Category Archives: review

A new comics-curmudgeon diving head first into the thousands of back issues on our shelves, grabbing a random comic, writing what I think. Today’s issue:

Comic Book: Tor #4 (2 in stock)

I think this is a new-ish series about a classic character, rather than a re-issue of a classic work. It’s certainly done in a style that’s several decades old. As usual I’ve jumped in right in the middle, and the protagonist starts out below ground trying to escape from a tentacled beastie. The story is the classic “misfits and outcasts surviving in a hostile world”. There’s no dialog, just narrative, but the narration does capture the characters’ perspectives. Different from most of the things I’ve seen recently, nice change of pace.

Diving head first into the thousands of back issues on our shelves, grabbing a random comic, writing what I think. Today’s issue:

Comic Book: C E Murphys Take A Chance #2 (4 in stock)

This is what I’ve been hoping for when starting this little feature: something I’ve never heard of that turns out to be pretty darn good! The setting is reasonably standard trope: non-super-powered vigilante fights crime in a universe where 8.1% of the population* has super powers. When story with a pretty common plot turns out to be a good read, that usually means the writing’s pretty good. In this case, the characters are well drawn (not talking about the art, though that’s also fine if not groundbreaking), the dialog is convincing, and the action moves along nicely. I’ll be tracking down the rest of these, looks like there’s 5 issues in total. Thumbs up!

• * I did the math, it’s actually slightly tricky! 25% of world population gets a virus, 1/3 die, 1/3 recover normally, and 1/3 get superpowers. So, 7.5% (0.3 * 0.25 = 0.075) of the original population is super. But… 7.5% died, so we’ve got a smaller population… 7.5 / (100.0 – 7.5) = 0.081

Diving head first into the thousands of back issues on our shelves, grabbing a random comic, writing what I think. Today’s issue:

Comic Book: Ninja High School #165 (3 in stock)

Oh my. I don’t know what audience this title is geared to, but it’s certainly not me. OK, I understand it’s issue #165 and there’s a lot of backstory I’m missing, but I found this one to be mostly incoherent. Basically, there’s a fight where random people keep showing up, engage in cliched melodramatic dialog, then get stabbed. At the end it turns out someone is a robot. Oof.

Diving head first into the thousands of back issues on our shelves, grabbing a random comic, writing what I think. Today’s issue:

Comic Book: Ghost Rider #31 (2 in stock)

Gotta appreciate a comic where, jumping in at issue #31, you get a clear summary of where the story’s at along with a crisp, well executed 32 pages. Yeah, it’s bubbling with some of the standard comic book cliches (anti-hero shamed into action, etc) but it’s all well executed, even if it’s not blazing new trails. Maybe the word is “workmanlike”? Merriam Webster defines this as “competent and skillful but not outstanding or original”, and that seems about right. Thumbs up, but not jumping up and down. I’ll save that for later…

Diving head first into the thousands of back issues on our shelves, grabbing a random comic, writing what I think. Today’s issue:

Comic Book: Welcome To Hoxford #4 (7 in stock)

I’m not generally a big fan of the horror genre, though I’ve been reading a decent “Vampires on the Mississippi” book lately (Fevre Dream by George RR Martin), so maybe this comic will appeal…

I do like Ben Templesmith’s art. I’ve seen and appreciated his covers for a while, but this is actually the first time I’ve opened one up. Gorgeous colors. Nicely creepy. He likes to draw beasties with great big curvy tongues.

This is the last issue of a werewolf story, taking place in a mental institution named “Hoxford”, and it looks like it nicely ties up some reasonably straight forward story lines: werewolves vs. werewolves, inmates vs. werewolves, etc. Nice twist to the story, too. Not bad, maybe I’ll hop back to the earlier issues and read the whole thing!

Diving head first into the thousands of back issues on our shelves, grabbing a random comic, writing what I think. Today’s issue:

Comic Book: Everybody’s Dead #4 (4 in stock)

Zombies and frat boys. Zombies get hacked up, non-zombies get ‘et. Characters, dialog, story and art: all kinda flat, but there are some amusing bits here and there. Didn’t really hold my interest, shrug.

Diving head first into the thousands of back issues on our shelves, grabbing a random comic, writing what I think. Today’s issue:

Comic Book: Guardians Of The Galaxy #9 (8 in stock)

Our description mentions pencils by “Bong Dazo”, but sadly when I look inside no mention of Bong. I don’t actually know anything about Bong, but I wanted to see his art. Oh well.

For jumping in at an issue #9 this is actually pretty comprehensible. Prisoners in a Negative Zone prison are under siege by ugly baddies, someone named Space-Lord Star-Lord shows up, naked, and offers help from “The Guardians of the Galaxy”, some of the prisoners are skeptical (“The Guardians of the Galaxy? You just made that name up!”), people get beat up, a message gets sent, a cosmonaut dog beams the team in, and… end of episode.

So stuff happens, some of it even made sense to me, and there’s some funny bits. Decent, semi-thumbs up.

We have over 6,000 different comic issues in stock, from all across the past year-plus we’ve been in business. I’m going to experiment with a new idea: roll some (virtual) dice and pick a random comic from our old-stock shelves, flip through it, and write a mini first-impressions-only review. Fair warning, I’m a bit of a comics curmudgeon, and likely won’t like most of the stuff I flip through… plus I’ll be jumping in right in the middle of stuff more often than not, and won’t have a clue.

What the heck, here’s the first installment:

Comic Book: Ambush Bug Year None #4 (9 in stock)

OK, looks like some meta-DC-universe thing. I like meta. Breaking the fourth wall. Got it, don’t always need that pesky extra wall. Lots of DC inside jokes. Don’t really follow DC, don’t get the jokes. Seems to be just DC inside jokes, no coherent story. Not my cuppa. Oh well.