What I bought, read, watched, or otherwise consumed – April 2023

“They’ve grown comfortable with their money,” I said. “They genuinely believe they’re entitled to it. This conviction gives them a kind of rude health. They glow a little.”

“I have trouble imagining death at that income level,” she said.

“Maybe there is no death as we know it. Just documents changing hands.” (Don DeLillo, from White Noise)

COMICS

Ask for Mercy volume 1 by Richard Starkings (writer) and Abigail Jill Harding (artist). $29.99, 254 pgs, Dark Horse.

This is a magnificent comic, mostly due to Harding’s stunning painted art, which is a bit reminiscent of Sienkiewicz but is still completely her thing. She zips between modern England – using more earth tones to show how mundane it is – and 1940s Europe and 1870s Indian territory, giving each of them a distinctive look and color palette – Nazi-occupied Europe is darker blue, while the Dakotas of the 1870s are brighter and greener. She gives us horribly slimy insect monsters, which are tremendous Lovecraftian nightmares, and also Budgie, a bizarre shapeshifter who looks vaguely insectoid but Harding manages to make him almost … cuddly? The other “good guys” in the book are a werewolf and a woman who transforms into a buffalo, and Harding makes them both fascinating, as Ratmir the werewolf is not a traditional wolf, but kind of man stuck halfway to wolf form, while Kasa is almost an idea of a buffalo, she’s so ethereal. Harding uses her paints well to make all the creatures in the book a bit ragged, which allows her to slide into the chimerical, as some of the creatures are terrifying amalgams of different forms. Her people are excellent, too, especially Mercy, the main character, who slowly turns into a warrior over the course of the book. When she’s introduced, she’s trying to sell real estate, so she’s putting on a pleasant face, which Harding does well, but once she’s sucked into Nazi-centered adventures and then she has to fight the ghost corpse of Andrew Jackson (yep), Harding shows how she’s becoming tougher and tougher, and it’s a nice transformation. Her Lakota are interesting, as well – proud warriors, sure, but we can see the effect the deprivations of the American government are having on them, as Harding makes them slightly stooped, definitely malnourished, and in general, weakened enough that we can believe they will put up a stiff resistance but ultimately fail. Her Custer is superb, a fierce and beautiful monster who we can believe would be as cocky as Starkings makes him. It’s an absolutely gorgeous comic, and I took a bit longer to read it because I was so impressed with the art.

Starkings is a good writer, but not a great one, although his ideas are usually pretty good. Here he has Mercy, who happens to be the scion of royalty in another dimension whose mentor (and eventual lover, which is always icky, even though it’s clear Mercy is old enough so that it’s not too, too icky) sends her away when evil insect creatures start taking over his world and corrupting everything they touch. Mercy doesn’t remember who she is, but the mentor/wizard is able to show her that she has the ability to open portals through space and time, and she meets three others people/monsters that she will help fight the insect creatures. In 1942, they stop Heinrich Himmler from opening our world to the insects, and in 1876, they … well, it’s kind of unclear what they do – they sort of fight Custer and they fight the ghost of Andrew Jackson and they sort of fight Ikto’mi the trickster, but the second volume feels more about the characters and what they’ve been through and also setting up a third volume, which will occur in the present (these issues are from 2018-2020, and I don’t know if Starkings and Harding have continued the series). Starkings knows how to put a story together, so there’s nice pace to it all, with some good but not terribly surprising twists, some decent social commentary, some humor, and an interesting character at the center of it all. He even does something interesting with the mentor that fuels some of the story and leads into the next volume. It’s just a good adventure story with horrible bad guys and somewhat complicated good guys, and it all moves along nicely. Harding’s art certainly helps, but Starkings does, after all, know what he’s doing.

I really liked this book, as the art is wonderful and the story works nicely. I hope there will be more before some big company throws a chunk of money at Harding!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Basilisk volumes 1-3 by Cullen Bunn (writer), Jonas Scharf (artist), Alex Guimarães (colorist), Ed Dukeshire (letterer), Eric Harburn (editor), and Ramiro Portnoy (editor). $44.97, 264 pgs, Boom! Studios.

I wrote last month that I hadn’t gotten volume 2 yet, but it arrived at the store, so I decided to re-read this entire series. It’s a decent “OMG teh superheroes r rilly EVIL!!!!” story, although Bunn does try to gussy it up by bringing in a religious factor. I’m not saying that’s a bad slant, because if superheroes existed, you can bet there’d be cults surrounding them, but I’m a bit unsure about it in this world, because while the “gods” have fancy powers (based on the five senses) and are pretty tough, they do seem remarkably easy to kill when you get right down to it, so why would a person who needs that kind of supernatural validation pick such frail idols? I mean, I guess “easy” is a poor choice of words, but the first one to die gets shot once, and it’s not clear if he would have been able to protect himself all that well if he saw it coming. Gods should be tougher, right?

However, it’s a pretty good book. One of the five, Regan (she’s the one on all three of the covers, in case you’re unsure), who has some kind of sight power that makes eyes bleed, decides that maybe – just maybe – slaughtering “normal” humans is a bad look, as the five “gods” announced their presence to the world by walking into a town and killing everyone in it. One of the town’s inhabitants, Hannah (who happened to be away at the time, but her husband and daughter were killed), wants revenge on the “Chimera” (that’s what the five, collectively, are called), and she forms an uneasy partnership with Regan to do it. They discover in the first volume that when one of them is killed, that power is transferred to the others – a bit weaker as it’s diluted, it seems, but still – and the bad seed of the group, Vanessa, finds this very interesting. Of course, it all gets apocalyptic, and of course, we find out what the Chimera really are, and of course, lots and lots of corpses pile up, and of course, we find out that Hannah has a very particular reason for wanting revenge (beyond just “They killed my family!”), and of course, it ends a bit ambiguously. Just because Bunn hits a lot of familiar notes doesn’t make this less effective – Bunn knows how to tell a story well, pacing it perfectly and twisting things just enough that the surprises – mild ones, sure, but still – are appreciated. As I noted, the religious aspect of the book is a bit hard to really buy, but that’s not because it’s implausible – I just wish Bunn had made the Chimera a bit more god-like or the cultists – represented by one dude who’s a total true believer – more comprehensible, with maybe a bit more time spent showing us why they believe so fervently. It’s a minor thing, but that’s just how I feel, dang it!

Scharf and Guimarães are the real stars of the show, as the book looks marvelous. Scharf’s “regular” pencil work is terrific – detailed, fluid, expressive – and he uses blacks really well to set the mood. The characters are interesting and diverse, which, when we find out what’s going on, adds a nice touch of … not exactly racism, but an odd paternalism to the proceedings which makes the … thing that’s happening a bit more sinister. In the flashbacks Scharf softens his line considerably, while Guimarães colors them monochromatically, so they look very distinctive and unusual, setting them apart nicely from the main narrative. For a book with a lot of horrific violence, it’s beautiful to look at.

