Chad’s Comments (group member since Oct 24, 2019)

Chad’s comments from the Edelweiss & Netgalley Reviewers group.

Last week's ARCs.

Tall Water ★★★
So much tragedy in this. It's about a girl whose mother is Sri Lankan. She was raised in South Dakota by her father but her mother was denied entry into the U.S. When she turns 17, they head to Sri Lanka to find her in the midst of a civil war. Meanwhile it's also 2004 when the massive tsunami in the Indian Ocean occurred. It's pretty damn good. Just expect a lot of sadness and tragedy along the way.

Hobtown Mystery Stories Vol. 3: The Secret of the Saucer ★★
The story wasn't bad and I liked the weirdness of this smalltown where the detective club in town investigates these oddball cases. Being told Memento style really made it difficult to keep track of the plot though. Each chapter went a little further back in time and it was really hard to keep abreast of what was happening. I grew to hate it with each new chapter.

Chibi Usagi: Attack of the Heebie Chibis ★★★★
Stan Sakai and his wife, Julie, created chibi versions of Stan's Usagi Yojimbo characters. It all skews a little younger but it's still fun for fans of the Sakais. They even got their daughter to color it, keeping it a family affair.

Eight Billion Genies ★★★
It's a good idea for a comic. Genies appear and grant everyone one wish. Of course, most of them are selfish and people start dying by the bucket load. About half way through, this started to get real tedious and I just wanted it to be over.

Cornelius: The Merry Life of a Wretched Dog ★★
The artwork is extremely inventive, constantly changing styles, sometimes even on the same page. The story though meanders a lot, especially since this is almost 400 pages. I love the whole concept that Cornelius is an extremely popular cartoon dog on the level of Mickey Mouse and been around for generations. There's even 20 pages of fake articles speaking to his popularity and history.

Vattu Book 1: The Name & the Mark ★★★★
Part one of a 12 year long webcomic. It's a fantasy story about a nomadic tribe that come across a Roman type empire. The title character Vattu is given as tribute and taken to be a slave. I found it pretty enthralling even though it's slower paced, sometimes wordless for several pages. I enjoyed the art quite a bit and look forward to reading future volumes.

Arkham Horror: The Terror at the End of Time ★★★
Cullen Bunn and Andrea Mutti step into the RPG world of Arkham Horror to tell the story of a woman looking for her sister. The story is pretty good until we get into the Cthulluness of it. Then it's kind of just random horror images and the story lost me. Mutti's art is better than it often has been the last few years when it looked very slapdash. It helps that he didn't do his own color work which often looks like he dropped his art in a puddle.

The Fairy Tale Fixers: Cinderella ★★★★
A fun and irreverent graphic novel for kids that turns Cinderella's story on its ear. Prince Charming never shuts up and all Cinderella wants to do is open a diner. There's enough here for everyone to like.

The Deep Dark ★★★★
An LGBTQ love story with a monster bent to it. Mags is a butch lesbian living with her abuela. She also has some kind of secret in the basement. Nessa is a childhood friend who moved away and is recently returned, running away from an intense relationship. Don't expect a lot of answers with the monster angle of this story. You're going to just need to go with it. If that's OK with you, you'll enjoy this story. If you need everything answered, you may have some issues with this.

I've been in Europe for the last few weeks. Here's what I was reading while I was gone.

Meat Eaters ★★★
Growing up is hard, especially when you wake up one day in the woods with your mouth covered in blood. Our main character here is a girl who has become a ghoul and has to learn how to deal with that while going to community college and also befriending 2 dipshit werewolves who can barely take care of themselves. I do wish the story was tighter. This has some real potential but some things were unclear as to why they were happening.

The Night Mother, Vol. 1 ★★★
Something of a dark fairy tale that leaves you some in the dark. It's about a world where it's always night and a girl who was raised by her stepfather. She can hear the dead and now the Night Mother is out to bring her home. It's not bad as long as you just go with it and aren't expecting more answers.

The Pale Knight ★
I'm like Charlie Brown kicking the football when it comes to Peter Milligan. I keep coming back expecting to actually get something worth reading like say Enigma and then Milligan pulls the football away again. This was all kinds of boring. It's about a knight who Death tasks with killing another noble in order to save his son from the plague. Then the story proceeds to meander the countryside for 6 issues. I suggest you not waste your time on this book. There is little point to it and the "twist" at the end is telegraphed to anyone who has ever read a story before.

Muted, Vol. 1 ★★★★
Muted is the story of Camille, a witch "raised" by her aunt after her family was killed in a fire. Her aunt treats her horribly and after a ritual goes wrong leaves her behind in the bayou to try again. There she meets a bunch of other covens and begins to find out about her hidden past and why her powers are different from the other witches in her coven. I like the world building here and how each coven specializes in different areas of magic. I'm interested in reading the next one when it's released.

Black Ice Vol. 2 ★★
I really wanted to like this more than I did but it was just constantly confusing. The kid from the first volume is trapped in a big ice block and can't get out. We shift to a completely brand new set of characters and this new girl is black and trying to make it as an actress but struggles with image issues because of how dark she is. Her white boyfriend seems supportive but then randomly starts to forget who she is. It's all really odd. It doesn't end so much as just stop after 300 pages and I still have little idea of what's going on even with 2 volumes under my belt.

Bright World (The Hazards of Love #1) ★★★★
This was completely different than I expected. From the title and cover, I expected some kind of YA queer love story but it's not really that. Of the two of them, Amparo quickly gets caught up in this crazy and deadly Bright World. Kind of a dark Alice in Wonderland world where you are slowly changed by being stuck there over time and how you change as you lose more and more of yourself. Good stuff.

Prokaryote Season ★★
I didn’t care for the squiggly art nor did I care for the self-absorbed characters.

The Carlyle School for Kings ★★
Needed to be fleshed out more. It’s about a contest to choose the next king and some of the contestants are truly awful. The problem is that nothing is fleshed out and the characters are paper thin.

Harpy ★★★★★
I quite liked this. It's set about 40 years in the future. It's about a lesbian Chinese cop in South Africa who catches a murder case of a series of Chinese people who have been murdered over 3 decades. Gunnie is a very interesting character. The art is really good. Somewhat stylized but very detailed. My one complaint if I had one is that the ending is abrupt. But overall this was a cool but long read.

Quincredible: A Better World ★★★
This is a pretty complicated plot for this short of a story. It's about a scientist who is poisoning the water supply of the poor areas of New Orleans, trying to mutate the people to generate sympathy to fix the situation. What could possibly go wrong with that scenario?

Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures Phase III Volume 4 ★★
This was alright. It was hard to get into because it's one big battle full of an ensemble cast. It's really difficult to get into any of the characters because they get such little screen time. Most of it is just random fighting.

Brawlhalla Tales: Nix ★★
About what you'd expect from a video game comic. Nix is a grim reaper trying to get out of the deal she made with a demon and teams up with a Valkyrie to fight in a tournament.

The Serpent in the Garden: Ed Grey and the Last Battle for England ★★★★
Gruagach from Hellboy is back, basically so Mignola can give him a proper sendoff. He also comes up with a way for Sir Edward Grey to return to the comics as well. These comics are so much better when Mignola is personally involved.

