Chad’s Comments (group member since Mar 22, 2018)

Chad’s comments from the I Read Comic Books group.

Yesterday's trip to the comic book store.

Unbreakable X-Men #3
Ultimate Wolverine #12
Ultimate Spider-Man #23
Ultimate Black Panther #23
Transformers #27
Infernal Hulk #2
Geiger #19
Aquaman #12
Absolute Batman #15

Yeah I like the Lord Baltimore stuff a lot. The Joe Golem stuff is pretty good too. There's even that new universe that's kind of like dark fairy tales.

Yeah, you know how much cheaper this is than all of the Mike Mignola comics I've bought over the years?

Last week's adventures in comics.

Red and the Wolves ★★★
Billed as a saphic retelling of Little Red Riding Hood seems a misnomer. There's some wolves and a grandma in it and that's about it. It's about a hunter, Red, who is going after evil spirits and her grandmother is banishing them. She discovers Sil caught in a bear trap and nurses her back to health. Sil is some kind of wolf / human hybrid. It's an OK story. It's way too long at 368 pages. You could have told this same story in probably 100 less pages. Some of the character designs I did think were odd, probably to add diversity. Red has absolutely no red to her luck. It would have made sense to give her red hair. Sil would have been fine if she wasn't Sil of the grey wolves. That leads me to believe she should have had silver or grey hair. But I'm just picking at nits here.

Plague House ★★
This is OK. It's kind of boring even though it's supposed to be a horror comic. The leader of a paranormal group starts taking vengeance on the people who murdered the ghosts he encounters. At least, that's the intention. It doesn't come across all that well though. This book also has some of the worst covers I've even seen with this theme of half a face and a building.

Three Little Wishes ★★★
A lawyer obsessed with details frees Oberon and is granted 3 wishes. She spends an incredible amount of time trying to determine how to best use her wishes for good without them being misinterpreted by a fairy who is a bit of a scoundrel. This was a lot of fun. This book brought out the humor in Paul Cornell. It's also the first time I've seen Steve Yeowell's art since his 90s heyday and it still looks great. Now he has be wanting to go back and read some of his Vertigo comics.

Solomon Kane: The Serpent Ring ★★★★
I always knew Patrick Zircher could draw (he's one of the best in the game.) but who knew he could write too. This fits right in with one of Robert E. Howard's pulp stories. It has Solomon Kane and a group of people headed to Africa on the hunt for the Eye of Set. And Good Lord! Zircher's art is so detailed and lush. I just love it. Someone put him back on a monthly book so I can see it every month.

Nils: The Tree of Life ★★★
Apparently, I read this 5 years ago and completely forgot about it because it read all new to me this go around. Just shows how incomprehensible the story is.

2020 review

This book is absolutely gorgeous.



Unfortunately, as fantastic as the book looks, the story is extremely difficult to follow. It doesn't help that for some reason, Magnetic Press used a tiny font in this book that had me squinting at the text even when blown up completely on my monitor.

This takes place in a dystopian future where all living things are dying while a technologically advanced people are vacuuming up "souls" that are needed for life to carry on. Like I said, this is hard to follow. Still, because of how much I enjoyed the art, I wouldn't consider this a waste of time.

Cobalt Blue ★★★★
This is prose but it is about super heroes so I'm including it. This is a super over the top novella. It's set on an alternate Earth during the cold war. Thirty years earlier, a Russian and an American were given super powers. The two were evenly matched and at a detente until the American died. Now her children are all that's left to protect America. The problem being, they only have half their mother's powers. I dig Matthew Reilly and dearly love the Scarecrow and Jack West Jr. novels. I hope we can add Cobalt Blue to the annals of repeat Matthew Reilly characters.

