I Read Comic Books discussion

Happy September! What are you reading this month? Getting a head start on spooky reads for Halloween? :)

Tell us all about it in the thread below!

As always, if you'd like to see what the IRCB crew is reading, take a peek at the Top of My Pile posts over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ircbpodcast

Last week's adventures in comics.

Masks ★★★
A fine book for younger readers. It's about some monster kids who are being hunted by basically a version of the klan but for monsters. These three monster kids live in an abandoned building on the outskirts of society. On Halloween, they venture out to find Haven, a mythical safe place for monster kind. For some reason, these kids know nothing about Halloween even though it's the one day they could walk around without hiding themselves. The other thing I thought was odd is that the main character has horns but never tries to hide them with a beanie even though the boy in the group wears a beanie nonstop. It would be a lot easier to walk around undetected without those horns sticking up.

Fishflies ★★★
There's beginning to be a sameness to Lemire's comics, especially those taking place in Essex County, Canada. This one is about an armed robber who turns into a giant bug and befriends a preteen girl. Of course, her dad is a piece of crap because every one of Lemire's main characters have daddy issues. This is fine. It doesn't have the breadth or scope of his more ambitious projects like Descender / Ascender. But it's an easy read.

Lady Mechanika Volume 6 ★★★
A deluxe edition collecting volumes 7 and 8 of the regular run. The Ministry of Hell explores Lady Mechanika's origins after she is found pretty much feral with her metal limbs as a child. She's put in a Victorian asylum with a bunch of other mutants. It's not bad.

The Devil in the Lake sends Lady Mechanika to Russia to investigate some missing scientists and word of a monster in Siberia. Siya Oum steps in for the artwork and her art is similar to Benitez's.

Free Agents Volume 1 ★★
I typically really like Kurt Busiek's stuff but this was an absolute dud. It's about a superhero team from another dimension that after a war is trapped on Earth. There's way too much focus on language and terminology from these other worlds. It made it really boring because I didn't care about any of it. The art seemed muddy here too when I've liked Mooney's art in the past.

Count Crowley Volume 3: Mediocre Midnight Monster Hunter ★★★★
David Dastmalchian just gets what I like about horror. Basing the story around someone running a late night monster movie show is genius. This is the exact same kind of thing we'd have come up with as kids and also similar to Fright Night, an unsung horror movie from the 80s if you haven't seen it. Jerri has all kinds of her own problems, especially with alcohol. Plus, all of these old guys think she can't kill monsters just because she's a woman and are huge a-holes to her even though she takes no gruff from them either. This clearly ends with the intention of there being more, so Dark Horse please keep these going. They are terrific.

Road to Resurgence: Ninjak vs. Roku TP ★★★★
Easily the best of these Road to Resurgence comics, both in story and art. All of these seem to be about tying up loose ends from previous series and setting up a confrontation with Dr. Silk in Resurgence.

Road to Resurgence: Dark Magic ★★
The Punk Mambo story was crap with bad art. The Darques wasn't any better. Just give this a pass.

Road to Resurgence: Allies ★★★
This was alright. Faith returns wasn't as good as the previous stories Jody Houser wrote (which were great) and the art was suspect.

Road to Resurgence: Eternal TP ★★★
The Archer and Armstrong story was my favorite of the three here. The Rai one was a bit of a waste. The Eternal Warrior one had Gilad and the rest of his siblings meet up and travel to the old West. I loved the jokes about the movie Tombstone. It's worth reading just for those.

DC Finest - Superman: The First Superhero ★★★★
I was a little surprised with how much I liked this, just because a lot of gold and silver age stuff just doesn't hold up in the modern age. It's very formulaic. Superman fights a LOT of gangsters. He's sometimes a menace more than a hero. In one issue he tells everyone to get out of their homes in a Metropolis slum and then knocks all the buildings to the ground because they cut corners in the construction. Then he just leaves. Another issue, a shady guy runs a plant so Superman just destroys it. He constantly bursting through walls like the Kool Aid Man. The Ultra-Humanite was the actual first supervillain of Superman's. Luthor shows up later but with a full head of hair. Clark and Lois work at the Daily Star until it inexplicably turns into the Daily Planet around #23. There's a different Chief and Jimmy Olson is nowhere to be found. Both Superman and Lois roofie people in this. It can get bonkers.