Bunn is a good writer, so even though some of his stuff is a bit formulaic, he knows what he’s doing and he gives his comics a lot of verve and personality, which usually can overcome the occasional pedestrian plot. Basilisk is interesting because of the hints toward religion, although I would have liked more of that. Still, it’s an exciting and interesting comic, which ain’t a bad thing!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

The Deadliest Bouquet by Erica Schultz (writer/letterer), Carola Borelli (artist), Gab Contreras (colorist), Tom Chu (colorist), and James Emmett (editor). $16.99, 113 pgs, Image.

On the back of the book, the recap blurb (which is, if not exactly the same, very close to what was in Previews as the solicitation): “In 1998, three estranged sisters trained by their Nazi-hunting mother come together to solve their mother’s murder … and try not to kill each other in the process. Follow the Hawthorn sisters in THE DEADLIEST BOUQUET as they explore what “family” means and discover the lengths they would go to keep a secret.”

I mean, that sounds pretty awesome, right? I like murder mysteries, and the backstory sounds nifty, and there’s a family drama … works for me! So I picked this up. And … hmmm.

Y’see, the back cover blurb is a bit misleading. I don’t want to give too much away, because it is a murder mystery, but … it’s still a bit misleading. The sisters’ mom is dead in the beginning, and Rose, who lives with her mother, is calling Poppy and Violet (every person in the family is named after flowers, which is kind of annoying) to let them know what has happened. Poppy lives with her husband and kids in California (Rose lives in New Jersey) and Violet is a model in Europe, and they haven’t seen each other in years, and they don’t seem to like each other all that much. As the cops investigate, we begin to learn more about their lives and why they’re estranged and what has happened in their past. It’s intriguing – their father mysteriously vanished twenty years earlier, their grandmother lived through World War II in Europe, and they all have their reasons for not liking each other. Rose has stayed in Jersey to take care of their mother, while Poppy threw herself into domesticity and Violet threw herself into glamor. There seems to be a lot going on … you have two generations of Nazi hunters, a father who seems to have been involved in some shady stuff and who has disappeared, one sister who is involved in violence somehow, and a murder. Holy crap! However, there are a LOT of red herrings in this book, which is going to happen in murder mysteries, but the resolution of the murder is … kind of weak, unfortunately. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, either, which is also frustrating. It’s puzzling why Schultz would make this family so … interesting, I guess, if you’re not going to really go with it. In the end, Schultz is simply writing a story about three sisters who are estranged and whose family has secrets and how they work through those. That’s not a bad plot, but because Schultz adds so much of the pulpier elements, it becomes something else that Schultz doesn’t take full advantage of, and it feels like she’s unsure which way to go with the characters. It’s frustrating.

Borelli does some good work, although there are some weird bits. In one panel, one of the characters is supposed to be a teen or even a tween, and she looks like a small adult, and it’s very weird (I’ve noted before about artists not drawing young people well, and this is an example of it). She’s also not great at the action, which is not surprising with some newer artists, but there are a few crucial panels that are a bit confusing, and it seems like Borelli could do a better job laying out the page and drawing the action. I assume Schultz had something to do with the coloring, and in one sequence, we see the Nazi-hunting grandmother freely walking around the street in Nazi-occupied Europe … and she’s brown-skinned. I still get annoyed when creators make older characters diverse without acknowledging that it’s unusual. This woman would probably not be strolling around the street and seducing Nazis, as she probably would have been carted off to a concentration camp long before. As I’ve noted, I’m all for diversity, but in a Nazi-run place, I very much doubt this woman would be wandering around killing Nazis without any repercussions. But maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, I wanted to like this a lot more. When the sisters are arguing with each other and Poppy’s husband is trying to find out what’s going on and they’re working through their issues, the book works pretty well. But it’s overstuffed, a bit, and it feels like Schultz didn’t trust herself to write a good family drama and had to add all these other elements that don’t feel as fleshed out. Too bad.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Gun Honey: Blood for Blood by Charles Ardai (writer), Ang Hor Kheng (artist), Asifur Rahman (colorist), and David Leach (letterer). $17.99, 88 pgs, Titan Comics.

This is the second Gun Honey volume, and they might not be “the finest kind of pulp noir,” as Ed Brubaker quotes on the cover, but both series have been pretty good sleazy noir, with any excuse to get our heroine and any other woman naked taken, even if it’s a bit ridiculous (and, honestly, a lot of it isn’t actually ridiculous, as they’re in situations where you can easily believe they’d be naked). There’s a lot to like about the comics, but they are pretty trashy. I mean, our hero, Joanna Tan, get naked at the drop of a hat, and her breasts are a bit big for her to be flying around without some serious consequences, but the plot speeds along nicely, there are slimy villains we can hate, somewhat sympathetic villains we can sympathize with, and even Joanna and her buddy, Brook, aren’t paragons of virtue. I mean, it’s pulp fiction – what do you expect? In this volume, Joanna is kind of off the grid after the events of the first volume (in which she, a supposed passive weapons supplier, was forced into action and had some bad experiences), but Brook finds her because someone is framing her for some crimes, including murder. It turns out it’s an ex-agent in Brooks’s agency, who has a bit of a grudge against Joanna. So Joanna has to find her, but of course all the people this other woman is committing crimes against are looking for Joanna, too, because they think she’s the culprit. Meanwhile, Brooks’s bosses in the Shadowy Government Organization™ might not be trustworthy. I know, quelle surprise. There is, not surprisingly, a lot of violence and several corpses, and unlike volume 1, it ends on the tiniest bit of a cliffhanger. I guess they didn’t know if volume 1 would sell so they made it more standalone, and now that they know it does sell, they’re more confident. This volume does tell a fairly complete story, but it does leave some plot threads. Tune in next time for more nudity and violence!

Kheng’s art is nice, in that smooth, highly rendered style that has become so popular but which also looks a lot better than it did 10-15 years ago, before advances in digital coloring. The hatching, for instance, is nicely done, making this look a bit more “traditional” and making sure it’s not too clean, which makes the art a bit more noir-ish, as it generally looks more like an action movie than a noir story (not that there’s anything wrong with that; I just find it humorous that reviewers call this “noir” and “pulp” when it’s much more action movie). Some of his faces have their emotions rendered right out of them, but in other places, he does a good job with the expressions, so it’s clear Kheng can do them, just sometimes he’s a bit off or the colorist, Rahman, has done a bit too much. Honestly, the biggest problem I have with the art is the boobs. Not that we see so much of them, but that both starring women have rather large breasts but they never get in the way of them doing a lot of acrobatic and athletic stuff. It just seems they would be more of a hindrance to some of the stunts that Joanna and her rival pull, but they never are. Hashtag BoobsPhysics4Evah!!!!! Other than that, the art is a bit slick, but it’s still done well.

