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 […]

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 […]

Now this is more like it. God knows I haven’t liked much of what I’ve read from Mark Millar this year.  “Kick-Ass” the movie has the (dubious?) honor of being the first feature film comic book adaptation of this generation to be markedly better than its source material.  While “Old Man Logan” had all the […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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’ […]

In terms of prose novels, I’ve probably read more by Stephen King than any other author.  Not only has he written the scariest novels I’ve ever read (it still creeps me out to think about the short stories in “Night Shift”) but he hasn’t lost his touch after all these years (“Under the Dome” read […]

The late Steve Gerber was a firm believer against the idea of revamping existing comic book characters while their creators were still alive.  He felt that such an act represented an act of contempt on the part of the new creators, and initially felt this way towards writer Jonathan Lethem’s proposed revamp of Gerber’s obscure […]

As you’ll recall I generally enjoyed J. Michael Straczynski’s run on “Thor,” except for the fact that its ending was so rushed and abrupt that it sucked most of the enjoyment out of the experience.  Now we have interim writer Kieron Gillen picking up the threads from Straczynski’s run with Billy Tan joining him on […]