30 Days of Night, Vol. 5: Bloodsucker Tales ★★
I can't believe Matt Fraction wrote the Juarez story. It's awful. It speaks of the very real murders of women in Juarez and injects a dumb vampire story into it. This Lex Nova talks like a detective from a noir but speaks all his inner monologue out loud. It gets tedious real fast. Then there's these clown vampires. It's really dumb without even bringing up the real deaths of multiple women in Juarez.

30 Days of Night, Vol. 6: Annual 2005 ★★★
This was actually pretty good. John Ikos heads to LA to find the FBI agent that became a vampire and gets sidetracked by a pack of vampires who want to turn humanity into cattle hunting him. I like Nat Jones's art a lot more than Templesmith's.

30 Days of Night, Vol. 7: Dead Space ★★
Exactly what you'd expect. An astronaut becomes a vampire on the way into space and infects everyone on the space station. Goofy concept with by the numbers execution once it gets rolling. The art was a little off, especially with body proportions, reminded me of a poor man's Guy Davis.

30 Days of Night, Vol. 8: Spreading the Disease ★★
Dan Wickline takes over but this story is tangentially related to the last volume. It's about the vampire who infected the astronaut at the beginning of the story. She's part of a vampire sect who are trying to come out in public. They are also somehow religious saying that are God's true children even when murdering people. It's pretty dumb. I also don't like how they were converting people to vampires from tainted alcohol. Let's stick to the basics here.

Tony Sandoval does some of the art and it's some of the worst art I've seen in a comic in a very long time. Everyone, including the adults, look like emaciated children with large bulbous heads and tiny skinny bodies. Sandoval needs to take an anatomy class because these people look like they need to eat a sandwich more than anything else.

Gamera -Rebirth- : Code Thyros Vol. 1 ★★
Apparently this is a prequel to a new Gamera anime on Netflix. I just thought it was a new comic using Gamera. The problem is that Gamera's not even in it. It's about people engineering kaiju and then having them to fight to solve disagreements between companies. I don't like what it says about women either as the girl is considered to be stupid because she doesn't apply herself and her brother takes care of her.

DC X Sonic the Hedgehog ★★★
Exactly what you'd expect from a crossover between DC and Sonic. It catered towards younger readers but it's not bad. The Justice League heads to Sonic's universe when Darkseid invades with all his cronies. From there it's kind of your standard paint by numbers intercompany crossover and that's OK. I did love all the banter between Sonic and The Flash about who was faster.

30 Days of Night (2018) ★
Not sure why you'd do a remake of a readily available original that's only 15 years old at the point this came out. Especially one that's a lesser fleshed out story even though it's double the issues. Even though the art is better, it's not nearly as scary as the original. It's funny how that works. This remake just feels completely pointless.

Mike Mignola is back with more Humble Bundle craziness. You can get these comics that aren't part of the Hellboy universe like Lady Baltimore and Joe Golem for $18. You can also get all of Hellboy, BPRD and pretty much anything Mike Mignola touched at Dark Horse if you get it all at $90. I do like that you can pick and choose in case you already bought the previous bundles.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/mo...

Today's trip to the LCS.

Absolute Green Lantern #9
Amazing X-Men #3Batman #4
Birds of Prey #28
Blue Falcon and Dynomutt #3
Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Justice League #5
GI Joe #15
Rook: Exodus #9
Something Is Killing the Children #45
Speed Racer #5
Thundercats: Lost #9
Ultimate Universe: Two Years In #1 <-- A one-shot kicking off the final year of the Ultimate universe.
Trigger Warning <-- This is a new Strangers in Paradise story from Terry Moore. It's been out for a few months but was a real pain to get a hold of because of Diamond's demise. All of the replacement distributors have minimum sales orders to get into their catalogs. Finally something got worked out and my LCS was able to order it from Luna.

It comes out in January Ed. I got an advanced copy of it.

The original Stray Dogs mini is great. Stray Dogs: Dog Days felt like a weak attempt to squeeze a few more bucks out of people. I love those homage horror movie covers. Feral's really good too.