This is a decent title, nothing great but entertaining. I’ll probably check out the next volume to see what’s going to happen, so they have me hooked a bit, so there!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Moon Knight volume 3: Halfway to Sanity by Jed MacKay (writer), Alessandro Cappuccio (artist)< Federico Sabbatini (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer), and Daniel Kirchhoffer (collection editor). $24.99, 150 pgs, Marvel.

Ugh, vampires, am I right? Our hero has been flirting with vampires the entire time in this volume (he has a vampire assistant!), but it comes to a head in this volume, and MacKay does some clever things with it, which is the only reason it works as well as it does. Instead of making his vampires part of a “vampire nation” (which Marvel insists is a thing; see below), he makes them part of a corporate cult, almost, which isn’t the worst idea. The big confrontation between MK and the vamps comes at what almost feels like a time-share convention, as the Tutor – the head bad guy – tries to sell his vision of a vampiric future, and our hero isn’t having any of it. I still wish vampires were not part of the book, but it’s not a bad way to present them.

Meanwhile, the crux of the book is more about MK coming to terms with his other identities, as the best issue in the volume – issue #14 – has him debating with Steven Grant and Jake Lockley about their role in Moon Knight/Marc Spector’s life, as our hero is becomingly increasingly unhinged (I mean, duh, but still). Issue #13 is a pretty good one, too, as the Tutor tries to get Taskmaster to kill Moon Knight and Taskmaster tells him why that’s such a very, very bad idea. Once Moon Knight makes peace with his other selves, he’s able to confront the threat posed by the Tutor and be a kinder, gentler (I mean, relatively) superhero. I don’t love Sabbatini’s art on the Annual, because it’s a bit too cartoony, but it’s still a good issue, as MacKay brings back Marlene, Marc’s daughter (who’s far too old for the timeline, but whatever), and Jack Russell. The plot is a bit goofy, but MacKay does a good job with the characters and how they interact with each other (the Annual also gives us that Rod Reis cover for this volume, which … man, it just stinks, doesn’t it?). Cappuccio is still a weird artist – he’s still a bit too angular and occasionally too … “digital,” I suppose, as his characters occasionally look too fake – but he does set a nice mood for the book, and his work on the “haunted” Midnight Mission is quite creepy. It’s not my favorite art, but it’s pretty good.

MacKay is doing a solid job with everyone’s favorite weirdo Batman knock-off. Now that the vampires are taken care of, maybe we can move on to something more interesting. We shall see!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Nightmare Country volume 1 by James Tynion IV (writer), Lisandro Estherren (artist), Maria Llovet (artist), Yanick Paquette (artist), Andrea Sorrentino (artist), Francesco Francavilla (artist), Dani (artist), Aaron Campbell (artist), Patrice Delpeche (colorist), Nathan Fairbairn (colorist), Jordie Bellaire (colorist), Tamra Bonvillain (colorist), Simon Bowland (letterer), and Chris Conroy (collection editor). $19.99, 136 pgs, DC.

Tynion writes in the foreword how big an influence Sandman had on his life, and how happy he is to be writing this, and that’s both a good and a bad thing, as you might expect. It’s good because Sandman is superb, and the universe it spawned can be endless (yep), but it’s bad for the same reason: because of its nature, it’s so tempting to simply return to the well. Some writers have avoided this better than others, and Tynion doesn’t completely fall into the trap, but it’s hard to avoid it, man. When he needs a deus ex machina, he has Daniel, showing up and making everything … if not better, then resolved. He has the Corinthian, so of course, the “cereal” convention from the original series comes up. This is, of course, a different Corinthian, which is why the book works as well as it does – and I did enjoy it, don’t get me wrong – but it’s a bit frustrating that he can’t quite break away. The final issue of the collection, which is a one-off to a degree, stars Thessaly, who always seems to pop up in these books even though she’s kind of annoying. Tynion can’t help himself but bring her in! And because of Daniel’s presence, and the Corinthian’s presence, Flynn’s story – the actual story – gets lost in the shuffle a bit. She’s still important, but the plot meanders away from her a lot, and her fate doesn’t feel as powerful as it should, even though it ends up being not quite what it appears to be. Even one of the bad guys – I won’t reveal it! – is boring, because it’s someone from the old series and it doesn’t have quite the impact Tynion wants it to. However … despite the meandering plot, which isn’t really explained, it feels important and even relevant, but, frustratingly, we’ll have to wait for more to know what’s going on (the next series started this month). I don’t mind subtlety and even slow burns, but man, this feels like waiting for something to boil when the stovetop is set on medium-low. Will Tynion shit or have to get off the pot? Will I mix more metaphors?!?!?!?

Estherren has done some good art on other books, and he does have a weird, cartoony style that shouldn’t work with horror, but does quite well. His two otherwordly assassins are creepy and terrifying, and the “smiling man” that Flynn sees is disgusting and weird. Estherren tends to do a bit worse with the regular humans, not because they look bad but because they look over-expressive, almost, as if they’re in a melodrama and they’re trying really hard to emote. I mean, this is a melodrama and the things that happen call for an extreme response, but it still looks a bit weird. His Flynn is good, though, mostly because of how he dresses her – she looks like a struggling art student, so when she gets caught up with people with more money and/or fashion sense than she, she looks very out of place, which is the point. Estherren also doesn’t quite get the grandeur of the Dreaming, which is evident when, in issue #1, Paquette draws it beautifully, for instance (the guest artists – except for Llovet, who draws all of issue #6 – only draw a few pages, interludes about what the Corinthian is up to). The art is generally quite good, but there are some places where it’s clear Estherren is more comfortable and others where he’s less so.

Overall, this is a good comic, held back a bit by its connections to the old series, but still engaging. It would be nice if Tynion focused a bit more on the human characters than the supernatural ones, but such is life. We’ll see where he goes with this in the next volume!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings by Gene Luen Yang (writer), Marcus To (artist), Michael Yg (artist), Erick Arciniega (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer), and Jennifer Grünwald (collection editor). $24.99, 150 pgs, Marvel.