Aurora: Vol 1 ★★
There are so many infodumps into the world building here and 90% of it is completely unnecessary. the gist is that a magician is able to defeat one of the many gods of this world and this spawns off a piece of his avatar into a new being that's trying to ultimately defeat this woman. I'm not sure why that story itself is so much more convoluted than it needs to be. Overall this is OK, but it's long at 400 pages.

Last week's ARCs.

Coin-Op Comics Anthology: 1997-2017 ★★
I like the Hoey's longer form comics. These comics pulled from Blab and Coin-Op though didn't make a whole lot of sense most of the time. The art is cool, with this art deco aesthetic to it. The stories though? Nope.

Planetes Omnibus, Volume 1 ★★★★
Even though this was written a quarter century ago, it holds up quite nicely. It's about humanity in space 50 years from now. Humanity still hasn't learned any lessons about taking care of the Earth. They've just moved on to strip mining space for its resources. Our main characters are basically space janitors operating off the moon, cleaning the debris that litters the spaceways before it can damage ships. The art is terrific. So detailed, so much the opposite of most manga today. The story has a lot to say in the backgrounds about society and about humanity in general. Looking forward to reading the second half of this.

Welcome to the Maynard ★★★★
This feels like a screwball comedy from the 1940s with a magic twist. Pip is the newest bellhop at San Francisco's hotel for magicians. She's secretly also in training to be a hotel detective and investigating a thief that is targeting the hotel. I had a lot of fun with this. It's kitschy and timeless, as is J. Bone's artwork. I hope we'll get welcomed to the Maynard again in the future.

Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures Phase III--Dispatches from the Occlusion Zone ★★★
Four one off stories that set up this last batch of stories set in the High Republic. We revisit everyone trapped in the Occlusion Zone by the Nihil. It's not bad.

Fitting Indian ★★★★
This was very interesting. It's about an Indian girl in high school in California. She's struggling with straddling both American and Indian cultures. Her family is still very traditional while she wants to fit in at school and be a typical American teenager. In secret, she's drinking and cutting herself. It delves into a lot of darker trigger issues including suicide and how people in Indian culture are looked down on for ever talking about their issues. I really liked how this was dealt with, even with the pat ending to it all.

Living Hell ★★
This was alright but didn't feel fleshed out enough. It's about a bunch of demons and gods that escaped from Hell years ago and there's a Shepherd tasked with sending them back. The main character kills the shepherd and is forced to take over because "reasons". This would have been much better as a longer story that could better explain the setup. It's a lot to pack into 4 issues and the story suffers for it.

Last week's ARCs.

Seven Sons ★★★
An alternate Earth where 7 sons were born in 1977, one of which is slated to be the return of Jesus. This religion of the Seven Sons seem to have overtaken the U.S. government. Meanwhile an extremist Islamic group is continuously attempting to kill the Sons. Of course, things on both sides are shady and not what they seem. I think part of my problem with the book is that absolutely no one is interesting and worth rooting for. I'd rather they all lose. The big draw here really is the return of Jae Lee on interior art.

Oneira - Chapter 1 - Crimson Moon ★★★
This is almost one big fight scene as we begin in media res. The main character has just vanquished a monster for the town and they are now refusing to pay. Pretty simple set up so far.

The Closet ★★★
A story about a family moving across the country to get a "fresh" start. The dad's a piece of work and doesn't realize he's nothing but a whining asshole who no longer really wants to have a family. His 4 year old son is being visited by a "monster" in the closet (or just having issues because his dad is a piece of crap). The story is repetitive. Each issue has the dad complaining to a new person while his son is in the background being terrorized by this creature. It's only 3 issues but probably could have had better effect as a shorter one-shot.

Sunburn ★★
This can be pretty much summed up with "Eh. it's fine." A coming of age story is left out to breathe for a very long time. I teenage English girl is invited to spend the summer with a childless couple who knows her parents. There, they let her drink. She goes to parties and meets a boy. That's the majority of the story. I kept expecting there to be more and there is a subtle other story but I no longer cared by the time it came about.

Inferno Girl Red, Vol. 1 ★★★
A teenage girl and her mom return to Apex City so she can go to one of the top schools out there. They left years ago after her mother's connection to Inferno Girl Red made her lost everything as a journalist. When the city is transported away by some unknown bad guys, the girl becomes the new Inferno Girl Red. This has some real potential. But at this point, it feels more like a framework than a killer story. The art is very good too.

Bloody Mary: A Graphic Biography of Mary Tudor ★★★
Mary Tudor's complicated life retold in comic book form. Mary was the oldest child of Henry VIII but because she was a woman was not allowed to be his heir. If you know anything about her dad, you know he was a piece of crap. He has the marriage to her mother annulled because she hadn't given him a male heir. This caused a riff with Rome and he started the Church of England so he could keep annulling marriages when a new woman caught his fancy. Because Mary was declared a bastard after the annulment, she was made governess to her younger half siblings, Elizabeth and James. All along Mary remained a devout Catholic even though it was outlawed. There are a ton of beheadings in this as people fall in and out of favor and Mary's nickname comes from when she came to power and started persecuting Protestants, burning them at the stake. (Yeah, history is complicated.) Anyway, I thought this was a pretty simple way to learn about some major parts of English history if you are so inclined.

A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel ★★★★
An excellent adaptation of one of the classic Earthsea novels. Fordham does a great job of not changing many of Le Guin's words and just adding some very good artwork to the equation. Those are the kinds of adaptations I want to see when classic novels are adapted into graphic novels.

Last week's ARCs.

Tomb Raider Colossal Collection Volume 1 ★★
This is pretty terrible. It gets even worse once Dan Jurgens and Andy Parks leave. The stories all seem more or less the same. Someone in Lara's life betrays her or a new love interest appears only to disappear and never be heard again after the end of the story. It's like this title exists in a vacuum. Then there's issue #25 which is missing, presumably because it was a crossover with Witchblade and The Darkness (Top Cow originally made all these before Dark Horse reprinted them.) The stranger thing is that Witchblade and the Darkness both appear in the issues afterward but only in their civilian garb. Anyway, Lara apparently dies in #25 and is in some kind of Egyptian underworld in #26 and you have no idea what happened. The whole series is nonstop poor writing and surprisingly poor art considering all these artists became much bigger after this was published.

Ain't No Grave ★★★★
Death comes for us all. Ryder has settled down to have a family. In the past she was an unrepentant outlaw. When she finds out she's dying, she seeks out Death to gain more time with her family. The art is absolutely gorgeous, both the line art and the colors. This book looks terrific. I like how each chapter was one of the 5 stages of grief too.

Sunday ★
I know almost everyone else that read this loved it, but I had to force myself repeatedly to stick with it. It's a day in the life of the author's cousin. It feels very indulgent as nothing happens. This guy just procrastinates the whole day doing nothing. There's pages where the words are just gibberish or the lyrics to "Sex Machine". (The latter happens multiple times.) The panels keep flitting back and forth between multiple threads that go nowhere. Plus it's about 500 pages long. If this is supposed to be Schrauwen's best work, it'll be the last time I check his stuff out.