The Freeze ★★
A cool idea that doesn't go far enough and leaves way too much open ended. I want answers dammit. It's about a world wide event where everyone suddenly becomes frozen except for one man. And that man's touch can unfreeze people. You never find out the mystery of why this happened. Even though in the first issue there's crashed planes and cars everywhere, the next issue the few people left are driving around like nothing happened. There's power. The internet still works. The food in the grocery store is still good. They even get meat there. It's just not very well thought through and then it leaves you hanging.

Aquinnah ★★
The first 2/3rds had way too many time jumps and the storytelling made things very confusing. The last 50 pages was just a big infodump where everything is spit out at us. You could literally skip the first 100 pages and have gotten the exact same story.

The Nasty ★★★★
I liked this quite a bit. It's set at a failing video store that specializes in horror movies. To save the store, they put on a horror festival showing a movie that's so gruesome it's not allowed to watch at home. I'm not sure what the laws were in Great Britain at the time, but this seems like it could have been legit. There's also some crazy woman who is part of some League of Decency who is trying to put a stop to it. I remember those stupid groups here too, always in everyone else's business. Anyway something happens to this horror movie and the kids decide to make their own since no one has actually ever seen it. Oh yeah, the director of this film also has a slasher imaginary friend who is becoming real as they start filming. I know it's a lot but John Lees makes it work.

Wifwulf ★★★
A pretty short story about a woman who marries a Civil War veteran. At first they are happy but he becomes jealous of her time spent outside in the woods with some wolves and begins to drink. It seems allegorical and moody. It's interesting but as I said short for $20. There's a lot of pinups and behind the scenes stuff that fill up over half the book. I wasn't familiar with Ogden's art but I quite liked it.

Supper Club ★★
Three friends start a supper club senior year as an excuse to get together every week. Problem is, after the initial meeting supper club takes a back seat to the random drama each of the girls go through during the school year and it just becomes your typical Raina Telgemeier experience.

The Ghost in You (Reckless, #4) ★★★★
Ethan's girl Friday, Anna, takes center stage while Ethan is out of town living the next book in the series. Fake Elvira comes in and hires her to investigate a house she's inherited with a long history of being haunted. The haunted house is only part of the story as we see all the drama with Anna's mother unfold. It's all very well written and well drawn just like you'd expect from a Brubaker and Phillips project.

Port of Earth, Vol. 1 ★★★
I thought this was a cool premise. Aliens visit Earth and make a deal with humans to basically put a gas station for spaceships out in the ocean. The Earth gets renewable clean energy, the galaxy gets a truck stop. Earth is responsible for security though. While aliens are not allowed to depart their crafts while on Earth but if they do, an agency needs to bring them back with the least amount of violence possible. This has led to the death of over a thousand humans since the agreement was made.

Port of Earth, Vol. 2 ★★★★
It finally comes out that these aliens might not be so benevolent just like everyone reading this expected to happen. Hopefully they can nail the ending with only 4 issues left.

Port of Earth, Vol. 3 ★★★★
This was a cool series. The plot thickens as it's becoming apparent that the Consortium is seeding these tragedies, laying the groundwork to take over. There's a lot of cool stuff here. Too bad it got cancelled before the story could be finished.

Mindset ★★★
A pretty cool story about a college student who discovers mind control and they decide to sneak it into an app. I could easily see this being a Black Mirror episode. Gets a little confusing towards the end with all the back and forth about who is controlling who, but still a cool idea.

Maniac Killer Strikes Again! ★★★
A bunch of Sala's short stories put together over the last 20 years. Most of them feature a maniac killer on the loose. Putting them all together kind of makes them less interesting instead of more. Sala's early lettering kind of drives me nuts as well. Please use a ruler.

