Manga and Comic Reviews
Alright, so that first volume of “Domino” left some room for improvement as it shifted between intense character drama and freewheeling action-comedy less-than-gracefully. This volume is an improvement in that regard as it focuses more on the latter than the former and the experience is a lot more enjoyable for it. It opens up with […]
Here’s what I’m pretty sure is the last collected edition featured in the “Great Color Cull” of “X-Men” titles from last year. It also makes a better case for itself this time around as the talk of changing the world takes a backseat to some well-crafted superhero action courtesy of writer Tom Taylor and artists […]
The first volume of “Oblivion Song” was disappointing in that it didn’t offer me anything I hadn’t seen before, let alone any real surprises. This second volume actually does offer up one real surprise in that it wraps up the main story thread a lot sooner than I was expecting. I figured we’d be dealing […]
More than any other, this is the volume I’ve been waiting to re-read once it was announced that the “Silver Spoon” manga had been licensed for U.S. release. That’s because it finally introduces one of the most significant characters to the main story: Hachiken’s Dad, Kazumasa. (Really, it should be Yuugo’s Dad since Hachiken is […]
Above-the-Board Recommendation: Criminal: Bad Weekend HC When I was talking about the two-issue “The Orville” miniseries in the Dark Horse Previews Picks, I mentioned that you could make a collection out of a two-issue miniseries. It’s effectively price-gouging your audience, especially if you put it in a hardcover, but you could do it. Now, guess […]
Above-the-Board Recommendation: The Wild Storm vol. 4 Warren Ellis and Jon Davis-Hunt’s reimagining of the Wildstorm Universe has been light-years away from how it was originally conceptualized and is all the better for it. The WU’s initial success was driven by the hype it had from the Image launch along with the fact that it […]
Above-the-Board Recommendation: Empowered vol. 11 Hey, it’s about goddamn ti– I mean, it’s great to see another volume of Adam Warren’s consistently great superhero parody/actual superhero series. Yes, he’s been putting out spinoff miniseries like “Soldier of Love” and “Sistah Spooky’s High School Hell” with different artists, but there’s no replacing the feeling that you […]
Above-the-Board Recommendation: Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 1: The Final Gauntlet There were a few things that I was considering for this spot. However, I’d either just mentioned them a few months ago or was planning on issuing a backhanded recommendation, which would defeat the purpose of the whole thing. So I settled on this […]
One door closes and another opens… As the previous volume made explicitly clear, we’re onto a new arc in this series. The “College Arc” to be precise. After settling things with Cartaphilius and managing her curses into a state of equilibrium, things are actually going well for Chise right now. Which means that the invitation […]
In the afterword to Howard Chaykin’s roman a clef about the comics industry, he does his best to explain why he didn’t make it more obvious who the characters were based on — Stan Lee and Jack Kirby excluded. He essentially says that the point of the story wasn’t to have it be a game […]