Manga and Comic Reviews
Back in 2004, writer Kurt Busiek teamed with artist Stuart Immonen for a story called “Superman: Secret Identity.” It had a dubious high-concept premise: What if a kid named Clark Kent gained the powers of Superman, in a world where “Superman” was a fictional character like he is in ours. The end result, however, was […]
With a resume that includes works like “Summer Blonde,” “Shortcomings,” and “Killing & Dying,” Adrian Tomine stands as one of the comics industry’s most respected cartoonists. It’s not nothing, but “most respected” doesn’t translate into personal wealth, fame, or actual respect. This is something that “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist” makes abundantly clear with […]
In an America where laws are literally fought for on stumps in public, Senator Jack Hammer was someone with his best days behind him. Until he beat the crap out of Senator Sweet Smell over a bill to deregulate genetic engineering. Not only is he now more popular with the general public, he’s got the […]
This final volume arrived a couple months back and it’s been sitting, buried, under other, objectively better comics after I finished reading it. BUT NO LONGER! The craziest train in comics deserves to have its final volume recognized in some form. Even if I’m going to be recounting a lot of the insanity that makes […]
Conventional wisdom dictates that “Kaguya-Sama’s” best days are behind it now. After all, Kaguya and Miyuki are now a couple so all of the romantic tension is deflated along with the “Will They or Won’t They” shenanigans. If fourteen volumes of this series have told us anything, it’s that “Kaguya-Sama” laughs in the face of […]
It took a while, but “Diamond is Unbreakable” finally realized its main plot and actually steered a couple of its principal characters into a conflict with Stand-wielding serial killer Yoshikage Kira. However, the characters in question were Jotaro Joestar and Koichi. In other words: “Guy Who was the Protagonist in the Last Arc” and “Best […]
It took three years, and a Netflix movie, but we finally got a second volume of “The Old Guard.” I really enjoyed the first volume and the self-contained story it told made it so that the wait for this volume wasn’t as taxing as it could’ve been. Still, it was advertised as “vol. 1” so […]
Bendis wrote two teenage versions of Spider-Man very well for a very long time over at Marvel. So when he pitched DC on writing two of its preeminent superteams that happen to be made up of teenagers, the company apparently went “Okay, sure.” and let him have at it. Naturally I picked up the first […]
Back in the early days of my anime/manga fandom, a popular bit of trivia about mangaka Rumiko Takahashi was that she was the second-richest woman in Japan. It was an easy to believe factoid, too. She was the creator of long-running hits like “Urusei Yatsura,” “Ranma ½” and her current series, “Inuyasha,” was working its […]
The fight against the Jinoo rages on for the Sangeryes family in this volume. It picks up with the “Red Summer Special” to fill in some backstory regarding its cast, with the bits regarding youngest son Cullen being the most relevant to the main story. We saw him dragged off to the realm of the […]