There aren’t many comics around with ironic titles but the “Totally Awesome” Hulk is definitely one of them! Greg Pak Paks up yet another title - I do not know how this dude keeps getting work but I guess if Greg Pak can, anyone can. Seriously - can you write your name? No? Well you’re probably still a better writer than Pak.
Jean-Marc has a comfortable job at his family’s toy company and an active social life with friends - except he’s horribly bored. His mother is overbearing, he doesn’t really enjoy playing football with his buddies, and he couldn’t care less about his work. Jean-Marc is lonely for a female partner, stuck in a rut and needs to escape. So he jumps onto a singles cruise and his adventure towards a new life begins…
JSA (Justice Society of America) Presents: Green Lantern is a collection of crummy comics nobody asked for featuring Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern. His contrived weakness is wood (which is just as bad as the modern day Green Lantern’s contrived weakness: yellow) and his costume is silly. Domino mask? Pfft. Wanker.
Green Lantern fights Solomon Grundy (crap DC proto-Hulk) a lot, as well as some Nazis because WW2, and finally Vandal Savage in a Thanksgiving Parade. Some guy who was once a friend or maybe an enemy Dials H for Hero and turns into a dumbass. Bah!
The book is full of corny writing and bad art and my brain already knows to forget this garbage in the next few minutes. Maybe all seven fans of the Golden Age Green Lantern will enjoy this but that’s it.
Books like Marc Guggenheim and Howard Chaykin’s Undead Again are why you don’t see many Blade comics out there: it’s AWFUL and shows that he’s just not that interesting a character. On paper he sounds good: a vampire hunter who’s also a vampire - but in practice, you get garbage like this.
Blade fights some vampire SHIELD agents, there’s some rubbish about Blade travelling back in time to save Doom’s mother, he fights a possessed mall Santa, more stakings, and he pointlessly tangles with Wolverine. It’s such unmemorable, meandering and boring drek! And Howard Chaykin’s art looks like shit, as always.
There’s probably a creative team out there who could make a great Blade book but it’s definitely not this one!
Novelist and comics writer Benjamin Percy imparts his literary wisdom in Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction, most of which make a lot of sense and contain useful advice and tips if you’re looking to develop seriously as a writer.
Really - a book on Batman and Jim Gordon’s bromance? DC will milk every angle on Batman, won’t they? Turning Points is rubbish. There’s always been enough Batman/Gordon scenes in the background of better, more substantial stories to make something like this negligible. All this shows is that it fails as the main focus of a book because it’s so boring!
Nick Fury discovers that the Latverian government is secretly bankrolling a bunch of second-rate supervillains to cause terror stateside and decides to take the fight to their doorstep with a little help from his friends. Except the superheroes don’t know how far Fury is willing to go to protect his homeland…
A world-famous footballer, his supermodel wife and their infant son crash-land near a tropical island – this is Savage aka Valiant Does Lost! Our plucky young hero must navigate the strange island’s dangers, like dinosaurs and bloodthirsty bikers, to survive and figure out how to get back home.
It’s another Rebirth book - you know the drill by now. Sigh...
I guess it’s because Death of Superman was (is?) a big seller for DC but they’ve basically decided to rehash it anew for the first Action Comics Rebirth arc with the same author, Dan “Talentless Yet Somehow Still Working!” Jurgens.
Green Arrow and Black Canary are a couple again and they’re fighting bankers - this couldn’t possibly suck could it? It could. It does. Bah. Fucking Rebirth!
DC have had quite the overhaul this past year: Rebirth proved to be very commercially successful, they launched their new indie line, Young Animal, curated by Gerard Way, and even their revamped Hanna-Barbera titles have gotten some good notices. They’ve now turned their attention to reviving the Wildstorm imprint, hiring Warren Ellis to write the 24-issue headlining series.
The Flintstones gets a makeover in their newly-relaunched series: Fred and Barney are war vets with PTSD, Wilma’s an artist, and Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm are tweens! Do the changes work? Actually, yes! Is this one of the best titles of the past year like many reviewers are claiming? Nope! It’s surprisingly not bad though – I can definitely see why there’s enthusiasm for this series.
Alexander Bont, the Kingpin before Wilson Fisk, is finally out of prison and wants revenge on the man who put him there: Matt Murdock!
