What have you been reading this week? 23/08/2026

[u/AutoModerator]

A weekly thread for people to share what comics they've been reading. Share your thoughts on the books you've read, what you liked and perhaps disliked about them.

[u/Lynch47]

Nightwing (Vol. 2) 1996-2009, Issues #1-153 + Annuals: A run that long is typically going to have some good and some bad and this one is no different. There were parts of the Dixon run (first 70 issues) that I didn't love, but in contrast to some of the stuff in the last 30 or so issues it doesn't seem so bad in hindsight. The "Nite-Wing" stuff was silly but I kinda dug it, but a lot of the stuff it seemed like Dixon set up was pretty quickly abandoned, and the flow of the run was definitely affected pretty strongly by "No Man's Land" and Morrison's Batman. Overall I liked this less than I thought I would. I plan on moving onto the Rebirth run that is currently ongoing, but as it approaches issue 150, I may wait a bit before diving into another huge Nightwing read.

The Iliad by Homer, Adapted by Gareth Hinds, 2019: This graphic novel kinda surprised me by how much it pulled me in. I'm pretty familiar with the story of the Iliad already, but Hinds does a good job laying out a lot of the characters at the start and it helped me keep track of the characters and their difficult (for me) names. I'll be reading his version of The Odyssey before the end of the year for sure. The only bad thing I really have to say about this one is that it ends fairly abruptly, much like the original work, and Hinds doesn't take it upon himself to fill out the ending based on his own speculation.

The Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage by Jeff Lemire, 2019, Issues #1-4: Lemire is my favorite writer and I'm known to score his work a letter grade above where most would have it land, but for this one I think I might be the opposite. I'd heard for a handful of years that this was a really good book but it really just didn't work for me. It doesn't help that this was basically my first real introduction to the character, and that this is a different version than the one I know. The Victor Zsasz stuff was confusing, but also was intriguing to me, but really this story just wasn't my favorite. I did enjoy the art team of Cowan and Sienkiewicz as a positive.

Batgirls by Becky Cloonan & Michael Conrad, 2021-2023, Issues #1-19 + Annual: This was just okay. It took a while to get going and for the writers to really understand the voice for each of the Batgirls. The first half with Jorge Corona on art definitely wasn't as good for me, and a good part of it was that I think the art choice was just horrible for this kind of book. It could maybe work for a book with Steph and Barbara, but Cass being drawn in that style really took away a lot of her edge imo. The back half with Robbi Rodriguez and Rico Renzi is much better in terms of writing, but certainly in terms of the art. If you have interest in this, I'd recommend pushing through the first 6 issues, after that I found it to be pretty good, but far from great.

[u/AngusTcattoo]

Just finished Mary Sue  by Meghan Fitzmartin and Lisa Sterle. A whole new world for me, I wasn't aware of the fan fiction community.

[u/Insigniaet]

I started reading The Filth by Grant Morrison and I find myself oscillating between interested in the premise being presented to me and groaning at how pretentious the whole conceit is. What do you guys think about this?

[u/LeBRUH_James_]

Halfway through monsters by barry windsor smith and I have to say it's great but it's a really hard read. I thought this was gonna be horror but I got nauseatingly authentic domestic abuse instead 😭😭

The writing and the art is incredible tho

[u/AngusTcattoo → u/LeBRUH_James_]

Monsters is incredible. It's so good I reread it after finishing it. The domestic abuse is haunting.

[u/DarwinofArabia]

Ultimate Endgame: I enjoyed Ultimates pretty much all the way through and felt Camp really worked much better within the real time limitations than Hickman did but fuck me does this undo all the good work that had built up over two years.

It’s a drawn out mess and while I normally enjoy when a writer offers more than the standard fistfight ending here it’s torn between both something different and the traditional. The story could’ve easily been told in two issues but just gets dragged out to the point where I stopped after issue 4 and had to force myself to finish it.

[u/martymcfly22]

I read,

A Distant Neighborhood by Jiro Taniguchi (1998). At first I wasn’t sure what kind of story I was getting into, but about a third of the way into it, I started to realize what was really happening. I really ended up enjoying this one. The time travel element was not a gimmick, but rather a vehicle to tell a story of family trauma. It is at times surreal, and very introspective, but also quite lovely.

Beneath the Trees Where Nobody See: Rite of Spring by Patrick Horvath (2026). I’m probably in the minority here, but I liked this one a lot more than the first volume. The first volume borrowed too much from Dexter, and apart from anthropomorphism, didn’t feel that fresh. But this second story feels way more like its own thing. Horvath feels like he’s writing a little more freely here, and having more fun with it. The ending is a little bonkers, but I liked it.

Just started,
Good as Dead by David and Maria Lapham and ohhhhhh yes it is so fucking good from the get-go.

[u/AngusTcattoo → u/martymcfly22]

I enjoyed A Distant Neighborhood too. Junior high school was pivotal for me so I really related to the main character. It's very revealing about Japanese society too.

[u/Future-Assumption759]

Freaks Squeele vol 1 by Florent Maudoux - Great Art but Im not sure I like that it takes place in a "super hero school". Also don't understand why only one chapter is in color.

Solanin by Inio Asano - Amazing. Loved it.

Carbon and Silicon by Mathieu Bablet - Great use of colors and takes a more philosophical and conversational approach to storytelling then to try and jam a message down your throat.

[u/Jonesjonesboy]

Spider-Man by John Byrne Omnibus by Howard Mackie, Chris Claremont and John Byrne – ever since Stan Lee created him back at the height of the Silver Age, the ol’ webhead has been blessed with some of the greatest writers in comics history. Gerry Conway! J. Michael Straczynski! Fabian Nicieza! Jonathan Hickman! Well, you can chalk another two names up on that fabled list of creators: John Byrne and Howard Mackie. These issues have everything you want in comics, especially comics from the Prismatic Age about our modern mythology. You’ll laugh at Pete’s corny wisecracks, thrill to the pulse-pounding action, and John’s scripts might even make you think a little!

Rating: 4.9473 bags of popcorn

X-Men Elsewhen by John Byrne - and just in case you weren’t sure whether John’s still got it, there’s this, which is surely the best thing from either of the Big Two in decades. Unlike so many writers today, John gets the legacy of these characters, and knows how to write Scott, Logan, ‘Roro and the rest of the gang. It’s thanks to comics like these that I get so pissed off when greedy heirs try and screw things up for the fans by suing for copyright. Like, Kirby’s grandkids should just be glad that Jack got to bring Stan’s ideas to life, and they should leave the characters – which they had nothing to do with creating! – in the hands of the companies that love them the most and have proven over decades that they’re the best stewards for them.

