Comic Reviews
Hawkeye #21 - Hawkeye's back! The apartment complex gets ready for an attack from the Bros, which takes up about 2/3 of the issue. Everyone is working together and it seems to be going well until Clint gets ambushed by the old Russian lady. When he wakes up groggy, he gets to see his brother get killed in front of him unable to help him in time. Then, Pizza Dog! It's a pretty rote story, but Aja illustrates the hell out of it, with the pacing of Barney's death being particularly heartbreaking.
Batgirl #38 - I was pretty down on this issue. Batgirl is being all overt and the people of Burnside love her, but she's pissed that an Internet celebrity asshole is more popular than her. So she goes to confront him, assuming he will be drunk driving, and her confrontation causes him to storm out, get him his car, and drive off. She chases him in an unnecessary high speed chase that ends up destroying a popular landmark (a coffee shop, naturally). The other half of the story is Barbara arguing with her cop boyfriend about Batgirl, which is a little cliche and a lot wordy and preachy. The arguing isn't interesting and the action piece fails to get me on Batgirl's side like I think the creators wanted me to be.
ODY-C #1 - Fraction has decided to rewrite the Odyssey as a sci-fi space opera. That's, interesting... There's a long page of back story that I mostly skimmed, the most interesting part being that the gods have destroyed all men, so the story features almost exclusively women. As for the story itself, it moves quickly, but doesn't take too much time to flesh anything out. It almost requires pretty good familiarity with the Odyssey to figure out, especially since it focuses a lot on the old relationships between the two warring factions that fought for a century in The Illiad. The art is pretty epic, but a little too sketchy. I normally like that, but a sci-fi story full of technology requires something a little cleaner. In the end, this reminds me a lot of the recent Prophet story, which is a mixed bag as I have similar complaints about both.
Saga #25 - Our story is still split into three groups. The first is Alana, her MIL, kid, and kidnapper. They've been traveling for months and are planning on fighting off the kidnapper (why it look two veterans months to discuss that, I don't know). Then we see the bounty hunters looking for The Will's attacker. They are looking for a male dragon, which leads to them getting pissed on by a female to draw in all the other dragons in the area. It's half badass, half kinda gross. The third group is Marko and the robot prince looking for the kidnapper and being at each other's throats. I like the individual parts, but I can't wait until the threads start influencing each other again. It's a little disjointed as it stands.
Sex Criminals #9 - The majority of this issue is giving the back story of Jazmine St. Cocaine. She had an early injury that made her having orgasms almost impossible. She spent a lot of time going from having sex to stripping to porn (including a hilarious Wicked and Divine parody and some great porn puns). At some point, she discovered that she could very occasionally have orgasms and she stops time when she does. This led her to study time on a doctorate level. I, generally, liked all this stuff. We learn all this because Jon found her in the files he stole and told Suzie and she's pissed as hell at him (as she should be), but they make up, visit the library, and decided to take on the sex police. Same old, same old: I like the sexy stuff, I don't care too much about the crime stuff. This issue happily had a lot more of the sexy stuff than usual.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Microseries #1-8 - This is the first of two mico-series, focusing on the heroes here. The first four focus on the Turtles: Raphael almost getting tricked by Alopex while fighting crime with Casey, Michelangelo trying to party on New Year's Eve and getting mixed up with some thieves on accident, Donatello going to a science convention and getting into a fight with his online troll, and Leonardo getting jumped by a horde of Foot while thinking of how he needs to protect his brothers. I liked all four of these in that they had action and humor while showing something important about each of the characters.
The next four issues move beyond the Turtles: Splinter remembering his past life and how his wife healed him, Casey getting help from Raph to beat up some guys to save his dad from mobsters, April breaking into Stockgen to steal some mutagen, and how the Fugitoid sacrificed his body to save his family (and they died anyway). These were more back story for the characters, but less looking at their personalities.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Villains Microseries #1-8 - This is like the other micoseries, but focusing on the villains.
Krang - About how a young and pampered Krang gets stuck in a battle and learns how to be a ruthless warrior.
Baxter - Simultaneously looking at Baxter learning how to be heartless and thinking ten moves ahead from his father and using a fly creature to create a diversion to get info to fight Krang.
Old Hob - How Hob was kicked out of his home as a kitten, learned to survive on the streets, and how not to trust humans.
Alopex - Shredder taking her home to Alaska and killing her family to make sure she has no other ties than The Foot.
Karai - A back story to how she came to take control of The Foot from her father and how she plans on taking her place at the right hand of Shredder from Evil Leo.
Hun - Casey's father telling a room full of AA folks how he came to team up with The Foot, get some mutagen, and gain control of his gain.
Bebop & Rocksteady - About how all two hapless idiots want is to be part of a gang (they've been kicked out of every one they've been a part of), so they become mutants to up their power and, well, are violent idiots.
Shredder - Seeing how Shredder took control of the afterlife while waiting to be resurrected by Karai, showing that time doesn't flow linearly and he is destined to kill his elder self.
Like the heroes ones, these are a little hit or miss. I liked the Krang one because it's kind of hardcore, Alopex and Karai because it looks at their personalities, and Bebop & Rocksteady because it's hilarious.
Casanova: The Complete Edition HC vol. 02 - This volume has Cass going deep, deep undercover. As in, he is surgically modified to look like his sister Zephyr. There's lots of morally dubious missions that he goes on, culminating with a devastating attack on EMPIRE that kill some major characters. Eventually, we see that he's setting himself up to stop a launch of a spaceship that is instrumental to bringing him to this universe (time travel, ya'll), hoping to stop all the horrible stuff that has happened since Xeno brought him here. It's all pretty dark and personal, which is great. There's also the introduction of Sasa Lisi, who is amazing. The thing I don't like is how there is almost no transition from the first volume. Where is Zephyr? Why is everyone back with EMPIRE? Again, tons of super personal back matter from Fraction. Cassanova: so good.
Moving Pictures OGN SC - A book Miah got me by the Immonens. It follows an art historian working in France during WWII where she's cataloging all the artwork that the Nazis are taking/stealing, a relationship she has with one of the Nazis, and her friendships with some of the other workers and a woman she tries to hide in the museum. It's a pretty personal slice of life, but I feel like everything could have been fleshed out more to give meaning to the interactions. I like Stuart's artwork, but here it's strictly b&w, which sucks all the depth out of the artwork and makes the characters, especially the women, look the same. It would really have been helped with some color, especially with the time transitions.