I’ve enjoyed Yang’s work with Shang-Chi, but this is a bit disappointing, as it’s uneven and it feels somewhat inconsequential. Yang tells three stories in this volume, with the first three issues dealing with bad guys trying to steal the ten rings (random bad guys in the first issue, more focused bad guys in the next two), then the final three are about supernatural beings deciding whether he’s worthy of having them (the third story is one of those random “special” issues that Marvel puts out and sends Shang-Chi back in time to team up with his father, and it’s not bad). The idea that bad guys would want to steal the ten rings is not a bad plot, although Yang was wise to not stretch it too long, because it could get boring. The first issue is a bit boring, but the second two are better, because it’s a bit more personal to Shang-Chi. But the “Game of Rings” of the last three issues is more boring, because it feels like there are no stakes. The supernatural beings bring together ten challengers for the rings, and they fight, video-game style, until one is left. Yang brings in some characters we’ve seen before and some from Shang-Chi’s past, plops in a weird evil thing just to spice things up (it’s connected to the rings, so it’s not completely out of left field), and has them fight it out. There are no real surprises – even the way Shang-Chi proves himself “worthy” isn’t a surprise – and it’s perfectly fine, but nothing special. We know Shang-Chi is going to end up with the rings, so why bother? It doesn’t really show us anything new about the character – he’s a good dude going in, and he’s a good dude throughout – and the one very minor surprise isn’t that impressive. It’s as if Yang had two stories in him – Shang-Chi takes over the Five Weapons Society, Shang-Chi gets the rings – but when those sold well, Marvel wanted more out of him and he hadn’t thought it through. Shang-Chi and his new empire should actually do something in the world, and Yang has our hero futzing around in other dimensions trying to hold onto rings. It’s frustrating.

It’s also frustrating because To’s work in this volume isn’t quite up to his usual standards. It’s still good superhero art, to be sure, but his line seems a bit heavier than usual, which doesn’t work as well as with his fluid style as much as a thinner line. It seems his faces are a bit looser, too, which lessens the “acting” his characters can do. It just looks slightly “heavier” than his past artwork, which “slows” it down a bit. He still does some nice hatching, and I do like some of the rough lines that give his art a bit of texture, but it still feels a bit unbalanced toward a more sludgy look. To’s art is still good, but something bugs me about it this time around. It’s hard to explain.

I’m not sure if Yang has more Shang-Chi stories in him, but I wouldn’t mind reading more from him, despite this one being a bit of a disappointment. Maybe next time Shang-Chi can actually do something!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Stuff of Nightmares: The Monster Makers by R.L. Stine (writer), A.L. Kaplan (artist), Roman Titov (colorist), Gonçalo Lopes (colorist), and Jim Campbell (letterer). $16.99, 100 pgs, Boom! Studios.

I didn’t pre-order this, but my retailer showed it to me and I thought I’d take a look – it looked pretty good, and I know Stine has at least some cachet as a writer, even though I’ve never read anything by him. So I picked this up. It’s a Frankenstein story, in which two brothers in Massachusetts manage to create life, but things, naturally, go to shit pretty quickly. They’re never exactly sane – on page 4 they kill a delivery person for spare parts – so it’s kind of hard to care what happens to them, and anyone even remotely sympathetic really needs to watch their backs, because lots of people get killed in gory ways in this book. It’s much more fun to think of it as a comedy (and I’m not certain Stine doesn’t think of it that way), because while the original Shelley book is a tragedy, in this book, the characters are so thinly sketched and even the monsters – plural – aren’t tragic figures, so we’re not thinking about their lost humanity or their attempts to regain what was taken from them. They’re just out to kill, and kill they do! The dark humor throughout, though, makes the story work better than if we read it straight. The scientists are clearly mad (and they know it, too), but they just can’t help themselves. Their Girl Friday seems drawn to the weirdness of creating life out of dead things, which makes her an easy target once things get dicey. The reporters and first responders seem decent enough, but they have no idea what they’re in for. The weird old servant from the brothers’ childhood is much sneakier than we think. All in all, it’s a fun, nasty little horror story with not much on its mind except the gore. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it also makes it a bit forgettable.

Kaplan’s art is quite good (although look at that Francavilla cover and tell me he wouldn’t have killed on this book), and he’s clearly having fun with this too. He makes sure we see every disemboweling and decapitation, and his monsters – both the early ones that really go nuts and “Frankie,” the one that the brothers tout as a success, are nicely done. He does a good job making this world – whether it’s Massachusetts or North Carolina, where the brothers flee when the monsters escape and wreak havoc – somewhat seedy, which tends to imply that the brothers are way, waaaay outside the mainstream of science here, and his weird ancient house in North Carolina fits the vibe very well. His characters look like regular people, even the scientists (although they both have ponytails, which makes me think Kaplan drew this in 1993 and it’s only now seeing the light of day!), and it helps ground the story and make the monsters even more horrific as well as making the whole “the humans are really the monsters!!!” vibe that lingers in the story (Stine doesn’t hit it hard, but it’s such a standard trope these days that he doesn’t need to) have a bit more impact. Titov and Lopes (who colors issue #4) do a nice job making the book a bit dark without making it murky – there are a lot of blues and Kaplan uses shadows well, but it’s always clear what’s happening and when the colorists decide to go bright, the page explodes vibrantly. The art helps elevate the story, which is always a good thing.

I don’t love this, but it’s fun. It seems like Stine wants to make this an anthology, as he introduces a “Crypt-Keeper” character who guides us through the story and could, presumably, guide us through other ones. We’ll see. For now, this is a solid horror story, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. Let’s move on!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

3Keys by David Messina (writer/artist/colorist), Rita Petruccioli (artist), Andrea Serio (colorist), Alessandra Alexakis (color assistant), Shawn Lee (letterer), Valeria Gobbato (translator), and Chris Ryall (editor). $19.99, 136 pgs, Image.

Messina is a terrific artist, and that’s evident throughout this volume. He uses thick, bold lines (he’s a bit like Terry Dodson, if you haven’t seen his art) and has a wonderful design sense, giving us interesting hot women who don’t look alike (which is harder than you might think) and beautiful, cat-like creatures (there’s that guy on the cover!) and weird, wild monsters. He uses page layouts really well (occasionally he leaves too much space, but that’s a minor thing) to create an interesting reading experience, adding inset panels deftly to the page, using some really interesting angles, and generally having great command of the storytelling. His coloring is very good, as well – the book isn’t murky but it isn’t too bright, as the colors are bold and occasionally brash but not overwhelming. When he has a big fight to draw in the final issue, he’s able to squeeze a lot of panels onto pages to speed up the action, which helps camouflage his lack of fluidity with the figures (which, again, is something many artists struggle with, so it’s not really a knock, but Messina is very good at “hiding” it). It’s a very impressive book, visually. (I should point out that Petruccioli and Serio draw only a few pages – this is Messina’s show.)