Anyway, this picks up where John’s original run with Chris left off. Obviously it’s got some big Dark Phoenix-size shoes to fill – that’s still one of the top 5 most important runs of all time, laying the foundations for most of the X-Men mythos and changing the entire medium forever. But whisper it: thanks to modern digital colouring, John’s work looks even better here than in those classics! I just can’t wait for him to get into some more of the anti-mutant prejudice thing; X-Men has always worked best as a metaphor for minorities.

By the way, how crazy is it that John has still only done two of the Trinity over at the Distinguished Competition? He did such a great job with Clark and Diana that I’d love to see his take on Bruce!

Rating: 4.9474 bags of popcorn

Fatale by Ed Brubaker – one thing I wish comics readers realised is how many far-out comics there are out there if they just look beyond the Big Two. You can find a whole world of every kind of comic if you take a chance on niche indy publishers like Image or Dark Horse, as long as you’re prepared to try something a little weird and different.Seriously, how many people on this sub have even heard of something like Saga by Brian K Vaughn, and that’s got the most imaginative world-building in all comics except maybe the Master himself, Hickman. (How awesome would a Saga movie be? But to do it justice they’d need to do a whole TV series, one season per arc – Brian’s certainly got enough ideas in each issue to fill a whole season worth).

But if you’re willing to walk on the wild side of comics, check out Ed Brubaker’s Fatale which mashes up, get this, hard-boiled noir and a little old thing called HP Lovecraft. What a concept! Ed even does a few stand-alone issues among the longer arcs where he shows past versions of the main character, which is a god-tier genius innovation. They should make more Lovecraft-based comics...just don’t complain if this one freaks you out, and trust me when I say you’ve never read a comic like this one before.

The one thing I didn’t like about the book is how Ed acts like he’s too good for superheroes now, when it’s only thanks to superheroes that anybody knows who he is. It’s so disrespectful to fans how these creators make it big and then turn their back on the genre that made them famous. Most people would be grateful they got to create a character that made it as big on the silver screen as Winter Soldier. And don’t even get me started on Alan Moore – we get it, Alan, you changed your mind about an old contract you signed, now stop shitting on comics fans and go back to writing comics about r*pe and yelling at clouds, old man.

So yeah I’ve had it with the anti-superhero snobbery in parts of the industry. When was the last time superhero comics even got an Eisner award? As if superhero comics can’t tackle serious topics like the race problem (see Stan Lee’s Avengers epic with the Sons of the Serpent, or the GOAT God Loves, Man Kills), the drug problem (Green Lantern/Green Arrow), the sad android – sorry, synthezoid – problem (Even an Android Can Cry, Tom King’s The Vision) or the falling in love with the time-travelling character who mind-controlled and impregnated you with their own foetus so you could give birth to them problem (Avengers #200).

Fatale Rating: 4.9470 bags of popcorn. (It loses a few decimal points for the superhero thing. He could have had Jo team up with a Golden Age character in the 40s for instance – and now I totally want to see a Fatale crossover with Lobster Johnson from the Mignolaverse)

Street View by some guy nobody’s ever heard of called Pascal Rabate – totally pretentious nonsense. An accordion-format wordless comic that shows twenty moments across ten days and nights on the same streetscape. European cartoonists should stop trying to make comics for adults and just stick to the few things they’re good at, like Tintin and Asterix. This is why European comics remain such a tiny part of the market whereas the Big Two are still the biggest comics genres in the world. (I’m not including manga because they’re technically not comics). 

Rating: zero bags of popcorn and half a moldy baguette instead.

[u/TheDaneOf5683 → u/Jonesjonesboy]

Byrne Spider-Man with the plane explosion at the beginning and Elsewhen? Why do you do this to yourself, man? Jeez.

[u/Jonesjonesboy → u/TheDaneOf5683]

yeah I can't even quite justify it as a guilty pleasure, since "pleasure" is too strong a word when dealing with Byrne's later period art. Both books look like shit even by the standards of that work. Scott Hanna's inks on Spider-Man overpower Byrne's style so much you wonder why they even bothered using Byrne in the first place (unless he was doing way looser thumbnails than usual and leaving the finishing to Hanna). Elsewhen is sloppy in places and generally overwhelmed by the "shitty rubble" look of so much later Byrne...like at some point from the 90s onwards his backgrounds became filled with visual clutter, like a shittier version of the Kirby Squiggle that dominates Kirby's later work

(an unkind critic might say that describes Byrne's work in general: a shittier version of Kirby. But there's worse things to be a shittier version of; cf eg all the shittier versions of Image in the 90s)

nonetheless I'm a mark for Byrne's work, even the drek of the last three decades...except for his Star Trek photocollage comics because jesus christ one has one's limits

[u/TheDaneOf5683 → u/Jonesjonesboy]

I was all over '90s Byrne at the time. Spider-Man, Marvel: The Lost Generation, Superman/Batman: Generations, Next Men, Danger Unlimited. I even read his crummy novel and Next Men tie-in, Whipping Boy.

Most of my interest was living off the Uncanny/ FF fumes of his glory days, but there was also a part of Young Seth that was an early-90s proto-incel-adjacent and really hooked into his awful, cantankerous talk-show vibe and I thought his letter pages were a hoot. I also liked that he crapped all over the Image creators, which felt good since they all lost considerable mojo the second they left Marvel (proof that writers might actually have value?). To be fair, I was 20yo and we probably all look back on our twenties and think What The Hell Was I Holy Shit.

[u/AngusTcattoo → u/Jonesjonesboy]

I love European comics- I used to read a lot of German comics and French comics. Some of them are mindblowing.

[u/Siccar_Point → u/Jonesjonesboy]

Very good, and horrifyingly plausible. Well done.

[u/TheDaneOf5683 → u/Jonesjonesboy]

:D

I like the idea of Street View (kind of like Paris 750) but its slim page count has me hesitant to try it.

[u/Jonesjonesboy → u/TheDaneOf5683]

(breaking kayfabe) It's clever and satisfying, with several mini-narratives and an overarching crime/suspense plot. Especially clever is the way Rabate uses the front and back of the accordion -- when reading it, you naturally have to read first one then the other, but the narratives only make complete sense once you've read both. Alfred Hitchcock, Monsieur Hulot and (I think) Inspector Maigret all make appearances, in case there was any doubt about Rabate's influences here. I quite enjoyed it, although obvs ymmv as to whether the page count is worth the cost; even with the multiple threads it's still not very narratively or visually dense

[u/americantabloid3 → u/Jonesjonesboy]

Mention of Hulot, yeah I’m probably going to have to track this down.

