I wish he'd step away some from all of the made up scientific BS and produce some more grounded stories. The stuff in the Arena of Fear picked up on the Caveman story of the last volume.

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor, Vol.6: Sins of the Father ★★★★
First up the Doctor heads to New Orleans where they come across some kind of sound monster. Then we get back to the bigger story with Anubis and the Time Sentinel, Brigade, whatever.

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor Vol. 7: War of Gods ★★★★
The story line with Anubis and Sutekh finally comes to an end. It was quite good too. I liked how it built off an old arc of the TV show from the era of the 4th Doctor. I just wish we could have gotten here sooner.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian, Vol. 1: Season One, Part One ★★
An almost shot for shot adaptation of the first half of Season 1 of The Mandalorian. I'm not really sure who this is for. Just go watch the show.

Where the Body Was ★★★
An OK one off story from the team of Brubaker and Phillips. It's about some neighbors on a block somewhere in Southern California in the 80's. Everyone has their secrets. The neighbors who are having an affair, the kid who plays at being a super hero, the teenagers on drugs. To me, it lacked focus though and it's the rare story by this team that's not 5 stars.

Red Sonja: The Ballad of the Red Goddess ★★
This was originally published for Planeta Comics decades ago. It's really short, only about 30 pages long with lots of filler and sketches. Esteban Maroto comes across as a major league creep in his forward, bragging about how he was the one who stripped her down to her chainmail bikini and comparing Red Sonja to a street hooker. The story has the basics of Red Sonja's origin, but adds in a gang rape showing her tied to the ground and talking about everyone taking a turn. It's pretty awful.

Maggie the Mechanic ★★★★
This first volume is a bit difficult to digest at first. Hernandez's work is really text heavy as it starts out. Some panels barely leave room for the art. So it takes a really long time to read. The second half maintains a much better balance. Love and Rockets has been around for decades and is one of the early successes of indie comics and it's easy to see why from reading this, even with multiple reviews saying later volumes are much better.

Monster Born ★★
A really barebones story about the daughter of monster hunters fighting monsters. Nothing is setup. Nothing is explained. If it wasn't for Tom Mandrake's terrific art and monsters, there would be zero reason to read this.

Black Solstice ★★
This started out as a trend on Twitter back when Twitter wasn't owned by an awful person. This is really half a story. It's three issues of exposition and then it ends right as the real story is about to begin. It's about black people getting superpowers on the winter solstice but then they go away the next day. The next year people are planning for them to come back again and in the hopes for that, a group is planning on robbing the Federal Reserve.

Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins: Jester Lavorre ★★★
I haven't watched any of Critical Role but a comic should be able to stand on its own. Introductions to the characters would have helped a bit. Still it was a light and fun comic.

Noblesse Season1. 1: Awakening in the new world ★★
The art is really good. The panelling can be odd. I'm sure that's due to the reconfigure from Webtoon to print but often the panels look like they are floating on the page with little structure or arrangement. The story moves at a glacial page and doesn't make a lot of sense. There's a guy running a school in Korea who turns out to be Frankenstein except he's beautiful. His master wakes up out of a coffin one day after 800 years and starts going to his school. He makes a few friends. Meanwhile a vampire and another guy are killing people on the peripheral.

Skull and Bones: Savage Storm ★★★
A pirate adventure set in the world of the upcoming video game. Since it's pirates fighting, you didn't need any knowledge of the game to enjoy it.

Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins--Yasha Nydoorin ★
This thing dragged on much more than a 50-page comic should. The art was awful. It looked like a knock-off fantasy Rick and Morty comic.

Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins: Caleb Widogast ★★★
A really dark and depressing story of a young mage sent off to school where he was twisted into being a monster for the Empire before breaking free. Surprisingly erotic as well as Bren develops a throuple while in school.

Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins: Nott the Brave ★★★
This may be the best of these origin stories I've read so far. It's about a halfling family captured by goblins. William Kirkby's art is growing. I absolutely hated the first one of these origins he did.

Avengers vs. X-Men ★★★★★
The culmination of the whole Utopia era of the X-Men from the end of House of M when the Scarlet Witch declared "No more mutants" until the return of the Phoenix.

Shelter for Lost Dreams ★
I felt like I was being wacked over the head by moral after moral. It was to the point where the opposite of the kid had just said would be the object lesson of the next story. Oof.

Dead Seas ★★★
A B-level horror movie plot set on a ship crewed by prisoners who are collecting ectoplasm from ghosts. They of course get loose and wreak havoc.

Captain America: Symbol of Truth, Vol. 2: Pax Mohannda ★★★
Sam mixes it up in the made up country of Mohannda in Africa. The White Wolf is behind it all to create an apartheid state. Unless I missed some White Wolf stuff that doesn't make a lot of sense. The White Wolf was raised as T'Challa's brother. Doesn't make sense to me you'd be raised in that kind of environment and become a hardcore racist.

