Antonius Axia, Rome’s first (and only) detective, is back with a new case: temple statues of the gods are coming to life and killing young nobles and a popular female gladiator is somehow connected. Can he solve the case before Emperor Nero loses patience and feeds him and his son to the lions?
The Unbelievable Gwenpool has nothing to do with Gwen Stacy or Deadpool; she is Gwen Poole, a Marvel fangirl from our world who has inexplicably wound up in the Marvel Universe! Using her unique inside knowledge of Marvel comics, Gwen has survived the strange and dangerous superhero landscape by deposing the giant testicle with a face, MODOK, and becoming the new head of his criminal organisation. She also has a team-up with Ultimate Spider-Man himself, Miles Morales!
I like to move it, move it, move it, I like to… movie it, provie it, shooo… sorry, I think my brain’s broken from too many crappy comics lately! Oh up yours Young Animal. Thank Jeebus this is the last one of these I’ve gotta endure!
With his best friend Foggy Nelson dead (or is he…?), Matt Murdock breaks out of prison to pursue the killer - a trail that will take Daredevil on a tour of Europe to the puppet master behind it all. The second half of Ed Brubaker’s first Daredevil arc, The Devil, Inside and Out, isn’t bad. It’s well-written with Brubaker showing he understands the characters and nails their voices and it’s beautifully illustrated by Michael Lark - it just didn’t do much for me.
Iris is a veteran of the Second Gulf War and spends his days selling ‘shine to his backwoods clientele and being a mediocre husband and father. But he’s haunted by his time in the Iraqi desert and what he and his platoon did - and the demons from that time are coming home to roost… I didn’t really know what to expect with The Dark & The Bloody and unfortunately it turns out that it’s a pretty crappy Southern Gothic horror, similar to Wytches and Harrow County. Neither the characters nor the story are in the least bit compelling with the whole thing tediously unfolding slowly. This person is killed off followed by another and… zzz… It took me a while to wade through because I just didn’t care! I suppose it’s an imaginative take on the shit America got up to in the Middle East - it’s an original premise, I’ll give it that - and the monster is visually interesting, but I found The Dark & The Bloody to be a bloody unengaging, bland horror.
I think Chuck Dixon might be the worst Batman writer of all time. If he’s not, he’s definitely in the running. Bruce Wayne discovers that he’s related to one of the Grail Knights (of course he is) and is given the actual Holy Grail by one of his descendants. Ra’s Al-Ghul and some other rogues want it - boring shenanigans ensue. Tedium would be an upgrade for what I felt when reading The Chalice. No idea why John Van Fleet’s art is so very black (because I’m Batman!) but I was squinting most of the time at the page right in front of me in daylight - not great. Predictable, uninteresting, uninspired, and absolutely pointless, it’s easy to see why this toilet paper masquerading as a comic is out of print. Let’s hear it for Chuck Dixon everybody! BOOOOO!!!
I think most people are familiar with Pepe the Frog at this point. He figured heavily in the 2016 Election as a meme and his grinning mug has become a symbol of the amorphously-defined “alt-right”. Matt Furie’s stoner comic Boy’s Club is where he originated and I picked it up out of curiosity for what the comics this character featured in were like. That was definitely one of the worst decisions I’ve made in some time - Boy’s Club is 10000% utter dogshit.
I’ve just emerged from the longest dry spell of reading any quality books I’d rate four stars or above in years - it’s been over a MONTH! So thank goodness that a new Giant Days arc drops just when I think I’ve got anhedonia. Seven - SEVEN! - books in and this title is still first class all the way. HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS, YOU MAD GENIUS JOHN ALLISON!!!?! Seriously, no other comics series I’ve read has been this consistently good.
Kingpin may have been nicked but he’s got an ace up his sleeve. If the FBI Director cuts him loose, he’ll give him The Murdock Papers, irrefutable proof that the blind lawyer of Hell’s Kitchen, Matt Murdock, is The Man Without Fear himself, Daredevil!
Penny gets fired from her job and booted out of her flat all in the span of a day. Ooooh, I gets it, the title’s irooooonnnnicccc! So she moves into a storage unit and goes to work at a laundromat run by her friend’s kid brother for comedy reasons. But romance is around the corner in the form of nerdy Walter - could Penny... get Lucky, (ohohoho, nudge nudge)?!
Rebel sympathisers are starving thanks to a planet-wide blockade by the Empire. Luke and co. plot to hijack a star destroyer to bust through and drop off supplies. The only problem is they have to hijack a friggin’ star destroyer! Last Flight of the Harbinger is unfortunately the worst volume yet in Jason Aaron’s Star Wars run - which hasn’t exactly been amazing either!
Michael Connelly is labelled a “thriller” writer and it used to be an accurate description for a lot of his books. Ten years ago I loved novels like The Lincoln Lawyer, The Scarecrow and Echo Park for their fast-paced plots with Connelly throwing his characters into tense situations against murderers and sadists. Alas, that’s not the Michael Connelly of today who only seems capable of robotically churning out dull police procedurals like The Late Show.
Chelsea Cain and Kate Niemczyk’s second and final Mockingbird book is for no good reason very, very loosely tied into Civil War II. I suppose why not? This title is so directionless it’s not hard to see why it got cancelled so early on!
If you’ve read any Moon Knight comics you’ll know the hero, Marc Spector/Moon Knight, is madder than a box of frogs. He’s completely crazy in the coconut! That’s what Jeff Lemire’s second Moon Knight book is all about underlining - and unfortunately not much else.