If you haven't read any other Brubaker and Phillips yet, make sure and check out Criminal. They just released a new OGN, The Knives, back in August set in the world of Criminal.

Last week's adventures in comics.

It Killed Everyone But Me ★★★★
Sutton was the final girl from an attack 28 years ago that killed all her friends. She's turned her life around becoming a real estate agent when some attacks happen again and she has to determine if they are related. That's when the series veers into the supernatural. It's a cool book. It very much gives off Something Is Killing the Children vibes. In fact, the artist, Letizia Cadonici, worked on House of Slaughter and her art has a Werther Dell'Edera look to it.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Pink Ranger ★★★
The return of Kimberly as the Pink Ranger in Pink honestly isn't all that great. There's about 3 issues of story in Tini Howard's 6 issues. Plus the art is not very good at all. It's very manga oriented and most panels are just characters floating in space.

Where this shines is "The Return". What's most surprising to me is that it's written by the Pink Ranger herself, Amy Jo Johnson, and it's good. It's a "What If" type story where the Power Rangers retired 20 years ago after defeating Rita but at great cost with the loss of Tommy. You see what everyone if up to and of course there's Power Ranger action. Frankly, it's a lot of fun.

Spider-Society ★★
This is alright. It's really basic and you have to just take what they are telling you for granted because they sure aren't showing you that these bad guys are tougher than all of the universal Spider-Men. They just get beat more or less off screen every time they fight. The evil baddie behind all this was stupid too and didn't explain where her powers come from. Again, you just have to accept it. Lets retire all this multiversal spider stuff until there's an actual story to tell.

Avengers By Jed Mackay Vol. 5: Masters Of Evil ★★★
The "One World Under Doom" story isn't very good and it's the first 4 issues. This iteration of the Masters of Evil is more like the Losers of Evil. They try and take over the Forever City while the Avengers are on Earth dealing with Doom leaving Sam Wilson to fight them. Then we find out what the "missing moment" is and who Myrridon is behind the mask. The more this and X-Men go on, the more I think Jed MacKay is better off doing solo characters than team books because this is the first time I can recall not loving a Jed MacKay book.

Mouse Guard: Dawn of the Black Axe ★★★★★
The Mouse Guard comics are fantastic. This one does not have David Petersen's art though. It does have the extremely capable artist, Gabriel Rodriguez of Locke and Key fame, stepping in though.

It tells the story of the first wielder of the Black Axe. About how he conquered the 5 snakes that were plaguing the area making it safe for the mice of the forest. The art in this is so freaking good and I love the stories of these little mice knights keeping their citizens safe from all the things that prey upon them.

The Traveler: Complete Collection ★★
Reading this as a whole, none of it makes much sense. The three volumes don't fit together at all. The early Chad Hardin art is solid and that's about it. I expect more for something from Mark Waid.

Calamity Before Jane ★★
A short and not complete enough story about Calamity Jane's life. It's just little snippets, most of which aren't even complete. The only thing this does, is make me go find another book that is actually a biography and not this.

Last week's trip to my LCS.

Thundercats #21
Mortal Thor #4
Justice League vs Godzilla vs Kong II #5
Justice League Unlimited #13
Infernal Hulk #1
Hornsby and Halo #12
Geiger #18
Flash Gordon #13
Feral #18
Expatriate X-Men #2
Detective Comics #1103
Absolute Wonder Woman #14
Absolute Batman #14

Holy crap, this new Humble Bundle is amazing. $18 for 175 Image trades from the 2010s. All of East of West, Deadly Class, Black Science, Curse Words, Descender, most of Saga, Nailbiter, Paper Girls, Revival, Rumble, Sex Criminals, Southern Bastards, Bitch Planet and a whole bunch of others.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/im...

I really liked Space Ghost. It's all of the first series (12 issues and an annual) and a few issues of the new one. I think there's only 4 out so far. I didn't look to see how many of the new ones are in there. HB makes it a pain in the ass to figure out what all is in the offer. I don't know why you can't sort them. It's the same creative team.