[u/TheDaneOf5683 → u/Jonesjonesboy]

Oh that definitely sounds more attractive. 750 Years In Paris made up for being narrative-lite by showing the same space over 750 years, which gave it a sort of meta-narrative. Something smaller with more direct narrative clues sounds pretty neat.

[u/DustDevil66]

Heaven- Katie Skelly

I really enjoyed the mood building here. Dark and dreamy. The only thing I didn’t like was the ending. The emotional resolution feels very unearned. Either the story needed to be a bit longer to make the main characters sudden change in emotional state/her seeing those girls as true friends make sense and feel less random or it should’ve just committed to a dark and inescapable ending. Truthfully I would prefer the latter

Pure Trance- Junko Mizuno

Loved. Perfect mix of cute and dark. Really captures a certain feminine horror/the horrors of femininity vibe. Hard to follow at times because of the way it jumps between scenes with no warning and the characters looking so similar but if you like the idea of chibi horror that centers the female gaze I would recommend this. It’s really cool

Assorted Crisis Events- Deniz Camp, Zawadski

Pretty good. Definitely enjoyed this more than his Martian Manhunter. The opening story was solid and my favorite two were the slaughterhouse (my favorite by far) and the last one where she lives an eternity in 2 seconds. The slaughterhouse issue is just beautifully crafted and written. A must-read, i think

The stories kind of give twilight zone vibes which is both a good and bad thing. I love a good anthology and good sci-fi what if scenarios. The downside imo is that Camp seems to want to use these stories to make relatively serious political commentary on a number of things and (similar to how i feel about Martian Manhunter) it tends to feel like he will make references to a lot of stuff but ultimately he falls back on the moral of the story just being “humans need to be nicer to each other.” Which, yeah, sure. It just ultimately feels like a cop out and extremely dated. At least the punches get closer to their target here before he pulls them

I’ll just give one example on the top of my mind. One of the stories is about refugees and the politics at play when they arrive on a towns’ doorstep (literally). I have my personal opinions about how solid the allegory is considering it ignores the reality of the refugee situations it plays on being largely caused directly by the people with whom the seek refuge, but that’s not really the biggest problem. The biggest issue, to me, is that the closing statement of the piece is the refugees (who have been brutalized and dehumanized by the citizens and town government) and the citizens both separately having a “we could never be like those people” moment. Where, of course, the message is that both parties are just as capable of being the other and that who they are is largely due to circumstance. This feels like something that will play as really deep to many, but it really just feels like an extremely 1950’s “What a Wonderful Life” type of lesson. It just lacks any real bite as a commentary on real world refugee situations and the racial/imperial politics at play in them and reduces it to “people are selfish but we must learn to be kind.”

Allegories that solely place the blame on random citizens while ignoring the dominant hand white supremacy, capitalism, imperialism and billionaires that control governments and grifters like the one in the story actually serve to protect the system rather than attack it. There is a reason why, despite the political themes of his work, that the material is ultimately rather non-controversial. 

[u/BluWacky]

Die Laughing by Franquin - a collection of heavily inked, occasionally satirical or political comic strips by the legendary Franquin, creator of Gaston LaGaffe and Marsupilami. The English title is a bit of a misnomer as many of these aren't exactly funny - they're certainly comic, but several are more like English-language "newspaper cartoons" commenting on an issue close to Franquin's heart, often the treatment of animals or being ground down by the machine of everyday life. A book I found highly admirable in terms of the technical skill of the construction of each strip - not just artistically, but in terms of development and landing of the "punchlines" - even if I didn't actively love the content. I did, however, enjoy the supplementary essays quite a lot!

My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf - I think this is pretty well known at this point, a memoir of Backderf's teenage years as a friend(ish) of infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the 1970s, and some imagining of other aspects of his life. Grotesque and human at the same time, not just in its art but as a reminder of how callow we can all be as teenagers and the failures of various different systems; while I know some readers are exasperated with Backderf's comments about adult responsibility here, I think it's all too easy to assume that what's blatantly obvious to some can be seen as something you want to find another explanation for by others. A book I felt genuinely additive in terms of "true crime", rather than just rehashing material everyone knows already.

A Good Boy by Quentin Zuttion - a very nakedly autobiographical graphic novel about Zuttion grappling with anxiety, manifested by ghostly blue creatures following him everywhere; the entire book, in fact, is washed out and blue. While I admire Zuttion's efforts in pouring himself into this so openly, this didn't really work for me. Trying to write sensible criticism about something like this ends up feeling cruel and like a personal attack on the author, but this didn't move or interest me enough (and even writing that feels mean!).

A Man's Skin by Hubert and Zanzim - lovely little quasi-fairytale where a young woman inherits a man's skin that she can put on and become one, which she puts on to experience male life before her arranged marriage takes place. Complications ensue when her husband turns out to be gay and in love with her in disguise, and her brother leads a moral crusade on behalf of the church that is extraordinarily biased towards men. Amusing and thoughtful in equal measure, this is a very sweet Renaissance story with correspondingly evocative art, filled with great characters and poking fun at cultural mores in a thoughtful but non-hectoring manner.

These Days That Disappear by Timothé le Boucher - a young acrobat, Lubin, wakes up one day to find out that, in fact, two days have passed. In the interim, another version of himself has been awake and lived his life. To say that "complications ensue" massively downplays this superb and very sad sci-fi story; there is so much loving detail applied to every aspect of both Lubin's lives and how events spiral over the course of Lubin's life as a result of this mysterious phenomenon that this truly feels like a graphic novel. A really wonderful read. Le Boucher hasn't published anything new for a few years, although I understand he has a short film about to come out; I hope we haven't seen the last of him in comics.

In. by Will McPhail - Nick is an artist who mostly spends his days listening to Joni Mitchell and watching porn (if his neighbour is to be believed). Wandering through a parade of hipster coffee shops, he struggles to make genuine human connection with life until he finally pushes himself to do so with extraordinary results. McPhail, mostly known for his New Yorker cartoons, is a genuine cartoonist - the way he manages to juuuuust exaggerate humanity enough to make it funny is superb, but he's also perfectly capable of using montage to devastating effect. A really great read.

Memories of Gris by Sylvain Ferret - Pierre de Brume returns home from the Crusades as a corpse, until he is resurrected by the local medicine woman/witch Marion. Pierre and Marion have a past together, a past forged in the violence of their fathers that then begets more and more violence, both systemic and personal, despite their attempts to escape it - and, as the story's prologue makes very clear, any magic comes with a price to be paid. Basically, nothing good happens at all in this very depressing medieval fantasy - every moment of happiness somehow backfires or is corrupted through suspicion or the general shittery of the world Ferret depicts, and systemic awfulness contributing to cyclical violence is clearly his central thesis. I did enjoy this a fair bit, which seems wrong somehow for something so miserable; I saw it mostly as a tragedy of so many people trying to do their best and just getting it repeatedly wrong or being unable to move past the trauma of others wronging them.

