Winter Comic Reviews
Adventure Time: Marceline and the Scream Queens #1-6 - I'm not a big Adventure Time fan, but I like Marceline and Meredith Gran, so I had to pick up this series when it went on sale. It's pretty great! Marveline and her band go on tour, Princess Bubblegum tags along as a manager, hijinx and music based puns ensue. Gran manages to get some good, relatable character moments in that resonate even if one isn't deeply familiar with the characters. Gran's art transfers well to Adventure Time and I was glad to see all the awesome variant covers from lesser known indie/webcomic artists.
8House #1-5 - 8House is a series of tonally connected stories set in a shared universe. The first two issues are "Arclight" about different civilized peoples dealing with each other and a hostile wilderness. It's written by Brandon Graham and feels like it belongs in the Prophet universe. The art is soft ans sparse, perfect for empty vistas. #3 follows a woman who controls a robot on a distant planet (think Avatar). She gets a quest to go somewhere and escapes her group into a vast city. This is more sci-fi with more exact artwork with sharp corners depicting an urban environment. The last two issues follow two families that hurl attacks on each other across a chasm and a young girl that sees into a spirit world and knows that the attacks actually feed the evil spirits on the other side. All the issues set up unique and interesting worlds. Seems like the "8House" title is going to be breaking up into individual titles and I'm a bit confused on how to follow along from now on.
Batgirl #46-47 - Batgirl teams up/saves Spoiler (who is Spoiler, again?) and then they break into the police station. Someone is using information only Barbara would know to arrest people and she needs to find out who. I like that the story is going back to having Batgirl question her mind as that's her greatest weapon, though I hope it doesn't retread too much on the similar old storylines. Honestly, I'm getting a little lost with who all the characters are and how they relate to each other. I feel like the cast expanded a little quickly, then the story took a couple of breaks, and now I'm a bit lost.
Bee and Puppycat #6-8 - More Bee and Puppycat stories! Like the other ones, these are written by people other than Natasha Allegri. They're good, but not quite great. The closest they come to great is a couple by Meredith McClaren, who has a style that elevates everything see draws.
Bitch Planet #5 - Most of this issue is the women of the prison participating in their first match against the guards which ends with most of them getting beat up pretty bad and one of the women dying. There's a B-story about a guy coming out to supervise building of an arena on Bitch Planet (I think his daughter is the one who died, but not 100% certain). It was an action packed issue, but I didn't get the same emotional impact that I did with the others. I think the death of the woman was supposed to be a punch in the gut, but it's been so long since I read the previous issues that I didn't really have a connection with her.
Black Canary #5-6 - Like Batgirl, I'm feeling a little lost in this series. I am able to keep track of the characters, but I'm having trouble figuring out why I care about the bad blood between the two bands or how that ties into the abduction attempts. Or even why the band is still touring when they are supposedly on the run. The art is impactful and does action scenes well, but I don't feel the emotional weight behind them.
The Bus HC vol. 02 - This is a collection of surreal comic strips about a bus stop and a portly commuter. It's a sequel to the original run that I was surprised to find even exists! They're all pretty clever, some laugh out loud funny. The tone reminds me a lot of Little Nemo. I think the original strips were a bit better, however.
An Entity Observes All Things OGN SC - This is a collection of short Box Brown comics. They're cute and clever little things, but feel like they are trying to be more profound than they really are. I like Box Brown's work, but think he's better with some more focus.
Finder TPB Library vol. 01-02 - Finder follows a guy from the wilds and (usually) his dealings with people in a city. He's a nomad that doesn't like to stay anywhere too long. He's also a "sin eater", a person from his clan that takes other's guilt, but is also shunned by them for being corrupted by the sins. The world he is in is futuristic (packed cities, virtual reality, etc), but not any short of utopia. It's more like an amplified version of "now". The stories follow different characters as they go about their lives, sometimes exciting, sometimes mundane. They have a way of taking a character and slowly, naturally revealing more about them until your perception of the character and their motives changes to something unexpected. It's a paced book and seems to be a blueprint for other indie comics in the same vein (Templar, AZ, Dicebox, etc).
I Hate Fairyland #1 - Skottie Young has taken his recent successes (Oz, Rocket Raccoon) and combined them into a more adult comic. It follows Gert, a girl who falls into a fairyland and is stuck inside her eight year old body for decades looking for a way out and causing unrepentant destruction in her wake. I think it has a similar problem to Rocket in that the story jumps from set piece to set piece without spending enough time with any individual setting. It's a perfect union of Young's art and storytelling, but kind of feels like an extension of what's he's been doing for years now. I hope he can move on to something different for himself after this series.
Irredeemable TPB vol. 01-10 - In this series, Not-Superman snaps and starts terrorizing the world. Only a few heroes (and some villains) escape and struggle to stop him. Evil Superman has been done to death, but Waid is a good writer and manages to get some pathos into the story. All the characters have personalities that drive their actions and mistakes, which makes the story telling better than most comics of this vein. I would have liked this book better if it was half as long. The story pretty much resolves half way through, then is dragged on for 20 more issues with unneeded twists, even passing a few other good stopping points to the ultimate ending that royally annoyed me with it's hubris (basically this world destroying mass murderer is said to be the basis for actual Superman, an avatar for man's goodness and potential).
Lumberjanes TPB vol. 01-02 and #9-20 - Lumberjanes is great! It's full of fun adventure, friends that stand up for each other even if they don't always see eye to eye, and super positive messages about being strong and tough and yourself. It's also funny and has nice, cartoony artwork. "Delightful" is a good word for this series. Can't wait to read where these ladies go next.
