The Christmas issue was really good. Peter and Harry developing different attitudes toward being super heroes is interesting, too. Hickman's pacing is good, even as he leans into a much more grounded story than he normally tells. There is a lot more journalism than I was expecting.

Some issues are definitely more gripping than others, but I like what Deniz Camp is doing with Marvel's re-launch of the Ultimates. My favorite issue by far was Doom's origin story.

"The internet tidal wave would be followed by a hacking tsunami"

Bilquis Evely's art is extraordinary. A wonderful story about grief, family, and imagination. I can't wait to read more.

These stories perfectly capture the melancholy and often tragic tone of many of the side quests in the game. Although they are all stand-alone episodes, these stories revolve around how Geralt interprets the world.

Tom King said that this was the best he's ever written. This arc follows Joan through an entire lifetime of domesticity. My one complaint is that the cliffhanger at the end of this volume is basically the same as at the end of volume one.

A truly bold new take on Zatanna from Mariko Tamaki and Javi Rodriguez. Super stylized pop art with a heavy dose of the surreal. Electric colors. Zatanna is a small-time Vegas magician--or is she? A great story about claiming your power with a surprising villain even if the ending isn't that suspenseful. Would absolutely read more of this.

Gerry Duggan wanted to write a romance comic but wasn't sure it would sell, so he made it about a gun slinger and a samurai in a fantastical purgatory. Hell yeah

My book is out in paperback!
https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.3828/9781949979916

The second arc of Bitch Planet was a bit weaker than the first. It felt a bit transitional to the next big story beat, and it definitely ends with a bang.

While I enjoyed the double helix structure--Thrawn and Vader in the present interwoven with Thrawn and Anakin in the past--something was off about the pacing. In four issues, they do a lot of detective work, but it wasn't that suspenseful.

Soule is extremely deft at weaving new stories into existing Star Wars lore. This volume covers the period before Return of the Jedi.

Logged my 700th book, baby!

Kieron Gillen takes the basic premise of Watchmen--what if super-powered beings were real--and updates it for our modern era. After writing X-Men, Gillen created original characters with powers similar to Xavier and Magneto. This first trade really just introduces the characters and lays out the stakes (the end of the world).

Ryan North's Fantastic Four takes an episodic, case-of-the-week approach. North has a lot of fun making Reed talk like a scientist.

Charles Soule keeps trucking along. This volume features a fun Lando arc, as well as another step toward Luke building his iconic green lightsaber.

Great comics need concepts that allow the artists to flex. Thompson, Pina, and Bellaire elevate a gimic--traveling through portals into different worlds with their own styles--into an art. This volume has so much wit, panache, and physical comedy. Bellaire is an astounding colorist.

One part star-crossed lovers, one part episodic supernatural mystery, G.O.D.S. has all of Hickman's signature devices--non-linear chronology, cosmic conflict, and character-driven story. This is about as weird as Marvel will let Hickman get.

A fresh take on Spiderman from Jonathan Hickman: what if Peter Parker didn't get his powers until he was a middle-aged dad? The pacing is very deliberate. This is a much more street-level story than Hickman's usually more cosmic/occult fare.

An homage to romance comics, Love Everlasting puts an ominous spin on all the classic tropes, as its protagonist Joan cannot escape an endless cycle of true love.

Compared to Hickman's usually impressive standards, this was fairly mediocre. My guess is he was spread too thin working on G.O.D.S. and Ultimate Spiderman, as well as his creator-owned projects. Whatever the reason, this story, which re-launched Marvel's Ultimate universe, was lackluster. The Maker is a great villain, but his master plan was kind of boring.

Incredibly fun book featuring an incredibly fun team. Romero's super stylized retro art is excellent, and Jordie Bellaire's muted electric pastel colors are perfect. Thompson balances action, humor, and emotion really well. This book is all about contrasts: Barda is physically bigger than everyone else; Harley is quippy, while Cassandra is nearly silent.

A Hickman trifecta for the holiday weekend

I really enjoyed Trust, which is kind of Faulkner-lite. A meditation on money in/as fiction.

In this arc, Mark Waid returns to his landmark work Kingdom Come (1994), which itself was a nostalgic return to an earlier era of more humane super heroes during the ultra-violence of the Image boom in the early '90s. Seeing Dan Mora draw the Kingdom Come character designs alone is worth the price of admission. Seeing the origins of Magog is interesting, though a little forced.

I think I've developed a bit of a Tom Taylor allergy

Saga just keeps on rolling. I like that it has morphed into a coming-of-age story for Hazel and Squire. The image of the robot people having tvs for heads is endlessly funny.