A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance, Vol. 1 ★★★★
Don't expect answers here. Hopefully, they'll come in the second half. A man is taking contracts on the dark web and warning people before they are filled. then he has to go on the run with one of the people he helps to disappear. Some kind of Epstein stand in seems to be behind it all. There's sparse dialogue letting the art do most of the talking and it works.

A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance, Vol. 2 ★★★★★
I thought volume 2 stuck the landing. Our main character and Xavier are still on the run from this Epstein's wannabe's minions. It heads in directions I didn't expect and pretty quickly. Things that happen in an issue or two would be entire arcs in a lot of series. I'm surprised this wrapped up in 11 issues. The art is extremely well done.

The Thirteenth Floor, Volume 3 ★★★
This was interesting. Not too many British comics make it the this side of the pond. It's about an apartment building run by AI back in the 80s. It's told in 3 page increments. Most of the stories are morality tales where someone is behaving badly (stealing from residents, that kind of thing) and Max the computer talks them into coming to his 13th floor where he basically controls his own holodeck and sets them straight. Then there's some stranger stories where a portable version of Max heads out with two tenants to Russia where an evil computer is trying to corrupt him. There's also a story where Max has a chip go bad and starts to try and kill the residents so it certainly has a Twilight Zone vibe to it.

Adventureman, Vol. 1: The End and Everything After ★★★★
A new collection of the series from 2020, this time collecting the first 5 instead of the first 4 issues and it does work better because of it. Adventureman was a Doc Savage type, a pulp hero. Then something happened and he and all of his colleagues were forgotten. Until now. Now Claire and her son are realizing it was all real. The Dodsons make this book look absolutely gorgeous.

GhostBox Vol. 1 ★★★
Two sisters discover a music box that soon draws them into a world of ghosts and monsters. I quite liked this. It's not that far off from other Mike Carey things like Hellblazer and his Felix Castor novels.

Falling in Love on the Path to Hell Volume One ★★★
A male gunslinger and a female samurai die on opposite sides of the world and wake up on this island where warriors across time fight the undead. It's little light on story other than being the comic book version of Lost. Garry Brown's rough art works very well here.

7 Inch Kara Vol. 2 ★★★
A cute story for little girls. Fills that "The Borrowers" vibe. It's about a Lilliputian that becomes friends with the teenager who moves into the nearby abandoned house. It's a cozy kind of story where not a lot happens. The main thing is that Kara's father wants to move as soon as his leg heals because he's scared of humans.

Standstill ★★
Starts out decently about this guy who can stop time and is killing people around the world. Once Andrew Robinson leaves though in issue #4 and Alex Riedel takes over things go downhill. Not only is Riedel's art poor but the story then matches it as it turns to cliches. I did appreciate the widescreem approach to the art with every page being a double page spread. It was like the whole thing was in widescreen.

Immortal Sergeant ★★
The creators of I Kill Giants return for a comic based on Joe Kelly's relationship with his father. If his father is like the character in this comic, he may be the most unlikable person on the face of the Earth. He's such a racist asshole and bully, that's it's hard to get through. It starts off and you think this is some kind of Archie Bunker situation and then it just keeps getting darker and darker. Ken Niimura's art is so loose and unfinished that it looks like thumbnails blown up to full scale. I hated it.

Minor Threats, Vol. 1: A Quick End to a Long Beginning ★★★★
A bunch of D-list villains from Great Value DC find themselves between a rock and a hard place when Not-Joker kills Not-Robin and Not-Batman goes off the deep end and starts murdering his rogues gallery. They decide to catch Not-Joker first. It's dark. It's fun. It's not too surprising that life long super nerds, Patton Oswalt and Jordon Blum (the guys behind the M.O.D.O.K. cartoon), can deliver comics as good as Patton's standup.

Gannibal Vol 6 ★★★
We finally get some of the crazy history of this clan who seems to be eating people. It's still some obtuse storytelling that makes it difficult to see how all the pieces fit together, but seeing some of Keisuke's past helped.

Paris ★★
A straight-forward LGBTQ love story where you know exactly what is going to happen on each page because you've read this story before. An art student falls for the debutante she's painting. It all falls apart due to misunderstandings and the English debutante is raffled off to the gay boy from a proper family. You can see where this is headed. Peppering French throughout this thing was an annoyance to translate. Just pick a language and stick to it instead of constantly needing to pull out my phone to use Google Translate. Simon Gane's art is incredibly detailed. The monotone color though tends to make it all blend together.

The Knives ★★★★★
The first new Criminal comic in 5 years! It's about time. I'm sure they did this one to more or less coincide with the Criminal streamer coming out soon on Amazon. It was worth the wait. Also, if you haven't read Criminal before, that doesn't really matter. The stories are told nonlinearly and can be read more or less in any order. You might miss some Easter eggs. Pretty much every character in this has appeared in previous stories.

I'm assuming this one pulls a lot from Brubaker's Hollywood experience. Jacob Kurtz is a comic book writer who has a show based on one of his comics coming out. Kurtz is hired for the writers' room for the show where things don't really go as expected. BTW, Jacob Kurtz is an ode to Jack Kirby whose real name was Jacob Kurtzman. Then there's Ang who has become a cat burglar out of necessity and often sleeps in Kurtz's basement when she needs a place to stay. Eventually the stories begin to weave together. All of it is super well done. Get aboard the Criminal train if you haven't in the past. You can thank me later.

EC Cruel Universe Vol. 1 ★★★
Eh, this was alright. Most of the stories felt a bit cliched and you knew exactly where they were headed as soon as you learned the premise. The old EC stories were honestly better but Oni gets points for trying.

Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock's Wildest Festival ★★★★★
Yes, I do read things other than graphic novels. I was very excited when I heard this was coming out. Lollapalooza started up when I was in high school and I was all in (Well, at least to the year when Metallica headlined. Then I was done.) I remember Eddie Vedder climbing up in the rafters and getting in my first mosh pit during Soundgarden. Seeing Luscious Jackson on the 2nd stage and being instantly smitten. Finally seeing Sonic Youth. Lolla was an important part of my life for 5 years.

This isn't a traditional book. It's a collection of interviews by the crew and performers who worked on it each year. Think of it more as the transcript of a documentary. There's over 200 people in this, musicians like Perry Farrell and Tom Morello. The crew. The promoters. Roadies. It's a nice cross section of people and you get lots of lots of inside info. Lots of drugs. Quite a bit of sex. Some inside baseball stuff like Nirvana was supposed to headline in '94 before Kurt Cobain's death. It's all really good as long as you're OK with the format. One thing that is certain, absolutely everyone hated Billy Corgan.

Last week's ARCs (Trying to get caught up edition).

Hope Never to See It: A Graphic History of Guerrilla Violence during the American Civil War ★★
I have a feeling this worked better in its original text more than in comic book form. There's so many different military figures mentioned in this, especially during the trial that I couldn't keep them straight. It's a neat idea, detailing some of the events of the Civil War that occurred in Missouri. It was just a chore to keep it all straight in my head.

The Bend of Luck ★★★
Two men in the Old West find some rocks that infer luck. This is the story of what happens as this story intersects with a man who jumps off the Golden Gate bridge leaving his wife behind. It's fine. Not as good as some other Hoey stories.