A strange highschooler can’t stop apologising for his little sister with the crazy smile who stalks people. And then everyone starts melting...?! Yup, it’s a Junji Ito horror manga, alright!
The Green Lantern Corps have disappeared somewhere, Oa has been blowed up and the Sinestro Corps rule the universe – prepare to lose IQ points, it’s Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps!
Vision’s brother Victor visits but brings complications with him, forcing Vision to make some hard choices about his family.
Dick Grayson has to play a game of hide and seek with Batman before he can be his sidekick, Robin - if Bats doesn’t find him before dawn, he wins! Also, gangsters and junk.
In 1969 David and Angie Bowie moved into Haddon Hall, a large Victorian house in suburban London, where a then-practically-unknown Bowie wrote some of his most famous songs (Life on Mars, Changes) and created his Ziggy Stardust persona that would propel him to superstardom and rock legend.
The last time I read a book with “Red Rising” in the title was a pretty awful experience. Martian Manhunter, Volume 2: The Red Rising is better than Pierce Brownpants’ crummy novel but not by much which is disappointing as the first volume was really good.
Mister Sun is a hitman who also disposes of bodies. His latest assignment calls for him to kill someone and dispose of their body. That’s it.
Huh!? I swear Warren Ellis used to be a good writer of prose, like in Crooked Little Vein, but his latest fiction has been absolutely shite. Dead Pig Collector is thin on content even for a short story. If you want to read 30-odd pages of a dude disposing of a human body in detail, this is for you! But, even as an Ellis fan, I thought this was unoriginal, uninteresting, uninspired, utterly terrible and pointless - don’t bother!
Jill Thompson’s Wonder Woman: The True Amazon is a retelling of Diana’s classic origin with the slight difference that teenage Diana is a brat. She’s the princess so she does what she wants, bitch! And then she learns the dire consequences of her irresponsibility, grows up and is set on the path towards the hero she will become.
Oh Rebirth, Rebirth, Rebirth, why art thou so pants? Fie my disappointment, Detective Comics dost verily sucketh! I don’t know why I’m talking this way. Maybe Rebirth’s broken me brain? I’ll stop now. Verily.
The Flight of Bones (what a crap title!) is a collection of rubbish, random Doctor Strange stories from the ‘90s and ‘00s.
The apocalypse happened and the world ended. In the wake, all roads lead to Boot Hill where the evil witch Griselda seeks to remake the world in her image in the Devil’s Workshop while Becky, Drake and co. set out to stop her one last time.
Nightwing is the worst Rebirth title I’ve read so far. I don’t know how Tim Seeley’s made the charismatic former sidekick of Batman so charmless, uninteresting and soul-crushingly boring but he’s done it! What a garbage writer.
It’s the Brian Bendis Special: a paper-thin plot that would barely cover an issue stretched to book-length!
Tony sends Rhodey to Japan to investigate some cyber ninjas but he goes missing. Then Tony and Spidey team up to find Rhodey and THEY go missing! OH MY G… who cares. This is just Bendis treading water until Civil War II.
Vast amounts of dirty money is being laundered through MI5 at the same time MI6 - Bond’s division - has been disarmed. Eidolon has infiltrated the highest levels of British intelligence. Eidolon: another word for ghost… or spectre...
“RAAAARRRGH! My name is Atrocitus and I’m a monster with a red ring. I leads the Red Lanterns!”
“Ugh, why’re you spitting blood everywhere??”
“Excuse me but I’m VOMITING blood everywhere and it’s because I’m a Red Lantern – it’s what we do! I want to put a Rage Seed in Earth.”
“You wanna knock up the planet? That sounds stupid.”
“It is. And a penis-like Hell Tower will burrow down into the Earth’s egg, uh, core where the Seed will be placed.”
“Why!?”
“Prophecy.”
“What?”
“There’s a prophecy, dude.”
“I’ve read the New 52 Red Lanterns books and there’s never been talk of some bullshit prophecy.”
“It’s called Red Dawn.”
“That’s even stupider. You know that’s the title of a couple of crap movies, right?”
“Woah, really? Are they about being angry and wanting to impregnate a planet?”
“No, that would be immensely retarded. They do suck though.”
“I’m still going to watch them.”
“Moron. Wait, why Earth exactly?”