Night Fever ★★★
A literary agent heads to Paris for a book fair. He can't sleep and has grown weary of his happy domestic life. So he starts wondering the streets at night when he follows a couple to a party where he pretends to be someone else. Then he meets Ranier who take him on a surreal and gritty journey through the seedier side of France. Interesting but nonessential compared to other Brubaker/Phillips comics.

Night Mary ★★★
Originally published in 2006 over at IDW and now given a new edition by Image. It's OK. It's got that Nightmare on Elm Street vibe with lots of it occurring in dream worlds. It's about a teenage girl whose father is helping people through dream therapy. His daughter is helping by going into the patient's dreams and helping them work through their issues. However, these same people are now killing people in the real world. The most interesting part about this is Dwyer's shifting art as he uses different styles for dreams versus reality.

Mirka Andolfo's Sweet Paprika, Vol. 1 ★★
I don't understand the point of drawing everyone in your book as angels or demons if you aren't going to give each race different traits or strengths and weaknesses. This is a trashy romance novel in comic book form. One with as many words as prose though. It's bogged down by so many words.

Today's trip to the comic book store.

Batman #1
Absolute Superman #11
Absolute Green Lantern #6
Avengers #30
Thundercats / Powerpuff Girls #3
Captain Planet and the Planeteers #4
Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Justice League #2
Justice League vs Godzilla vs Kong 2 #4
Flash Gordon #11
Rocketfellers #8
Sisterhood #3
TMNT #11
Thundercats: Lost #6
Uncanny X-Men #20

Last week's adventures in comics.

Hope Never to See It: A Graphic History of Guerrilla Violence during the American Civil War ★★
I have a feeling this worked better in its original text more than in comic book form. There's so many different military figures mentioned in this, especially during the trial that I couldn't keep them straight. It's a neat idea, detailing some of the events of the Civil War that occurred in Missouri. It was just a chore to keep it all straight in my head.

The Bend of Luck ★★★
Two men in the Old West find some rocks that infer luck. This is the story of what happens as this story intersects with a man who jumps off the Golden Gate bridge leaving his wife behind. It's fine. Not as good as some other Hoey stories.

Second Chances, Vol. 1 ★★
The story can be a muddled mess at times with too much focus on a drug that can erase memories. The main character is a man who helps people get second chances, except it's more about his crazy assassin girlfriend. The story isn't all that great but the art is. It's really detailed and dynamic giving me Steve Epting vibes.

Green Lantern 2: Love and War ★★★★
Jeremy Adams is doing a very good job of making the Green Lanterns relevant again. We finally find out what happened to Kilowog in the first issue. Then the deep state stuff with the United Planets comes to light over the course of this. Adams seems to have some cool plans there. The back up stories are actually relevant. The Guy Gardner ones tie into House of Brainiac if you're a completist. I like how each of the other Lanterns get some screen time and it's not Hal and no one else. My one nitpick is that there are a LOT of artists on this book.

Art Brut, Vol. 1: The Winking Woman ★★★
The creative team behind Ice Cream Man create the most Vertigo comic I've read since that imprint folded. This isn't a horror comic like Ice Cream Man though. It's all meta with someone being able to change paintings like the Mona Lisa who is now winking. There's a crazy guy called the Art Brut who can step in and out of paintings who this FBI like organization uses to fix these kinds of things. It's like this story just stepped out of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol run.

Echolands, Vol. 1 ★★★★★
This thing is an absolute treat to gander at. Williams art is so fantastic and inventive. Every character looks like they were plucked out of a different comic, Kirby, Wrightson, a comic strip. They all mix together to tell this story of a group of criminals on the run after one of them stole a gem and didn't realize what they'd taken from the local wizard in charge.

This thing has a unique layout, stapled and bound on the narrow side of a comic and oriented in double page landscapes. It can be a chore to read digitally if you don't have a very large screen. Try and get a physical copy if you can.

