Comic Picks by the Glick

Manga and Comic Reviews

Hellboy: Masks and Monsters

Just when you think they’ve run out of “Hellboy” comics to collect, a new volume shows up featuring stuff you either forgot about or didn’t know existed.  This isn’t a proper volume of the series, but a collection of the two crossover mini-series featuring Batman and Jack “Starman” Knight in one and Ghost in the […]

Oh My Goddess! vol. 36

This series has been coasting on goodwill from me for quite some time.  With this volume, said goodwill has finally run out.  I mean, how am I supposed to get excited or interested in a story that involves one of the hoariest of plot devices — amnesia — and runs through it in exactly the […]

I went and saw “RED” the other day…

… and my assessment that it looked like “Grumpy Old Retired Ex-Government Killers” turned out to be pretty spot-on.  Outside of the basic premise of having a former CIA “problem solver” be hunted down by the Agency, the filmmakers took nothing from Warren Ellis’ and Cully Hamner’s comic.  I’m glad that they both got a […]

Conan vol. 9: Free Companions

This volume wasn’t as entertaining as the previous ones for the simple reason that it spends too much time hammering home the idea that Conan “isn’t ready for prime time” as a leader of men.  After the previous volume saw the man ingratiate himself into the court (and bedchamber) of Princess Yasmela of Khoraja, this […]

A Sickness in the Family

The latest Vertigo Crime graphic novel comes from a writer who is no stranger to Vertigo or crime.  Denise Mina writes crime fiction based in her native Scotland, but she’s best known to me for her thirteen-issue run on “Hellblazer.”  It was a good run, most notable for how John Constantine wound up saving the […]

Grendel: Behold the Devil

Over the past year, I’ve had a friend of mine turn me on to the ongoing saga of Matt Wagner’s “Grendel” series.  I’ve been reading everything from its origins with criminal mastermind Hunter Rose to the exploits of his “granddaughter” Christine Spar and her boyfriend Brian Li Sung as well as the far-future exploits of […]

Fear Agent vol. 2: My War

I really liked the style and energy that writer Rick Remender brought to the adventures of hard-living, harder-drinking sci-fi jack-of-all-trades Heath Huston in the first volume of this series.  It also had a real light touch as Heath barrelled from certain death in one set of circumstances to even more certain death in a completely […]

Roadkill: A Jim Kowalski Adventure

Well, I wanted to read more works by the Fillbach Brothers and this is as far as I could go.  I say this because “Roadkill” is apparently the ONLY original work they’ve published after “Maxwell Strangewell.”  That’s too bad since it shows that they are singular talents (yes, I know that doesn’t really make sense […]

Cable vol. 4: Homecoming

Does the last volume of “Cable” provide a strong enough justification for the past 25 issues and change of Cable and Hope’s time-travelling odyssey?  Nope.  In fact, the “A Girl Called Hope” backup strips by regular series writer Duane Swierczynski and artist Steve Dillon provide a pretty good summation and encapsulation of the two characters’ […]