Manga and Comic Reviews
Above-the-Board Recommendation: Blade of the Immortal Deluxe HC vol. 10 There was always the possibility that the publisher wouldn’t finish re-publishing their omnibus editions of this classic series in oversized hardcover format. Fortunately, with this solicitation, it looks like that fear will be unfounded come October (remember, Dark Horse advance-solicits all of their collections by […]
“Valentine Radio” week approaches at MRS. It’s an event where the station and its personalities guest on each others’ shows and do the same with those on a few affiliated stations. Minare is going to be part of this as well, so she’s going to have to prepare! Which means doing a show with a […]
Sometimes great talents emerge fully-formed from the start. Most times it takes them a little while to show what they’re really capable of. In Tatsuki Fujimoto’s case, the latter is what’s true here. Republished in the wake of his monstrous success with “Chainsaw Man,” these early stories show an artist who’s still trying to find […]
Well, this is embarrassing. In the almost fifteen years that I’ve been podcasting and writing about comics, I’ve never had a problem with that most basic of rules when it comes to following a series. You know, the one about reading every volume in order and not skipping over any of them. It’s a pretty […]
Based on the way vol. 9 ended, it looked like Mob’s biggest challenge for this volume was going to be placing in the top ten of his school’s 5K run. All so that he could get enough confidence to confess to the girl he likes. That’s… not the case here as this is the volume […]
Above-the-Board Recommendation: Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Secret of Chesbro House Does it say something that the best Mignolaverse collection I’ve read in a while is the one that wasn’t released in hardcover? That’d be “Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Return of Effie Kolb” which, coincidentally, was also the first one in some time written […]
Vol. 5 set up a hell of a situation for Narancia to overcome. With his mouth possessed by a Stand that caused him to say the opposite of whatever he means, he had to convince his friends that they were all under attack. I don’t need to tell you that he eventually finds a way […]
Nearly three years passed between the release of volumes two and three of this series, and I can still remember sections of vol. 2 like I had just read them. Particularly the opening fight between Shinobu and her friends, and the villains who moved into her house on Ishikunagijima island. It wasn’t just proof that […]
Osaragi and Ino were once the best of friends. Now their relationship is on the outs about how they feel about Ishigami. It’s this fracture that drives vol. 24’s opening chapters as they slowly work through their issues in ways that are more dramatic than comedic. The comedy comes back in subsequent chapters as Chika […]
Had I engaged in a bit more planning and/or patience, I’d have talked about this volume when I did the podcast for the series. In the end, I was left hoping that the stories collected here would offer some additional insight into the ending we got with vol. 11. That’s not the case here. Vol. […]