Veronika gets a desk job at a company that makes energy drinks or herbal supplements or… something. It’s a murky operation and what’s in their products is murkier still. With her new colleagues Persephone and Dave, they set off to find out the secrets of the company deep down in… The Well!
Batman and the blimmin monster men. If I’d known that’s what The Bat-Man: First Knight was, I never would’ve picked it up. Well, in for a penny, etc. so I pushed through once I realised what it was and, yup, this retelling is about as good as the others, ie. gahbage, see?
I’ve been a fan of Jason Aaron’s since the Vertigo days of The Other Side and Scalped, before he went to Marvel and did great work there for many years. His Punisher is as good as Garth Ennis’ - which is really saying something because Ennis’ Punisher is the definitive run on that character.
Ever wonder what if Batman were built like an anime tough guy with umbrellas for hands? And what if Alfred was The Punisher? No money, no gadgets, no Robin - no problem. It’s time to get alternative universe-y with Absolute Batman!
Autobots continue resurrecting each other slowly as they gather more Energon - but will the returning comrades forgive Optimus for something that happened way back whenever… In the wake of Starscream’s failure, Soundwave takes control of the Decepticons so they can… bring back their spaceship to steal all the fishies out of the ocean?!
Athena Liu is a literary superstar - her sort-of-friend June Hayward is not. But after a girls’ night out goes wrong and Athena lies dead, June decides to swipe Athena’s latest manuscript - and pass it off as her own! Suddenly June’s life is transformed as she gets to experience the accolades that Athena did. But will her secret be kept… and is Athena somehow still alive?
Cobra Commander gives weapons dealer Destro some Energon to make his Battle Android Troopers (BATs) work - who then immediately uses his new robot army to stage a coup of the nation of Darklonia! But rival gun runners want what Destro has and the metal-faced baldy has to fight for his right to party.
Alley is the latest Junji Ito horror manga collection to be reprinted (it first appeared in 2011) and it’s not up there with his best. Of the 10 stories here I only really liked 2, but luckily one of them was the longest story so it’s not as bad a read as it could’ve been.
A young Geoff Dyer became enamoured of DH Lawrence and decided that he would one day write a book about his literary hero. An older Geoff Dyer decided to realise that ambition - and then realised that that book was beyond his abilities! Out of Sheer Rage is the result of that realisation.
An antiquarian bookseller happens across an ancient scroll from the time of Jeebus that can’t be copied or photographed. And then three mysterious weirdos show up looking to acquire it - but what about the scroll makes it so valuable… and possibly dangerous?
SPOILERS
It’s the early ‘70s and Brian is a teenage artist/filmmaker whose latest film will include his crush, the red-headed Laurie, to be shot on their friend group’s hiking break in the mountains. Will he finally tell her how he feels - and how will she respond? Flying. Alien. Braaaaains. It’s Charles Burns’ latest comic!
Scarlett’s a super-duper-mega agent who does swishy martial arts guns swords stuff. She has to infiltrate a Japanese terrorist ninja group - where her bestie/girlfriend/housemate/who knows Jinx is undercover for some reason - to stop Shinobi-wannabe get a glowy sword for some reason. If you have two brain cells to rub together, this one’s not for you. But Vin Diesel fans? Welcome - the drool bucket is in your minder’s lap!
Peter and Ivan’s dad has died. The two brothers have always had a rocky relationship but without the buffer of their old duffer between them anymore, they’re gonna be ornery to one another - Irish style!
Gambit’s missing Rogue (something to do with a larger X-Men storyline happening around this time) and decides to distract himself by investigating the death of an ex in London - the latest victim of a Jack the Ripper copycat killer with a Wolverine silhouette. Couldn’t be Logan, could it? He does have blades in his hands and has a tendency to go off on one without really knowing what he’s doing. Nahhh. Anyhoo, Remy’s on the case, cher.
The elevator pitch that got my attention for this novel was “a woman falls in love with a printer” - not a person working the job of printer, but the actual office machine. Alright, that might be fun. And a similar tagline is on the cover too: “This is a story of girl meets printer.” (Hard Copy - geddit, the innuendo, hoho!) And it is that, but it’s also not much more than that - and that’s not enough for a novel.
I read Frank Miller’s original Ronin years ago and don’t remember much about it besides it fused Japanese samurai with robots. Which sounds ok and probably was - it was the ‘80s and back when Frank Miller was still capable of ok!
1973, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Before Dahmer, there was The Deviant Killer. Dressed as a mall santa wielding an axe, he killed three people - including two teenage boys - before he was stopped. Randall Olsen, a closeted store manager, was convicted of the killings.