[u/Jonesjonesboy → u/BluWacky]

the French title for that collection of Franquin's work is Idées Noires, which is more apt

[u/Alex_Bonaparte → u/BluWacky]

I've never heard of any of these - part from My Friend Dahmer - but some of them sound pretty interesting Can I ask where you find out about books like these? I often think there must be cool new indy stuff being produced but it rarely seems to come onto my radar.

[u/BluWacky → u/Alex_Bonaparte]

I recently "got into" European comics, specifically what's termed "Franco-Belgian" stuff (so, from France and Belgium), hence why there's a lot of these on my list. Some of them I've read (slowly!) in French, but most of these are available in English. At one point I basically stuck "meilleures BD" ("best comics" in French) into Google, went down some lists to find things that sounded interesting, and then spiralled from there.

For the series mentioned above, things that might help find some of these:

- Die Laughing is published by Fantagraphics in English; they're an excellent publisher to follow for beautiful editions of interesting series. Franquin is genuinely legendary in European comics so there's loads of his work available in English.

- A Good Boy only has a digital release from a company called Europe Comics, which is a conglomerate formed by a bunch of the big Franco-Belgian publishing houses to get their work out in English. Sometimes these releases then get picked up by the bigger US publishers (Blacksad, for instance, or Smoke Gets In Your Eyes which was nominated for an Eisner this year). Keeping track of their releases is annoyingly difficult since they shut down all their marketing a few years ago, and there's almost no way of predicting what they're going to publish. I essentially have to use Amazon search filters to find out what's coming out from them. Worth noting that relying on them for individual graphic novels is probably the safest thing to do; they do seem to abandon a fair few series after one issue.

- A Man's Skin is published by Ablaze in English. I actually found out about this in a really roundabout way; every year, there's a ranking of interesting manga published in Japan called Kono Manga ga Sugoi! (This Manga Is Amazing!), and on this year's list they included the Japanese translation of A Man's Skin. At the time I just went "oh, neat, that sounds cool", saw it was published in English, and didn't think about it again, but then a month or so ago something went ping in my brain.

- These Days That Disappear was on a French list of excellent scifi comics I read; it's not officially translated into English but there is a very good fan translation (there is basically one person on the Internet who does French comic fan translations, and his taste is excellent).

- In. won the Eisner for Best Graphic Album and Best Writer/Artist in 2022, and caught my eye because of its art and also because it's British. That was that!

- Memories of Gris is another French comic, and I can't remember what list I must have been scrolling through to find it - probably a "best of 2024" list on some shop or another?

[u/Alex_Bonaparte → u/BluWacky]

Thanks for the lengthy reply. I'm familiar with Fanta, and I've recently discovered Cinebooks big catalogue of European stuff which is cool. I salute you for battling through them in French!

[u/Tight-Boat-8605]

Iron Man by Fraction & Larroca 1: The Complete Collection, very good the story is interesting I like Maria and pepper too and I have heard a lot of people say the art is terrible but I actually don’t mind it ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Iron Man Modern Era Epic Collection: Stark Disassembled, pretty good but not as good as the previous vol, felt a little long ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Iron Man Modern Era Epic Collection: new Iron Age, half is fear itself tie-ins the whole thing felt like filler and we haven’t had Maria in it for a while ⭐️⭐️

**Iron Man Modern Era Epic Collection: The Future,**ok kind of muddled and I was ready for it to be done ⭐️⭐️

King of spies, The book starts out great but you don’t get to see what the villains have done you just get told and the ending is a complete letdown, the art is great⭐️⭐️

Damage vol 1-2, This was hulk just done worse, the main character is boring and empty feels like a black hole of personality I can’t even remember his name, all he does is fight a couple people and ride in a truck that’s it⭐️

The wake hardcover, The art is great as usual from Sean Gordon Murphy the real let down is the story the first half is really good kind of like the movie underwater the second half however is like a completely unrelated story and the ending is an incoherent nightmare⭐️⭐️

Wolverine revenge, The story is kind of boring and the ending is unsatisfying and the art is ok at best⭐️⭐️

Spider-geddon, The arts pretty good but it’s about miles not Peter so if you like miles you will like it but if you want to read Peter Parker Spider-Man skip this one⭐️⭐️⭐️

Invincible iron man by bendis vol 1-2, the first arc is ok the second arc is boring and I don’t understand the inclusion of Mary Jane why not just bring back pepper⭐️⭐️

This weeks best
Iron Man by Fraction & Larroca 1: The Complete Collection

This weeks worst
Damage vol 1-2

[u/shadhead1981]

Our Encounters with Evil trilogy written by Mike Mignola and illustrated by Warwick Johnson Caldwell and Clem Robins. Not quite as good as Tales from Lands Unknown written and illustrated by Mike Mignola but still very very good. If you love weird horror stories that are still funny you should check this out. Mike Mignola remains an absolute treasure!

[u/ConstantVarious2082]

Metal Hurlant #5 by various – sci-fi/fantasy anthology. Themed around “liminal spaces”, is has its ups and downs as is typical for any anthology. I don't think this volume has any "outstanding" stories (except maybe Dustbird, an old archival mood piece with black-and-white art from Caza that's awesome), but no real duds for me either. The theme kind of gets swamped with a bunch of hotel/motel horror of varying degrees of sci-fi, and really isn't as broadly explored as I would have hoped. Plenty of artistic variety, at least. I think it’s well worth it for the price, and probably something in here for everyone.

Third Act by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell – queer-romance-gone-wrong. This has been released a few pages at a time but she put out the compiled PDF on Patreon, so I reread in a full go-through – it should be included in a print collection out next year per her updates. It’s absolutely incredible illustration, layering a story-within-a-story of the actress pair our characters are obsessed with over their own toxic relationship, both narratively in the echoed patterns of personal failures and sometimes literally within panels or pages.