Paper Girls (2015) #1-2 - A bunch of girls delivering newspapers on their bikes in the 80's basically step into Monster Squad (almost everyone has disappeared while monsters roam the streets). I'm not big on 80's nostalgia, but this is written by BKV and drawn by Cliff Chiang, thus is immediately elevated above its influences. The stakes are much higher than a tween 80's movie and there's an element of alternate realities/universes that appeals to me. I don't love this as much as other BKV works, but will keep reading it as I want to see where it takes me.
Prometheus Eternal - This was put out with the Philadelphia Museum of Art to accompany their displaying of the painting Prometheus Bound. It features a lot of big names from the comics world that I like (Morrison, Sienkiewicz, Dave McKean, David Mack), but the handful of stories are pretty standard fair. The art is mostly nice to look at (but not really anyone's best work), but that doesn't make a good comic book on its own.
Rocket Raccoon & Groot #1 - The 616 Rocket and Groot are dead? Anyway, their bodies were thrown into a wormhole where some characters that take their roles (a mouse and a shrub) smash the coffin. From there, we follow "Pockets" and "Shrub" as they hit up a diner and are captured by the local big bad, "Rakzoon". After Rakzoon takes care of the two, he finds that they were smuggling a "thing" that turns out to be Groot all carved up Memento-style. It's a super intriguing premise, so I want to read the next issue to see what happens.
Severed TPB - This is a Scott Snyder series about a long lived cannibal (vampire?) that preys on young kids that are out on their own in orphanages or riding the rails. He goes after a kid that runs away from home to be with his traveling musician father and meets up with a girl pretending to be a boy on the way. The story unfolds pretty much how you'd expect, but does take the time to breathe and let the characters just be themselves between big set pieces. It was a good book with a nice tone and appropriate artwork. I didn't find it too shocking or scary, but it's pretty competent and enjoyable.
Sex Criminals #11-13 - The sex crims are gathering more "perverts" to their cause while the sex police try to dig up dirt on them (Kegelface is sleeping with Jon's psychiatrist to gain access to his files). One of the new characters is a dude that jizzes anime characters. The other is an asexual woman (who is actually pretty interesting as a character). I'm glad that the series is bringing in more characters to play off of each other and it's maintaining its sense of fun.
Southern Cross #5 - This story is chugging along. Everything is still a mystery, someone is still lying, there's a neat scene with a person incorporating out of thin air. It's all alright, not my favorite.
Spider-Gwen #5 and #1-4 - This series keeps on chugging along. That's kind of praise and a diss. It still has all the aspects that I liked about the series (alternate take on the Spider mythos with great art and action), but the story feels like it's just hitting the paces without doing anything surprising with the story.
Tokyo Ghost #1-2 - Tokyo Ghost is a hoot. It's in a near future where everyone is stuck with virtual reality being piped directly into their brains. One woman is trying to earn enough money to get her roided up friend to basically rehab. Of course, this includes copious amounts of murder and violence. The first issue is really great, telling a complete story while setting up the world for more stories to be told. The second issue feels like the actual beginning of an arc as our main characters travel to technology-free Japan. It's a fun series with really nice art.
Universe! #3 - Earth sent out missions to other worlds to find life. The crew we are following seems to have found a barren planet, but one of the scientists faints and is visited by incorporeal aliens. Years later he's on Earth and seems to have tried spreading their message, but no one has believed him. Cliffhanger! Great art and an interesting story (as usual). Too bad this book comes out so infrequently as it's been six months waiting for the story to resolve.
Valhalla Mad #1-4 - Joe Casey is doing to Thor with this series what he did to the FF in Godland. We get a bunch of thinly veiled Thor and the Warrior's Three characters coming to an Earth that has forgotten them since their last visit. They are here to party after some adventures in a distant realm. In their revelry, the leader grabs a random human who ends up being their greatest enemy after being given a mindwipe. Paul Maybury does a pretty good Kirby impression. It seems like a good start to something that would be interesting, but I'm pretty confused on if this series is going to continue or if it ended after four issues.
We Stand On Guard #1-6 - Another BKV book, but I didn't like this one as much as his usual work. Here, the US has invaded Canada and is taking their clean water. The story follows some Canadian freedom fighters (terrorists) as they rebel against the Americans. The story is pretty straight forward without any surprises. I guess BKV is trying to show how the US is seen as an aggressor around the world, but it doesn't do it in any novel kind of way.
Where Is Jake Ellis? #1-5 - This series finally finished! After the first series, Jake Ellis is picked up by the people that turned him into basically a ghost and they are trying to figure out why the experiments worked on him and no one else. Jon, meanwhile, is on the run. Jake pops back up in his brain and Jon goes to rescue Jake without his usual help. They have a bunch of adventures, then Jake lets himself be killed so he can live on in Jon's head. We get some answers about who did the experiments (basically some military contractors), but the structure of the story mimics the first quite a bit. Not sure if it was exactly worth the three year wait.
Wytches #2-6 - Another Scott Snyder horror series. It's about a girl in a small town that "pledges" youngsters to witches in the woods in exchange for their wishes being granted (health, life, wealth). The main character is a new girl in town with some mental issues due to some trauma she experienced in her past, so you never quite know if it's all in her mind at the beginning. I liked the book as it was mysterious and spooky, but found the ending abrupt and out of nowhere (the girl's mom is who pledged her). Shame that the ending wasn't stuck. It ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, but I'm not sure how (if) the series can continue unless it pivots toward more action.