Dynamite has a new Humble Bundle out for most of its comics based on cartoons. It works out to about 20 cents a comic.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/th...

I've read the Thundercats, Johnny Quest and Space Ghost ones and they are all good. Some of the titles like Space Ghost/ Johnny Quest: Space Quest are not complete because they haven't even been printed yet. But all of the issues that are out seem to be in there.

Last week's adventures in comics.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Vol. 1: Return to New York ★★★★★
The first half of Jason Aaron's turn on the Turtles. Each issue features a different turtle, drawn by a different creative team, Joelle Jones, Rafael Albuquerque, Cliff Chinag, Chris Burnham, Darick Robertson and Juan Ferreyra. The brothers got into some kind of fight and now are scattered across the world, Raph's in jail, Mikey is a TV star in Japan, Leo's meditating in India and Donatello was forced to fight in an underground fight club and went crazy. It's all really interesting with great art. Looking forward to reading the second half of this now.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vol. 2: NYC vs. TMNT ★★★★★
This was great. Much better than I even expected. Juan Ferreyra's art is terrific. So detailed and dynamic. He even gets to do some of the body horror that he does so well. I love how crazy Donnie has become talking to a dead rat which he claims is Splinter. I'm sad it ended after only 12 issues. We'll see what Gene Luen Yang and Freddie Williams II do next.

Venom War: Spider-Man/Lethal Protectors ★★★
A mixed bag of tie-ins to the Venom War event. The Spider-Man series had a lot of potential. The symbiote teams up with Peter Parker again and Jackpot is along for the ride. I really liked the parts where the symbiote realizes all the regret Spider-Man is hiding over losing MJ. It gets points off for not being a complete story on its own though as it weaves in and out of the main book between issues which I find incredibly annoying. And I don't care what you say about Greg Land's art. I've always liked it and it's still good here.

The Lethal Protectors story is the return of Silver Sable's Wildpack. This time they have symbiotes though. It's fine.

The Fantastic Four one shot is one of the worst Marvel comics I've read in a long time. Adam Warren is a terrible writer. The dialogue is nonstop technobabble. My eyes glazed over a few pages while I painfully stuck with it until the end.

Thankfully the It's Jeff story continues to be a delight anytime Kelly Thompson and Gurihiru get together to make it happen.

Fantastic Four, Vol. 5: Aliens, Ghosts and Alternate Earths ★★★★
Mainly one and done stories focusing on big sciencey ideas. Oh and fun. These stories are fun. In the background Doom is lurking. He's now the Sorcerer Supreme and has locked Latveria behind an impenetrable dome. Leads directly into One World Under Doom.

Godzilla Destroys the Marvel Universe ★★★
This is more or less what you'd expect.Godzilla attacks New York and all the Marvel heroes have to stop it. Some of the art is suspect because Javier Garron and Paco Medina couldn't keep up for 5 issues. The epilogue by Scientronc was particularly poor. I am disappointed they laid groundwork for a followup. I think 2 Godzilla series at Marvel was plenty.

The Ultimates, Vol. 3: Rescue Mission ★★★★
Six more one off stories as we get down to the Maker's return at the end of #18. Plus Hawkeye's one shot. I thought the regular series was quite good. The last issue had me amped up for the Maker's return and to see how it shakes out.

The Transformers Compendium Vol. 1 ★★★
I always loved the Transformers as a kid but never read any of the comics so I decided to rectify that. First, I'll say that it's very different than the cartoon. There's a lot less focus on individual characters. Each issue focuses on different ones. As the series goes on, it becomes more and more about introducing the new toys. The first three-quarters of this is pretty good. Once the Headmasters show up, it loses focus. I thought the Headmasters were stupid when I was a kid and I still think they are stupid now. The head turns into a human that is controlling them? What kind of sense does that make? The other thing that was really strange was how inconsistent the size of certain transformers were when they changed. Megatron shrinks down into a normal gun when he transforms. Shockwave is a giant gun floating through the air. It looks ridiculous. The Insecticons shrink down to the size of insects when they are in insect form. I wish they'd just explain that. It bugged me as a kid and it bugs me now.