Second Chances, Vol. 1 ★★
The story can be a muddled mess at times with too much focus on a drug that can erase memories. The main character is a man who helps people get second chances, except it's more about his crazy assassin girlfriend. The story isn't all that great but the art is. It's really detailed and dynamic giving me Steve Epting vibes.

Art Brut, Vol. 1: The Winking Woman ★★★
The creative team behind Ice Cream Man create the most Vertigo comic I've read since that imprint folded. This isn't a horror comic like Ice Cream Man though. It's all meta with someone being able to change paintings like the Mona Lisa who is now winking. There's a crazy guy called the Art Brut who can step in and out of paintings who this FBI like organization uses to fix these kinds of things. It's like this story just stepped out of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol run.

Echolands, Vol. 1 ★★★★★
This thing is an absolute treat to gander at. Williams art is so fantastic and inventive. Every character looks like they were plucked out of a different comic, Kirby, Wrightson, a comic strip. They all mix together to tell this story of a group of criminals on the run after one of them stole a gem and didn't realize what they'd taken from the local wizard in charge.

This thing has a unique layout, stapled and bound on the narrow side of a comic and oriented in double page landscapes. It can be a chore to read digitally if you don't have a very large screen. Try and get a physical copy if you can.

Radiant Red, Vol. 1: Crime and Punishment ★★★★★
Radiant Red operates way more in the grey than Radiant Black. Her fiance has gotten them into a ton of gambling debt and the only out she sees is to rob banks. And it turns out she kind of enjoys the power. Then she gets forced into a job to steal something dangerous. There's a lot to like here. LaFuente's art is often quite good and then he'll do something like draw someone with great big huge hands the size of boxing gloves.

Fall of Deadworld ★★★
The Judges fight a bunch of the undead in this ongoing war. It's got some Dead Space type stuff in it as these aren't strictly zombies and are almost impossible to kill. Still like a lot of 2000 AD stuff if you haven't been reading it forever, I didn't know why any of this was happening.

Radiant Black, Vol. 2: Team-Up ★★★
Marshall continues as Radiant Black as his best friend sits in a coma. The first 2 issues are a slobberknocker between the Radiants without any story progression. The second half of this is more interesting as Marshall is a little more out for himself and tries to do things his way as he struggles through life. The last issue is an origin for Radiant Pink and Yellow. Overall, pretty good.

The Crumrin Chronicles Vol. 1: The Charmed and the Cursed ★★★★
Courtney Crumrin is back, this time in the background while her little brother / great uncle (It's complicated.) takes center stage. There's high school, magic and a vampire involved in this one. I thought it was every bit as good as the original series even as we move onto a new chapter.

Phoolan Devi, Rebel Queen ★★★★★
A biography of the controversial Phoolan Devi. A fierce advocate of women's rights in India. At the age of 11, she was married off to a man 20 years older and then raped. The police later raped her as well. Eventually, she meets some bandits and takes control of her life, meeting out justice to those who abuse women with her gang acting as a Robin Hood to the villages in the area. There are some truly horrible scenes in this so be forewarned. But it is an incredible story of perseverance and ultimately justice. I had no idea who Phoolan Devi was before this but I'll be looking out for more biographies about her now.

Choose Your Own Adventure Eighth Grade Witch ★
I used to love Choose Your Own Adventures as a kid and had a ton of them. This doesn't really work as a comic book though. It's more difficult to flip back and forth without accidentally cheating and revealing the wrong paths. Plus, most of the endings were plenty lame and felt intended for a much younger audience.

Under the Cottonwood Tree ★★★★
A Spanish story about a family in New Mexico. The youngest brother is a pest and runs afoul of the local curandera. She's had a tragedy in her life and let it turn her sour. She turns little Carlo into a cow and things continue south for the family from there. There's a lot to like in this original story and I thought the art was great as well.

Tomb Raider Colossal Collection Volume 1 ★★
This is pretty terrible. It gets even worse once Dan Jurgens and Andy Parks leave. The stories all seem more or less the same. Someone in Lara's life betrays her or a new love interest appears only to disappear and never be heard again after the end of the story. It's like this title exists in a vacuum. Then there's issue #25 which is missing, presumably because it was a crossover with Witchblade and The Darkness (Top Cow originally made all these before Dark Horse reprinted them.) The stranger thing is that Witchblade and the Darkness both appear in the issues afterward but only in their civilian garb. Anyway, Lara apparently dies in #25 and is in some kind of Egyptian underworld in #26 and you have no idea what happened. The whole series is nonstop poor writing and surprisingly poor art considering all these artists became much bigger after this was published.

Violent Flowers ★★★
A group of vampires fight over an old feud and strike a lot of sensual poses. My favorite part of this is that it took place in one of my favorite cities, Barcelona, and large portions of it take place in Park Guell and La Pedrera, two of the most fabulous works of architecture you could ever visit, both by Gaudi.

Deep Cuts ★★★
An anthology of stories revolving around the American music of the 20th century. Some worked better than others, as did some of the artwork with a different artist illustrating each issue.

The Dark Room ★★★★
This completely reminds me of something that would have come out from Vertigo if Vertigo still existed. It's about a private curator of cursed objects hired to find a cursed camera. Then she has to go on the run. It's got breakdancing skeletons, coke fueled werewolves and disco loving elves in it too. It's just a hell of a lot of fun.

The Bone Orchard Mythos: The Passageway ★★
This feels like the first issue of a comic where you expect to get answers in later issues, except those don't exist. A geologist comes to a tiny island that houses a light house when she calls in that a large deep whole appeared over night. Then a bunch of weird nonsensical stuff happens without any answers. In retrospect, this is not where you want to end a volume with the reader having no idea what's going on.

Last week's ARCs.

Masks ★★★
A fine book for younger readers. It's about some monster kids who are being hunted by basically a version of the klan but for monsters. These three monster kids live in an abandoned building on the outskirts of society. On Halloween, they venture out to find Haven, a mythical safe place for monster kind. For some reason, these kids know nothing about Halloween even though it's the one day they could walk around without hiding themselves. The other thing I thought was odd is that the main character has horns but never tries to hide them with a beanie even though the boy in the group wears a beanie nonstop. It would be a lot easier to walk around undetected without those horns sticking up.

Fishflies ★★★
There's beginning to be a sameness to Lemire's comics, especially those taking place in Essex County, Canada. This one is about an armed robber who turns into a giant bug and befriends a preteen girl. Of course, her dad is a piece of crap because every one of Lemire's main characters have daddy issues. This is fine. It doesn't have the breadth or scope of his more ambitious projects like Descender / Ascender. But it's an easy read.

Lady Mechanika Volume 6 ★★★
A deluxe edition collecting volumes 7 and 8 of the regular run. The Ministry of Hell explores Lady Mechanika's origins after she is found pretty much feral with her metal limbs as a child. She's put in a Victorian asylum with a bunch of other mutants. It's not bad.

The Devil in the Lake sends Lady Mechanika to Russia to investigate some missing scientists and word of a monster in Siberia. Siya Oum steps in for the artwork and her art is similar to Benitez's.

