How did Darth Vader get his red lightsaber? Better question: who fucking cares?! That said, while this may be the flimsy plot of Charles Soule and Giuseppe Camuncoli’s first volume in the rebooted Vader series, Imperial Machine surprisingly wasn’t that bad.
Snootchie motherlovin’ bootchies, what a fucking shitshow the first volume of Silent Bob’s Green Arrow was!
Ollie Queen’s dead, he’s not dead, he’s sorta dead, there’s another Green Arrow, there’s still another one – who can fucking follow, let alone care?! In TEN absurdly overwritten issues it takes Kevin Smith an age to get around to producing anything resembling a story and when he does it’s somehow even more boring than the meandering nothing that preceded it.
Wealthy businessman Aristide Leonides has been murdered after someone swapped out his insulin for poison! Leonides’ children are quick to blame their elderly dad’s young bride who looks to inherit his fortune – but did the gold-digger and her secret lover dunit or is the killer someone else in the household…?
Two men murder an acquaintance, stuff the corpse into a chest and then invite the victim’s father round to eat dinner off it! Will they be found out or will they get away with it?
The Comedian and Ozymandias square off for Round 2 – against a window atop still another skyscraper, naturally! – but Eddie died… didn’t he? Meanwhile, another supposedly dead Watchman, “Rorschach”, hangs out at Wayne Manor as Batman reads Walter Kovacs’ rambling, paranoid journal and Mime and Marionette sample the Gotham nightlife by taking in a comedy show – but will their antics amuse the city’s resident clown, Mistah J… ?
Gwen Poole’s a Marvel fangirl from the “real” world who’s been transported into the Marvel Comics Universe and reinvented herself as the amusing anti-hero Gwenpool - but how did she get there in the first place? Finally, her secret origin is revealed! Also, Gwen discovers that she’s her own worst enemy - literally! - as her evil future self appears to her in the present, along with future Miles Morales. Both are trying to control her destiny because of what she becomes. So what’s a girl to do: destroy the Marvel Universe, the thing she loves the most, or leave it behind forever and forget she was ever a part of it? Or is there another way…
Down-on-her-luck 40 year old governess Miss Guinevere Pettigrew needs to get a teaching job or she’ll be evicted. But little does she know when she stumbles into the glamorous life of socialite Miss Delysia LaFosse, her fortunes are about to change drastically - today, for the first time in her bleak existence, Miss Pettigrew will LIVE!
He may be trying to leave his murderous past as a masked vigilante behind him but the god-dang Russian Mob won’t stop hunting Dylan. To protect his loved ones, Dylan must… Kill or Be Killed!
Rick is an old-fashioned ice cream man out to serve as many happy customers as possible. What’s your favourite flavour - vanilla, chocolate? He’ll serve it up to you lickety split!
“This thing is so fucked up”
- Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America
Fire and fury certainly describes the response to Michael Wolff’s latest book - this thing is a runaway bestseller! It’s a shame then to report that the content is much less incendiary or compelling than some might hope - underwhelming even, like Trump’s first year as President.
I enjoyed Etgar Keret’s short story collection, Suddenly, A Knock on the Door, so it was disappointing to find out The Nimrod Flip-Out isn’t nearly as good.
Oh my criminy, I am so done with this series! What happens in The Wide Window, the third book in A Series of Unfortunate Events? The EXACT SAME STORY THAT HAPPENED IN THE FIRST TWO BOOKS! The Baudelaire orphans are placed with a distant relative, the villainous Count Olaf tries to do away with them and steal their fortune, he predictably fails, escapes, and the kids are relocated to some other hapless relative so the whole damn thing can repeat itself in the next book! I noticed this disappointing pattern in the second book, The Reptile Room, but hoped it was a one-off – nope, this looks to be the template for the entire series! I’ve read the same story for three books now and I can’t takes the formulaic repetition no more!
Aquaman: Kingdom Lost is the third volume of the Sub-Diego storyline though that useful information isn’t mentioned anywhere on this book so good job, DC Marketing! That said, while Sub-Diego was just a mediocre comic (which, by Aquaman standards, instantly makes it a contender for “classic” status!), I’d recommend readers not to bother with Kingdom Lost as it is shiiiiiiiiiiit!