Deadpool/Batman ★★★★
Surprisingly good. Deadpool is annoying but Wells makes it work by making Batman the straight man to Deadpool's antics. I love that Deadpool is totally making fun of Batman until he actually meets him and realizes he's not a joke. Most of the backup crossovers are pretty good too although it's clear that Frank Miller can no longer draw. It was also a nice touch to have Kevin Smith return to two characters he wrote well in Daredevil and Green Arrow.

Batman/Deadpool ★★★★
The Grant Morrison main story is, of course, very weird. I do like how he gets his digs in at Deadpool about how his creator can't draw feet and that he started as a knockoff of Deathstroke. My favorite story though was no surprise. Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo return to Nightwing and Taylor brings Laura Kinney and Honey Badger along for the ride.

Birds of Prey, Vol. 4: On the Run ★★★★
The Birds are targeted by the Shadow Army that's been plaguing them. Not a whole lot of answers but plenty of good action and great character interaction.

BRZRKR: Bloodlines ★★★
The four current Brzrkr one-shots collected all in one place. Reeves is letting some other creators get their hands on the character in various places in time. These are actually better than the miniseries even if some of them get pretty crazy. I'm talking to you and that story in Atlantis Steve Skroce.

One World Under Doom ★★★★
Dr. Doom's been hiding out under a dome in Latveria since he became the Sorcerer Supreme. Now he's returned and taken over the world. I like how this isn't just a big battle between heroes. He's convinced a bunch of normal people that they are better off under his rule and some things actually do seem better. Of course, all is not as it seems. R.B. Silva's art is good but it can be obscured by too many effects. All in all though, a good event.

Red Before Black ★★★★
Stephanie Phillips's penchant for creating f'd up characters works well for this series. It takes place in Florida and has a bit of a Florida Man vibe to it, but with female protagonists. Val is ex-military and never fully recovered from the trauma of war. She's trying to get in with an old war buddy who is now a criminal. Leo is self-sabotaging and just stole a bunch of coke from Val's new boss and is trying to resell it. Through circumstances the two women end up on the run and I'll let you read the rest from there. It's good stuff and the rare miniseries that doesn't really leave you hanging in hopes of a sequel.

Incredible Hulk Vol. 6: Monster Road ★★★★★
I gotta say, this version of the Hulk is badass. That ending has me chomping at the bit to read The Infernal Hulk. Love all of the body horror as well.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Pink ★★
This is fine. Kimberly has to return as the Pink Ranger when her parents are put in danger. There's about 3 issues of story though drug out across 6 issues. Brendan Fletcher and Kelly Thompson leave after the first 2 issues and Tini Howard takes over so maybe they had the same thoughts? The art is just OK too. There's a lack of backgrounds in most of this. The rest of the art is just bland especially with people floating in space a lot of the time.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Return ★★★★
Surprisingly good considering it's written by the actual Pink Ranger. It's a What If? style story where the Power Rangers stopped after finally defeating Rita Repulsa This may actually be the best Power Ranger comic I've read. (I'll admit I'm not the biggest fan.) Nico Leon's art is good too.

Murder Island ★★★
James Patterson wrote 2 prose books about Doc Savage's descendant. Mindless action and sometimes that's OK. Doc Savage's great grandson is back with Kira Sunlight in tow. After thinking everything had settled down after the last book, the two are now on the run again. They are split a world apart after thinking they were finally safe. Then they must find each other again. It's a different book. The main villain is built up to be this big bad only to ultimately not be much of a threat at all. It's like Patterson switched gears and decided to end things after planning for a longer story.

