Comic Picks by the Glick

Manga and Comic Reviews

The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows

When it was announced that this “Secret Wars:  Warzones!” miniseries would focus on a married — with child — Spider-Man, I thought I knew what the story would be about.  We’d get to see how Peter Parker would handle these things while interacting with other heroes and villains in some semblance of current Marvel continuity. […]

Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham

How did a “Batman” comic co-written by Mike Mignola manage to go without a collected edition for nearly fifteen years?  We may never know the exact answer, but it wasn’t because “The Doom That Came to Gotham” wasn’t a good “Elseworlds” series.  This three-part miniseries, co-written by Richard Pace with art from Troy Nixey, takes […]

The Ancient Magus’ Bride vol. 3

The previous volume left off on a dramatic cliffhanger as Elias, enraged by the wounding of Chise, began to lose his human form and revert to his natural one.  What follows is a rousing sequence of action and drama as the two, and those in their immediate vicinity face off against Joseph, a.k.a. Cartaphilus, a.k.a. […]

Big Man Plans

With his signature creation, “The Goon,” appearing to have gone off the rails in its most recent outing, I was wondering if creator Eric Powell’s best days were behind him.  “Big Man Plans” proves that this isn’t the case.  It’s the story of an unnamed dwarf who goes through life suffering every indignity and cruelty […]

Frankenstein Underground

A somewhat rare work in the Mignolaverse these days in that it’s written by the man himself without the assistance of a co-writer.  This miniseries shows what happened to Frankenstein’s Monster after we last saw him in “Hellboy:  House of the Living Dead.”  As it turns out, he met an old woman in the jungles […]

A Bride’s Story vol. 7

Um… yeah, this volume was a surprising misfire for me.  Mainly because I’ve been enchanted by mangaka Kaoru Mori’s works for years and this is the first time I’ve read something from her that has really failed to satisfy or entertain me.  While she’s always had stellar instincts for characterization, they’re not employed well enough […]

Here’s a couple more vol. 2’s…

The second volume of “Haven’t You Heard?  I’m Sakamoto” does get a little more creative in its antics.  Where I was worried that seeing the title character effortlessly succeed in the face of any obstacle he faced, mangaka Nami Sano displays a little more inventiveness in showing us how he does that in this volume. […]