An insane magician/ventriloquist and his bloodthirsty dummy redefine what it means to kill onstage – and off!
William Goldman’s Magic is a fairly decent horror novel. It definitely has its faults but it’s also quite charming and entertaining in a trashy way.
I read the first Hitman book a few years ago and didn’t like it much but decided to revisit it and give it another shot - maybe I initially read it wrong/wasn’t in the right frame of mind? After all, it’s Garth Ennis writing a character who’s essentially DC’s Punisher and Ennis’ Punisher was fracking awesome! But no, I was right the first time: Hitman is complete drivel!
Wow, this series tanked hard - and so damn soon after a great first book! I kinda expected it to dip in quality gradually, like every series does at some point, but so quickly and by so much in just the second book? That’s impressive!
Set in the 17th century, a pair of Portuguese Catholic priests, Rodrigues and Garrpe, set off to the remote and mysterious island kingdom of Japan to spread Christianity and track down their mentor, Father Ferreira, who is rumoured to have committed apostasy (renounced his faith). But the Japanese government are not friendly to foreigners (this xenophobic attitude actually continues to this day!) and are particularly hostile to this new religion - is Ferreira simply dead and does a similar fate await Rodrigues and Garrpe?
Ever see The Bourne Identity, Matt Damon’s first Jason Bourne movie from 2002? Good wasn’t it? Yeah, I think Nathan Edmondson liked it too because he’s basically replicated it with Who Is Jake Ellis?
Eye-catching title, eh? Unfortunately that’s about all that really stands out about Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, which is actually a very ordinary self-help book - and I’ve not even read a lot of self-help books either, that’s how broad, generic and unremarkable a lot of the stuff he talks about here is! Still, its ideas are ultimately positive and worth re-reading and keeping in mind so I can’t say I found the book a total waste of time.
Snagglepuss as a closeted gay Southern playwright standing up to systemic oppression in 1950s America? Heavens to Murgatroyd, that sounds like a barrel of laffs! Yeah, it’s a surprisingly serious reboot for the iconic Hanna-Barbera character that’s not even pretending to aim for a kiddie audience which is probably why the first issue isn’t bad.
Monsters threaten Earth - Shazam gotta punch ‘em. Wow, what an original, thoughtful storyline!
I suppose Jeff Smith does a decent, if rushed, job of explaining what is a really weird and convoluted origin but I feel like Shazam is an outdated character at this point - he’s just not interesting and comes off as quite corny, both of which could also be applied to the one-dimensional monster villains (convenient that the baddies call themselves “The Monster Society of Evil” eh?), as well as Sivana and Mr Mind.
The hi-larious humorist David Sedaris returns for another collection of rib-tickling, side-splitting… ok, enough of that! But Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls isn’t a bad read and a few of the essays had me LOL-ing hard though it’s definitely not as consistently good as his other books.
I tried watching The Losers movie twice before and gave up quickly each time for the same reason why I gave up trying to read the comic once before: it comes off as the most bland, generic actioner EVER. Having forced myself to read this first volume of the comic I can confirm that, yup, it most definitely is that!
I bought Snuff when it first came out in 2011, not realising then, like everyone else, that it was going to be the final City Watch book. I sadly abandoned it long before the end anyway, sensing that it wasn’t any good. But, having recently read an excellent Discworld short story reminding me of my love for Terry Pratchett, as well as seasonal nostalgia (new Discworld books used to be cannily published during the Christmas season), I decided to give Snuff another shot and this time force myself through. At the very least I’ll be completing the City Watch series. Well, my initial impression of the novel was right - Snuff ain’t up to snuff!
There are absolutely godawful Batman books and then there are Batman Elseworlds books, many of which somehow found a level even lower than rock-bottom quality - in fact, I might’ve found the worst of them all with Batman: Nosferatu!
Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead retold Hamlet from the perspective of two minor characters; Tag & Bink Were Here is essentially the Star Wars version of that as two nobodies stumble from one wrong place to one wrong time and in the process show us the story of the original trilogy and the prequels, as well as inadvertently playing a role in the overall saga.