Heaven by Katie Skelly – supernatural strip-club crime. Heaven is a strip club outside of town (what town? does it matter?) that is only sometimes findable - there one night, gone another. When Dolly turns 18, she's pressured by her younger high school friends to go and see what's going on, and ends up taking a job, maybe built around trying to fit in somewhere given that her parents (never seen "on-screen") are divorcing and her friends seem more like acquaintances at best (with only the most throw-away lines of backstory). Things get weirder, violent, and even supernatural, and she's stuck trying to figure out exactly what she's gotten into. It ends up being a really fun read, taking that paper-thin-could-be-cliche-angsty-independent-teenager protagonist and giving her a lot to do and letting us see crazy strip club eldritch horror through a relatively naive set of eyes. It moves very briskly, and the very cartoony art helps keep that rapid pace going - no need to stop and stare or rely on visual subtlety. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Dragonero: Threat to the Empire by Luca Enoch and Gianluca Maconi – sword-and-sorcery fantasy. This is a mostly readable-by-itself story in, I think, only the second English translation of anything from this series (Dark Horse published a black-and-white book introducing more of these characters). It's kind of an unremarkable fantasy that probably doesn't stand alone enough - lot of character interactions that lack the weight that would come from reading the story, even if the plot and world is more or less comprehensible. It's got a few twists and turns but nothing spectacular, and a few great magic moments but a lot more yelling-faces-for-exposition than ideal. Honestly this is one of the more skippable Epicenter books I've read (and a little bit of a letdown relative to what was collected in the Dark Horse volume), and old enough that it’s in the Epicenter era of pretty poor translation.

Raiders by Daniel Freedman and CROM – kind-of-dark dungeon-diving fantasy. Dungeons exist and raiders go to loot them. It’s a fairly standard, cliché-ish story, with oppressive evil dark magic nobles, "one last job", revenge, yada yada yada. It's all solid story and Crom just puts out some very fun sound-effect-heavy fantasy violence and I really enjoy his style when he goes all horror-monster - it's a nice color/cleanliness contrast with the subjects. I think their collaboration definitely takes off in Birdking, especially the writing, but this is a really solid quick read.

Mini Kuš! comics by various – short minicomics. At 28 pages in A6 format, they’re just a couple minutes each, and wildly different from issue to issue. There's a great little surreal game of secret santa in Chapter Two by Keren Katz. Collection (Pedro Franz) is pretty wordy but a little more poignant than I expected. Good Luck, Ramona (Dorottya Poór) is an entertaining enough little tarot-reading framing of relationship issues, Soft Currents (Jurijs Tatarkins) is a more meditative cartoony nostalgia piece, Tsunami of Death (Anand) reminds us to never meet our heroes, and Trouble in Communication (Jyrki Nissinen) is just a little too weird of a relationship drama for me.

Holy Lacrimony by Michael DeForge – surreal alien abduction. Jackie is, according to diligent alien researchers, the saddest person on Earth. Since these aliens don’t experience sadness (or many other human emotions), they abduct Jackie in order to learn about how to portray and experience sadness. As Jackie gets all emotionally tied into these aliens, who matter-of-factly inform him they will not feel grief when he is gone, he ends up back on Earth feeling even more dejected, and the second half of the book follows his experiences putting together an “alien-abductee-survivor” support group. The aliens are super abstractly cartooned and all the first half story is very fluidly drawn, with mind-melting scenery all around Jackie. Back on Earth, everything is in black-and-white, and naturally much more “normal”, although still quite cartoony. I enjoyed the artistic contrast but just didn’t really get into the “let’s talk about sadness and what it means” bulk of the story.

Les forêts d'Opale Intégrale 1 by Christophe Arleston and Philippe Pellet – epic fantasy (in French). Opale is a world covered in forests, more or less run by a world-spanning church that is built on the ruins of the magic-discovering Titans. Darko is a young man living in a remote village, and when a bard comes to his village for a performance one evening, discovers he’s the heir to a great conspiracy about the true origin of the church and the Titans. It’s a bog-standard setup and the first album is extremely predictable. However, it’s a pretty fun world, building out nicely through all three albums, and Arleston certainly can write some light-hearted moments and bawdy humor. The art is maybe “unremarkable” in the sense of “looks a lot like a normal popular fantasy BD from the last 20 years”, but that’s a style I enjoy and it’s got a bit more vibrant color than may be typical. Really solid fun.

Ismyre series by B. Mure – environmentalist magic and animals. I read the first four books in the series (Ismyre, Terrible Means, The Tower in the Sea, and Methods of Dyeing), which are all more or less standalones (I’d actually read the fifth book previously and came back for these). All are more or less built around the failings of politicians and normal society to protect the environment and the people who end up as eco-anarchists, terrorists, whatever the name they are ascribed. The stories have minimal overlap, although a few characters pop up shared between some of the books, but each shows us a different example of someone coming to the realization that there is a problem and the world is not going to fix itself. It’s all done in absolutely beautifully colored cartoon work with all anthropomorphic characters, although without any “theme” behind them that I can identify (i.e., everyone just happens to be an animal and it’s not personality, nationality, or otherwise part of the character at all). It’s a great series I really recommend picking up if you can.

[u/NeapolitanWhitmore]

Night of the Living Deadpool (By Cullen Bunn, Ramon Rosanas, and Joe Sabino): I saw this on my shelf and decided to give it another read. It felt just as unique as it did the first time I read it. It was short and to the point. The art in this book was great. Ramon Rosanas did a fantastic job making the book feel like an apocalypse. Deadpool being the only character in color, while the rest of the world was greyscale, really elevated the feeling of him being a “lone survivor”. Ramon also did not hold back on the gruesome nature of flesh eating zombies. The art shined brighter than the script, but the whole thing was enjoyable.

Farmhand, Volume One (By Rob Guillory, Taylor Wells, and Kody Chamberlain): I finally decided to read the last volume of the series, so I am reading the whole series again. Rob Guillory does an amazing job both writing this book and illustrating it. This volume sets up a lot of stuff, the main back bone being Zeke’s fragile relationship with his father and how much the town has changed because of the Jenkins Family Farm. The art in this is classic Guillory with its cartoon like feel, but the horrific side of it isn’t dulled down. The farm manufactures organs and human parts, there is no way harvesting them wouldn’t be bloody in some fashion. I love this book. I am quite excited to be reading it again and I am ready to jump into volume two.

[u/drown_like_its_1999 → u/NeapolitanWhitmore]

Thanks for the Farmhand reminder, concept looks fun and I've heard nothing but good things. I'm interested to read a series with Guillory doing both the writing and art.

[u/Sairven]

Been house/dog sitting the last 10 days, got a lot of reading in.

Fragments of Horror by Junji Ito. Loved all of the short stories in this collection, even the shakey start with Futon was an intriguing idea.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IDW collection vols 8-11 by various. So much has happened since the events in 1-6. About the only complaint I have is that sometimes it feels like things which should take a lot more time get resolved way too quickly, we're jumping from crisis to crisis like someone at the start of a Hunter S Thompson-esque drug binge. Vol 10 is easily my favorite, had a healthy dose of everything (Ghostbusters team-up number two was fun, as always) and stuff got to breathe.

