Category Contributors

Aug 5 2015

Lazarus 18

lazarus 18Today, Spencer and Ryan are discussing Lazarus 18, originally released July 29th, 2015.

Spencer: There’s a certain rush that comes with new stories, with watching a whole world full of new characters and relationships being established right before your eyes, but it’s a rush that by definition can’t last forever, and late-series attempts to keep things fresh often misfire. The answer isn’t continually adding new characters and concepts, which can often leave a story feeling bloated and distract from its core themes; the best storytellers know the power that comes from mixing up established relationships, throwing together characters who have never really interacted before, and finding new perspectives to view their cast through. Greg Rucka and Michael Lark’s Lazarus is well into its second year and fourth storyline, and it’s exactly these kind of techniques that keeps issue 18 feeling as compelling as ever. Continue reading →

Aug 4 2015

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 48

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Today, Taylor and Spencer are discussing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 48, originally released July 29th, 2015.

Taylor: Time is hard concept to understand. On the one hand, it’s totally an invention of humankind and wouldn’t exist without us. On the other hand, it does seem like things more or less move temporally in some fashion independent of human thought. That’s basically the second law of thermodynamics. The point is, time is a complicated concept. It should be no surprise then that time can be difficult to illustrate in comics. It’s such an abstract concept that it’s not always easy to show readers. However, one of the things comic book artists are experts at is showing the movement of time in and between panels. In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 48, artist Cory Smith puts on a clinic on how to show the passage of time. Subsequently, this issue is beautiful to read.

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Aug 3 2015

Batgirl Annual 3

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Today, Michael and Mark are discussing Batgirl Annual 3, originally released July 29th, 2015.

Michael: I don’t know if the concept of “Annual” comic book really has a true characterization. Sometimes it’s just a giant-sized issue of an ongoing story. Other times it’s a semi-audition for up and coming writers to get their feet wet. Then there are annuals like to jam-pack the issue with as much muchness as possible. Batgirl Annual 3 is the much muchness example. Continue reading →

Aug 3 2015

Secret Wars Round-Up: Issues released 7/29/15

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Today, Patrick, Drew, and Spencer discuss Thors 2, M.O.D.O.K. Assassin 3, Deadpool’s Secret Secret Wars 3, and Black Widow 20.

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Patrick: It’s kind of a goofy week for Secret Wars: between Deadpool’s Secret Secret Wars — which may have just delivered its own punchline — and M.O.D.O.K. Assassin  — which is nothing but punchlines — and the deadpan homage to cop shows that is Thors, there’s a lot to make us smile. It’s not all shits and giggles: perhaps it’s fitting that series stuck telling stories of heroes’ Last Days would skew so dark, and issues like Black Widow 20 provide a necessary tonal balance when looking at the week in aggregate.
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Aug 3 2015

Star Wars 7

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Today, Patrick and (guest writer) Elliott are discussing Star Wars 7, originally released July 29th, 2015.

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Patrick: Comic books are the go-to medium for fleshing out stories and characters set up in movies, TV shows and video games. There’s always going to be a Firefly comic or something featuring Lara Croft – and 90% of the time, those series are filling in gaps in the narratives. And those gaps — those times before or after or during the main stories are usually filled with precisely that: more narrative. That’s not fair to comic books as a medium, which move in their own rhythms and will always be compared to the storytelling prowess of the original. We’ve had a ton of conversations on this site about what we even want from these things: Star Wars isn’t just a set of aliens and some colloquialisms about the Kessel Run, it’s the music, the motion, the sound effects, the light, the performances. Star Wars 7 is an interesting issue; it fills in gaps in the narrative we’re already reading, which in and of itself is filling in gaps in a different narrative altogether. But rather than letting the necessarily weak plot drive the issue, writer Jason Aaron imagines what Obi-Wan Kenobi must have felt during his years on Tatooine, and builds a story out from there. Continue reading →

Jul 31 2015

DC Round-Up Comics Released 7/29/15

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Look, there are a lot of comics out there. Too many. We can never hope to have in-depth conversations about all of them. But, we sure can round up some of the more noteworthy titles we didn’t get around to from the week. Today, Michael, Spencer and Patrick discuss Batgirl 42, Gotham By Midnight Annual 1, Lobo Annual 1 and The Flash Annual 4.

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Michael: Have you ever noticed how the fifth Wednesday of a month always brings an odd grab bag of titles from DC? It’s typically full of books that are behind schedule and trying to catch up and the occasional Annual issue. So I guess it’s no surprise that this week’s DC offering is full of five Annuals in total. Let’s cover a few of them, shall we?

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Jul 31 2015

Guardians Team-Up 8

guardians team up 8Today, Spencer and Patrick are discussing Guardians Team-Up 8, originally released July 29th, 2015.

Spencer: The best writers know when to step aside and let their artist tell as much of the story as possible — “a picture’s worth a thousand words,” right? Of course, to do this, a writer must have trust in their artist to properly convey their story, and in the chaotic world of mainstream superhero comics, where there are sometimes fill-in artists or multiple artists on a single title, that kind of trust can often be a rare commodity. In light of that point, Guardians Team-Up 8 is even more impressive — Ray Fawkes and Bengal tell their one-off story without any words (until the last page), putting Bengal in charge of all the issue’s storytelling. While this issue isn’t without its faults, I’d call it a largely successful gambit. Continue reading →

Jul 30 2015

The Manhattan Projects: The Sun Beyond the Stars 2

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Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing The Manhattan Projects: The Sun Beyond the Stars 2, originally released July 29th, 2015.

Patrick: The original The Manhattan Projects series built its mystique by taking figures and events from history and slightly distorting, exaggerating and recontextualizing them into a bizarrely compelling science fiction story. It’s a masterclass in having fun with the concept of an alternate history, and writer Jonathan Hickman seemed singularly focused on what was fun about his alternate history. Occasionally, dates and lifespans and discoveries wouldn’t exactly line up, but the series really didn’t need petty adherence to logic: the loose framework provided by those historical figures was enough to ground some absolutely bonkers storytelling. Now that we’re Beyond the Stars, that framework has morphed from historical figures to science fiction conventions, and even still, Hickman is as unpredictable and unprecious as ever. Continue reading →

Jul 29 2015

Uncanny X-Men 35

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Today, Patrick and Taylor are discussing Uncanny X-Men 35, originally released July 22nd, 2015.

Patrick: Mutants are among the more malleable allegories in comics. As a class of people persecuted for something they can’t control, they’ve acted as stand ins for racial minorities, religious minorities, disabled peoples, homosexuals – anyone with any kind of outsider status. But they’re also useful for other political debate: gun control, freedom vs. safety, etc. In one of his final issues writing the X-Men, Brian Michael Bendis employs a rarely-tapped metaphor and uses one of his own Mutants to tackle a topic that is decidedly apolitical, and casts an unlikely X-Man as the furthest thing from “outsider” you could imagine. It’s a delightfully simple slugline: what if Goldballs became famous? Continue reading →

Jul 29 2015

Wolf 1

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Today, Ryan and Drew are discussing Wolf 1, originally released July 22nd, 2015.

Ryan: Stop me if you have read this comic before: a dark, supernatural noir following a seemingly immortal protagonist and featuring Lovecraftian — oh, yes, that’s Ed Brubaker’s Fatale. Or this one, then: a hard-nosed paranormal detective named Wolf tries to right wrongs in a major American city populated by folkloric — yup, you got it, that is Fables. The first issue of Wolf strides over well-trodden territory — really, we have seen this all before. So why, then, does it work so well? Better yet, what is it that Ales Kot is doing better than everyone else? Continue reading →