Manga and Comic Reviews
I said in my review of the first volume that, “I’m hard-pressed to see how the second volume improves from here.” Well, I don’t think that vol. 2 is an actual improvement, but the destruction of my expectations after reading vol. 1 at least let me enjoy this one more. Not that it does anything […]
The cliffhanger delivered at the end of vol. 6 was amazing for a few reasons, but mainly because of how it inverted my expectations of the kind of ending I usually expect from Rick Remender’s work. So, do he and artist Wes Craig fully deliver on the promise of the tables being turned on everyone […]
Bartlett Bowman is a man who appreciates the simple things in life. Like sitting on the porch of his family house in the cool of an evening in a small Texas town sipping a blood beer. Blood beer? That’s right, because like the other members of the Bowman clan, Bartlett is a vampire. They’ve been […]
“Batman: Damned” got off to a headline-grabbing start last week. Not because of its status as the debut “Black Label” title for mature readers superhero comics, or the quality of the storytelling from writer Brian Azzarello and artist Lee Bermejo. No, it grabbed all of those headlines because in one scene Bermejo drew Batman disrobing […]
For the last several volumes this series has been focused on the martial-arts tournament that Saitama has been competing in so that he can learn more about this particular style of fighting. While this has been going on, a monster invasion in the city has had the many members of the Hero Association playing defense. […]
While much of “Batman #50” have largely remained unspoiled for me, two details have emerged regarding it. The most relevant one to this volume being that Batman and Catwoman did not wind up getting married. Which is too bad for a couple of reasons. The first being that I was already looking forward to writer […]
“Sherlock Frankenstein” is a great name. It’s an unlikely mash-up of two of the most famous characters in fiction that grabs your attention right away with its promise of weirdness and horror tempered by rationality. He’s also a character who fits perfectly within the superhero pastiche of the “Black Hammer” world, of which this is […]
The slow-y burn-y approach of “Outcast” continues unabated in this volume as a major new character makes his debut. Rowland Tusk has just moved to the town of Rome and is dealing with the usual headaches that such a thing entails. A wife who has to deal with the unpacking, kids who are uneasy about […]
What fresh hell awaits us in this volume? Not much, all things considered. Compared to previous volumes where I was expecting “Murcielago” to stop trying to shock me, only to be proven wrong in unsettling and/or skin-crawling ways, this volume is relatively sedate. A kid gets stabbed in the head, a woman gets part of […]
Wizord’s story takes a backseat in this volume so that writer Charles Soule and artist Ryan Browne can focus on two key members of the supporting cast: Marsupial-loving Margaret and living, breathing French joke Jacques Zaques. The latter becomes less of a joke in this volume (well, insomuch as a Frenchman named Jacques Zaques can […]