Unfortunately, Messina also writes this, and it’s a bit of a mess. It’s not terrible, but it is a bit wonky, and I don’t think I can blame it all on the translation (or on Ryall and Scott Tipton, who are credited with “dialogue assist”). So, the idea is that Lovecraftian monsters (I mean that literally – Cthulhu is the lurking big bad of this story) are able to get to our world through a dimension that intersects with humans’ dreams, so they scorched that dimension and killed everyone in it. Three cat creatures came through to our world to find the three descendants of Randolph Carter, all of whom are capable of wielding a big-ass broadsword (called the “key,” although it is, in fact, a sword) that can kill the monsters. The “key” has been divided into three parts, all of which are just swords, so I’m not sure how it was divided. Noah Carter is one of them, and she’s the main character, along with her cat creature (each cat creature found one of the descendants and became her mentor), Theon. Basically, there’s a lot of killing monsters in this volume, which is awfully fun. And while I appreciate that this isn’t an “origin” story – do we really need one? – it’s begun so in media res that it’s a bit confusing. Why are the three keys identical swords if they’re the three parts of a bigger sword? How did Theon – a big cat creature, remember – convince Noah of who she was? How long have they been together, as Noah seems awfully skilled with her weapon? There’s a bad guy in this, and it’s supposed to be a tragedy that this person is a bad guy, but we know nothing about them, so who cares? Messina tries to add some personality to Noah during her “down” time, but it’s not very good, and I don’t know, again, if it’s something that’s lost in translation. Messina also seems to enjoy picking on comic book readers, which seems weird. It’s not quite Millar-level contempt, but he does have Noah lay into comics fans a few times, even though she works at a comic book store. Why does she work there? What’s in it for her? (It can’t be money, as she can’t make too much scratch.) It’s just very disjointed writing, with Noah not feeling like a real character, but simply a vehicle to move the plot along, and Messina leaving far too much unexplained so he can get to the monster-killing (which, I mean, is very cool). It’s a bit frustrating.

We get a big “The End” at the end of this, even though it’s clearly not over and we get two epilogues that set up more stuff, so I assume Messina simply meant it’s the end of this volume (I don’t know how Italian comics work, so I don’t know how this was originally published). I’m ambivalent about further volumes. On the one hand, the writing does annoy me. On the other, the book is really gorgeous. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what I think when it comes down the road.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Vanish volume 1 by Donny Cates (writer), Ryan Stegman (penciler), JP Mayer (inker), Sonia Oback (colorist), and John J. Hill (letterer). $14.99, 91 pgs, Image.

Cates and Stegman give us a story that, on the surface, is pretty good. There’s a very ragged dude who gets mugged and then saved by a youthful superhero, but something happens to him that makes him realize the superhero is really part of a cabal that used to be villains in another dimension where this dude, when he was a kid, was learning to be a soldier in a magical war against this cabal. Got it? Our dude, Oliver, was in a military academy learning how to fight against a big ol’ villain – called Vanish – and his minions, who are trying to take over the dimension where they live. Oliver manages to defeat the villain (it’s kind of clever how he does it) and becomes a hero, but his life doesn’t turn out quite as well as he wants. He lives in “our” dimension, is married to another ex-student, and takes a lot of drugs and drinks a lot of alcohol to forget who he is. But then he realizes that Vanish’s minions live in our dimension and have set themselves up as superheroes, so he decides to become a “super-villain” to take them down. Ultra-violence ensues.

It’s not a bad plot, but there’s something off about it and I can’t quite put my finger on it. Cates does a pretty good job setting things up, but it becomes a bit obvious as it goes on what’s happening, and he never zags when he can take the road well traveled. The story unfurls in the most predictable way possible, and it’s a big frustrating to read, even though it’s fairly entertaining. There are a couple of clever moments, and the fight between Oliver and two of the “superheroes” at the beginning of issue #3 is very well done, but it still feels like Cates is simply painting by numbers. Stegman is a good artist, but his art here is a bit odd, as well. He has a cartoony style, which makes his art fluid and he choreographs his fights well, but because of the cartoonish nature of the lines, some of it feels less serious than it should be. In some places, the panels are supposed to be serious, but the slight goofiness of the characters makes it less so. Stegman is a good superhero artist, but I’m not completely sold on him doing an extremely bloody comic like this. It just doesn’t quite work.

I probably won’t keep getting this story as it moves forward. I might, but it’s definitely on the fence. Cates has done some decent work, but he’s also done some mediocre stuff, so we’ll see what mood I’m in when the second volume comes down the road!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

We Only Find Them When They’re Dead volume 3: The Soul by Al Ewing (writer), Simone Di Meo (artist), Mariasara Miotti (color assistant), AndWorld Design (letterer), and Eric Harburn (editor). $14.99, 112 pgs, Boom! Studios.

This final volume of the series once again shows how weird this series was – not bad, you understand, just weird. Ewing has always been a weird writer, and so it’s not surprising that this series is weird, but the problem with this volume, specifically, is that Ewing has set things up in the first two volumes to get to this one, just so he can philosophize on the nature of existence. Which is … fine? I mean, comics writers often philosophize on the nature of existence, because they dig it, and Ewing is weirder than most, so you’d think he’d be able to do it, but … it’s really hard to do that within the context of a serial comic book story, ya know? Ewing is telling a story spread across hundreds of years, and the characters are less characters than philosophizing archetypes, so it’s hard to become too invested in what they’re going through. I mean, if Nietzsche couldn’t come to terms with humanity’s existence and that’s literally all the dude ever thought about, it’s going to be hard for Ewing to get through it. He gives it the old college try, though, and this volume does throw up some interesting ideas about the gods and who we worship and why we worship, and the series as a whole is titillating with its agenda and the way Ewing flips the story around a bit and ends up in a bit of a loop. It’s tough to get too into this volume because I don’t want to spoil anything – it ties back into what the dude was doing in the first volume when he went looking for living gods (as the humans … only find them when they’re dead) and it ties into what happened once he found them, but again, I don’t want to give too much away. It’s fairly clever, not as deep as it could be (which, again, isn’t too much of a criticism, as it can’t be too deep and still exist in this format), and Di Meo’s burnished art is usually beautiful and occasionally confusing (the layouts don’t always work, and the soft-focus coloring can, weirdly, obscure some of the lines). It’s the kind of book that feels like it could go for far longer so that Ewing could take his time with the ideas of spiritualism he’s mining, but Boom! doesn’t do that kind of thing, and it probably wouldn’t sell anyway. It has to be good enough that Ewing was able to do 15 issues about this weird sci-fi world of dead gods and clones and other dimensions. It’s a fascinating series that doesn’t quite pull off everything Ewing is aiming for, but is still pretty impressive.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

X-Terminators by Leah Williams (writer), Carlos Gómez (artist), Bryan Valenza (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer), and Jennifer Grünwald (collection editor). $17.99, 110 pgs, Marvel.

Dazzler and Jubilee, two of my favorite X-Men (see below), team up with Boom-Boom (who’s not bad) and Chick Wolverine (who’s … well, she exists) for a night out and an adventure! What could go wrong????