I couldn't find a news thread so I'll just put it here. DC released a bunch of info about the comics that are part of the new Vertigo line.

https://www.dc.com/blog/2025-10-09/dc...

Today's trip to my LCS.

Captain America #5
Godzilla Destroys the Marvel Universe #5
One World Under Doom #9
Predator Kills the Marvel Universe #4
Ultimates #18
Unbreakable X-Men #2
X-Men Book of Revelation #2
Absolute Flash #9
World's Finest #45
Batman / Deadpool #1
GI Joe #14
Gatchaman #14
Herculoids #10
Racer X #3
Space Ghost #5
X-Men of Apocalypse #1

Last week's adventures in comics.

Toxic Avenger ★★★
Some short stories set in the world of the new Toxic Avenger movie from 2025. Not bad.

Absolute Green Lantern Vol. 1: Without Fear ★★★★
My favorite of the 2nd wave of Absolute titles. It flips the GL mythos on its ear. Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Guy Gardner and Jo Mullein all appear. They just aren't Green Lanterns. They're living in a small desert town when a dome comes down in the city and an alien (Abin Sur) appears along with a giant GL symbol that flattens the town. (Yeah, this book is cool.) I didn't love the art though. Jahnoy Lindsay's art is generic manga 101.

The Cemeterians ★★★
This was a weird one. Out of nowhere, bones start appearing in places. Skeletons inside of teddy bears, piano wire changing to bones, that kind of thing. It's an interesting supposition. It quickly spirals out of control to apocalyptic lengths and that's where it gets kind of silly. I can't say I enjoyed the ending just because of how out there it gets.

Transformers Vol. 4: Conquer and Control ★★★
A solid end to Daniel Warren Johnson and Jorge Corona's Transformers run. Not a whole lot changed but solid nonetheless.

Storm King Comics Dark & Twisted: Death Mask Volume 2: Ichor Azure ★★
This was OK. It features the same police detective from volume 1. She's on a new case where someone is talking vapid rich kids. The problem with this is all of these young adults are so awful you want to see them all die. In fact not enough of them do. I wish there was a little more to the story.

Lilith, Vol. 1 ★★★★
A sexy demon is looking for a way back to her world. She comes across a brother and sister with a book that may be able to help her return. Along the way she needs to fight the demons sent after her. The art's very good and I really like the almost all red color palette.

The Space Between the Trees ★★★★
A story about a couple not only lost in the woods but also time and space. It's a quick read but a good one. I liked the animation style art too.

G.I. Joe Vol. 2: Bludd's Revenge ★★★★
I liked this arc better than the first one. It focused mainly on Major Blood and he's an interesting villain with zero redeeming qualities. This arc didn't have the weird coloring of the first arc either where it looked almost like a misprint instead of a choice.

Redcoat Volume 2: American Icons ★★★★
Simon Pure encounters more real historical figures in Johnny Appleseed, Annie Oakley and Dolly Madison, although they are different as Appleseed can perform magic. By the way, that serial killer family in issue #8 is real. They'd lure travelers in and murder them. Then we get another one of the Unnamed in the Northerner. He's a time traveler from an alternate future where the South won the Civil War and he's trying to keep other time travelers from sabotaging the timeline. Geoff Johns and Bryan Hitch have got another winner on their hands.

Justice League: The Atom Project ★★
Spins out of Absolute Power and Justice League Unlimited so read those first. Even on its own though, this sucks. All 3 Atoms are tools. So is the military. It all feels forced to provide the angle they wanted. The gist is that Captain Atom can no absorb and give powers to others after Absolute Power. So because of that everyone needs to bicker and fight. This also runs in conjunction with the first arc of Justice League Unlimited. It doesn't help that Mike Perkins art isn't great here. It feels lumpy with the darkness turned up to the max with the coloring. I honestly don't really get why this exists. It's all kind of pointless.

