Batman’s pal Matches Malone tells him about a black site called Ark M where a mysterious company called JK run by a man in white (gee I wonder who that could be) is conducting evil and highly illegal Dr Moreau-style experiments on people. As Batman investigates, he encounters his most lethal foe yet: Baaaaaane!
Johnny Moore is a genius born with spina bifida. He makes friends with a small group - or “society” if you will - at school who help him come up with revolutionary tech that enables him to walk. Then they bury a tin can time capsule so that the book has its title.
Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford appears to be a pretty uninteresting man who does his job well in his small Texas town and lives a quiet life - but who actually harbours a dark past and nature that is reawakened when he begins an affair with a local prostitute. The killer inside Lou stirs and the murders begin in earnest…
Ricky Lawless owes a bookie big so he takes on a risky job to pay him back: rip off a high roller after a casino poker game. Ricky’s a fuckup so he fucks up the job and suddenly he needs to do a riskier job for a mob boss to make up for it. Guess how well that goes for Ricky the fuckup? And so it goes, five chapters of Ricky and his girl Mallory trying to get out of dodge and getting deeper and deeper into shit - instead of moving forward, five gears in reverse.
Someone is killing child molesters in Gotham - and, according to one of the child victims, it’s Batman! Has everything the Dark Knight’s seen finally tipped him over the edge into becoming a murdering vigilante?
Junji Ito’s second Liminal Zone book collects four stories, none of which are especially good, though they all contain great art and the occasionally entertaining scene.
Demon King of Dust is set in an abandoned hotel in an abandoned city involving a convoluted story of generations of actors doing evil things to their housekeepers - demonic forces inevitably come into play!
Flash might be my least favourite superhero. I’ve never read a good Flash comic and the character itself is so dated. He runs fast and can travel through time/across dimensions. So what - so do numerous other (better) characters. He looks like a parody of a superhero. His rogues gallery stinks: a psychic gorilla, a guy with an ice gun and a guy with a boomerang? THEY seem like parodies of supervillains! Flash has always been bad and yet DC keeps trying to make people care about this antiquated, feeble superhero.