As it turns out, quite a bit. This is pretty terrible all around, and it saddens me. Some of my objection are of the “old man yells at cloud” variety, I readily admit, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong, either.

I mean, I could get into why I don’t like how Williams writes the characters because they seem nothing like Dazzler and Jubilee, but that would get really long and you don’t care that much. She makes Boom-Boom really, really stupid, too, and she’s not as good a writer as Warren Ellis, so it doesn’t quite work as well for her as it did for him. Even if we can deal with these characters not being the “real” Alison and Jubilation, they act stupidly as well, and their interactions do not sound like things anyone says to anyone outside of a very bad reality television show or teen drama. I don’t know a lot of “young” people, but do they really talk about how juicy someone’s ass is all the time? I doubt it. It also feels weird because the sliding timescale of Marvel means that somehow, Alison, Jubilee, Tabitha, and Laura are all the same-ish age? Alison has to be at least 15 years older than the others, so why would she call Jubilee to go out and get drunk? I mean, I have fallen way, way behind my X-reading, so maybe they’re totes BFFs these days, but it just feels … weird. Then there’s Krakoa. FUCKING KRAKOA!!!! I don’t know why I could get away with reading an X-book and not have FUCKING KRAKOA factor in at some point, but I had hope, hope that was crushed as I read. And then there’s fucking vampires, which, as you know from above, I could just do without. It ties back into the FUCKING KRAKOA angle – the bureaucrats who sit on the Fucking Quiet Council are bothered by the fact that Alison and the rest are killing vampires because Dracula and the “vampire nation” are pissy about it (sigh). Alison should just say “THEY’RE FUCKING VAMPIRES” and be done with it, but nooooo – they’re actually on a kind of trial for doing so, even though they were just defending themselves. Stupid Quiet Council. The introduction of the FUCKING KRAKOA angle is really weirdly done, too – that’s the biggest problem with this series: the storytelling is really, really disjointed, and not in a fun way. FUCKING KRAKOA just suddenly turns up in issue #2, and it shows up at weird places for the rest of the book, and it really does feel like Williams was kind-of, sort-of forced to tie this into FUCKING KRAKOA even though she didn’t want to. I don’t know – it continues to be a terrible idea that makes all the books worse, but especially ones like this one, which literally have no need to bring in anything remotely stinking like FUCKING KRAKOA. There’s also the cursing. There’s a LOT of it in this book, but of course, we get a lot of grawlix. It’s stupid. Look, as you can tell, I dig a good swearing every now and then, but to put it in a comic that you know is not going to allow it is lazy writing. It’s Williams’s way to say, “Hey, my book is so cool that Marvel won’t let me swear!” when she knows that going in, so it’s not rebellious at all. It’s just stupid. Sigh. I really am angry at the skies, aren’t I?

Gómez’s art exists, I guess. It’s a bit too cartoony for me, but he has fun with it, which is all that it needs. I don’t love it, but it gets the job done. I can’t work up too much emotion about it when the writing makes me this angry.

I hate that I can’t get behind what’s going on with the X-Men anymore. I love these characters (not just Dazzler and Jubilee, of course, but the whole idea of mutant-dom), and the fact that they’ve completely passed me by is sad. I mean, it’s not “children are dying in South Sudan while wealthy nations do nothing” sad, but it still sucks. I wanted to like this so badly. But it’s just not very good at all. Double sigh.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

BOOKS

The Bedside Companion to Sherlock Holmes: A Unique Guide to the World’s Most Famous Detective by Dick Riley and Pam McAllister. 216 pgs, 1998, Continuum International Publishing Group.

This is a fun, slight book that probably won’t contain any real insights for you nerds, since you know everything there is to know about Holmes, Watson, and Conan Doyle, but it’s still a fun read. The authors throw in some puzzles, crossword and otherwise, to test your Holmes knowledge, and they give a brief biography of Conan Doyle and delve into various aspects of both Holmes’s world and how readers have reacted to Holmes (there’s a section, for instance, on many Sherlockian societies worldwide). They also break down Holmes in other media, such as film, and even place Holmes into the context of 19th-century Great Britain. Throughout, there are page-long capsule reviews of each Holmes story – not the solution, but the general set-up, when it was published, notable Holmes quotes, and even weird discrepancies in the narrative. As I noted, it’s not too deep, but as a Holmes fan (although not a Holmes obsessive), I found it fun (someone like Greg Hatcher would probably have thought it too obvious, but then again, that dude knew his Holmes stuff). I just picked it up each night (it’s a “bedside” book, after all!), zipped through some pages, and enjoyed it. That’s all it really needs to do, right?

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

TELEVISION

Lucifer seasons 1-6 (Netflix). There we were, merrily watching Lucifer when a new season came along, and eventually my daughter started watching as well, because she dug it. We watched a little bit of season 5, but then my daughter turned into a surly teenager and didn’t want to watch with us anymore. We paused on the Lucifer-watching, hoping she would lose her surliness and come back to watching, but she has not – in the past few years she’s maybe watched television with us no more than five times, and even getting her to sit through a half-hour show seems like it’s torture for her. So we fell way behind on this show, and then the final season came out, and we finally decided that the daughter was a lost cause (at least with regard to watching television with us), and we decided to re-watch this from the beginning. It’s a fun show, resting very much on the strength of the cast – there’s not really a weak link in the main cast. The case-of-the-week aspect was always the worst part of the show, but the showrunners knew that and began to even mock it a little as the show went on. It’s fascinating watching it all at once, because the first season – with no Aimee Garcia and barely any time spent at the police precinct and Kevin Alejandro as a vaguely crooked cop – is so weird. Once they get going in season 2, the show takes off, and it’s fairly strong for the rest of its run (season 3 drags a bit). Once it moved to Netflix, the show ignored the police procedural aspect of it even more, as it became much more a show about the characters’ quests for meaning in a chaotic world, and while it always remained a bit facile about that (I mean, this isn’t Kierkegaard, after all, it’s genre television), it was still interesting to see the way the characters strived for personal growth and redemption in a world in which Heaven and Hell are very real, and most of them know it (poor Garcia, in the dark for almost the entire run). The show was always willing to be a bit goofy, so we get a musical episode (see below; Tom Ellis sang his songs on the show, which you can probably guess as this show seemed find ways to give him songs, which they wouldn’t have done if they needed to hire someone to provide the vocals); a flashback to 1946; an episode in which the characters read a book about themselves and “recreate” the scenes we’d seen in earlier episodes; an episode in which Alejandro falls deeper and deeper into a bizarre rabbit hole of crime, which is not what it looks like; an episode in which a man figures out independently that Lucifer is, in fact, the Devil … there are a lot of odd episodes in the show, and what’s often impressive is how well the writers and directors incorporate them thematically into the main narrative – the musical episode, for instance, is not a standalone where no one realizes they’re in a musical and it’s never referenced again; it’s very much a part of the overall theme of the show. There are plenty of missteps, of course – season 1 was a bit wonky, although Ellis and Lauren German’s chemistry carries it along; season 3 was a bit long; God retiring and the angels trying to decide on a replacement is just weird; and Brianna Hildebrand, so good in the Deadpool movies, has a thankless role in this show in a plot that involves time travel and makes zero sense whatsoever. Ultimately, though, this is a keen series. Of the many police procedurals that pair a cop with an “outside consultant,” this had the most storytelling potential simply because of the supernatural aspect of it, and the showrunners did a good job taking advantage of that. They weren’t afraid to make fun of themselves, they weren’t afraid to switch things up, and they weren’t afraid to upend the status quo. You get a really good cast, don’t take yourself too, too seriously, and you can do some good television!