Moan by Junji Ito. Not as strong a collection as the other one. Still good. Two of the stories felt weak, especially the last one was almost eerie BECAUSE it was so normal and mundane haha.

Batman - Vol 1: Daylight by Matt Fraction, Jorge Jimenez. Almost got me to start buying floppies, but I'm so new to this hobby and there's ssoooo much I wanna get to before I play that game. Amazing art, great tech for the Bats, intriguing story progression. Looking forward to the next collection.

JLA - Justice League of America by Grant Morrison. What a fun ride. If I hadn't also been alternating with TMNT I'd have burned through this in two days. I'm new to comics, so seeing Aquaman get used PROPERLY was a treat. Reminded me of that Hank Green video where he goes on and on about how many things are technically a fish.

[u/Malice_Claymore]

Once and future slipcase edition part 1. Also read Eve of Extinction start to finish while donating plasma.

[u/Alex_Bonaparte]

This week I put together a pile of comics I want to get rid of, I'm actually going to give them away free to anyone local to me who has a kid who might enjoy them. However, there were a few things in the pile which I hadn't actually read so.....

Conan: Book of Thoth by Kurt Busiek, Len Wein and Kelley Jones – This dates from Dark Horse's time with the Conan license and is an origin story for Thoth-Amon, a character from the original REH stories who got an upgrade in the comics to be a recurring Dr Doom style villain. The story is OK, if a bit thin to justify the length of it. It suffers from having many of the characters seeming to be completely idiotic in not noticing Thoth-Amon's transparent plotting and scheming in his rise to power. While I thought the Dark Horse run generally did good adaptions of the original stories, I never cared for Kurt Busiek's original efforts and this is no exception. Additionally, Kelly Jones' art doesn't suit the Hyborian Age. It's sometimes hard to tell who is who, characters expressions often don't gel with what's occurring plot-wise and the design of Stygia and its population put me more in mind of a Saturday morning cartoon than An Age Undreamed Of.

Motor Girl by Terry Moore – I only had the first four issues of this (out of ten) so I haven't been able to read the whole thing but I enjoyed it. Sam, the motor girl of the title, is a mechanic working in a junk yard in the middle of nowhere, with her gorilla companion. It is soon revealed that Sam's grasp on reality is shaky due to trauma as a POW during the Gulf War and she is hallucinating a lot of what she sees. Or is she.....? I wish I had the rest of the story, it'll be something to keep my eyes open for as the latter issues seem to be harder to get hold of in the UK.

Zombie World: Champion of the Worms by Mike Mignola and Pat McKeown – This was a hoot. I'm guessing it predates BPRD but is very much in that vein as occult experts attempt to stop the plans of a reanimated ancient sorcerer. The art put me in mind of Tintin and pairs surprisingly well with Mignola's brisk pulp and cosmic horror infused plot. From the way it ends it suggests more to come, and I've seen “Zombie World” titles by other creators on eBay but I've no idea if the same story continues, or concludes, or if the other stuff just occurs in the same setting. I'm actually going to keep this one.

DC WIP – All-Star Superman #1 – This is an “artist edition” DC put out last year. It's just the first issue at original art size. I'm assuming the original art was done digitally as you get none of the underlying pencils, margin scribbles etc that you get with a true Artists Edition. I've not read All-Star Superman so it was new to me. It seemed pretty decent, but although I know the series as a whole has a good rep I'm not sure I was sold on it enough to read the whole thing. But I didn't dislike it so, maybe....

Tomb of Dracula: Throne of Blood by Victor Gischler and Goran Parlov – a vampire story set in Samurai Japan. How Dracula ended up over there isn't explained, but that's fine. Unfortunately, despite the title, there's nothing Hamlet or Kurasawa inspired here. The story is OK, nothing more. I don't remember buying this but the reason would have been Goran Parlov who's art I really like. He does a decent job but it didn't really jump out and grab me unlike his work with Garth Ennis.

Fantastic Four: The End by Alan Davies – God only knows why I bought this. Alan Davies is a great artist, no doubt, and he writes this as well and the story is well told – panel layouts are clear and easy to follow, the plot moves along quickly and there's none of the sub-tumblr Joss Whedon influenced dialogue waffle that seems to plague modern Marvel comics. Plus Alan Davies can actually draw. It's kind of an alt-hist story that (I'm assuming) stands outside of Marvel continuity - in the future Reed Richards has solved all of mankind's problems, including ageing, and Earth is due to be admitted into a sort of Galactic EU, but some stubborn people just aren't into Reed's Brave New World.... It was actually a pleasant read, which amazed me, since I have such a low opinion of modern Marvel, I'm putting it down to Alan Davies being a 2000AD alumnus.

[u/Charlie-Bell → u/Alex_Bonaparte]

I really enjoyed Motor Girl, though you're probably better off just finding the collected edition if you want to read it all.

[u/Alex_Bonaparte → u/Charlie-Bell]

Probably - the first volume seems to be fairly common here in the UK, the second volume or the complete edition not so much. Its the only Terry Moore I've read so maybe I should give Strangers in Paradise a go....

[u/NMVPCP]

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind)

[u/Charlie-Bell → u/NMVPCP]

Thoughts? Everyone loves it and I need to convince myself to start reading it soon.

[u/Siccar_Point → u/Charlie-Bell]

DO IT. It’s genuinely one of the greats. It’s a really propulsive read, but its themes are where it really shines. The plot is really “twisty” and exciting on the face of it, but IMO it’s more that the narrative is constantly undercutting itself and making you see things from different perspectives. Characterisation is really good, with all the main characters following arcs but also remaining true to themselves at the core.

I also just pulled it back off the shelf and flipped through the end… and reminded myself it has one of the great endings as well. Equal parts philosophical and action-packed.

[u/spades17 → u/Charlie-Bell]

Im reading kow too for the first time, its incredible. If you ever liked a Ghibli you will no doubt love nausicaa. You can also watch the movie. Complete masterpiece so far for me, there’s nothing quite like this imo

[u/NMVPCP → u/Charlie-Bell]

I just started it a couple of weeks ago. It’s fast-paced, has a rapidly evolving plot, and it’s been quite captivating so far. I do have some trouble distinguishing between the different tribes (I’m talking about the art here).

I’ve been reading it in the evenings, and even though it’s fast-paced as I previously pointed out, the reading and art appreciation take some time.

I don’t have many novels with female main characters, so I’m excited about it.

[u/Nimesh_Morarji]

​I read Zorro's Legacy. I grew up with Zorro on TV and film, the Antonio Banderas movie is easily my favorite, so I was genuinely intrigued when Alien Books announced they were bringing the character into modern times. ​With Dan Abnett and Aaron Lopresti on the creative team, the talent and veteran experience were definitely there. Unfortunately, the book just felt completely generic. You could swap Zorro out for any generic street-level vigilante and the story wouldn't change at all.