This is the weakest of the first three World's Finest arcs because of its cliche AI-gone-haywire plot, but Dan Mora's art is marvelous and he gets to draw virtually the entire Justice League plus a ton of other characters.

My holiday haul ended up being extremely Marvel-centric

"He didn't get up; the planet sank"

Tom King and Daniel Sampere have a bold new take on Wonder Woman. One of King's most surprising devices is to make the narrator the antagonist, a new villain called the Sovereign. Sampere's art is awesome, depicting Wonder Woman as gorgeous, but not sexualized, powerful, but not hulking. More than supervillains, Wonder Woman faces the rot at the heart of America, a festering brew of toxic masculinity and patriotism.

Liu and Takeda are unstoppable; Monstress rocketing ever upward. After once longing to be free from Zinn, Maika now finds herself fighting to reunite with him and stop her father's rampage. As per usual, this volume ends on a massive cliffhanger.

Hazel has always been Saga's narrator, but with the death of [redacted] she is emerging as its protagonist. Hazel and her family--both biological and adopted--continue trying to survive galactic chaos. Saga remains very bleak, yet acidly funny.

I really wanted to like this, but just didn't find it compelling at all. Korvac is a pretty lame, generic villain, while this version of Tony has a nebulous internal conflict of unspecified angst. I honestly expect better from Cantwell, who is a multi-talented writer.

I like Tom King a lot, but I would rank this near the bottom of his impressive comics resume. This has a clever, non-linear structure, but a less than totally satisfying conclusion. It's told more from the villains' perspective than Batman's and has some interesting allusions to Euripides. Marquez's art is good, but not as memorable as some of King's other collaborators.

I re-read Monstress from the beginning before starting vol. 8 and it is even better when you binge it. There is so much lore that it can be hard to follow in single-issue installments, but the series perfectly balances horror, fantasy, and sci-fi. It would make such an awesome animated series. Liu & Takeda are at the top of their game.

James just won the National Book Award for its brilliant retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Jim's perspective.

"I had never seen a white man filled with fear. The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn't conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened him."

Brilliant, disturbing. Great use of the 16-panel grid. Every horror story needs a monster. What if the internet is the scariest monster we can imagine?

No better time to read Tolkien than when the Shadow is ascendant

Make sure you vote for Harris/Walz on Tuesday! Sign up to canvass or phone bank here:
https://votesaveamerica.com/vsa-2024/

After watching Rings of Power, I had to go back to the source.

Public Domain is a thinly veiled retelling of Jack Kirby's family's legal battle to win back the rights to the characters Kirby created from Marvel infused with Chip Zdarsky's own experience as a comics writer. While it's pretty funny, it's extremely literal. I'm a Kirby partisan, but these fictional analogues are less interesting than the real people. I'd rather just read a biography of Kirby. The illustrations are very bland digital clip art.

Tom King is undefeated at writing 12-issue miniseries about DC most obscure characters. This one literally started as a joke on Twitter. King's homage to his favorite noir, 1949's D.O.A., is a love story wrapped in a murder mystery. Greg Smallwood's art elevates this story to true beauty.

GotG meets Westerns is a really good premise, but the execution is just okay. The character designs are great, but the illustrations themselves are very simplistic.

Heavily inspired by Tolkien and D&D, the Fellspyre Chronicles is a really fun epic fantasy graphic novel. The double helix chronology moves back and forth from the past to the present. My only complaint art wise is that some of the characters, especially the women, are very hard to tell apart.

The Krakoan Era is technically over, but I'm still catching up! A lot of people think that it went off the rails after Jonathan Hickman left, but Kieron Gillen's Immortal X-Men is really great. Beautiful art by Lucas Werneck, too. The Quiet Council finally pays for its sins.

It's hard for anyone's work to be as over-hyped as George Saunders, but he always delivers. The title story, "Liberation Day," is inventive, haunting, probing, familiar, and contemporary all at once. No one masters voice like Saunders. "The Mom of Bold Action" and "Ghoul" are so funny yet searing. I love how Saunders blends hope, pain, and humor into an incredible emotional realism set against slightly satirical or exaggerated premises.

Sean Murphy's White Knight series is the most successful franchise from DC Black Label. Murphy's distinctive art is unmatched, but just as impressively, he reimagines compelling alternate versions of the whole Bat Family. Beyond the White Knight is also super self-aware and chock full of jokes and references.

I love the oversized Absolute format, especially for stories as epically bombastic as Dark Knights: Metal.