“It’s the angriest planet in the universe.”
“And how did you find that out?”
“…”
“Tell me this isn’t the whole book.”
“Hello, I’m Simon Baz!”
“And I’m Jessica Cruz!”
“And together we are the new Green Lanterns!”
“We don’t get along at first but eventually become friends. This is a buddy cop movie, like a superhero version of Lethal Weapon but not as good!”
“Huh. Well, I guess you two do have decent chemistry and aren’t totally annoying. But why do so many Green Lanterns come from Earth?”
“…”
“And I’m a secret Guardian who made a secret super ring – I need to speak to Hal Jordan!”
“Go away, secret Guardian, you’re meant for later books!”
“Ok, I’ll go wait in the wings and order a beer.”
“Hi, I’m Atrocitus and I’ve got some nonsense to spew.”
“I’ll leave you all to it, I don’t need to hear it again.”
“Are you coming back to see what happens in the next book?”
“Yeah, you guys look great!”
“Did he have his fingers in his ears?”
“He was running too. I don’t think he’s gonna come back. Did you just spit blood on my spiffy green outfit??”
“Vomited blood, yes.”
“Why?!”
“I’ve been reading DC Rebirth books. I mean, I’m a Red Lantern, it’s what I do.”
“Do you need medical treatment?”
“Got any Tums?”
“No, but I can construct a green one.”
“Awesome. Ooo, it tastes minty too! So let’s get down to it. There’s this Prophecy called Red Dawn…”
(Both Green Lanterns vomit.)
House of Penance is loosely based on the life of Sarah Winchester, the 19th century American heiress who went mad after the death of her husband and daughter, and then spent decades and a massive amount of the Winchester fortune on constant work on her San Jose mansion, which is still around and known today as the Winchester Mystery House (the house’s design is mental, full of staircases and doorways to nowhere).
Karnak, a misanthropic Inhuman warrior monk, is hired by SHIELD to rescue an abducted Inhuman teenage boy who’s gone through Terrigenesis but seemingly didn’t receive any powers or undergo a transformation - or did he? The stoic Karnak might face his greatest challenge yet as he is confronted with his deepest desires, desires he may not even be aware of…
I was glad to hear Geoff Johns was leaving Justice League as I wasn’t a fan of his New 52 run and I still wanted to read a great Justice League comic. My optimism was soon dampened though after hearing Bryan Hitch was taking over. Have you read his Image series Real Heroes? The premise is what if actors playing superheroes actually got superpowers and had to save the world for reals. Sounds ok, right? I couldn’t get through the first issue, it was so, so bad - it even gave me a headache!
An eccentric dying billionaire who made his money on social media site Chirper, where users can send “chirps” of 140 characters or less, leaves his fortune to 140 random people around the world. If one of the 140 dies, their share is split between the survivors. Oh yeah and an insane masked killer is slowly tracking down and murdering each of the 140! Who will survive long enough to enjoy their money?
Matt Murdock is outed as Daredevil – but will he admit to the world that he really is the Man Without Fear or fight it?
After being blown away recently by Daredevil: End of Days I wanted to read more of Brian Michael Bendis’ Daredevil run, hoping they’d be as good – and, going by this book, they certainly seem to be! Out is easily one of the best Daredevil books I’ve read.
Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason, the creative team best known for their New 52 Batman and Robin run, try and recapture that title’s magic by applying a similar formula to Superman Rebirth, giving Superman a young son sidekick - and unfortunately the result is not nearly as good.
Is it possible to sleep through a book with your eyes open? I think that’s what I did with this one! I read it so passively, I feel like I ghosted through the whole thing. The reason why is how utterly crappy the stories are in this one.
Maddy’s parents have been turned into mice by the Thimblewitch so she sets off on a magical adventure to find her to turn them back.
Eric Orchard’s Maddy Kettle: The Adventure of the Thimblewitch is a delightful kid’s book that even a (supposed) grown-up like me enjoyed!
Eric Powell’s back with a new series: Hillbilly, the story of a wandering Southern hillbilly called Rondel who hunts witches - and it’s not bad.
I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: Jason Shiga is a genius cartoonist. Meanwhile is a choose your own adventure puzzle comic that took years to make and he literally needed to write a computer algorithm to put it all together in book form!
