Rocket Raccoon, Volume 2: Storytailer Review (Skottie Young, Jake Parker)

Stuck on an ice planet, Rocket’s gotta steal a dragon’s egg to save Groot’s life! Kaiju-sized Groot fights Rocket Jaegar! Rocket reads the Book of Halfworld and discovers his past!

The Goddamned #1 Review (Jason Aaron, RM Guera)

My latest review for Need to Consume was Jason Aaron and RM Guera's The Goddamned #1. Read the full piece here: http://www.needtoconsume.com/comics/goddamned-1-review/

Chess by Stefan Zweig Review

On a cruise ship to Buenos Aires, a mysterious stranger unexpectedly beats the world chess champion in a match – but who is the stranger, how did he become so good at chess and why did he not pursue a career in the game? 

By Chance or Providence: Stories by Becky Cloonan Review

By Chance or Providence is a trilogy of previously published short stories – Wolves, The Mire, and Demeter - by Becky Cloonan collected together in one volume. I reviewed all three individually in 2013 – those reviews are below. Enjoy!

The Wraith: Welcome to Christmasland Review (Joe Hill, Charles Wilson III)

I didn’t know it when I picked it up but apparently The Wraith: Welcome to Christmasland is a sequel/prequel (as in it was published after but the story is set before) to Joe Hill’s prose novel NOS4A2. Like Nosferatu, geddit? Sheesh, what uninspired “cryptic” wordplay. Well, like father, like son, eh Redrum? 

I Hate Fairyland #1 Review (Skottie Young, Jean-Paul Beaulieu)

Once upon a time, a little girl called Gertrude wished she could visit the magical Fairyland - and lucky her, her wish came true and she was whisked away to that enchanted place! But she realised she didn’t really want to be there and asked the benevolent Queen Cloudia to go home. The smiling Queen gave her a map and a cheerful companion to help Gertrude get home in no time at all!

Twenty. Seven. Years. Later. 

She didn’t make it home.

Pixu: The Mark of Evil Review (Gabriel Ba, Becky Cloonan)

Four great artists – the Brazilian twin brothers Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon, Becky Cloonan and Vasilis Lolos – tell four interlocking stories of tenants in a haunted house whose lives simultaneously fall apart. Pixu: The Mark of Evil should be awesome given the talent involved but it’s a comic that is instead frighteningly tricky to understand and enjoy! 

Batman, Volume 6: Graveyard Shift Review (Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo)

Most of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s acclaimed Batman run has been one event story after another: The Court of Owls, Death of the Family, Zero Year, and Endgame. But there have been a few random issues appearing in between the arcs to give readers a bit of a breather before launching into the next one – those are collected in this volume, the generically-titled Graveyard Shift. And, like many short story collections, it’s an uneven mix of quality. 

In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom by Yeonmi Park Review

I’ve always been curious about life in North Korea but didn’t really make an effort to find out just how weird and harrowing it was until I saw Yeonmi Park’s In Order to Live - a memoir of a girl who grew up in North Korea, defected, and now lives in South Korea - and decided to find out. Well… I found out. Weird and harrowing doesn’t come close.

Our Expanding Universe by Alex Robinson Review

Alex Robinson’s best known book, the unbearably long and outdated Box Office Poison, featured a group of boring people talking about their boring lives – hey, it was the ‘90s when that sorta thing was hip and fresh! Years later and Robinson’s back with a (thankfully) much shorter book about boring older people talking about their boring lives in Our Expanding Universe. 

Deadly Class, Volume 3: The Snake Pit Review (Rick Remender, Wes Craig)

The Snake Pit picks up where the last scene from Kids of the Black Hole ended: Marcus and co. have successfully raided Fuckface’s stronghold but are faced with a new threat: Mexican gangsters – the same evil muthas who killed Maria’s family! Things go from bad to worse as one of Marcus’ friends is killed and, as a result of the raid, another is taken out too in King’s Dominion no less! The guilt, along with an increasingly messed up love life, sends Marcus into a tailspin of depression and paranoia exacerbated by his growing drug use as he becomes a one-man island of emo moping! 

Harrow County, Volume 1: Countless Haints Review (Cullen Bunn, Tyler Crook)

The people of Harrow County burned the witch, Hester Beck, on the hanging tree. Before she died, she told them she’d come back. 

Years later… 

Emmy has turned 18 and isn’t sure what she’s going to do with her life. But strange things are happening around her pa’s farm with cattle mysteriously dying. That is, except for the one Emmy laid hands on. To her father’s horror, he realises the witch has returned in the form of his daughter! 

Manifest Destiny, Volume 3: Chiroptera & Carniformaves Review (Chris Dingess, Matthew Roberts)

Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea and the crew continue on their way into the wilderness that is the western half of 1804 America - and who’da thunk it, they discover another dang arch! Which of course only means one thing: horrible things are on the way! This time it’s a vampire bird monster called the Vameter and a group of small bear/bird hybrids called Fezrons. 

Bone, Volume 1: Out From Boneville by Jeff Smith Review

Fone, Phoney, and Smiley Bone are run out of Boneville after Phoney’s latest shenanigans. Lost in the desert, they become separated and Fone Bone, our protagonist, ends up in The Valley, a human-dwelling part of the world, for the winter. There he meets a beautiful young woman called Thorn and her kindly cow-racing grandmother Ben. But danger looms on the horizon as the Lord of Locusts and the rat creature army are massing…