Pearl, Volume 1 Review (Brian Michael Bendis, Michael Gaydos)

Young albino Japanese/American tattoo artist Pearl Tanaka foils a Yakuza hit and is forced to become their hired gun to pay off her debt. Shenanigans ensue!

Pearl, Volume 1 is the weakest of Brian Bendis’ new Jinxworld titles at DC. Bendis is usually a clear storyteller but I found his story in Pearl to be murky at best.

Why My Cat Is More Impressive Than Your Baby by Matthew Inman, The Oatmeal Review

Matthew Inman’s latest is a kind of follow-up to his brilliant book, How to Tell If Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You, where he “amusingly” explains why he thinks cats are more impressive than babies – it’s also my least favourite of his books so far.

Six Days: The Incredible Story of D-Day's Lost Chapter Review (Robert Venditti, Andrea Mutti)

June 6, 1944 and Operation Overlord is in full swing. A group of US soldiers find themselves unfortunately displaced 15 miles away from their drop zone, deep behind enemy lines. Luckily they find allies in the local French village of Graignes as they dig in and prepare to resist the oncoming German force. They have six days…

Raised in Captivity: Fictional Nonfiction by Chuck Klosterman Review

Chuck Klosterman is back and he’s more Klosterman-y than ever in his first collection of short stories, Raised in Captivity! I’m a big fan of Chuck’s but this book was just... fine. There was one really good story called Of Course It Is about a man who’s self-aware enough to know he’s in a dream or a character in a story or in the afterlife but doesn’t seem to care. It was a fun, very compelling and subversive look at the short story format, particularly Twilight Zone-type stories.

Bandette, Volume 4: The Six Finger Secret Review (Paul Tobin, Colleen Coover)

There’s a famous painting with many thieves after it, including Bandette - who’ll get it and what is its six fingered secret?! Sacre bleurgh, what a potentially wacky storyline sure to make you hee haw hee haw!

Hardcore, Volume 1 Review (Andy Diggle, Alessandro Vitti)

CIA agents remotely mind-control people in foreign lands close to their targets like human drones to assassinate them safely from the comfort of US soil. The programme is called Hardcore but its disgruntled creator wants revenge on the government for ousting him from his own project. “Mentally unbalanced”? Pish posh! Time to prove them wrong by hijacking a nuke and blowing it up in front of the President! Trapped inside his latest drone body, Agent Drake must make it back to America within 72 hours or his real body will die.

Nichijou, Volume 5 by Keiichi Arawi Review

Nichijou is a series of short comedic sketches and, like similarly-formatted TV shows, some of the sketches hit and some miss. There wasn’t any one great sketch that stood out and made me laugh, but there were some amusing bits.

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong Review (Prudence Shen, Faith Erin Hicks)

Nerds want school funds to go to a robotics competition but cheerleaders want the cash for new uniforms - the solution? Entering the nerds’ robot – The Beast – into the Robot Rumble to try to win the $10k first prize so everyone’s covered! Nothing can possibly go wrong…

The New Me by Halle Butler Review

Office temping jobs are unfulfilling, beyond boring and deeply depressing – who knew?! Working in a call centre is worse! Whaaa….?! It’s almost like Halle Butler’s stating the bleeding obvious while having an extended moan about her own crappy life and trying to pass it all off as a literary novel! But that would mean she’s a hack and The New Me isn’t worth reading? Now who’s stating the bleeding obvious!

Bad Weekend Review (Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips)

Set in 1997, Jacob is asked to chaperone his former mentor, comics legend Hal Crane, around a convention where he will be given a lifetime achievement award. Sounds straightforward enough, eh? Except Hal is an embittered old drunken wreck whose increasingly reckless, unhinged behaviour lands him and Jacob in one sketchy situation after another! Will they get through the Bad Weekend in one piece?

Criminal #6 Review (Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips)

Cruel Summer, Part Two shows us how Teeg Lawless and his lady Jane wound up in the bar where they crossed paths with skip tracer Dan Farraday from the last ish. And, as always with Teeg, it’s a dark and sleazy tale!

O Josephine! by Jason Review

Four shorts make up Jason’s latest book, O Josephine!, most of which I really enjoyed.

The Nowhere Man by Gregg Hurwitz Review

Former shadow wars assassin turned pro bono one-man A-Team for those in need, Evan Smoak - the titular Nowhere Man who’s also called Orphan X; jaysis make up your mind, man! - is kidnapped by a vampiric rich dude who only knows Evan has cash that he wants. And then he finds out who Evan REALLY is and things kick up a notch. Gawrsh, however will Evan get out of this scrape?!

Poochytown by Jim Woodring Review

A giant floating amoeba emerges from a magic tuba and sucks up Frank’s furniture-like dogs. Naturally that means Frank becomes mates with PigMan and goes on a road trip with him!