In Ultimate Invasion, The Maker made it so that the origin stories of superheroes in an alternate world never happened - which means no magic spider ever bit a teenage Peter Parker and this world never had a Spider-Man! Instead, this world’s Peter is a middle-aged photojournalist at the Bugle, married to MJ, a PR exec, with a couple kids. The perfect life - except Peter can’t shake the feeling of dissatisfaction… that he should maybe be doing something else with his life…
After boring readers with his tedious recounting of how Bruce Wayne learned the skills in his youth to become Batman (he trained with masters of multiple disciplines around the world - whodathunkit!?) in The Knight, Chip Zdarsky does a truncated version of that same, needless story with The Joker. Yup, unfortunately Zdarsky’s Batman run still isn’t improving in this third volume, The Joker Year One.
Batman’s had more than his share of crossovers over the years and at this point DC are scraping the bottom of the barrel with this latest one. That’s right, it’s the crossover nobody asked for, featuring a character most English comics readers will be thinking “...who?”: Dylan Dog.
A dying man and his young son walk a blighted landscape littered with the mass dead, dodging roaming cannibals and surviving on whatever they can find, heading south, to the coast. Will they make it there alive - and what is at the end of the road?
We’re living in a particularly uncreative era for art where a great deal of what’s being produced by the big companies is an endless raft of unwanted prequels, sequels, spinoffs and remakes rather than imaginative original stories and challenging ideas. So here’s another useless prequel: Batman: The Knight!
Volume 1 is an interesting way of framing a book that starts with issue #301!Larry Hama has been writing GI Joe comics on and off for over 40 years. His first run started at Marvel in 1982 and ran until 1994. The series went on hiatus and was picked up by IDW in 2010 with Hama writing again and ran until 2022. This third iteration began at Image/Skybound in conjunction with Robert Kirkman’s Energon Universe endeavour in 2023, so, if the pattern holds and Hama lives until he’s 86 (he’s currently in his mid 70s), there’s another 11 years of Hama/GI Joe comics to follow! Gawd help us…
Born with spina bifida, John Moore overcame his physical obstacles and grew up to become a brilliant inventor. Among his inventions was a powerful armour that turned him into the superhero Caliburn. His childhood friends watched as their friend amazed the world - until today, when Caliburn was found brutally murdered. Whodunit? His old pal Kasia thinks it was someone in their childhood club known as The Tin Can Society…
Mid-20s cynical semi-drunk Megan is obsessed with her co-worker, Jillian, a single mom in her mid-30s, relentlessly upbeat and full of love for the Lord. Obsessed in a negative way because Megan hates Jillian. Megan hates full stop. Except when Jillian’s life starts to go tits up and then Megan l-u-v-s the fallout. But how will Jillian react to unending Ls?
There suddenly exists a distorted mirror version of Gotham called Gotham Below where everything’s a little bit spookier for no reason. Now it’s affecting the rogues in the real Gotham and Batman Below (who has tentacles coming out of his mouth for no reason) has kidnapped some kid to be his Robin for some reason. Batman and a Talon from the Court of Owls have to portal over to save the day. Yay…
Hunger is literally the story of the starving artist! An unsuccessful writer (yup, that tired trope of a writer making their main character a writer like them), he’s a hungry boy because he’s got no money for food. He writes, he sometimes gets money, and occasionally something mildly interesting happens, but mostly he staggers around hungry.
Absolutely fascinating and totally distinct main characters Generic Man Hero Character and Generic Woman Hero Character are on the run for alien treason. Kylo Ren-wannabe Proximus is dispatched to kill them. Couple of Transformers cameo. Do not read Void Rivals while operating heavy machinery!
In this sixth volume of Boy’s Abyss, we learn the backstory of the cult author Esemori (his younger self is on the cover) and his doomed romance with Rei’s mother, Yuko, when they were in high school. Back in the present, Rei’s former friend and sometime bully Gen finds out about his relationship with their teacher Shibasawa while Rei’s morbid death fascination finally leads him to a place he thought he wanted to go - or does he?
One day Elsie, Patch and Lord Fluffy Britches were living the good life of pampered, domesticated cats - now they’re locked in cages along with other animals in the back of a truck driving away from their home! What’s going on - and why’re all the humans suddenly afraid of them…?
In Manhattan 1944, a Columbia student called Lucien Carr stabbed 32 year old David Kammerer and drowned the body. William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac were friends of Carr’s and both were arrested after the murder as Carr had confessed to them and neither had gone to the police (Kerouac even helped dispose of the murder weapon!).
A young Pakistani called Changez tells an unnamed American his life story as they leisurely sit at a restaurant in Lahore. How he once lived the American Dream - until 9/11 changed everything…
Antony Beevor published what may be the definitive book on the Battle of Stalingrad (modern-day Volgograd) in 1998 - Christmas at Stalingrad is a short extract from that book, focusing on the bitter winter of 1942-43 when the fate of Hitler’s doomed Sixth Army was sealed.
