Comic Picks by the Glick

Manga and Comic Reviews

The Fade Out, Act Two

The rabbit hole of depravity and sin that is Hollywood, circa 1948, just gets deeper in this latest volume from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.  How bad are things there?  The best decision in Act Two appears to be former child star/current jazz trumpet player Jack Jones’ statement to screenwriter/very amateur investigator Charlie Parrish that […]

Saga vol. 5

There are three different plot threads in this volume, two of which collide with explosive results by its end.  After vol. 4 left off with robot dissident Dengo escaping with Alanna, Hazel, and Marko’s mother, he figures that his best bet to make the Robot kingdom pay for the death of his son is to […]

Crossed: +100 vol. 1

Being one of our greatest living comics writers, it shouldn’t be surprising that Alan Moore is one of the few writers to do something interesting with the “Crossed” franchise beyond serving up some shock value with a side of extreme gore.  The writer starts this new series one hundred years after the initial outbreak, where […]

Claymore vol. 27

No, this isn’t getting a podcast.  I considered it, but doing a retrospective for a series where I covered the first 17 volumes in one edition and then summarized the final 10 seemed kind of pointless.  Also, the series doesn’t deserve it.  I’ve written here about the series has had its good parts, particularly in […]

Descender vol. 1: Tin Stars

It’s written by Jeff Lemire.  It has art from Dustin Nguyen.  It’s a sci-fi story with an epic scope and with a story that looks to have the fate of the universe at stake.  These are all things that interest me, yet this first volume of “Descender” wasn’t nearly as involving as you’d expect from […]

Groo: Friends and Foes vol. 1

While we’re on the subject of comedic fantasy action stories (in comic book form), here’s the return of the granddaddy of them all.  Of course, we did get “Groo vs. Conan” earlier this year and that wound up being a bit underwhelming.  Have Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier lost their touch with the character after […]

The Walking Dead vol. 24: Life & Death

I went into “Fear the Walking Dead” with all the optimism that the quality of the show and Robert Kirkman’s involvement would allow.  It was not rewarded.  Even if there were some nice moments in seeing civilization slip away, they were outweighed by a cast of characters that were boring at best and actively unlikeable […]

The Ancient Magus’ Bride vol. 2

Before this year started, Seven Seas wasn’t on my radar as a manga publisher.  Even though they’ve been around for years, nothing they had published ever really caught my eye.  I’ve picked up four of their titles so far this year.  The quality has ranged from god-awful (“Freezing”), harmless (“Pandora of the Crimson Shell”), “jury’s […]

Empowered vol. 9

Getting the collection of one-shots in “Empowered Unchained” earlier in the year was nice.  The fact that this latest volume of the main series is excellent even by the title’s normally high standards is better.  Things start off by picking up on the fallout from Emp and Sistah Spooky’s trip to Object 524 as the […]