X-O Manowar: Invictus ★★
This got real bad towards the end as there was a mad dash to tie up all these plot threads and get Aric back to Earth for Resurgence. You can actually hear the record scratch when Ivar shows up on the last page and teleports Aric out of there and Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad's story before it's really settled. There's are also 3 different artists and multiple colorists on the book and it shows.

Radiant Red, Vol. 1: Crime and Punishment ★★★★★
Radiant Red operates way more in the grey than Radiant Black. Her fiance has gotten them into a ton of gambling debt and the only out she sees is to rob banks. And it turns out she kind of enjoys the power. Then she gets forced into a job to steal something dangerous. There's a lot to like here. LaFuente's art is often quite good and then he'll do something like draw someone with great big huge hands the size of boxing gloves.

Fall of Deadworld ★★★
The Judges fight a bunch of the undead in this ongoing war. It's got some Dead Space type stuff in it as these aren't strictly zombies and are almost impossible to kill. Still like a lot of 2000 AD stuff if you haven't been reading it forever, I didn't know why any of this was happening.

Radiant Black, Vol. 2: Team-Up ★★★
Marshall continues as Radiant Black as his best friend sits in a coma. The first 2 issues are a slobberknocker between the Radiants without any story progression. The second half of this is more interesting as Marshall is a little more out for himself and tries to do things his way as he struggles through life. The last issue is an origin for Radiant Pink and Yellow. Overall, pretty good.

The Crumrin Chronicles Vol. 1: The Charmed and the Cursed ★★★★
Courtney Crumrin is back, this time in the background while her little brother / great uncle (It's complicated.) takes center stage. There's high school, magic and a vampire involved in this one. I thought it was every bit as good as the original series even as we move onto a new chapter.

Phoolan Devi, Rebel Queen ★★★★★
A biography of the controversial Phoolan Devi. A fierce advocate of women's rights in India. At the age of 11, she was married off to a man 20 years older and then raped. The police later raped her as well. Eventually, she meets some bandits and takes control of her life, meeting out justice to those who abuse women with her gang acting as a Robin Hood to the villages in the area. There are some truly horrible scenes in this so be forewarned. But it is an incredible story of perseverance and ultimately justice. I had no idea who Phoolan Devi was before this but I'll be looking out for more biographies about her now.

Choose Your Own Adventure Eighth Grade Witch ★
I used to love Choose Your Own Adventures as a kid and had a ton of them. This doesn't really work as a comic book though. It's more difficult to flip back and forth without accidentally cheating and revealing the wrong paths. Plus, most of the endings were plenty lame and felt intended for a much younger audience.

Under the Cottonwood Tree ★★★★
A Spanish story about a family in New Mexico. The youngest brother is a pest and runs afoul of the local curandera. She's had a tragedy in her life and let it turn her sour. She turns little Carlo into a cow and things continue south for the family from there. There's a lot to like in this original story and I thought the art was great as well.

Tomb Raider Colossal Collection Volume 1 ★★
This is pretty terrible. It gets even worse once Dan Jurgens and Andy Parks leave. The stories all seem more or less the same. Someone in Lara's life betrays her or a new love interest appears only to disappear and never be heard again after the end of the story. It's like this title exists in a vacuum. Then there's issue #25 which is missing, presumably because it was a crossover with Witchblade and The Darkness (Top Cow originally made all these before Dark Horse reprinted them.) The stranger thing is that Witchblade and the Darkness both appear in the issues afterward but only in their civilian garb. Anyway, Lara apparently dies in #25 and is in some kind of Egyptian underworld in #26 and you have no idea what happened. The whole series is nonstop poor writing and surprisingly poor art considering all these artists became much bigger after this was published.

Violent Flowers ★★★
A group of vampires fight over an old feud and strike a lot of sensual poses. My favorite part of this is that it took place in one of my favorite cities, Barcelona, and large portions of it take place in Park Guell and La Pedrera, two of the most fabulous works of architecture you could ever visit, both by Gaudi.

Deep Cuts ★★★
An anthology of stories revolving around the American music of the 20th century. Some worked better than others, as did some of the artwork with a different artist illustrating each issue.