Free Agents Volume 1 ★★
I typically really like Kurt Busiek's stuff but this was an absolute dud. It's about a superhero team from another dimension that after a war is trapped on Earth. There's way too much focus on language and terminology from these other worlds. It made it really boring because I didn't care about any of it. The art seemed muddy here too when I've liked Mooney's art in the past.

Count Crowley Volume 3: Mediocre Midnight Monster Hunter ★★★★
David Dastmalchian just gets what I like about horror. Basing the story around someone running a late night monster movie show is genius. This is the exact same kind of thing we'd have come up with as kids and also similar to Fright Night, an unsung horror movie from the 80s if you haven't seen it. Jerri has all kinds of her own problems, especially with alcohol. Plus, all of these old guys think she can't kill monsters just because she's a woman and are huge a-holes to her even though she takes no gruff from them either. This clearly ends with the intention of there being more, so Dark Horse please keep these going. They are terrific.

The Freeze ★★
A cool idea that doesn't go far enough and leaves way too much open ended. I want answers dammit. It's about a world wide event where everyone suddenly becomes frozen except for one man. And that man's touch can unfreeze people. You never find out the mystery of why this happened. Even though in the first issue there's crashed planes and cars everywhere, the next issue the few people left are driving around like nothing happened. There's power. The internet still works. The food in the grocery store is still good. They even get meat there. It's just not very well thought through and then it leaves you hanging.

Aquinnah ★★
The first 2/3rds had way too many time jumps and the storytelling made things very confusing. The last 50 pages was just a big infodump where everything is spit out at us. You could literally skip the first 100 pages and have gotten the exact same story.

The Nasty ★★★★
I liked this quite a bit. It's set at a failing video store that specializes in horror movies. To save the store, they put on a horror festival showing a movie that's so gruesome it's not allowed to watch at home. I'm not sure what the laws were in Great Britain at the time, but this seems like it could have been legit. There's also some crazy woman who is part of some League of Decency who is trying to put a stop to it. I remember those stupid groups here too, always in everyone else's business. Anyway something happens to this horror movie and the kids decide to make their own since no one has actually ever seen it. Oh yeah, the director of this film also has a slasher imaginary friend who is becoming real as they start filming. I know it's a lot but John Lees makes it work.

Wifwulf ★★★
A pretty short story about a woman who marries a Civil War veteran. At first they are happy but he becomes jealous of her time spent outside in the woods with some wolves and begins to drink. It seems allegorical and moody. It's interesting but as I said short for $20. There's a lot of pinups and behind the scenes stuff that fill up over half the book. I wasn't familiar with Ogden's art but I quite liked it.

Supper Club ★★
Three friends start a supper club senior year as an excuse to get together every week. Problem is, after the initial meeting supper club takes a back seat to the random drama each of the girls go through during the school year and it just becomes your typical Raina Telgemeier experience.

The Ghost in You (Reckless, #4) ★★★★
Ethan's girl Friday, Anna, takes center stage while Ethan is out of town living the next book in the series. Fake Elvira comes in and hires her to investigate a house she's inherited with a long history of being haunted. The haunted house is only part of the story as we see all the drama with Anna's mother unfold. It's all very well written and well drawn just like you'd expect from a Brubaker and Phillips project.

Port of Earth, Vol. 1 ★★★
I thought this was a cool premise. Aliens visit Earth and make a deal with humans to basically put a gas station for spaceships out in the ocean. The Earth gets renewable clean energy, the galaxy gets a truck stop. Earth is responsible for security though. While aliens are not allowed to depart their crafts while on Earth but if they do, an agency needs to bring them back with the least amount of violence possible. This has led to the death of over a thousand humans since the agreement was made.

Mindset ★★★
A pretty cool story about a college student who discovers mind control and they decide to sneak it into an app. I could easily see this being a Black Mirror episode. Gets a little confusing towards the end with all the back and forth about who is controlling who, but still a cool idea.

Night Fever ★★★
A literary agent heads to Paris for a book fair. He can't sleep and has grown weary of his happy domestic life. So he starts wondering the streets at night when he follows a couple to a party where he pretends to be someone else. Then he meets Ranier who take him on a surreal and gritty journey through the seedier side of France. Interesting but nonessential compared to other Brubaker/Phillips comics.

Night Mary ★★★
Originally published in 2006 over at IDW and now given a new edition by Image. It's OK. It's got that Nightmare on Elm Street vibe with lots of it occurring in dream worlds. It's about a teenage girl whose father is helping people through dream therapy. His daughter is helping by going into the patient's dreams and helping them work through their issues. However, these same people are now killing people in the real world. The most interesting part about this is Dwyer's shifting art as he uses different styles for dreams versus reality.

Mirka Andolfo's Sweet Paprika, Vol. 1 ★★
I don't understand the point of drawing everyone in your book as angels or demons if you aren't going to give each race different traits or strengths and weaknesses. This is a trashy romance novel in comic book form. One with as many words as prose though. It's bogged down by so many words.

If you want me to create the new threads for each month, I don't mind. It only takes me a few minutes when I'm in front of the computer.

I think we've been OK so far Tracy. I can keep on creating the threads for all the monthly and yearly things. If you need to give it up completely, I'm there but otherwise this is a pretty low maintenance group and I don't mind keep on, keeping on. Think on it.

Last week's ARCs.

Into the Bewilderness ★★★★
A delightful childrens graphic novel about two friends (a bear and a mole) who live in the woods and one day win a trip to a performance in the big city. Eventually they are off on an adventure. I love the discourse between the two as they mainly do nothing but sit around and talk and get the occasional visit from their friend Bigfoot who is always lost.

Black Cohosh ★★★
An interesting memoir about a kid who grew up unconventionally in the Appalachians. He has a severe speech impediment and some out there parents. You can tell this was Brosi's first work. It starts off pretty rough. You're just thrown in there and not a lot makes sense at first particularly because there are no panels. I was completely disoriented for the first 20-30 pages before I picked up on how this works. Plus some of the early work is rough. It's long at 360 pages but moves fast since it's typically a couple of word balloons on each page.

Manga Biographies: Charles M. Schulz ★★
A manga biography made for kids even though I doubt most kids know what Peanuts is these days. To be honest, this was kind of boring. But then again, so was Charles Schulz who dedicated himself to doing nothing but drawing Peanuts for over half his life. I can admire that.

Buff Soul ★★
A memoir from a Swedish influencer who accompanies her best friend on a trip to the U.S. She's in a band that is recording in L.A. and then going to South by Southwest. These girls like to party hard, doing all kinds of drugs and waking up with strangers. Romanova is a talented artist. Her character designs were off putting though. She draws everyone to look like Alice the Goon from Popeye.

Hack/Slash = Body Bags ★★★
I was excited to see this was a crossover with Body Bags, Jason Pearson's old comic that I liked from the 90s. It's not bad with Tim Seeley in the driver's seat and Stefano Caselli always makes the pages sing.

Rowlf and Other Fantasy Stories ★★★
Three werewolf stories from Richard Corben plus the adaptation of a Japanese legend. The first story, Rowlf, is actually about a dog who is turned into a dog man and it's wild because in addition to the fantasy stuff are demons driving tanks. This is known as one of first masterpieces and it is interesting as are the others. This collection is short, only about 80 pages of stories and then filled with other art including a comic Corben created as a kid.

