Mar 22 2018

Jon Shines as Damian Spins His Wheels in Super Sons 14

by Spencer Irwin

 

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

The battle between Damian Wayne and his mother, Talia al Ghul, is the centerpiece of Super Sons 14, but it’s a showdown I feel like I’ve seen before. I don’t mean the actual physical fight, which is well choreographed and which artist Carlo Barberi fills with hits that look like they really hurt; it’s their argument, the words and ideas they toss back and forth, which feels lifted from every other Damian/Talia story I’ve ever read. Thankfully, writer Peter Tomasi brings it all to an interesting conclusion; the idea that Damian is upset that, no matter what he does, he’ll never be able to please both of his parents is an affecting one, and is probably familiar to many children of divorce (at least the more contentious ones). It’s a great place to end the issue, even if it doesn’t do much to lift up the rest of the fighting that came before.

Thankfully, Jon Kent’s half of the issue shines where Damian’s doesn’t. Continue reading →

Mar 21 2018

Infidel 1: Discussion

by Drew Baumgartner and Ryan Desaulniers

Infidel 1

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature

Drew: I’m not sure there’s anything we fear quite like the unknown. Whether it’s xenophobia or just things that go bump in the night, every fear is defined by the things we don’t (yet) understand. And while our society has legitimized the former (effectively forgetting that it’s as nonsensical as the latter) all fears spring from that same well of the unknown. Which is what makes Pornsak Pichetshote and Aaron Campbell’s Infidel so alluring; they’ve brought those fears back together, using supernatural elements to illustrate the more pressing real-world fears its characters live with. Continue reading →

Mar 21 2018

Differences of Time Travel Opinion in Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man 301

by Michael DeLaney

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

What would you say to your younger self if you had a chance? Would you try to change the future or just enjoy the literal stroll down memory lane? Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man 301 does a little bit of both, actually. J. Jonah Jameson and Peter have traveled back in time a little earlier than their target date and have some time to kill. Peter spends it thwipping webs with his younger counterpart while Jonah enlists his younger self to track down The Tinkerer. Continue reading →

Mar 21 2018

New Super-Man and the Justice League of China 21

by Mark Mitchell

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Political commentary is not New Super-Man and the Justice League of China 21’s forte. It’s mostly informative in the sense that characters are literally declaring information, like when Bat-Man flatly proclaims that, “North Korea is an asylum inmate that only listens to China…” But while the political message of the book lacks nuance, that writer Gene Luen Yang bothers to go there at all is commendable. If every comic book is someone’s first comic books, than every fleeting discussion of Sino-North Korean politics is someone’s first fleeting discussion of Sino-North Korean politics — and that’s worth celebrating. (Information is power!) Continue reading →

Mar 21 2018

Bodies Are Weird in Come Into Me 1

By Taylor Anderson

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

It doesn’t take much to read into the allegory of Come Into Me. We are a society that increasingly shares every aspect of our private lives with the world. Some would argue that this is a great way of connecting people, but others, like writers Zac Thompson and Lonnie Nadler, would contend that it violates our privacy at worst and is used as a money making scheme at best. In the first issue of Come Into Me, the creators offer an intriguing look into the possibilities of sharing your personal experience, even if it comes accompanied with certain amounts of horror. Continue reading →

Mar 20 2018

Existential Fears in Marvel Two-In-One 4

By Taylor Anderson

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

There are times deep in the night, and always at night, where I am plagued by existential fears. It’s the curse of the modern age, I guess, knowing about problems that are too great for any one single human to do anything about. Climate change, the meaning of life in a godless universe, and death (just to name a few) frequently wrack my brain. Of course, this is to say nothing of the eventual heat death of the universe, which, while possibly a googol years away, still worries me because it basically means the end of anything living (as we know it) in the entire universe. That’s sad and troubling! This fear of nothing being left is hard to fathom, but it’s made easier when it happens all at once, as in Marvel Two-In-One 4. Continue reading →

Mar 20 2018

It’s Manga’s Greatest Hits in Betrothed 1

By Mark Mitchell

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

If you like reading manga you will probably enjoy Betrothed 1, and if you like Betrothed 1 you will probably enjoy reading manga.

That’s obviously a broad generalization, since manga is a medium, not a genre, and there are many different stories told within that medium, but as a lapsed Weekly Shonen Jump subscriber, I’ve read enough breezy meet-cutes and hastily staged fight sequences to comfortably state that Sean Lewis and Steve Uy’s Betrothed 1 is a solid effort at a Manga Tropes Greatest Hits Collection. Continue reading →

Mar 20 2018

Order in the Slow Chaos of Secret Weapons: Owen’s Story 0

by Patrick Ehlers

This article contains SPOILERS! If you haven’t read the issue, proceed at your own risk.

January’s Secret Weapons 0 was all about Nikki’s growth from high school senior to effective super heroine. It’s a straight line of dissolving relationships and withering opportunities, a chain of events where one cause naturally leads to the next effect. That’s moving, effective storytelling. But that’s not always reflective of life, is it? Secret Weapons: Owen’s Story 0 takes a similar concept and muddles it up, making Owen’s saga less like a line and more like a web of trivial connections. Writer Eric Heisserer and artists Raúl Allén and Patricia Martín lean on the oddly symmetric structures present in a series of seemingly unrelated stories, and though they arrive at a slight conclusion, it is all the more meaningful for being fully earned. Continue reading →

Mar 19 2018

Characters Revise Their Own Histories in Darth Vader 13

by Michael DeLaney

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

When Star Wars comics relaunched under Marvel in 2015, Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca’s Darth Vader was far and away the best title. Charles Soule and Giuseppe Camuncoli have continued that tradition with their latest incarnation of the book. Darth Vader 13 is the latest example of how the comics can flesh out characters and concepts in a way that the movies never really did. Continue reading →

Mar 19 2018

Eternity Girl 1: Discussion

by Mark Mitchell and Spencer Irwin


This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Mark: People who suffer from chronic depression are often very good at putting up facades of happiness; it’s part of why suicide can be surprising to the friends and family of the person who took their life. These facades are a coping mechanism for a depression sufferer in a number of ways, including stopping people from inquiring about their happiness. If you look happy — if you act “normal” — then people are more apt to leave you alone. But keeping up appearances for the benefit of others is exhausting, and sometimes the facade breaks down at inopportune moments — at a friend’s wedding, the night before a big paper is due, in front of your co-workers at the office.

The performative aspect of keeping up appearances is made literal in Magdalene Visaggio and Sonny Liew’s Eternity Girl 1, a new title in DC’s Young Animal line. Continue reading →