Mayfair Witches season 1 (AMC). This show, on the other hand, was disappointing. It’s based on some Anne Rice novels, I guess, but I haven’t read those, so I’m just basing this on the actual show, and despite some decent acting and some nice moments, this is just dull. It features every single “witch” cliché you can think of, and it features every single dumb horror movie/show trope you can think of, including people acting really, really stupid most of the time, and it even features every New Orleans cliché you can think of! Alexandra Daddario, who was so good in The White Lotus, is the supposed protagonist, but she is far too reactive throughout, and when she does act, she acts stupidly. Daddario tries to sell it, but it’s a hard sell. She and Tongayi Chirisa, who plays a dude working for a Shadowy Organization dedicated to … something, have no chemistry together, and the show throws them together oddly – one moment he’s just trying to protect her from dark forces, and then suddenly they’re banging. Harry Hamlin, looking weirdly well-preserved (there’s an in-story reason, but Hamlin has to have had work done, right?), has some fun with his role, but the show wastes Annebeth Gish, unfortunately. The worst thing about the casting is Jack Huston as Lasher, a demon (?) who gets attached to the witches. Huston has done very good work in the past (he might be the best character in Boardwalk Empire, which is saying a lot), but he’s supposed to be charismatic and gorgeous in this show, and he’s neither – he’s relatively inert and kind of creepy (which he’s also supposed to be, to a degree, but his charisma is supposed to overcome that, and it doesn’t). It’s either a bad casting choice or bad choices by Huston, and it really hurts the show. I doubt if we’ll be back for a second season, but maybe we’ll give it a look and see if it improves. I don’t have high hopes, though.

The Last of Us (HBO). This has been getting a lot of love around the place, and my daughter’s PT is a huge gamer (I keep telling her to write for us, but she doesn’t have a lot of spare time!), and she digs the game (and the show), so even if we were on the fence about this, we probably would have watched it based on all the love it’s getting. It’s … fine. It’s a zombie show. Yes, I know the things aren’t zombies because of reasons that lovers of the game and lovers of the show will probably go on and on about until you wish a fungus would take over your own brain, but … they’re zombies. And the show plays out very much like a video game (which, to be fair, a lot of shows are like these days): challenge, fight, victory, level up, challenge, fight, victory … rinse, repeat. This is not to say it’s a bad show, and I do appreciate things like episode 3 (I’ll get back to that), which try to slow down and show how life has changed and how people have met the challenge, but, still … it’s a zombie show. It’s on HBO (or … Max?) and so it looks superb (it was filmed in Calgary and around Alberta, and the production people did a great job making it “post-apocalyptic”), and the cast is absolutely stacked (“Hey, let’s get John Hannah, Christopher Heyerdahl, and Josh Brener for basically a cameo at the very beginning of the show, just to let us know that fungi can turn people into zombies and that we, HBO, have Fuck-You Money to throw around”), and that goes a long way. Some things are dumb, but when Pedro Pascal does them with his glowering, gorgeous face, you can believe in it, man! He and Bella Ramsey (“TINY GIRL!!!!”) have terrific chemistry, so as the show goes along and she becomes his surrogate daughter, you can believe it. Anna Torv is excellent as Pedro’s … lover? – it’s unclear – and Melanie Lynskey is absolutely fierce in an extremely thankless role (where she is forced to do stupid things in the name of revenge, which makes a little sense, but not too much). It’s just a frustrating show. The opening, which shows the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, is brilliant – I guess it hews very closely to the game, and Nico Parker as Pedro’s poor, doomed daughter is excellent. The first two episodes, when they’re in Boston and Pedro is forced to take Ramsey with him because she’s immune to the fungus and the resistance wants to study her, are excellent (each city is ruled by a nominally unified government, but some cities are better off than others, depending on how fascist the government wants to be, it seems). Then we get to episode 3, in which Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett fall in love. Offerman plays a survivalist who finds Bartlett in one of his traps, and coincidentally, they’re both gay! Yay! They spend 16 years together, meet Pedro and Torv, who barter with them (Pedro and Ramsey are heading there after they leave Boston, which is why we check in on them), and have a grand love story. Everyone loves this episode except me, apparently. It’s not that it’s not good, again. But Bartlett doesn’t get much to do, unfortunately, so his fate doesn’t hit particularly hard, and because Offerman’s fate is more voluntary (I don’t want to give too much away!!!!), it’s also less emotional. I don’t know – maybe I just have a cold, cold heart. Anyway, the final episode bugs me, too. Apparently what Pedro does is supposed to be controversial, because he does something selfish, but that’s stupid. It’s supposed to be Hobson’s Choice, I guess, but there’s no question Pedro does the right thing, for any number of reasons. And then … he lies about it to Ramsey. Ramsey does a wonderful job showing that she’s knows something is hinky but is scared to call him out on it because she’s finally learned to trust him and even love him a little, but my point is that there’s no reason for Pedro to lie to her. The world sucks, she knows it, and what he does is not only for his benefit but for hers, as well. She might be mad at him a bit, but she’ll come around, and, I mean, of course she’s going to find out the truth, and then the shit will really hit the fan. It’s another dumb story choice in the series that keeps me from loving it. I do like it, and I’ll watch season 2, but it’s not quite as good as everyone is making it out to be. A lot of cool stuff, though, and a lot of cool actors, so that’s nice.

**********

I only bought one “classic” reprint this month. What the heck is wrong with me?!?!?

Lots of Ditko, which is keen. Interesting-looking stuff!

Here’s a look at the money I spent this month!

5 April: $146.56
12 April: $85.87
19 April: $91.93
26 April: $114.50

Money spent in April: $438.86 (April 2022: $1090.51; April 2021: $651.46)
YTD: $1858.65 (At this point in 2022: $3853.38; 2021: $2290.90)

I’m doing pretty well cutting back. I know it’s still a chunk of money each week, but it’s not as much as it used to be!

