Manga and Comic Reviews
Above-the-Board Recommendation: The Dreaming vol. 2: Empty Shells Si Spurrier is a writer who never takes the easy, obvious path when writing a story that involves established or corporate-owned characters. No, he’ll always try to find some way to use them that’s still familiar yet takes them in a different direction. That’s what we got […]
Above-the-Board Recommendation: Outer Darkness vol. 2: Castrophany of Hate So in case you didn’t get the message from my review of this last week, I REALLY liked the first volume of “Outer Darkness.” To the point where I’m actually kind of concerned that I don’t hear more people talking about it. After that first volume […]
Above-the-Board Recommendation: Conan: Serpent War #’s 1&2 (of 4) This doesn’t get the “Above-the-Board” spot for what it is. As a B-list event featuring Conan, fellow Robert E. Howard creations Solomon Kane and Dark Agnes (and also Moon Knight because why not), with Jim Zub writing and Scot Eaton and Stephen Segovia illustrating, I’m sure […]
Above-the-Board Recommendation: Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Seven Wives Club I’ll be honest, not much stood out to me in this round of solicitations. Most of the trade paperbacks on offer either had some kind of issue holding them back or just seemed outright mediocre. There were some promising-sounding miniseries coming from unknown (to me) […]
As far as titles go, this is probably the most straightforward one you’ll see this year. It’s about Honda-san. She’s a bookseller. She’s got a human skull for a face. That’s not as strange as it sounds when you consider that her co-workers have paper bags, gas masks, and knight helmets for faces themselves. It’s […]
Going back to yesterday’s first volume of “Miles Morales,” if his latest adventures felt fun yet predictable, this new “Superior Spider-Man” is a more self-aware version of that. Picking up from the “post-credits scene” of “Amazing Spider-Man #800,” Otto Octavius has a new body and identity. That of the newest professor at Horizon University in […]
This is the first volume of Miles Morales’ solo adventures not to be written by Bendis! Those of you hoping for a dramatic departure from the kind of stories we got with the character before, however, should check their expectations. New writer Saladin Ahmed does a good enough job of putting the title character through […]
My last order of graphic novels was held up for two weeks because I didn’t realize this particular volume was on backorder when I put it into my cart. Cue two weeks of annoyed website checking as I waited for my order to finally ship. This wasn’t doing “Outer Darkness” any favors since as this […]
I was kind of holding out hope that this current storyline was saving its craziest stuff for last. As it was involving some Japanese practitioners of Christianity and we all know how Japan has treated that religion with nothing but the greatest respect over the years. Regrettably, that doesn’t happen as the juiciest stuff winds […]
It’s the weekend of Comic Fest and Jacob Kurtz has a miserable task ahead of him. He’s been asked to watch over legendary comics artist Hal Crane. Just to make sure that the man gets to his panels and doesn’t get into too much trouble before he accepts his lifetime achievement award. That would be […]