Barnstormers ★★★★
The best thing Snyder's written in quite a while. Tula Lotay's gorgeous artwork doesn't hurt either. The book is about a stunt pilot of the 20's who meets a girl looking to get away from her life. They end up flying from town to town performing stunts while making money however they can while being chased by her rich fiancee.

All Against All ★★★★
This one was pretty cool. It's about an alien race that pulls traits out of races it comes across. They've come across a long ago destroyed Earth and found one of the seed vaults that exist. From that they've grown habitats to explore what they pluck from the DNA of Earth organisms. This race is like Krang from TMNT. They are little jellyfish creatures who take over other bodies. I like how each issue approaches the story from another angle, one of the various characters. I like how this mutates into something of a horror movie as well.

Afro Samurai Vol 1 ★★★
The story isn't much more than a simple revenge fantasy. Afro Samurai's father was killed in front of him as a boy and now he's out to kill those who killed his father. If you're wondering, yes, this was turned into a anime with Samuel L. Jackson in the lead role.

Redfork ★★★★
Gives off strong Needful Things vibes. A man gets out of prison after taking the rap for his brother and returns to a failing coal mining town in West Virginia. Opioid addiction runs rampant through the town. The man's little brother is trapped in a mine collapse. He gets out but brings someone back with him. Someone who can take away your problems but nothing is free...

Greg Smallwood makes every project he does better. He's such a talented artist. It also helps that this is a lot more straight forward than a lot of King's stuff.

Evilblacksheep wrote: "I've just finished the first volume (and have the second ready to go) and even tho I know approximately NOTHING about the justice league."

Yeah, unless you've been reading comics from the late eighties you aren't going to know much about that era of the Justice League. But that's OK. It doesn't really matter. They are more Easter eggs for those of us who have read those comics. This may be the best comic I read last year.

Today's trip to the LCS was a big one.

Nightwing #106
By the Horns #12
World's Finest #19
Something Is Killing the Children #33
Wolverine #37
X-Men Annual 2023
Dark X-Men #2
Wonder Woman #1
Captain America #1
Uncanny Avengers #2
Titans #3
Predator Versus Wolverine #1
Uncanny Spider-Man #1

kaitlphere wrote: "Re: Chad: Wow you read a lot of Doctor Who comics! I need to catch up on the TV series. I got distracted early in the Jodie Whittaker run and haven't picked it back up. I also have a lot of the comics on my to-read list!."

Lots of leftover Hoopla borrows from last month. I expect that'll happen again next month with Doctors 11 and 12. I fell way behind on the Titan comics and I've picked most of the bone off the comics in Hoopla.

Last week's adventures in comics.

Nemesis: Reloaded ★★
Psycho, evil Batman has it out for Los Angeles. These characters are so paper thin. There may be a full story but I guess we'll need to wait for the Netflix series to see more than these storyboards. The last couple of pages do lead into the Big Game crossover between all of Millar's characters.

Heart Eyes: The Complete Series ★★★
This is very violent and full of Lovecraftian monsters tearing people apart. The series was interesting. It could have used another issue or two to flesh it out more. It's about this girl who can control the monsters that have ended the world and how she's looking for someone else who isn't afraid of them.

TKO Presents: Tales of Terror ★★★
A bunch of short horror comic book stories. These weren't half bad. I'd read "The Father of All Things" and "Night Train" before when TKO released their TKO shorts separately so you could have some deja vu here.

BAGS (or a story thereof) ★★
From the creator of Over the Garden Wall. A man who looks like a giant thumb goes looking for his missing dog. Along the way he encounters creatures that don't belong in a small town like a walrus or this weird looking devil thing. The more you read, the less it makes sense.

Project ARKA: Into the Dark Unknown ★★★★
This was some cool sci-fi. It was originally a French novel that the author turned into a comic that has now been translated into English. It's about some colonists from a failing Earth. They are headed to a new world full of plenty of resources when they wake up from hibernation with no stars to locate their position and things in their greenhouse have mutated.

Behold, Behemoth ★★★
This seems like it's pretty cool and the art is great. It jumps around in time way too much though. I had a really difficult time keeping the story straight in my head. It's about a guy who looks after this little girl who can turn into a Behemoth to save people from monsters. For some reason though, everything is broken and the world is becoming post-Apocalyptic while they try and save it without really knowing what they are doing.

The Approach ★★★★
Some straight forward cosmic horror about a small airport during a severe snowstorm. A plane shows up that disappeared 27 years ago and brings in something with it.

I Am Not Okay with This ★★
A teenage girl drawn to look like Olive Oyl deals with depression, her sexual identity and telekinesis?

The Ambassadors, Vol. 1 ★★★
Millar basically steals the concept of H.A.R.D. Corps. from 90's Valiant and gives it to a billionaire. She's developed the technology to give people the ability to dial in to 3 powers at a time and is giving it to 8 altruistic people of her choosing. Meanwhile her dirt bag husband is doing something similar with tech billionaires. I hoped that this being 6 issues meant this would be fleshed out more like Millar's earlier work, but it's not.

Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor, Vol 1: Weapons of Past Destruction ★★★★
This was great. It's the Ninth Doctor with Rose and Captain Jack in tow as his companions. It slots in very well as just another episode of Eccleston's run. It's about a race that has decided to police time travel and another race that's determined to stop them.

Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor, Vol. 2: Doctormania ★★★
The Doctor Rose, and Jack take on the Slithereen. Then they head to San Francisco where Rose gains super powers and they fight some gargoyles and Mickey shows up from the future.

Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor, Vol. 3: Official Secrets ★★★★
I really enjoyed going back to the 3rd Doctor era and revisiting UNIT. It's nice to see some of the old characters show up for those of us who grew up watching Doctor Who reruns on PBS. Then we go back in time to the conquistadors that could have actually been a little longer and less rushed.

Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor, Vol. 4: Sin Eaters ★★★★
These stories have smartly revolved around the Doctor's guilt over the Time War. I know we don't see much of it until later on the show but it makes sense here in these additional stories. So first the Doctor goes to a prison to investigate the Sin Eaters and it of course, all goes to shit. This would have made a good episode. Then everything culminates with the Doctor's memories of the Time War as events from book one come back to bite the Doctor.

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor, Facing Fate Vol 1: Breakfast at Tyranny's ★★★
A volume 1 that's really year 3 of the series. It would help to have read the previous volumes so labeling this vol. 1 adds needless confusion. The Doctor is still with Gabby and Cindy along with Nubis. They get sucked into a fake Tardis that contains a shopping mall that drains life energy. Then we head to old world China for a not very good story about a walled off town with hundreds of Cindys in it.

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor, Facing Fate Vol 2: Vortex Butterflies ★★★
The Doctor goes off on his own to figure out why the Tardis is acting wonky. Meanwhile Gabby and Cindy spend some downtime in London with an old companion.

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor, Facing Fate Vol 3: Second Chances ★★★
Definitely the best volume of year three. We bring back some old friends and tie up all the loose plot threads of this run.

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor, Vol. 4: The Endless Song ★★★
The Doctor helps some aliens who are made of sound. A neat idea and the best of the stories in this volume. There's an interlude on Earth that only makes sense in context with the previous volumes. The last volume has to do with cavemen and I thought it was a dud. Due to some Marvel levels of poor numbering I read these out of order as Volume 4 comes before the volumes 1 through 3 I read.

Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor - Gaze of the Medusa ★★★★
Tom Baker was my Doctor growing up. I would come home from school and watch the reruns on PBS. I loved his sense of curiosity (and jelly babies which I finally got to try when we went into HoneyDuke's down in Universal. I'd drive my wife nuts for a month pulling the bag out and asking her "Jelly baby?" She had no idea what I was referring to.). It was so fantastic to see them do a 4th Doctor miniseries. This was great. I loved how it tied into the Medusa myth.

Doctor Who: The Seventh Doctor - Operation Volcano ★★★★
The Seventh Doctor is one of the Doctors I'm least familiar with. I thought the main story was really solid. It mainly takes place in 1967 with some events stretching to 2029. It's about some alien cops and robbers on Earth for millennia.

Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor - A Matter of Life and Death ★★★
The 8th Doctor is the one we know the least about. He had a TV movie in the nineties and a little short in the modern Who era along with some extended universe stuff (which I've never consumed). This mini doesn't add much to that.

Doctor Who: Time Lord Victorious: Defender of the Daleks ★★★★
Any time you see Jody Houser's name on a comic, that's a good thing. The Tenth Doctor has to team up with the Daleks because the Daleks have come up against a threat they themselves can't stop. It's the enemy of my enemy is my friend business. This story is self-contained while still hinting at a broader picture and their certainly is one. This Time Lord Victorious initiative has me curious but I'm not a fan of having it structured across multiple forms of media.

The Ones Volume 1 ★★
I remember when Bendis used to be one of my favorite writers who could do no wrong. These are no longer those days. This stunk. It's about a group of chosen ones who are then chosen to defeat the Antichrist. Then it's mainly standing around talking for 4 issues. Even with all this talking though, nothing is explained. The characters are still paper thin. The art isn't very good. Just an all around poopfest.

Avengers Legends, Vol. 1: Avengers Forever ★★★★★
Immortus vs. Kang with some Avengers from across time stuck in the middle. This was Busiek's attempt at fixing all of the time travel shenanigans that had occurred over the decades with Kang, Immortus and Kang's other incarnations like the Scarlet Centurion.

Max wrote: "I don't think I'm going to be a Brian Azzarello guy. I tried to read 100 Bullets can could get past the dialogue. I like the art by Eduardo Risso though."

If you didn't like 100 Bullets completely give up on Azzarello. It's easily the best thing he's ever done.

Today's trip to my LCS.

Incredible Hulk #4
House of Slaughter #17
X-Men Red #15
World's Finest: Teen Titans #3
X-Force #44