Let’s have a look at the publishers from whom I bought and what kind of comics they were!

Boom! Studios: 3 (3 trade paperbacks)
Dark Horse: 5 (3 graphic novels, 1 single issue, 1 trade paperback)
DC: 2 (1 single issue, 1 trade paperback)
Fantagraphics: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Floating World Comics: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Helvetiq: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Image: 6 (3 single issues, 3 trade paperbacks)
Marvel: 5 (1 single issue, 4 trade paperbacks)
Penguin Books: 1 (1 graphic novel)
PS Artbooks: 1 (1 “classic” reprint)
Silver Sprocket: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Titan: 1 (1 trade paperback)
Viz: 1 (1 manga volume)

Here’s the breakdown of the kinds of comics I’ve gotten:

1 “classic” reprint (12)
8 graphic novels (14)
1 manga volume (5)
6 single issues (37)
13 trade paperbacks (44)

Abrams ComicArts: 1 (1 graphic novel)
AfterShock: 2 (2 single issues)
AWA: 3 (3 trade paperbacks)
Battle Quest Comics: 1 (1 trade paperback)
Beacon Press: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Black Caravan: 2 (2 single issues)
Boom!: 5 (5 trade paperbacks)
Dark Horse: 20 (3 “classic” reprints, 6 graphic novels, 10 single issues, 1 trade paperback)
DC: 10 (1 “classic” reprint, 6 single issues, 3 trade paperbacks)
Fantagraphics: 2 (1 “classic” reprint, 1 graphic novel)
Floating World Comics: 1 (1 graphic novel)
HarperCollins: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Helvetiq: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Image: 25 (12 single issues, 13 trade paperbacks)
Lev Gleason: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Living the Line: 2 (2 graphic novels)
Mad Cave: 3 (1 graphic novel, 1 single issue, 1 trade paperback)
Marvel: 17 (1 “classic” reprint, 4 single issues, 12 trade paperbacks)
Oni: 2 (2 graphic novels)
Penguin Books: 1 (1 graphic novel)
PS Artbooks: 4 (4 “classic” reprints)
Rebellion/2000AD: 4 (3 “classic” reprints, 1 trade paperback)
Roaring Brook Press: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Silver Sprocket: 1 (1 graphic novel)
Titan Comics: 2 (2 trade paperbacks)
Vault: 2 (2 trade paperbacks)
Viz Media: 5 (5 manga volumes)

**********

Here’s Nicole Coenen, who dresses like an elf and makes kick-ass weapons, which she then uses:

View post on imgur.com

I only watched the first season of Riverdale and loved it, but I heard it went seriously off the rails quickly in season 2 and just kept going more and more off the rails as it continued, to the point where I can’t believe anyone still watches it. Here’s a fun article about podcasters who review each episode and why on earth they keep doing it, and in there is this link to someone who simply notes every plot point in the show. Weird, wild stuff.

This is really not a good look for the Jumbotron:

Down bad pic.twitter.com/77l2p4ZbpR

— JaguarGator9 (@JaguarGator9NFL) April 21, 2023

Tucker Carlson was fired, which has been bringing glee to left-wingers for the past week or so, and a lot of right-wingers are having a hard time dealing with it. The weirdest reaction might be Jason Whitlock’s, about which you can read here:

‘This is an Attack on God!’ Frequent Tucker Carlson Guest Jason Whitlock Delivers Utterly Bizarre Postscript on Fox Host’s Firing

On the home front, things have been happening. Sadly, one of those things is my weight, which went the wrong way in April. I weighed in at 258.5 this morning, meaning I gained .7 pounds in April. Sure, that’s not a lot, but this is what’s been happening for a very long time – I simply stay at this weight, +/- a few pounds, and I just can’t lose more. Oh well. I’ll keep trying!

Meanwhile, my daughter might be graduating at the end of May. We have been trying to get her to graduate because she hates school so much, but because she hates school so much, she doesn’t want to do the work she needs to do in order to graduate … it’s a vicious cycle, let me tell you. Her school has been bending over backwards to help her, but we still thought she’d need to go an extra year because she didn’t have the credits, and another year of her bitching about high school might have killed me, I’ll tell you that much. Recently, however, the dean of students at her school bent even farther backwards and told her a path to graduation, and she seems to be following it … it’s like pulling teeth, sure, but she’s so close to the finish line that I think she’s actually willing to go to school and do the work so she can leave it behind. It depresses me, not only because I loved school but because when she actually does work, she’s a pretty good student, but she has so many mental things holding her back that I just hope she can get through this month and join the wonderful world of adulthood, where everything works the way it should and nobody is ever a jerk! By the time I post another of these, we might have a high school graduate. Won’t that be nice?

My wife started a new job on Monday (the 24th), which was nice news. She got laid off in November and has been looking for employment ever since. The mortgage industry has been going through a severe downturn (perhaps the one thing Trump did that we appreciated was keep interest rates low, which spurred home buying, and once they went up, people stopped buying houses in such great numbers), so it was hard finding work, but things appear to be picking up, and she was able to get a job. She also believed that her somewhat decent salary scared employers off (they want people with all her experience who are willing to work for half or less than half what she was making, which is all you need to know about employers, really), and she did end up taking less money, but what are you going to do? We did ok – we had savings, she got a decent severance package from her former employer, and we got our tax refund as well – but it still wasn’t great. Yes, I kept buying comics, but we cut back in other places, so it didn’t hit us too hard. We’re just glad she’s gainfully employed again.

In sadder news, April is, you might recall, the month in which my daughter and I got in the car accident that left her with a traumatic brain injury. Every year I write about her progress, and every year I link to it, so here it is! She will be having root canal surgery soon and then getting injected with Botox to stop some tremors she’s been having, both of which suck but which can’t be avoided. Other than that, she’s doing well!

The beard is still going strong. Here’s the latest gif to show its progress. The image with me in the striped shirt with the picture frames behind me is the first one in this sequence:

A while back I wrote about my shelf porn, and you might recall my figures of Rogue, Dazzler, and Jubilee. Since then I’ve added Psylocke, and I painted some shelves that came with the house (I didn’t paint them very well, but I don’t care too much about that), and now I have two nice shelves with figures on them:

As you can see, I have a shelf just for the X-Women, and the other one has some of my favorites – my Wallace and Gromit Batman and Robin, Killer Moth, Pope Innocent III, my chog, Late Night Talk Show Host Apocalypse, and Cartoony Rogue. I still have some others on my bookshelves, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with those. But the shelves look nice, don’t they?

Thanks for reading, everyone, and I hope everyone is doing well. May is upon us, and it’s heating up here in the desert, and soon I will be (gulp) 52 years old. Where did the time go?!?!?!? Have a nice day!