You know how the latest footage of next year’s flopbuster Captain America 4: We Keep Changing the Title But It Definitely Has “World” In It got smeared like you-know-what across our screens and we got treated to that amazing footage of Harry Ford as Red Hulk, and we collectively didn’t go “gross” and immediately try to forget we saw it, but pre-ordered our tickets (and probably popcorn buckets of Red Hulk’s… hmm, head)? Glad we’re on the same page.
It’s an eventful time in MS Harkness’ life: she’s graduating art school, she’s making comics, she’s having an affair with an MMA fighter, she’s doing a lil sex work on the side to fund it all, she’s studying to become a personal trainer, and her incarcerated molesting father is trying to make “amends”. Tense indeed.
The Woman in the Purple Skirt sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t. When she doesn’t, she has a daily routine where she sits on a park bench and eats a snack. But whether she’s working or not, there’s always someone watching her. And, even though she doesn’t know they exist (yet), that someone really wants to be her friend…
A rogue Amazon kills some dudes in an American bar causing Congress to pass a law calling for the expulsion of all Amazons from ‘murica, or something. But Wonder Woman doesn’t want to go - which makes her an Outlaw. Idiotic fighting ensues while an absurd villain cackles in the background in this abysmally stupid book.
Joe Matt died last year at the relatively young age of 60. Peepshow #15 is his last comic, published posthumously and completed with the help of his friend and fellow cartoonist Chester Brown, who inked the last four pages.
If Jack Kirby isn’t the patron saint of comics, he’s definitely up there in the pantheon of comics gods. So, as a lifelong comics reader, I felt it important that I at least read one book by “King” Kirby - and I also brung along some suckers friends to join in! Yay, we’re headed back to the Silver Age…I thought titling the buddy read after Curb was just a silly fun pun but my enthusiasm was unfortunately curbed early on into this one!
Kozakura is getting on great with her tuxedo kitten Musubi - so great that she decides to mix it up by getting another kitten! Enter: Soboro. The most cute kitten ever. A munchkin cat (the breed has stubby legs which only makes her cuter) - how will Musubi react to another kitten in the house?
We’re all of us different people at different times of our lives - and yet the same person. Like the main character of Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim, who is alternately: a prisoner of war in the closing stages of WW2; a successful optometrist in later life; a self-admitted mental patient in a veteran’s hospital; a philandering husband; a distant father; an exhibit in an alien zoo; a little boy failing to swim.
Frank and April Wheeler are married with kids, living in suburbia, on idyllic Revolutionary Road. They have drinks with the neighbours, Frank works in the city, April keeps house - but both are unsatisfied. They plan to start a new life in Paris. Yes, that’ll definitely happen…
Richard and Juliette potter around their remote country house of Starve Acre, mourning the death of their young son, Ewan. But how did Ewan die - and can the mysterious Mrs Forde and the Beacons help them move on?
Comedian and actor (to distinguish him from the famous novelist of the same name) David Mitchell writes about the kings and queens of England in his history book, Unruly. Covering the murky days of post-Roman occupation, from when various Anglo-Saxon leaders ruled areas of what will become known as England, vikings periodically stopped off for a barney, and a fictional character called Arthur ruled in a fictional place called Camelot, up to Queen Elizabeth I, because then her successor James I becomes both king of England AND Scotland rather than just England. Which makes it seem like Mitchell focused on rulers only of England but quite a few kings had also been kings of Ireland, and sometimes France, in addition to England up to that point. Hmm.
With Penguin dead and loving it, his kids have filled the power vacuum he left behind in Gotham. Except (shock) Pengy isn’t dead - he’s retired incognito to Metropolis, living the quiet life. Except (shock) he isn’t - the Feds want him back in the game for reasons. Pingu’s gotta assemble a crew and take back Gotham. Just when he thought he was out, yadda yadda wak…
Miracleman is a comic with a convoluted past. Post-Alan Moore run, Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham took over and got out the first book in a proposed trilogy, The Golden Age, with The Silver and Dark Ages to follow. Except the then-publisher of the title went bankrupt in the mid-90s so only two issues of Silver Age were published up to that point - and there the title languished, unfinished.Until now.
A quiet village in the English countryside becomes the unwitting vortex for international espionage, shady corporations’ plans, billionaire’s balloon-popping antics, incel romance… and a literary festival. And all because the lady loves Milk Tray Dan Rhodes has some gripes about the book world!
Cobra-La. An underwater snake-themed kingdom weakened from lack of resources. Except its chief scientist has uncovered a powerful new energy source to restore it to its former glory: Energon. That scientist’s name? Cobra Commander. His mission? Find and bring back a buttload of Energon so that Cobra-La can rule the world moo-ha-ha!
An office worker adopts a stray kitten on a whim - not realising how disruptive her cute new friend will be to her secret gamer double-life! But maybe a little chaos in her highly regimented routine is what’s needed…?
