Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand
In today’s episode I finally open one of my all-time favorite modern X-Men runs – but, first, I talk about my intended musical experiment on my own offspring and how it was derailed by our mutual love of Michael Jackson.
Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.
Episode 78 features the Uncanny X-Force omnibus, covered in my Guide to X-Force.
Doctor Strange: Damnation #1, art by Rod Reis
I know it seems impossible, but The Pull List has grown even bigger this week for the third week in a row! That’s because I finished catching up to present on a number of DC and Marvel books, plus I picked up five smaller press books.
A bloody, thrilling, heart-rending comic. Aaron has somehow amped up the drama in each of the last three issues as we hasten towards a potential Ragnarok at the hands of the Mangog and Jane Foster’s death at her own hands if she takes up the mantle of Thor just one more time.
Yet, beyond those looming disasters there is still Makelith’s war on the Ten Realms. Mangog is just one facet of that. Even in the dimness and tragedy, Aaron finds shining moments – Jane with her friend in the cancer ward, a father and son joined in battle, and a mother casting aside a snake that has wounded her before.
All the while, Dauterman and Wilson are turning in a quality of artwork never seen before at Marvel comics – truly, one of the pinnacles of art at Marvel in over 75 years of publishing.
This story has officially become the best Thor story in my eyes, and it just might be Marvel’s best longform story of all time. I’d place it alongside Mark Gruenwald Captain America and Chris Claremont X-Men at this point.
An utterly madcap introduction to Punks Not Dead (and, for me, to Black Crown comics, which are edited by Shelly Bond distributed by IDW). This book is part Injection, part Sid and Nancy, and a little dash of the more lighthearted issues of Sandman.
It follows a teenage boy and his scam artist mom as the kid picks up some kind of supernatural echo of the deceased Sid Vicious in a dingy airport bathroom. Meanwhile, the beleaguered Department for Extra-Usual Affairs is busy putting minor demons out of the closet at 10 Downing Street with a staff of one.
This book is funny, unique, and looks freaking brilliant. Artist Martin Simmonds is simply incredible, drawing a real-seeming Britain with amped up color and clever use of cut-and-pasted patterns to ground it in real, textured reality. I am in love with this book, and will not only be keeping up with it, but also checking out other titles from Black Crown. [Read more…] about The Pull List: Batman, Brave and The Bold, Damnation, Maestros, Mighty Thor, Punks Not Dead, and more!
In this second part of my unboxing of new comics from my December order, I dig deeply into the X-Men Classic omnibus. What is it and why were X-Men fans so shocked and excited to hear about its release?
Find out more, including how the book is laid out, in this video. Then visit my issue-by-issue guide to how Classic X-Men back-up stories fit into continuity.
Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.
Episode 75 features The X-Men Classic Omnibus.
I haven’t been doing much back-issue reading this week, which means this Back Issue Review isn’t as sprawling as its been in past weeks.
I did manage to knock out four volumes worth of youthful titles. None of the were major standouts, but they all presented nuanced looks at the meaning of friendship and identity.
[Read more…] about Back Issue Review: Lumberjanes, DC Comics Titans, & Unstoppable Wasp
I’ve managed to one-up last week’s edition of The Pull List! This week, the list is a whopping 27 issues deep – one more than last week. However, its also a tick worse, with an aggregate rating of 3.055 compared to 3.17.
What did I pull this week? I caught up with Birds of Prey, Flash, and Titans to add to my DC pull list, sampled four new number ones, and dropped a pair of weak books. Here’s what I reviewed in brief:
I have never before been so viscerally scared of Grodd. He is utterly terrifying here, and I was really concerned that we could be seeing the end of Flash at multiple points – and, in a way, we did.
Joshua Williamson is proving that he is one of the best writers in the business with this constantly thrumming plot that has been building non-stop rising action for 40 straight issues. While you could easily jump right one with every arc, each of them builds off of everything that came before. That means this run has notched itself as the third or fourth best extended Flash run of all time in under two years, and it shows no immediate signs of stopping.
Carmine Di Giandomenico continues to stun on artwork with vivid coloring from
Ivan Plascencia. This issue includes some of the most inventive action paneling I can think of reading in recent memory. The paneling of Avery catching the lighting rod is breathtaking.
An A+ book through and through, with a thrilling final moment.
There’s no denying the craft, power, and charm of Giants. For a third issue in a row The Valderrama Brothers. turn in a beautiful, action-packed comic full of heart.
We begin our story with Zedo, the boy left for dead who is now making a cavalier power-play to control the gangs of the underworld. Only a child could see things as so black and white, yet both in the last issue and here he is making vicious choices that he can’t take back.
In stark contrast, Gogi has found a group of other children who are necessarily tough but still enduringly kind. Their acceptance and willingness to give without asking anything in return is alien to Gogi. At first he resists it, then he resents it, but finally he understand that’s it’s easier to live openly then be on guard and full of distrust.
Gogi’s journey from underground child to hero in the wider wider stands in stark contrast to Zedo’s dark turn at the end of this issue. Neither boy can entirely blame fate, nor can he say that the choices were all his own. That makes Giants a powerful allegory for the role of environment on our lot in life.
We might not all be fighting giant monsters, but we’re frequently either the child who ran away or the child that was left behind. [Read more…] about The Pull List: Avengers, Death of Love, Detective Comics, The Flash, Paradiso, Sideways, & more!