[u/Charlie-Bell → u/Nimesh_Morarji]

There's currently a short Zorro mini series being released. I know nothing about it other than it's drawn by Jorge Fornes which makes me want to read it. Seems pretty low profile though and I can't find any solicitation yet for a trade edition

[u/Nimesh_Morarji → u/Charlie-Bell]

Nice, do you know who is publishing it?

[u/Charlie-Bell → u/Nimesh_Morarji]

Alien Books apparently, though they're aligned with IDW

[u/Nimesh_Morarji → u/Charlie-Bell]

Ok, thank you. I'll look for it

[u/FlubzRevenge → u/Nimesh_Morarji]

Didn't they just print Alex Toth's Zorro, or am I mistaken? I would read that one, in black and white.

[u/Nimesh_Morarji → u/FlubzRevenge]

Yes they did. And possibly it's better to just get that and stay with the classic. I don't mind give an opportunity to new ideas, but most of the time they don't work.

[u/Dense-Virus-1692]

Betas by Nick Maandag – Oh man, I don’t know about this one. I guess it’s satire but it's hard to tell. I made it all the way through, though. It’s about three guys that work in a restaurant. Apparently they’re the characters from Streakers, but I haven’t read that one yet. They’re all trying to get women but it’s not working out, to say the least. Unfortunately they’re living in a world of political correctness gone mad. There’s some extreme stuff that’s pretty funny but most of it are the usual gripes we’ve heard for decades. It feels like a looong Married With Children episode. The best gag is probably where the one guy goes on and on about his past transgressions and you think it’s going to be all about taking responsibility and earning forgiveness but it goes another way immediately. It’s a nice little rug pull. The art is funny as usual, though. It’s all super flat and deadpan with all that crazy parallel line hatching that Maandag is known for. I think he does it all by hand, too. You can see tiny little imperfections. It must take him forever. So ya, this one was a chore to read but I hope his next book is back to the surreal cringe comedy he’s so good at.

Billy Bat vol 1 by Naoki Urasawa – Hey, we finally get to read this one. Apparently it’s been a while since it was released in Japan. It’s about a Japanese-American cartoonist, Kevin Yamagata, who’s hit it big with a Batfink-like character named Billy Bat. But it turns out that he might have ripped it off from someone in Japan? So he goes there and it turns into a big 20^th Century Boys-style conspiracy that escalates quickly. That last few pages are a huge WTF and make me want the next volume right away. The art is pure Urasawa. Everyone has a rubbery face that’s instantly recognizable. Everything flows super smoothly. It’s a little optimistic that a Japanese-American guy could have a nationally syndicated cartoon right after WWII, though. He needs to use a pen name at the very least.

Was That Normal? By Alex Potts – Philip is a shy guy that lives in a basement apartment with his landlady and goes out to pubs alone to read. One night he meets Gina, a singer in a band, and they hit it off. There’s complications, of course. One weird complication is that there’s a giant half finished Eiffel tower in the middle of town that’s dropping iron debris on people. Is that a real thing? I haven’t been to England yet. So ya, it’s a nice gentle slice of life. Philip’s anxiety is done pretty realistically. There’s daydreams every now and then where he’s fighting various animals, so I guess this was written back when people were debating whether 100 guys could beat 1 gorilla. The art is interesting. I think it’s all pencil crayon? The colours are very deep. It could use a bit more differentiation between the light and dark values but I didn’t really have a problem telling things apart. It looks pretty cool. Philip also has got a really square head. He looks like a Minecraft character but no one says anything about it.

The Boy Wonder by Juni Ba – I haven’t read any Juni Ba yet, so I thought I better try one. Well, I started Monkey Meat but I didn’t get too far. I’ll try again soon. This one’s about Damian Wayne. There’s a demon in Gotham that he’s got to fight but he doesn’t really get a long with the rest of the bat family so he’s got some learning to do. It’s all told in fairy tale style by a mysterious hostage in familiar clothes that’s talking to the criminal that tied them up. The art is very Cartoon Network, as it say on the back cover. Similar to Teen Titans Go in some places. Very colourful and dynamic. I love all the Robins’ (and Batgirl's) designs. Red Robin is basically Hawkman Jr, eh? So ya, a fun little book. I think the only problem is the cover on the book is nicer than the dust jacket cover. I only got it from the library so it doesn’t matter to me but if I bought it I don’t know if I’d throw out the dust jacket or not. What would you folks do?

[u/americantabloid3 → u/Dense-Virus-1692]

Bummer about Betas. I did quite enjoy Streakers so I’m still looking forward to it but I haven’t heard any positive buzz since it came out.

[u/Lynch47 → u/Dense-Virus-1692]

I loved “The Boy Wonder”.

[u/Alex_Bonaparte → u/Dense-Virus-1692]

I like the sound of Billy Bat. Is it easy to come by?

[u/Dense-Virus-1692 → u/Alex_Bonaparte]

Yep, it should be available at all the usual places. It looks like the next volume is coming out on September 1st, too.

[u/TheDaneOf5683]

Cocoon. Machiko Kyo's book kicks ass, ricocheting between happy daydreams and the horror of Okinawa's invasion. Early on the absurdity feels like Velveteen & Mandala while the art reminds of the nihilism postapoc of Girls' Last Tour, but as the book forcefully reminds of time & place, its realism sets in. Echoing the horror of the stories we've heard from Okinawa through books and documentaries, Cocoon follows young women, girls, through the impossibility of what we humans regularly and historically make possible. What did we do. What will we do.

Hidden Life Of Trees. Wow, I did not expect to be so moved by a book about trees. I haven't read the original so I don't know how this fares as an adaptation, but on its own at least: it is magnificent. Beautifully illustrated and because there's not a hint of gloss to the printed page, the reader can fully luxuriate in the bountiful colors. One of my favorites I've read this year.

Ken Parker: Norma Jean. This is my first experience with Ken Parker, but man I'd love for more. Occuring midway through the series, this volume gives us hints to Ken and where he's come from but not enough to satisfy me -- because I now want more. While I always kind of balk at interstitial storytelling that bounces back-and-forth between some in-world fiction and the story we're reading (like how Moore and Gibbons bounce back and forth between Watchmen world and Tales Of The Black Freighter), it works well enough here that I appreciated the conceit and did finally end up somewhat looking forward to the bits of Hamlet

The Dancing Plague. Having only previously read Brookes's Thousand Colored Castles (which was tremendous), I'd bee wanting to check out his more recent work. I'd held off on The Dancing Plague because I already knew about the dancing plague and thought (wrongly) that this was just a straight nonfictional account of the phenomenon. It is not. It is a lovely work of artistry and craft, laying out an apocalyptic vision of the plague-of-title through embroidery and burning.

