After introducing us to Forever Carlyle and her world in the first volume, writer Greg Rucka starts digging further into it with this new collection.  We see her the rigorous training she underwent to become the Lazarus of Family Carlyle and how she employs those skills to avert a terrorist threat in the present day. […]

Unlike a lot of other publishers, Avatar doesn’t seem to place many restrictions on sexual or violent content in its titles.  I imagine that kind of freedom is how they get writers like Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis, David Lapham, Kieron Gillen, and Alan Moore to write comics for them.  “No limits” is an appealing thing […]

After the first volume I couldn’t wait to read the conclusion to Cap’s adventures in Dimension Z!  Now that I’ve read it… well… it’s not quite on the same level   Maybe if it hadn’t started off with a terminally silly scene where Arnim Zola’s tachyon kung-fu powerhouse daughter Jet Black monologues about how much she […]

In case you had any doubts that Hickman’s two “Avengers” titles were different sides to the same story, this volume will put them to rest.  So if you’ve been putting off reading “New Avengers” for some reason — and the monthly sales numbers tell me that there are a lot of you — then consider […]

A few months back, I wrote (briefly) about the first volume of a series called “Five Weapons.”  Essentially it was “Harry Potter” with child assassins standing in for child magicians, and whether or not it worked for you all came down to how hard you didn’t want to think about the incongruity of that premise. […]

Back in that period of time we like to call the “early aughts,” Marvel put out a miniseries called “Wolverine:  Origin” that would explore Ol’ Canucklehead’s earliest days.  It wasn’t done out of a desire to answer the many longstanding questions regarding the character’s origin, but to beat Hollywood to the punch after the success […]

In the category of “reprinted crime comics from David Lapham” that has sprung up this year, the “Stray Bullets:  Uber Alles” edition is what you should spend your hard-earned money on.  The forty-one issues it collects detail a rambling, surprising, sometimes terrifying, always compelling narrative about a disparate group of runaways, killers, thugs, and crazies […]

I liked Ed Piskor’s “Wizzywig” well enough, but the fictional narrative he created to serve as a backbone for his exploration of hacker tech and culture came off as underdeveloped and very predictable.  For his latest project, the writer/artist has chosen to work exclusively in the realm of nonfiction to explore the origins of hip […]

We saw the setup for this epic storyline in the previous volume, and now the narrative barrels on full steam ahead.  It’s the Avengers Unity squad vs. The Apocalypse Twins and their horsemen for the fate of Earth itself.  This arc recently concluded in serialized form after eighteen issues — a virtual eternity in today’s […]

Dear Brian, Hello.  I’m writing to you as a longtime fan of your works.  Not only is “Jinx” one of my all-time favorite graphic novels, the many other series you’ve been involved with over the years has basically turned me into a completist when it comes to your writing.  The quality of books like “Goldfish,” […]