Manga and Comic Reviews
All of the setup in the previous volume felt like it was leading to a big battle, and that’s what we get here. Two, in fact, with the first involving a clash of 250,00 Lusitanians against 100,000 Parsians. It sounds like a very lopsided battle – and the Parsians don’t even have the strategic genius […]
Above-the-Board Recommendation: Absolute Superman by Geoff Johns & Gary Frank Johns did write the Man of Steel a lot during his heyday in the 00’s and early ‘10’s at DC but he never actually did a proper run on his monthly adventures. He did, along with Frank, do a number of short stints on “Action […]
One thing I noticed in this round of Penguin Picks is that there are no longer prices attached to any of the items solicited. I can’t say that this is directly related to all the talk I did about the prices of single issues of Dark Horse comics in the last round of these Penguin […]
Above-the-Board Recommendation: Where the Body Was HC Big surprise: Another OGN from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips gets the top spot this month! It may seem obvious and predictable that I keep giving this spot to new work from these creators. However, when they’ve consistently been delivering greatness (or at least above-averageness) for over two […]
Above-the-Board Recommendation: Venom by Ewing (& Gronbekk) vol. 5: Predestination The solicitations just have Al Ewing’s name in the title, but it’s been clear from the last few solicitations that Torunn Gronbekk is now filling the co-writing role that Ram V was at the start of this series. While she did a decent job of […]
It’s safe to say that in the last volume shit got real. Phobos’ programming was re-written by Poseidon’s leader and she was sent to attack Nene and Clarion. The latter was doing her best to fight off her sister’s assault, but it wasn’t enough. Facing imminent defeat partway through this volume, she looks into her […]
You’ll recall that I thought vol. 1 was one of the best things I read last year. Writer Matthew Rosenberg and artist Tyler Boss’ story of a group of kids, the Academy, navigating their way through a vision of the post-apocalypse where other kids follow the patterns laid down by the adults that came before […]
Cafu takes over for Bryan Hitch as the regular artist for “Venom” with this volume. Even though he’s got a relatively grounded style, he’s good with the craziness Ewing asks him to draw here. From symbiote-on-symbiote fights to metaphysical depictions of Eddie Brock’s current state of mind there’s a lot to like about what he […]
Devin Fulcher hasn’t been having a good time as of late. It turns out that the woman he loves, who is also his fiancee, has been sleeping with one of the biggest asshole cops in town. Worse still is that she’s now pregnant with his kid, and her father, the town sheriff, is still insisting […]
We reach the climax of this arc towards the end of this volume, but before we get there we’ve got to spend some more time with Philomela. Not that it’s a bad thing as the saga of this poor, put-upon, and deprived girl has been one of the strongest plot threads of the “College Arc.” […]