The Moon Is Following Us Volume 1 ★★★★
They say when you're a parent, you'll do anything for your kids and these two are put to the test to see if that is true. Their daughter is trapped in a dream world and they'll do whatever they need to to bring her back. I have to say this was probably the first time that I did not hate Riley Rossmo's art. Having him draw a dream world make his quirky art work. Then we get DWJ drawing the real world and there's at least one cool transition between the two.

The Deviant Vol. 2 ★★★
Volume 2 has Michael in prison, the killer still presumably on the loose and his boyfriend, Derek, left trying to figure out who is setting them up. This is a slow burn true crime story and I think it works well. I like that there's no gotcha twist either. The killer shows up and you're like, who is that, just like it would be in these cases in real life. There's a lot of subtext about how gay men are treated in the world today but I'll leave that to the fellow readers to debate.

The Uncanny X-Men: Days of Future Fun ★★★★★
This kids book was a delight. Jeffrey Brown hearkens back to the 70s X-Men era for a bunch of strips where the X-Men are kids again with Professor X in charge. They are really funny for kids and even funnier if you've read any X-Men comics from back then. It's full of little things like Kitty being scared of a monster in the basement and there's a n'garai demon hiding under the stairs. That was the first X-Men comic I ever bought and I remember it well where she had to fight the N'Garai alone on Christmas Eve in the mansion. Or there will be something as simple as Kitty using magnets to hang pictures on Colossus's back like he's a fridge. It's only going to take about 10 minutes to read but I do think it's something you can pull off the shelf and read again.

Blood Squad Seven Vol. 1: Perilous Relaunch ★★★★
So since Rob Liefeld has been kicked out of Image and Youngblood with him, enter Blood Squad Seven. Casey propositions the team as an alternate past where Blood Squad Seven rose to prominence at 90s Image instead. Now it's 30 years later and the government is bringing a new team into the public eye. But this isn't really a superhero team book. It's an operating behind the scenes of power type thing. It was surprisingly good. Maybe along the line of what he did with WildCATS 3.0. Paul Fry's art was quite good too. I wasn't familiar with his work previously.

The one thing I hated about the book is the team name. Blood Squad Seven is a terrible name. And there's only 6 members in this.

Blood Squad Seven Vol. 2: Con Season ★★★
A solid super hero soap opera. Blood Squad Seven has basically replaced Youngblood in Image history as its original super team and now it's back 30 years later with a new government sponsored team.

Punk Mambo: The Punk Witch Project ★★
Not sure why this was one big issue instead of 2 regular sized issues like the other Valiant titles of this era. Punk Mambo keeps hearing punk music and tracks it down to London. It's really boring though. Too many going ons about punk. 40 years ago that discussion would be relevant. Today? Not so much. It's a shame too because this is one of the few characters Milligan has written well in the past. Ponce's art is good but it's boring. Just figures plopped on the pages floating in the ether with a bunch of magic effects around them.

Madi: Once Upon a Time in the Future ★★★★
This was cool. It's a dystopian future comic about a croup of cyborg mercenaries who get sucked into something shady when one of them does a job offbook to try and earn some extra cash to pay off the debt for their cybernetics. Nice world building in this. This is written by Duncan Janes and apparently set in the same world as his movies Moon and Muted. There are a ton of different artists on the book and some of the shifts in style can be jarring. That's my one complaint. Otherwise it's really good.

Lady Mechanika Vol 7: The Monster of the Ministry of Hell ★★★
We flash back to when Lady Mechanika was first found as a child. She is pretty much feral and is put on some kind of asylum like they used to do in England in the 1800s. My one question I'd have is if she received artificial limbs as a child, how did they grow along with her body. I'm guessing you aren't supposed to think about that. Otherwise this was interesting and we see more of her backstory than we've ever seen before.

Lady Mechanika Volume 8: The Devil in the Lake ★★★
Lady Mechanika is hired by a Russian princess to go rescue some scientists in Siberia who have disappeared. They were investigating sightings on a monster in a remote lake. It's basically the story of Nessie transported to the frozen north of Siberia. Joe Benitez doesn't draw this one but Siya Oum's art has a similar look to it.

Monolith Vol. 1 ★★
I think you need to be completely caught up on Spawn to get what's happening here. Apparently Monolith is a Spawn from the future who fights Omega Spawn a lot and moves through history. I don't know. This is confusing on its own. It feels like the cliff notes version of what was going on with Monolith over in Spawn.

The Domain ★★★
Chip Zdarsky gets a bit meta by making the comic within his comic Public Domain, the comic about bringing back on old comic that the artist worked on for the majority of his career. It's straight up super hero fare. Three friends find a crashed spaceship and find a suit that grants them powers but only one of them can use it at a time causing all kinds of problems as they yank it off each other left and right. Then there's the matter of the aliens and the government who both want those suits. It's a neat idea, but it's hard to make it more than that in only 5 issues.

Last week's ARCs.

Sleep Terrors ★
This book makes absolutely no sense. It's about this woman who has narcolepsy after being hit by a car. She was in a coma for a long time. Now her dreams seem to be coming true. It has to do with a shadowy government organization that is creating dream monsters in people. I don't know. The whole thing is a mess. At one point, a police officer is strangled by his Asian noodles while eating in his car. Not by an entity, but by the actual noodles wrapped around his throat. If there was a Mystery Science theater 3000 for comics, this would have appeared there.

Space Ghost Vol. 2: The Council of Doom ★★★★
The nostalgia in this one is high while still maintaining a good story and art. If you were ever a Space Ghost fan, you're probably going to dig this. Can't wait to see what Pepose and Lau do in Season 2.

Count Crowley Vol. 2: Amateur Midnight Monster Hunter ★★★
This picks up right where volume 1 left off. Jerri is still a screw up but she's 3 days sober and going to AA. She's also hunting monsters while hosting the late night monster movies. This is very much a middle volume and there's not a whole lot new here other than different lore for killing werewolves and vampires.

Transformers: Worst Bot Ever: Meet Ballpoint ★★★★
A really fun (and funny) story about the worst Decepticon out there. A transforming ball point pen who talks a big game but is the complete opposite. I had a LOT of fun with this.

Night Club, Vol. 2 ★★★
What happens to our teenage vampire superheroes when the popular kids become vampires too? That's the question that gets answered here. It's ultimately not bad.

All-Negro Comics 75th Anniversary Edition ★★★★
For the 75th anniversary, Image has reprinted the first comic created by black talent. It's largely been lost to history up to this point. It's quite unique for its time. In addition to reprinting the original comic, there's some essays and then a few new stories using the same characters by modern day black creators.

Flash Gordon Vol. 2: Killer of Worlds ★★★★
This series is still kicking butt. Mongo is gone and Flash is figuring out what happened after its destruction as he revisits old allies. The art's good. The story is great. I'm very happy to see this series be this good.

Local Man Vol. 1: Heartland ★★★★
This is kind of a odd series. It's about a super hero that's been kicked off his team for reason unknown. He's not even allowed to rescue kittens from trees due to a noncompete agreement. He heads back to his hometown where everyone also hates him. When an old archenemy is murdered, he puts on a ski mask and walks into town to find the killer. This story also contains flashbacks to the fake Youngblood type team that he was on where we begin to find out how he screwed up.

