I thought I was getting a story about a son getting to know his dead father while vampires take over the City of Brotherly Love.  That part was mostly true.  What I got along with it was a story about our second president, John Adams, being the source of said vampire outbreak and working to […]

Above-the-Board Recommendation: Everything vol. 2:  Black Friday The second and concluding volume of writer Christopher Cantwell and artist I.N.J. Culbard’s series about the weirder side of consumerism.  While the launch of the Everything superstore in Holland, Michigan was a rousing success by any metric, there are still a few people in town who haven’t been […]

Above-the-Board Recommendation: Swamp Thing:  The New 52 Omnibus This is a comic of two halves:  The one written by Scott Snyder and the one written by Charles Soule.  If you’re wondering how that shakes out quality-wise, imagine a curve that’s more like a valley than a mountain.  Snyder’s run started off well enough, but was […]

Above-the-Board Recommendation: Chu vol. 1:  First Course John Layman and Rob Guillory’s “Chew” was a lot of fun over the course of its 60+ issue run.  It also tied things up pretty well at the end to indicate that Cibopathic detective Tony Chu’s adventures were at their end.  So what’s the focus for this similarly […]

Above-the-Board Recommendation: Miles Morales vol. 4:  Ultimatum Under writer Saladin Ahmed’s watch, Miles has foiled a plot to hypnotize kids into being criminals, been experimented on by an unknown collector, fought the Ultimate Green Goblin, and survived team-ups with the Rhino and his own Uncle Aaron.  In this volume, however, he’ll face his greatest challenge:  […]

“Hellboy” isn’t driven anymore by an epic story about the title character’s role in the end of the world.  Instead, creator Mike Mignola is free to give us more stories about the character’s adventures prior to his death.  “The Beast of Vargu and Others” serves up four stories in that vein.  Three of which are […]

After the success of “DCeased,” a generally alright superhero zombie story, it was expected that a spinoff like this would be forthcoming.  What I didn’t expect was for “Unkillables” to be more entertaining than its progenitor.  It may be eighty pages shorter, but that makes for a tighter pace overall as writer Tom Taylor crams […]

While I generally try to stay away from spoilers, sometimes they have a way of sneaking up on you.  Maybe they’ll turn up in an unrelated article, or a friend will let one slip unaware that you were trying to remain in ignorance.  Other times they’ll be spoiled in a publication from the same family.  […]

After you’ve managed to make enemies of the galaxy’s biggest corporation, Lux, and its biggest religion, the Renunciation, by proving that they’re actually in bed together, what do you do for an encore?  If you’re Captain Grix of the Sundog, then you try to find a way to survive while sticking to your principles.  After […]

There are some comics whose first volumes read like first issues.  This is in the sense that they take a whole volume to do what a proper first issue should do:  Explain the setup, introduce the core cast, and then show the audience where the story is really headed.  “Reaver” is the example of this […]