Manga and Comic Reviews
Most weeks whenever the New York Times list of the bestselling manga hits Anime News Network, it’s usually “a whole lot of shonen and shojo manga that I’m not reading,” with a few exceptions. “Yotsuba&!,” “Chi’s Sweet Home,” “Claymore,” “Berserk,” “Battle Angel Alita,” and even “Biomega” are the ones that I can recall popping up […]
This volume’s official subtitle is “Gag and Serious,” but it may as well be, “What to do when your series is cancelled.” It’s another eventful look at the process of creating Shonen Jump manga, and for all that I talked about the kind of bloat that tends to be a token part of series from […]
This was the summary given on the back of the volume: “After a hellish battle against ravenous sea monsters, Guts the Black Swordsman and his companions are forced to seek refuge on a small island so that their ship can be repaired. But this island is not the safe haven they’d hoped for — it’s […]
Garth Ennis did more than create one of the best comics I read last year with the first volume of “Crossed,” he created a franchise. In a move that I haven’t seen since Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch gave “The Authority” over to the creative community over a decade ago, Ennis is letting other creators […]
Though the issues inside are labeled as parts of an arc called “Flambe,” this collection is not a continuous storyline. It’s just five issues documenting more crazy weirdness in the life of Tony Chu, starting with the fallout from the writing in the sky that closed out the previous volume. As it turns out, such […]
While the series’ current direction, which has sent The Plutonian off-planet to an intergalactic mental hospital, may seem like a necessary evil for what writer/creator Mark Waid has planned it’s still quite compelling. In getting the world’s most powerful superhuman out of their hair, we find that the inhabitants of Earth have traded the devil […]
I probably would’ve enjoyed this more had I not read Paul O’Brien’s review of it several months back. Yeah. He advertised major spoilers for it, but I went and read it anyway, so it’s my bad. The issue here is that the ending is essentially a calculated anticlimax that takes a sharp left turn into […]
It probably won’t surprise anyone to learn that I have little affection for Todd McFarlane. The man’s artistic and sales achievements on “Spider-Man” and “Spawn” mean less to me than his court battles with Neil Gaiman over ownership of Miracleman and the fact that he spends more time as a businessman than a comics creator […]
Another collection of “Hellboy” short stories? That’s all right by me! Even though I’m eagerly awaiting “The Storm & The Fury,” which is the next major arc in the main Mignola/Fegredo storyline, this collection of one-shots and shorts will tide any fan over until it arrives. These collections are an eclectic affair — as always […]
Let me tell you about the baggage I brought to reading this. Long-time readers will know that I like Svetlana Chmakova’s work and I was looking forward to reading more of “Nightschool” after the first arc was done. She teased at the end of vol. 4 that it wasn’t going to happen right away because […]