Last week's ARCs.

The Woman With Fifty Faces: Maria Lani & The Greatest Art Heist That Never Was ★★
The truth about this story is interesting. The roundabout way the story takes to get there is not. I'd lost the point trying to be made at times with all these extra pages that would just show an eyeball or an exterior shot. The story is about a con artist who came to Paris in the 20s and said she was a movie star from Germany. The city was smitten with her and soon famous painters from across the area were painting her portraits which eventually all disappeared.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Nation, Vol. 1 ★★★★
This volume serves mainly as a bridge between the previous series and the current one. We see what Hob's been up to. Then Raph and Pepperoni get forced into invading Area 51 to rescue some mutants. We see what Casey has been up to since Untold Story of the Foot Clan. There's some cool stuff in this anthology series. Marvel and DC should take note on how to do these well.

Minky Woodcock: The Girl Called Cthulhu ★
While I enjoyed the other Minky Woodcock stories, this was a turkey. There's not a single story in these 4 issues. It's random encounters with Allister Crowley and H.P. Lovecraft. A miniseries should tell some kind of story and be more than just opportunities to see risque shots of Minky.

Last week's ARCs.

John Carter of Mars ★
Just completely horrible. The story didn't make a lick of sense. The art is awful. At one point cars are floating in space with people in them and they can breathe and talk just fine. It's in a later time period because John Carter has died and been resurrected. Just downright horrible stuff. The art is all floating in space with weird camera angles that exaggerates the length of limbs.

Blade Forger ★★★
A future where the Emperor is determined every 5 years through a tournament of Blade Forgers, a fight to the death for the 16 entrants involved. The storytelling is pretty disjointed in this. It's also told through multiple generations of this family so there's not a main character, per se. I really liked We Live from the Miranda Brothers. This wasn't to that level though.

The Incal: Psychoverse ★★★
One of the comics expanding Jodorowsky's The Incal, this prequel isn't bad. It's full of wildly murderous nuns and metabarons. I was hoping Russell would maybe bring something new to the table, but that wasn't the case. Yannick Paquette does rock the artwork though.

George A. Romero's The Amusement Park ★
George Romero's family took a terrible film of his from the 70s and restored it, then adapted it into a comic. Unfortunately, it's terrible. It feels like experimental film. It's about an old man who goes to an amusement park and is treated more and more poorly. It doesn't make a lot of sense if the story is taken literally. It's more a metaphor on how society doesn't value old people. It just doesn't do it very well when you have dumb things like a cop show up at a bumper car ride and try and write one of the riders a ticket for rear ending another car. Then he doesn't believe her that it was the other guy's fault because he didn't use a turn signal. This whole thing was just stupid.

Gannibal, Vol. 5 ★★★
Has there ever been a comic more drawn out than this one? It feels like we should be getting near the end and when I go to write my review I see there's at least 6 more volumes. This one has a bunch of law enforcement officers about to crack down on the town but ultimately do nothing. I like this comic but at the same time it's a frustrating read. I wish these were all in English already so I could burn through them.

Last week's ARCs.

Slaughterman's Creed ★★★★
This is one messed up story and it's incredibly violent so be forewarned. It's about this hitman for the mob who butchers people. He decides to help his next victim when he sees she's pregnant. That's all you get though. Anything more will just hurt your enjoyment of this.

Disney Villains: Hades ★★★★★
Just a ton of fun and the best of this Disney Villains series yet. Hades gets a burr on his butt about not being invited to the Gods' brunch and puts a team together to steal the golden fleece before Jason and his brotastic Argonauts can. This is just what comics should be, entertaining.

Last week's ARCs.

Search and Destroy, vol. 2 ★★★★
The artwork is great. The story is simple at this point. The main character is trying to reclaim all of her body parts that were cut off her and given to other people. She continues to get them back but is surprised how much weaker she is, now that she is reclaiming them.

Paradise Court ★★★
Your typical slasher story that you've read before. Four college kids go to visit an old friend in a remote gated community over Spring Break. Then people start dying off. It's not bad, just not original either.

The Black Knight ★★
A public defender gains the same powers as Marvel's Black Knight and fights rival Russian mobs. The leader of one of them is immortal and trying to kill off all the male heirs of the other one. They keep the story pretty simple. Don't expect answers to anything. Just a lot of fighting by a girl in armor but because it's Zenescope there is no armor in the middle of her chest at all, all the way down past her belly button. It looks ridiculous and makes no sense.

Last week's ARCs..

DEN Volume 4: Dreams and Alarums ★★★★★
The continuing adventures of Den as he searches for Kath. Some pieces of this are confusing as it's sometimes dreams or the like after long sequences. And Den gets fat. Along for his search for Kath though, he attacks air fighters, meets some fish people and then ghouls. There's still plenty to like. Plus, Den finally gets some clothes.

Model Five Murder ★★★
Some pretty cool, noirish sci-fi. An android sees another version of itself floating in space while out on a mission and has to work backward to figure out what happened. This is only about 50 pages long so it's a tight story. If it had been fleshed out with a heftier page count who knows how good it could have been.

Primer: Clashing Colors ★★★
The sequel to Primer from a few years ago which I loved. This I thought was just OK. Primer really wants to join the Teen Titans from the cartoon. I actually think that was part of the reason, the writing wasn't as tight. Trying to put this more in the DC universe but also not by making changes to the Titans history puts it in kind of a no man's land. The other thing I didn't like was the change in artists part way through. Gretel Lusky's art is a lot of fun. Nicoletta Baldari's artwork left me wondering what was happening in the action sequences. I had the hardest time following them. It's still not bad. Just not the lovefest I had with the original book.

The Idris File ★★
This was an odd one with some fugly art. It's about a kid and his mom who go to a small town in Wales where she gets a job as a housekeeper. This kid is odd and meets a ghost and Nazis but the story isn't that interesting and the art is real ugly.

Last week's ARCs.

The Rabagoo Race ★
This reads more like a sketch book than a coherent story. As static images it's maybe fine. As sequential art... I guess you could call it that. The thing changes from a boat race to a bicycle race half way through and then an ode to his dog which he clearly misses.

The colors look thrown on the page like a Jackson Pollack painting. The lettering is constantly changing fonts and appears randomly on the page. I think the last 20 pages or so are extras. I'm not really sure when the story ends bu the end is back to random boats so I think it's extras. This whole thing is a mess. Has it even seen an editor?

Ghost Circus ★★★
This was alright. It's about a kid who wakes up in a circus but not just any circus, it's a circus of ghosts. He can't remember what happened to him but it's pretty obvious to anyone that has consumed media before. One of the ghosts helps him and it's all well and good. The second half of the story gets weird though when he decides to help the ghost girl and ultimately the whole circus. It feels like two unrelated stories smushed together.

Small Town Spirits ★★
Some decent juvenile fiction comics about a town in Ireland where monsters visit once a year and the town throws a celebration and holds family games. One family always loses and another always wins. One of the boys decides to change their fate, leaving the doorway for all monsters to come through the gate. I'm sure you can see where this is all headed because there are no surprises.

