I Read Comic Books discussion

Happy November! Hard to believe we're already here.

What are you reading this month? Getting into a wintery vibe or staying stuck on spooky? Catching up on the Reading Challenge?

Tell us all about it on the thread below!

Don't forget to check out what the IRCB crew is reading with the Top of My Pile posts over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ircbpodcast

Technically I started this one in October, but I nevertheless burned through Vol. 1, (Issues 1-5) of "Y: The Last Man." Not a new book, but the author's name came up on a podcast and I found a used copy when I was buying some other books for my family. I will read further. I do find some parts of the book a little too camp or "comic-booky," but the premise is good enough. It is a kind of time capsule of the immediate years after 9/11, as well.

I am reading Daredevil: the Man without Fear by Frank Miller

Currently reading Absolute Martian Manhunter, and Memetic by James Tynion IV

Last week's adventures in comics.

From the World of Minor Threats: The Brood ★★★
Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum farm out their version of Succession in the Minor Threats universe to Heath Carson to pretty good effect. Napoleon Archimedes is a tech billionaire and, secretly, a supervillain. (Aren't they all?) He finds out he's dying in the first issue and each subsequent issue zeros in a different child. If you like comics, this is worth a look.

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.

The Jellyfish ★★★
This starts off with Odette in a doctor's office and she's told she has a jellyfish in her eye. For the longest time, I couldn't figure out if she has some kind of eye disease or it's some kind of artistic license and she has a literal jellyfish in her eye as we see this jellyfish float around her in each panel. This is also about Odette breaking out on her own, trying to establish herself as an adult along with a burgeoning new relationship. As the story goes on, you do get clarity into what's going on with Odette's eyes. It's a solid book with good art.

The lettering while being nice and clean (and straight) did drive me nuts as she kept drawing "a"s that looked like "2"s. The one thing I want in my comics is for the lettering to be completely unnoticeable so I can focus on the art and story and not trying to figure out what a character is saying.

Stargazing ★★★★
First, I'll just say that I'm so glad that there is zero romance in this book. It seems like every kids book tries to be about that these days. Instead, it's about 2 very different girls who become friends. Although both are from families of Chinese immigrants living in California, one girl's family is very traditional while the other's is more artsy and bohemian. The book does take a much more serious turn towards the end than I expected that is based on Jen Wang's childhood. This was quite good and I'd be comfortable letting kids of any age read it.

This One Summer ★★
I'm surprised about how many other readers liked this, because it. is. BORING. Nothing happens. It's about 2 sometimes snotty girls on the cusp of being teenagers. They spend a summer in neighboring cottages on Lake Huron and witness some drama about a pregnancy with some older teens and watch horror movies. That's the whole 300+ pages. I don't get it. It's got awards stamped all over it. The one it's missing though is worst graphic novel of the year.

Lackadaisy: Volume #1 ★★★★★
What an absolutely gorgeous book. Butler's sepia tones are perfect for a comic set in the Prohibition era. These anthropomorphic cats work very well too. The story is short but dense and apparently a webcomic that Butler is doing on the side. Apparently more people need to buy this so Butler can work on this full time because it's just terrific. I can't wait to dig into volume 2.

Lackadaisy: Volume #2 ★★★★★
Another terrific installment of anthropomorphic cats bootlegging in St. Louis in the Roaring 20s. I grew up in St. Louis and appreciate the attention to detail. The sepia-toned art is just gorgeous. I wish these would come out more regularly as we've seen 2 volumes in 10 years. But I'll certainly be here for the next installment whenever that comes about.

The Gulf ★★★★★
I thought De Souza did a great job of catching the uncertainty of graduating from high school and establishing different voices for each of the characters. It's about 3 friends who run away from home on the last day of high school. Oli has kept this old pamphlet of a nearby commune since she was 11. Now that she's graduating, she's determined to go there so that she doesn't have to get a job or go to college and enter society. The book is about them hiking around this island in the Pacific Northwest, trying to find this commune while Oli's mom is attempting to track them down and find out what happened. It's a solid coming of age story.

Skim ★
Another book by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki that I don't get the love for. It's about a depressed Goth girl in high school who is trying to be a Wicca and writes in her diary all the time. A kid in her school that she didn't know kills himself. That's pretty much it. Nothing much happens. There's very little story. Even the art is poor in this early work.

Renegade Royale ★★★
An inconsequential but fun story about a group of friends trying to win a VR gaming tournament. It's slight on story but better on laughs.

Bandette Volume 5: The Wedding of B.D. Belgique ★★★★★
These comics by the husband and wife team of Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover never fail to delight. Bandette is irreverent as ever as she finally takes on the Voice and has to get the grumpy Inspector to realize he's in love with his partner. Hopefully we'll continue to see Bandette in the future eating her candy bars while stealing everything in sight.

Halloween Man ★★★
This is some weird comics. Halloween Man is a guy who was turned into a vampire and then turned into a zombie to keep him from becoming a vampire. Now he and his scientist girlfriend fight monsters in Solar City. There's a crossover with Hack/Slash and some art by Nicola Scott and David Baldeon in here. Not bad.

Kid Maroon ★★
This fake character resurrected from the Golden Age would have worked better as satire than the ultra serious tone given. It's about a kid detective investigating a murder and the burning of an orphanage. There's no detective work though and it seems to just be a contest into how sad Cantwell could try and make this.


Dying Inside ★★★★
A surprisingly good comic from Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy. There's definitely some trigger warnings as the main character is a teenage girl trying to kill herself. Problem is, when she tries to do it, she discovers she's immortal. Now her new witch friend has to help her find out what happened and how to get back to normal. Lisa Serle's art is real nice.

Beyond Real: The Complete Series ★★★
This was cool. A couple gets into a car accident and one of them is in a coma. Then June discovers she's in a computer simulation and steps behind the curtain in order to try and save her boyfriend. The art really makes this, changing to a new artist with each new reality she visits. It's very inventive.

Yellow Stringer, Volume 1: Fake News Provocateurs ★★★
A female journalist and an ex-cop team up to investigate strange cases while working at a Weekly World News type newspaper. Turns out their cases are real though. Not bad.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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...