Comic Picks by the Glick

Manga and Comic Reviews

The great Viz manga shrinkage of 2013

I’ve written regularly about my issues with Dark Horse manga over the years, yet I’ve come to realize something over this past year.  Consider all of the series that I’ve been reading this year that have ended:  “20th Century Boys,” “Tenjo Tenge,” “Bakuman,” “Saturn Apartments,” and “Slam Dunk.”  They’re all titles published by Viz.  For […]

Knights of Sidonia vol. 6

In the previous volume for this series…  Actually, that was the first one I didn’t talk about here.  It wasn’t that it was bad or even disappointing, just that it continued on from what had come before in fairly seamless fashion.  Yes, we got the start of an extended arc about the Gauna sending an […]

Dark Horse Previews Picks: March 2014

Remember “Xerxes?”  The sequel to “300” to be written and illustrated by Frank Miller that was previewed back when “Dark Horse Presents” launched back in 2011 and to serve as the basis for the upcoming film sequel “Rise of an Empire?”  Well, after turning in two issues a couple years back, Miller has yet to […]

Pink by Kyoko Okazaki

Terrible ending coda aside, Kyoko Okazaki’s “Helter Skelter” was an engrossing thriller that left me eagerly awaiting this story.  Described as her “representative work” on the back cover, “Pink” is entertaining fluff and light on its feet with its protagonist’s determined refusal to acknowledge life’s harder edges.  Interestingly enough, its quality proves to be the […]

Gantz vol. 29

“Oh, it’s a review of the latest ‘Gantz’ volume,” you’re thinking, “Time for Glick to rant even more about the title’s downward spiral.”  In that regard, you’re mostly right.  The series doesn’t really do a whole lot to make the current alien invasion storyline more interesting and even adds in a new complication that’s more […]

Berserk vol. 37

It’s that time of year again as the annual volume of “Berserk” has finally arrived.  That being said, the “annual” tradition is effectively over now as it’s doubtful that a new volume will even be out in Japan next year.  Mangaka Kentaro Miura announced that “Berserk” is going on hiatus while he works on a […]

Sickness Unto Death vol. 2

Keeping with a Vertical trend for this weekend, here we are with the second volume of this shonen soap opera romance.  Though the first one had its issues, I wasn’t about to write it off because there was the chance that it could pull out a revelation about main female protagonist Emiru’s “sickness of despair” […]

The Summit of the Gods vol. 4

So this arrived a little sooner than I thought it would, and turned out to be worth the wait as well.  A little win-win situation right there.  Even better is that after a bit of action at the beginning the book’s entire focus shifts to Fukumachi’s efforts to chronicle Habu’s solo, oxygenless climb of Everest’s […]