Pavil's Mask ★★
A man crash lands into a culture living atop an ancient culture that has flooded. Now they no longer know what the artifacts they find do and can only see 10% of it as the rest is underwater. I saw someone else use the word enigmatic about this book and I think that definitely applies. Don't expect a lot of answers to what's going on. There are a lot of wordless pages full of random panels of villagers just living their lives. The coloring doesn't add anything to the pages and I wish this was just in black and white. The colors are just applied in large blocks (make this half of the panel solid green. Leave the figures uncolored, etc.). It actually distracts from and obscures the art instead of enhancing it.

The Heart Hunter ★★★
This wasn't bad. It's about a cursed kingdom that plops people's hearts out of their bodies and into indestructible jars. At that point every one becomes immortal but also fails to grow. The only way to grow is to find your soul mate but at that point the two of you have to immediately leave or will die. A woman with a broken heart is tasked by the king to take care of a man with a golden heart which is where this story kicks off. The end of this got so convoluted that it made my head hurt. But overall, not bad at all.

Holy Lacrimony ★
I didn't get this at all. It's about the saddest person in the world getting abducted by this weird shapeshifting alien that seems to be wearing the ghost killer mask from Scream. Then he goes to therapy in an alien abduction group. I found the whole thing a waste of time with poor art.

The Weirn Books, Vol. 2: The Ghost and the Stolen Dragon ★★★★
I really like these kids comics. They're more in line with like Harry Potter or something I guess as there's a real sense of danger to them. Now this is very much a volume 2 and you want to make sure and read them in order as this bills off of that one. The villain from volume one returns to not only threaten the school but to attempt to drive the life energy of all the kids in the school. There's also a dragon involved and an ending that teases a third book. It's all really good stuff.

Last week's ARCs.

Alice in Cryptoland ★★
While this is a decent primer to what cyptocurrencies are, this is written as if it's propaganda on the pros of crypto. I mean it mentions NFTs more than once which are little more than scams for the gullible. I was looking for a more unbiased and balanced look than this.

The Treasure of the Black Swan ★★★★
The government of Spain sues a treasure hunter who finds a Spanish galleon and proceeds to secretly harvest its contents. They try to pass the contents off as another ship and what follows is a legal battle with plenty of shady asides to try to get it back. This is supposed to be based on true events by a diplomat who witnessed the actual events. Paco Raco turns this into a really good page turner of a book even without a lot of action. Apparently this is an AMC+ series that I was not aware of called La Fortuna with Stanley Tucci.

The Winter of the Cartoonist ★★★★
The true story of 5 artists in 50s Spain who attempt to go on their own in an era when companies retained the rights to all the characters they had created. It dips a little into living in a country run by the dictator Franco as well. What I really enjoyed though was Raco's artwork. I've been to Barcelona and this felt like a return to the city, instantly recognizing the streets and even the food. It was a nice little additional touch in this story about how publishers used to crush the creatives working for them.

The Rocketfellers Volume 1: First Family of the Future ★★★★★
I really dug this. It's about a family from the 25th century who came back to 2024 to hide out from an evil corporation that is trying to kill them. The larger story is taking a while to tease out but that didn't even matter. I loved the family dynamics. Tomasi is one of those writers who I just really jive with. And Francis Manapul is killing it with his art. That's one thing you can say about Ghost Machine. They've really picked the cream of the crop for artists. Oh, and there's at least one person in these comics who are aware of all the different universes out there which I found interesting.

Hyde Street, Volume 1 ★★★
Geoff Johns gives us his version of The Twilight Zone. Hyde Street is where those going to Hell often wind up and those living there can escape if they capture 10,000 souls. It's not bad but could use more of a through story. Like every other Ghost Machine book, Ivan Reis's art is great.

Geiger, Vol. 4 ★★★★★
This was quite good, but then again the whole run has been. The story gets more complex with the addition of Ashley Arden and the return of Junkyard Joe. I like how you can feel the threads Johns has laid out begin to pull together here. I do wonder how long it'll be before we actually get to see what happened with the Unnamed War. Gary Frank remains an artist of the top of his game.

Gunnerkrigg Court Volume 2 Limited Edition ★★★★
Antimony Carver finds out more abut her past while she attends her school full of fairies, robots and shadow creatures. It's fun stuff.

Last week's ARCs.

Conan the Barbarian Vol. 5 Twisting Loyalties ★★★
Conan and Belit run into Set's followers while trying to steal an artifact. Then we jump to after Conan has left Belit behind and is plagued by an infection from his encounter with Set's followers. I appreciate Zub delving into Conan's long history. At the same time, I don't really want to read a bunch of text pages to figure out all that history.

The Night Eaters, Vol. 3: Their Kingdom Come ★★★★
The final volume in the Night Eaters trilogy sees Milly and Billy waking up for the apocalypse or that's how at least a lot of people are taking it. Monsters are beginning to come out into the open. There's a lot of random social media posts in this. I guess that's replaced the talking heads on the news of the 80s and 90s. I really like how much this is about family. Milly's and Billy's parents love for them in straight contrast to Ming who is willing to sacrifice his family to get what he wants. It's great stuff, compounded with Takeda's interesting East meets West artwork.

What We Wished For ★★★
A group of kids stumble into a cave and are each granted a wish. However, they take too long and the comet they wished on has already passed. 38 years later the comet is back and so are the children's wishes. The problem is a child's wish often isn't practical to being an adult with some of these wishes reeking havoc on their lives. It's a fast-paced read.

Bowling with Corpses & Other Strange Tales from Lands Unknown ★★★★
Mignola's got a brand new bag, starting up another new universe. This one seems more fantasy based. It's a bunch of short stories, told in taverns and the like. It gives off dark fairy tale vibes. The stories are good, filled with the undead, vampires, talking animals and the like. Who am I kidding though, I've been in the bag for Mignolia since the 90s. I will say it's really nice to get an entire comic that he both wrote and drew.

Barbaric Vol. 4: Born in Blood ★★★★
Nothing much new here in volume 4 but still fun. Owen and Soren return to Owen's home to find out his barbarian clan isn't protecting the other tribes they pledged to. Why not is a bit telegraphed early on.

Arkadi and the Lost Titan ★★
An epic story that spanned 20 years of Caza's life to create. It's a tomb at over 500 pages and finally translated to English. This is set on a Earth 10,000 years after it has stopped spinning. The last people live in villages in the twilight demarcation between day and night. Most people have some kind of mutation. Way below the Earth exists one last city, its citizens pampered and run by an A.I. What follows is a really long adventure spanning 2 generations. It's full of things to say, never straight-forwardly, leaving you to figure out what Caza is getting at. Caza's art is really detailed, giving off a Moebius and Cam Kennedy vibe.

The House ★★★★
Three adult siblings return to their family's vacation cottage to fix the place up to sell a year after their father died. Along the way, they bear old grudges, have fond reminisces of the past and try to decide what to do with the place. As someone who is at the same stage of their life as these kids, I identified a lot with this simple story.

You're specifically talking about posting reviews on Barnes and Noble's website? TBH, I don't even bother with them. It was always such a hassle that I just gave up.