Above-the-Board Recommendation: Hellions by Zeb Wells vol. 3 While the current line of X-books has generally been entertaining on its own terms, it’s mainly because they’ve been doing familiar superhero stuff quite well with a straightforward dramatic bent.  Well, all of them except for “Hellions.”  This has been a darkly funny, deeply cynical series that […]

The title birds only figure into the first few pages of this volume, but their brief presence is enough to let you know that Magpies are serious business.  It’s enough to convince Bridgette that she needs to find her daughter Mary before her dalliance with Merlin and Arthur begets more violence and tragedy.  Which is […]

At the beginning of this volume we get the story of the Phoenix of 1,000,000 B.C., with some impressively burly art from Dale Keown.  At the end of this volume we see Blade transition out of the Avengers into a job he was born to do with some less-impressive, but still nice art from Luca […]

Aphra eventually managed to give ruthless collector Ronen Tagge what was coming to him in the previous volume.  Unfortunately this also managed to put her on the radar of Tagge family head, Domina.  Worse still is that Aphra’s actions managed to impress Domina, and now she wants the good doctor to do a job for […]

Emma Elliot is in the midst of an epically bad breakup.  The kind where she’s been curled up in her bed for the past two weeks before some inspired needling from her roommate finally gets her to rejoin society again.  However, it isn’t until she meets a mysterious man named Bob that Emma finally has […]

Writer Geoff Johns and artist Gary Frank didn’t heed my advice at all, and so here we are, six years after vol. 2, with the latest volume of their “Batman:  Earth One” graphic novel series.  To give you an indication of how long it has taken them to get this volume out, Grant Morrison and […]

The original “Steeple” miniseries from creator John Allison was delightful.  It wasn’t just the fact that it was enjoyably quirky in a deeply English way, it was also very funny with two winning leads in curate-turned-satanic-priestess Billie, and satanic-priestess-turned-curate Maggie.  I wasn’t expecting a sequel, so the appearance of “The Silvery Moon” in the solicitations […]

“Tall Tales” wants to be “The Godfather, Part II” of this series.  I say this because its story moves both backwards and forwards, telling the history of vampires while also expanding on the present day story of the Bowman clan.  The history is centered around one character, Nicodemus, who became the very first vampire after […]

Vol. 1 of Ewing’s run was great fun.  It had all the snappy dialogue and clever plotting that you’ve come to expect from the writer as he set about addressing the remaining baggage the “Guardians’” cast had prior to his arrival.  Ewing also decided this was also a good time to give Peter Quill his […]

So, the Scorched Earth Clan are actually the good guys and the Temple of the Flaming Fist, now led by Master Chou, are the bad guys.  That’s a hell of a reveal to pull after you’ve just finished introducing them, but I’m sure years of writing “Invincible” have taught Robert Kirkman that there’s never not […]