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

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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.

I love the idea of Poison Ivy tackling climate change, polluters, and greenwashing, but this story is a bit repetitive: every couple of issues, somebody gets turned into a weird fungus and Ivy needs to make an antidote. On top of that, the art is fine at best.

Ram V builds on lore established by Grant Morrison and Scott Snyder to put the Gothic back in Gotham. This is an operatic, occult story about Batman's (literal?) demons. Rafael Albuquerque's art isn't really my style, but he is very accomplished.

The definitive oral history of the making of Mad Max: Fury Road, one of the longest-gestating and most ambitious movies ever filmed. After seeing Furiosa, I wanted to go back and learn the crazy story of how they made this wild movie.

No one carries the torch of empathy farther than George Saunders

I absolutely loved this event. It pays off a number of narrative threads going all the way back to the origins of Krakoa in HoX/PoX. Mr. Sinister finally gets everything he wants and casts the universe into chaos. The story spans 1,000 years, blending real character stakes with playful space opera elements and high concept sci-fi. This is the X-Men version of Star Wars & Star Trek rolled into one.

"To me, my mes"

One of the funniest X-Men panels ever

This Lando-centric story is a really fun crossover with the larger Dark Droids event.

Rogue AI stories are getting a little tedious, but this one isn't bad. Terry's characterization is well done, and the art is solid if not stunning.

Taylor & Redondo's Nightwing run is a balm for anyone weary of overly grimdark, nihilistic story-telling: heroes saving lives and helping their communities. This story is about the nature of your heart--literally and metaphorically. Plus, Dick & Babs are adorable.

Impending Doom

I'm not a bug Venom guy, so the King in Black crossover issues we're really my jam. However, the issues written by Torunn Gronbekk and drawn by Nic Klein are great.

Great concept, zany style, and a beautiful ending, but the characters are a little shallow. The genies are very funny.

Including an issue drawn by Phil Noto makes the other artists look like amateurs. This story has to connect to multiple crossover events, which makes it a bit hard to follow.

This volume is a little more exposition-heavy, but Nic Klein's art and Matt Wilson's colors are still great.

Check out Verity Willis reading Douglas Wolk's fantastic All of the Marvels in this Al Ewing story.

The hardest thing in comics is to follow a legendary run on a title. Donny Cates managed to build on what Jason Aaron did with Thor while bringing his own fresh spin that brings the character forward, rather than starting over completely. Having won the War of the Realms, Thor must learn to be a king, not just a warrior.

Badass ladies

I found this . . . convoluted.

I'm loving Donny Cates' run on Thor from a few years ago. In this arc, Cates mines the lore to reinvent Thor's original alter ego Donald Blake. Great pacing, action, and dialogue. Cates picks up the themes of worthiness and authority that were so prominent in Jason Aaron's run.

This was a really cool concept that didn't quite nail the execution. Some of the poignancy and drama of the original are missing, though it does have a bit happier ending.

In homage to the fact that Dumas was Black, The Last Count of Monte Cristo is an Afro-Futurist retelling of the famous tale of revenge.

Donny Cates' Thor run seamlessly picks up where Jason Aaron's left off: after winning the War of the Realms and ascending to Asgard's throne, Thor must now form an uneasy alliance with Galactus to stop the star plague from wiping out the universe. Nic Klein's art perfectly splits the difference between Esad Ribic's and Russell Dauterman's.