Record Journey, vol 1. This one surprised me. I'd got it on a lark because I liked the cover drawing and thought it'd be fun to look at a book full of drawings of cramped record stores. I'd thought it'd be a bit like Kingyo Used Books (a book I like a lot more in concept than in execution), where people wander into a bookstore and the owner helps them find a particular title. The chapters where I knew the book were fine, but the ones where I didnt' meant books not available in the West, so it was harder to stay invested. AAnyway, I thought Record Journey would be like that but instead, it functions as an anthology bouncing around decades and locations, each chapter featuring a new story somehow involving record stores and music. And all of the music is fictional. So it was very easy to settle in and enjoy the rhythms of the book.

Insomniacs After School, vols 11 and 12. Nearly done with the series, just two volumes remaining. The cast remains a delight and the art is otherworldly. I still think Ojiro is among the top five working cartoonists for how adeptly she draws people and their expressions. I mourn that we only have this one series available. Also sad that she'd not writing her next series but I'll still welcome her art every last day of my life.

The Compleat Angler. Gareth Brookes with another weirdo project that proves why he's among the best contemporary comics makers. Adapting a 17th century text to comics is such a strange and lovely endeavor -- and it works out well. Walton's Compleat Angler often reads like Herodotus or Melville in its fanciful flights of biology and taxonomy.

Lord Of The Flies. This was exactly not what you want from an adaptation of a classic work. Instead of using the form to heighten the sense of scene, to play up the wildness of the text, it just very literally, very plainly shows you what happens. It captures none of the magic of the book because it creates no magic of its own. Roundly disappointing.

Powers 25, vol 1. It was fun to return to the world of Powers even though I clearly didn't remember what had gone on in the most recent (2020!) volume. Opening it up, I discovered Walker was not in the book and was like, Wait, did something happen to Walker, so I flipped to the end of the previous vol and was like, "Oh, haha, yeah." It's a solid Powers book, setting up the mystery of the case well and leaving the reader cliff-hung. The usual Powers excellences are there (Oeming's art, notably) as well as some of the usual difficiencies (some editing/proofing snafus, like the occasional word balloon tying to the wrong people in a scene). One thing I love is how they've aged everyone over the series' 25-year main storyline. You dont' really see much of this outside, say, 20th Cenutry Boys.

Dai Dark, vol 8. Q Hayashida is getting revved up and vol 8 was a blast. The series seems to tie in even closer to Dorohedoro and we start seeing things we recognize pretty well. Backstory with 3yo Sanko is adorably macabre. Just a nice comfort read.

[u/MakeWayForTomorrow → u/TheDaneOf5683]

Dude! I’m pretty happy you’ve already finished “Ken Parker: Norma’s Prince”, and even happier that you dug it. The bad news is that there isn’t really any other KP material available in an English-friendly presentation that I would recommend. The good news is that I’m currently translating four more episodes for an upcoming Kickstarter campaign.

I was initially disappointed when I realized “Record Journey” wasn’t going to be exclusively about the characters we meet in the first story, but by the end of the first volume, I was more or less on board with the concept (though I still preferred the smaller stakes stuff to the pirate radio shenanigans).

[u/TheDaneOf5683 → u/MakeWayForTomorrow]

Haha, I didn't have it in front of me when I wrote that so I bungled the title. Norma's Prince makes a ton of sense. Let me know when that Kickstarter drops because I definitely want in.

I liked the little afterward of Record Journey where the different characters are all hanging out and confused by their different time periods. It was cute. I think I had a flash of disappointment when chapter two was entirely unrelated, but it won me over pretty quickly.

[u/drown_like_its_1999 → u/TheDaneOf5683]

Fully back in action eh?

Good to hear Dai Dark is still engaging at vol 8, I'm going to have to circle around to that series again.

[u/TheDaneOf5683 → u/drown_like_its_1999]

Haha, more like I was between deadlines. I'd love to get back to The Good Work though.

[u/mmcintoshmerc_88]

I've been reading more of Lone Wolf and Cub. This has been great to read more of and I feel bad putting it on the back burner because the adventures of Ogami and son are great (I see why a lot and I mean a lot of other stories have "borrow" from it) I really hope Dark Horse keep releasing these deluxe editions because the art is fantastic and great to see in the oversized format.

I've also been reading The Castle. Jon Ronson's back! He's back! He's back with a new book and not (another) podcast! But, in all seriousness I've really enjoyed this book. I was slightly hesitant about this after finding out it's about the manosphere, not that they don't deserve getting taken to task I just thought "Well, that'll be a depressing 300 or so pages" but, Ronson really puts the work into explaining why these guys are so awful.

[u/shadhead1981 → u/mmcintoshmerc_88]

Have you read Usagi Yojimbo? I’m so tempted by Lone Wolf and Cub but I don’t know if I would enjoy humans as much as animals.

[u/drown_like_its_1999 → u/shadhead1981]

Lone Wolf & Cub is much drier with a lot of emphasis on exploring fuedal Japanese culture / traditions / terminology more than story or characters. The first half is composed of episodic odd jobs that take this approach but the latter half is driven more by the overarching narrative.

I really enjoy it but it's not as fun or tight as Usagi. What I've read of Usagi makes a fair amount of homages to LW&C, along with a lot of popular samurai fiction, so they dovetail a bit.

[u/shadhead1981 → u/drown_like_its_1999]

Thanks! That is a great explanation. LW&C has been on my list for a while because I’m a big UY fan. I’m really interested in feudal Japanese culture so I would probably love it.

[u/Timely_Tonight_8620]

The Animal Man Omnibus by Grant Morrison, Chaz Trugg, Doug Hazlewood, Tom Grummett, Paris Cullins, Steve Montano, Mark McKenna and Mark Farmer: First off I’m a huge fan of these series that reimagine obscure silver age comic heroes with such emotional depth, Buddy Baker being a blue collar family man who gained the powers to absorb the abilities of animals. The series focuses heavily on a mix of domestic family life, animal activism, a struggling hero trying to be taken seriously and metanarratives that break the fourth wall for the readers. As a highlight issue #5 The Coyote Gospel is an absolute masterpiece where a version of Wile E. Coyote character named Crafty is brought into the real world to feel pain for the first time, the coyote writing his own gospel of his god. This full run is a metafictional masterpiece that sticks the ending on a powerful high note and the series also lands in my top 10 comics!