Manga and Comic Reviews
“Don’t Split the Party” was the lesson learned by one RPG-centric comic, but Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans aren’t inclined to follow the rules. Which is why vol. 2 starts off with Ash, Matt, Angela, and the newly-Fallen Sol stuck in the Eternal Prussian-occupied ruins of Glass Town, while Izzy and Chuck are clear on […]
Tough-as-nails cyborg bounty hunter Beilert Valance made his debut back in the 80’s when Marvel originally published “Star Wars” comics. Writer Robbie Thompson was apparently so taken with this character (or someone at Marvel who loved the character and knew where Thompson buries the bodies) that he bought the character back in the pages of […]
Things haven’t been going well for Robbie Reyes, the Ghost Rider. After losing control of his car, the Hell Charger, he wants to be done with this whole Spirit of Vengeance business. Good thing that he’s a member of the Avengers, who can not only pool their talents to get him out of this mess, […]
When this fourth volume was announced, it came with word that it was going to be Alan Moore’s final work in comics. The writer’s official reason was that he didn’t want to start repeating himself, which is fair enough. Unspoken, I would think, would be his utter disgust at how he’s been treated over the […]
Look at that cover. You can almost feel the smugness radiating off of it. No doubt some of it is left over from vol. 15’s cliffhanger revelation that Shogun Iemochi’s new husband, Prince Kazu, is actually a woman. It read like another kick in the shins at the time, because things have been going bad […]
The space opera action continues in this volume and shifts to a new setting: Earth. There’s still some business to take care of in Empire-space, however, as Emperor N’Jadaka makes his move to crush the Maroons once and for all. Unfortunately he gets more than he bargained for, and his failure allows T’Challa to finally […]
After seven issues of one shots that dodged the main story (though most were still pretty good on their own terms), vol. 11 starts off with the issue I’m sure everyone was waiting for! Batman breaks out of the dreaming machine and walks through Arkham beating up everyone in his way. It’s a genuinely cathartic […]
Why did Daniel leave the Dreaming? For love, of course. The tragic story of his romance is told by “Sandman” veteran/survivor Rose Walker to a barely conscious Lucien in the hospital. It starts off with Rose having a chance encounter with Dream himself that could’ve led to a romance, except that she decided to give […]
Let me tell you a bit about how I arrange the manga side of my comics collection. There’s one series of shelves where everything is laid out front-to-back like you’d see in a bookstore. Another series of shelves has the volumes double-stacked: You can see half of the volumes on the shelf while the other […]
Above-the-Board Recommendation: East of West vol. 10 Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta’s epic sci-fi western reaches the end of its road. The story of how Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, fell in love, had a kid, and paid dearly for these things. Oh, and he did it according to some religious […]