Imperial ★★★★
Marvel's space operas get thrown for a loop when there's some assassinations. It's solid. The art was just OK. Way too chaotic and just too much crammed into every panel for me. The one thing that didn't fit for me, was the Hulk's appearance as the Worldbreaker. He's been on Earth doing the horror thing with Phillip Kennedy Johnson for about 3 years now. Not sure how he wound up back on Sakaar.

Void Rivals Volume 4: First Chosen ★★★★
I didn't expect so much time spent with Skuxxoid but I kind of dug it. Anyway, another great volume of Void Rivals mixing in Transformers from the movie and the oddball Cobra-La stuff and yet it all works. All of the stuff with the two divisions of people and why they are kept apart are resolved and not how I expected. It was nice to see Conor Hughes take over on art. If you're never checked out White Ash, you should.

Ultimate Spider-Man: Incursion ★★
Pretty disappointing. The Ultimate line in general has been pretty good (besides Ultimate X-Men). This felt completely pointless. Miles's baby sister makes her way to the Ultimate universe where Miles has to chase her as she gets captured by people each issue. It's repetitive and boring. The whole thing feels like a pointless cash grab.

Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2: The Omega Act ★★★★
This is all about the lead up to K.O. The issues leading up to it aren't as dumb as the event itself sounds, with heroes and villains fighting in a ring to be King Omega. This is all about time being out of control due to Grodd messing with it in We Are Tomorrow.

Deadpool/Wolverine: A Time Of Stryfe ★★
Too much time on trying to be wacky and not enough time spent on making a coherent plot. Stryfe is back but it's not Stryfe, it's Apocalypse in Stryfe's body. He wants to end the world and create a new world for mutants a 1,000 years in the future. Deadpool and Wolverine are being mind controlled some times but not others. There's cowboy zombies and skeleton dragons. None of this makes much sense.

Today's trip to my LCS.

1776 #1 <-- New Marvel miniseries by J. Michael Straczynski and Ron Lim
Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt #1
Blue Falcon and Dynomutt #3
Aquaman #11
Batman #162 <-- The rare H2SH sighting in the wild. Any bets on how late the last issue is? There's already 3 issues out for the Batman series after this one.
Beneath the Trees Where No One Sees: Rite of Spring #4
Flash Gordon Quarterly #5
The World To Come #4
Red Coat #15
Rogue Storm #2
Thundercats: Panthro #1
Ultimate Black Panther #22
Ultimate Wolverine #11

Last week's adventures in comics.

Witchblade Volume 1 ★★
I'm not sure why Top Cow suddenly decided to reboot Witchblade and rehash everything that more or less came before back in the 90s. This is just not very good. I typically like Bennett's writing but this is dense and very little happens in these 6 issues. The original actually did a better job of telling this story (even though I often thought it was boring as well.) After 6 issues, I feel like we are more or less where we started, Sara just now has the Witchblade. I had problems with the art and lettering as well. There are a ton of two page spreads and the panel structure or lack thereof doesn't make it easy to figure out what order to read the text boxes plopped all over the page.

The Incal: Kill Wolfhead ★★
My biggest problem with this is that it doesn't stand on its own. You need to know who Kill Wolfhead is to care about any of this. Plus Thomas is way too verbose of a writer. He drones on and on throughout these pages. The gist of the story is that Wolfhard has littered the galaxy with his children and now they are picking his brain clean now that he's severely injured. The best part about this is Pete Woods's art.

No Romance In Hell ★★★
A female demon comes to Earth to find a man for sex. It's not bad. Nor is it great. It's all around fine.

John Carpenter's Tales for a HalloweeNight: Vol 11: More Twisted Tales Masterfully Crafted for Your Terror ★★★★
A very good group of spooky stories for adults this year. Way more hits than misses.