The Dark Room ★★★★
This completely reminds me of something that would have come out from Vertigo if Vertigo still existed. It's about a private curator of cursed objects hired to find a cursed camera. Then she has to go on the run. It's got breakdancing skeletons, coke fueled werewolves and disco loving elves in it too. It's just a hell of a lot of fun.

The Bone Orchard Mythos: The Passageway ★★
This feels like the first issue of a comic where you expect to get answers in later issues, except those don't exist. A geologist comes to a tiny island that houses a light house when she calls in that a large deep whole appeared over night. Then a bunch of weird nonsensical stuff happens without any answers. In retrospect, this is not where you want to end a volume with the reader having no idea what's going on.

Tomb Raider, Vol. 1: Saga of the Medusa Mask ★★★
Chase Carver is super cringey. The rest isn't too bad though, better than I expected. Still it's early 2000s Top Cow so keep your expectations low.

Tomb Raider, Vol. 2: Mystic Artifacts ★★
This thing begins to slide downhill when Lara Croft goes back in time with the dinosaurs. It was better than these goofball Midnight Squire wingnuts though. They are so over the top macho and then they meet the old guy who has his own underground lair complete with harem straight out of a James Bond film. I don't know how Dan Jurgens wrote this without snickering.

Tomb Raider, Vol. 3: Chasing Shangri La ★★★
The Shangri-La story was actually not bad. Some good artists early on in their careers here.

Tomb Raider: Pieces of Zero ★★
This story is goofy as hell. It's got reality stars getting swallowed up by tentacles. Then time travelling to the future. Plus, the old guy with the harem who is "fated" to wind up with Lara is back. All of it is dumb.

Chad wrote: "... Phoolan Devi, Rebel Queen ★★★★★
A biography of the controversial Phoolan Devi...."

I enjoyed that, too. It is more of an auto-biography, though, since the graphic novel is based almost entirely on P.D.'s book I, Phoolan Devi: The Autobiography of India's Bandit Queen. Since she was, as you say, controversial, and a politician as well, I doubt it is 100% true.

When I was reading it, I kept feeling like it reminded me of the novel Who Fears Death. It wasn't a coincidence. Nnedit Okorafor has confirmed that "This autobiography profoundly influenced the voice of Onyesonwu in Who Fears Death. It’s such a fantastic rage-filled read. Phoolan Devi was...wow.🌹"

Just read Curse Words: The Whole Damned Thing. ★★★★

I hadn't been aware of it back when it was released monthly. I enjoyed bingeing the whole thing.

A wizard with a sword, named Wizord, a scarlet witch, named Red Stitch, and a talking koala named Margaret battle to save/destroy the Whole world and the Hole world. There is nothing subtle about this, but it sure is fun!

I prefer Eight Billion Genies from the same creators, but this is fun, too.

Today's trip to my LCS.

Ultimate Wolverine #9
Ultimate Spider-Man: Incursion #4
Transformers #24
Thundercats #18
Space Ghost #2
Redcoat #14
Racer X #1
One World Under Doom #7
Gatchaman #12
Feral #16
Exceptional X-Men #13
Captain America #3
Birds of Prey #25
Aquaman #9
Absolute Batman #12
X-Men of Apocalypse: Alpha
Blue Falcon and Dynomutt #1
Nocturnals: The Sinister Path #1

I also got some ashcans from a new comic book company, Ignition Press. It's run by Jamie Rich, someone from Boom and Jeremy Haun.

These ashcans had Leah Williams, David Baldeon, Jeremy Haun, Cullen Bunn and Marika Cresta listed. I saw Si Spurrier, Stephanie Williams, Joe Eisma and the Miranda Brothers also listed as having projects coming out there.

Flipping through one of these Jeremy Haun's book has a sequel to The Beauty coming out.

That's an interesting line up at any rate.

Adam wrote: "That's an interesting line up at any rate."

That's what I thought. A mixture of creators I'm interested in and a couple I'm always disappointed with.