Manga and Comic Reviews
Make of this what you will: Last week, Kodansha Comics announced several new manga licenses. Of particular interest to me was “Die Wergelder,” a new manga from “Blade of the Immortal” creator Hiroaki Samura. This is notable because it’s his first series to not be published by Dark Horse. In addition to the mangaka’s signature […]
At first I thought this would be the first volume of the series to offer nothing worth writing about. It kicks off with the launch of the brand new Tazugane-class vessel and most of the core cast is onboard to put it through its paces. Narratively, this involves the vessel coming into contact with a […]
As this wound up making a last-minute arrival on my “Best of 2014” list, I figured it was due for some elaboration on just why that happened. It’s a mature work of erotic fiction that skillfully fleshes out the personalities of its two female leads in a respectful, intelligent… “WAIT! DON’T LEAVE YET! THIS BOOK […]
Comics’ biggest writer! Comics’ biggest artist! Together on comics’ biggest character! That’s the kind of hype which preceded this series featuring Scott Snyder and Jim Lee taking on Superman, with Dustin Nguyen pitching in here and there for a few pages. The first issue hit the stands when the “Man of Steel” movie was still […]
There are those rare moments in fiction where a character manages to say exactly what you’re thinking about the work in question. You get the feeling that whoever was responsible for those words just reached into you head and either put them down on the page or had them come out of someone’s mouth. It’s […]
…because then things like this happen. That’s right, “Daredevil” has gone straight-to-softcover for its latest relaunch and that suits me just fine. The title character is now working out of a new city, but Mark Waid and Chris Samnee are still chronicling his ongoing adventures. So really, everything I said yesterday holds true here. In […]
The previous volume of this series was kind of a wash, containing only three proper issues while reprinting two more (that I’d already read) from “Indestructible Hulk.” However, those three issues were thoroughly entertaining as they showed Matt Murdock defending the bully who gave him the nickname “Daredevil,” dealt with the Sons of the Serpent’s […]
My impression of the prolific Charles Soule so far is that he’s definitely a competent writer with occasional flashes of genuine cleverness. Yet there’s something about his writing that tends to feel just a bit too calculated at times. Like he’s sticking as close as he can to the prescribed notions of how the story […]
After “20th Century Boys” ended last year, I and everyone else who followed it were left without our bi-monthly Naoki Urasawa fix. For years Viz had been serializing his most famous works — the aforementioned title, along with “Monster” and “Pluto” — and now we were left with nothing. What was going to take its […]
This arrived back on New Year’s Eve when I was setting things up for a party at my place. After all of the setup had been taken care of and people had yet to arrive, I started reading this to occupy myself until people arrived. I wasn’t expecting to be that involved with it, as […]