Something Crawled Out ★★
The more this went on, the less focused it got. At first it seems to be about this teenager who is supposed to be the devil and can tell people to do things like the Purple Man. Then it becomes about his friend's little sister who has gone missing. These girls have their skin sloff off for some reason. Nothing is explained. It's like Son M. had a series of ideas in her head and then she tried to fit them all together in one story and it just left me unsatisfied. The art had a canned middle school book look to it and I often couldn't tell the two main characters apart. Even though one was a boy and the other a girl, they had similar character designs that made them look the same in most panels.

The Best American Comics 2019 ★★
Eh, Jilian Tomaki's selections for 2019 didn't do a whole lot for me. That shouldn't surprise me since her and her cousin's comics haven't thrilled me either.

Bring On The Bad Guys ★★★
This was alright. I expected more explorations of each of the characters. Instead we got all of them trying to kill a person to complete a deal with Mephisto. It was basically the same story told 6 different times.

Ms. Marvel: Fists of Justice ★★★
These are 3 really simple one-shots to keep Ms. Marvel in the public eye while she doesn't have her own book. She teams up with the X-Men, Moon Knight and Venom to fight some robot bugs that are stealing DNA. This was kind of generic. I honestly expect a little more from Jody Houser because she's typically a great writer.

Star Wars Adventures: Luke Skywalker and the Treasure of the Dragonsnakes ★★
A slight story set in Luke's time on Dagobah. There's really very little to it. Surprising for a Tom Taylor story.

The Best American Comics 2006 ★★★★
I liked this year's collection. You've got stuff from Joe Sacco, Chris Ware, Jaime Hernandez, Lynda Barry and R. Crump. In addition to the usual suspects were stories by Alex Robinson and Justin Hall that I really liked. That Justin Hall one was pretty crazy, about a woman on a trip to Mexico who has mental problems and other people thereon the trip have to get her back to the U.S. so she's not committed to a psychiatric hospital in Mexico.

Couch Tag ★★★
A memoir about growing up in a messed up family in the 70s. I'm a little younger than Jesse but grew up in a similar environment. If I only knew how to draw...
There are some color illustrations in the back. The background colors though made these really difficult to read the text boxes even with a physical copy.

Absolute Flash Vol. 1: Of Two Worlds ★★★
Extremely decompressed. By the end I felt like very little had happened. Wally West becomes the Flash with out of control powers and the Rogues are a secret government team sent after him. Still invested in this. Just was surprised that it was the worst of the Absolute titles so far.

Absolute Martian Manhunter Vol. 1: Martian Vision ★★★
Is John Jones suffering from a brain injury or is he actually hearing others' thoughts? Middletown is spiraling out of control maybe due to the manipulation of white martians? This thing is trippy and weird. The art really does a great job of bringing this to life. Let's see if Camp and Rodriquez can bring this home in the latter half of the story.

Godfell ★★
A warrior and a rogue travel through the body of a god that has died and landed in this fantasy world. They proceed to kill every group they meet that settle in various organs. It's pretty simplistic but extremely wordy. Sebela needs to learn to edit himself. His verbal diarrhea got tedious very quickly.

Immortal Thor Vol. 5: Death Of The Immortal Thor ★★★
This run has just never gotten to be as good as I wanted it to be. Some of it is Ewing's dialog and exposition. It just always feel stilted. Some of it is the amount of obscure and new but meant to be old characters. You're just constantly going " Who?" This volume also suffers from Bazuldua's lack of backgrounds that they try and hide behind page effects. So this run just gets a "Meh" from me. Hopefully, The Mortal Thor will strive for greater heights.

This week's trip to my LCS.

Alien Vs. Captain America #1
Absolute Green Lantern #8
Absolute Superman #13
Amazing X-Men #2
Avengers #32
Batman #3
Birds of Prey #27
Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Justice League #4
GI Joe #13
Rook Exodus #8
Speed Racer #4
Thundercats Lost #8
Void Rivals #24
Thundercats: Pumyra #1