Jex
Seeing artists other than Tyler Crook illustrate the story of Emmy and her friends took me aback somewhat. Don't get me wrong. The two artists featured here are both good. But Crook has made this world his own, and it just doesn't feel quite right without him. Thankfully he's not gone entirely. The two issues at the center of this collection are pure Tyler Crook goodness, with his beautiful watercolors showing us a haunting and surprising tale. Bunn and Crook's ability to subvert our expectations remains one of this book's greatest strengths.
Hill and Rodriguez have some fun playing with form in this volume, and the action ratchets up to intense levels. Without giving anything away, it's quite clear that Hill has no problem with breaking things that can't be fixed. Further, we are reminded that this is a story, finite, with a beginning, middle, and end. And the end is coming.
One of the things that I like most about this book is that it never does what I expect it to do. It trades in Southern Gothic Horror and monsters and witches and similar, but the storytelling itself doesn't hit those horror beats in the way I keep thinking it will. I'll be honest that this isn't always a good thing, that sometimes if the story were to do what's expected it might actually be more satisfying. (Not always, but sometimes.) Still, I'd rather have to contend with an ambitious misstep than rote genre convention. I can also give the writing a little leeway just because it's supported by such gorgeous art. Crook has been a favorite since his work on BPRD, but what he's doing here is something really, really special.
This was a pleasant surprise. I don't particularly care for the art, and I was worried that it would put me off the book entirely. Fortunately, the story is totally engrossing, and I even came to appreciate the rendering a bit more as I got invested in the characters. I look forward to reading more.
Steampunk Batman fights Lovecraftian monsters in Victorian Gotham City, as co-written by Mike Mignola. How can you beat that? Unfortunately the execution doesn't live up to the promising abstract. It's hard to say just what doesn't quite work. The art was good but not always what I hoped it could be, and on the whole the story could have been more imaginative and the requisite cameos a little less perfunctory. In the end, it's a pastiche of a pastiche. It's fun, to be sure, but it could have been so much more.
Great, if incomplete, history of fantasy role playing in general and Dungeons and Dragons in particular. I loved the way it weaved together the author's personal relationship to the game with the more historical and journalistic aspects. I wish that it'd spent more time exploring the role of women in fantasy gaming, and it's explanations for why women were not involved seems insulting to their intelligence (gronards smell bad, basically). A discussion of gatekeeping would have been a smart addition given the dramatic increase in women gamers and the gaming world's long history of sexism. Still, the section that did talk about women's increased participation–even if it was framed in terms of the author's surprise–was welcome.
Definitely a good introduction to intersectionality and race/class/gender analysis but that also means that the work included can feel very surface-level at times. If you're totally new to this kind of work, this will likely be a revelation. If you've been immersed in it already, use this as a jumping off point to find the authors and ideas you're most interested in.
Now this is how you tell a Superman story. Waid's retelling–or reinvention, to be more accurate–of the timeless Superman origin story shows both that the writer has a deep, fundamental understanding of the character, as well as a similarly rich understanding of our times, and, importantly, how to write a Superman story that resonates in a post-9/11 world. I hate to compare it with Zack Snyder's Man of Steel, but where Snyder misunderstands the character at a fundamental level and presents a cynical (and superficial) retelling of the Superman story, Waid is able to inject a profound sense of hope into his work, demonstrating the importance of Superman as a symbol and cultural icon.
The only element I'm not entirely certain of is the art, about which I have mixed feelings. It's a bit too mainstream cape and cowl for me, and while Yu manages to get his characterizations of the main characters right, there are a lot of elements to his style that I found distracting.
In all, this is a classic Superman story, one that offers insight into the character and which recontextualizes Superman for a modern audience while retaining the values he stands for.
This was great. It makes me very happy to know that even as Hellboy's main story comes to an end, there are always more stories to be told. This one's a bit of a monster ex machina, but that's okay because it was a hell of a ride, deepens the Mignolaverse mythos, and Alex Maleev's art is fantastic. Great stuff.
Nice to have a story centered around Howards and get to know a bit more about the power he has. Overall plot advancements are slow, but this was an interesting MOTW type arc. Plus we learn more about Enos, who up to this point has mostly just been an insufferable asshole. (Doesn't help that he looks like Scott Summers.)
. Honestly worth the price of admission just for “Grind,” a sort of post-apocalyptic slice of life story that features the return (and probably last appearance) of Tyler Crook. The preceding stories are great as well: the first spotlights Kate, who is usually a bit underutilized, so it was nice to have a story featuring her. The second story involves a BPRD crew in Japan and it's a kaiju vs kaiju story that is remarkably touching.