Extremely Short TPB Reviews
Feb. 2nd, 2016 06:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroI never managed proper reviews for a lot of the comics I’ve read recently; apparently I just wasn’t in the mood. I bought most of the comic-based Humble Bundles, including Forbidden Books, Top Cow, BOOM Studios, and Creator’s Own Worlds.
The Best:
- Lumberjanes is adorable, generally PG-rated (they tend to curse with, “What the junk?” and “Holy [historical feminist figure]!”), very progressive and has decently well-contained arcs. Highly recommended.
- Are you reading Saga? Because it’s fantastic and you really should. Also, if you like rpgs at all, you should be reading Rat Queens.
“Recommended With Reservations”:
- Midnight Nation is J. M. Straczynski working through some of his issues with religion, death, predestination and the state of society. It has some interesting ideas, but also some glaring issues.
- The Freshman was co-created by Seth Green, and feels like it. A lab accident grants a bunch of college students superpowers, and while the story mainly follows the telepathic girl and the non-powered Batman character, the other characters include a guy who can pass on his drunken state, one who’s perpetually sticky, and one with an enormous “third leg”. If that seems your brand of humor, go ahead.
- Sunstone, despite being a Top Cow book, does not involve any magic stones at all. It’s a highly NSFW story of a lesbian couple having a meet-cute over their shared love of BDSM.
- Outcast is about a demon-haunted man with some kind of exorcism powers; it’s by Robert Kirkman (of Walking Dead fame) and has a similar aesthetic, which I don’t really go for, but I suspect would go over well if you like his work.
- Trees is Warren Ellis asking, “What if aliens arrived but didn’t care about us at all?” It’s a series of interwoven stories about people and how they react to giant alien trees all over the world.
The Worst:
- League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 3 seems to mostly be an excuse to drag the old gang out of hiding and draw a lot of boobs. The first two volumes could qualify as art. This? Meh.
- Genius has an interesting concept—every generation has a “greatest military mind”, and this one happens to be a black teenage girl in Compton who has taken over and organized the gangs against the police. The execution is pure Blaxploitation, though, and mostly an excuse to show gang-bangers and cops being assholes and shooting each other.
- Self-Obsessed is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s like the second coming of Harvey Pekar, except with even less narrative thrust and artistic consistency.
- For that matter, The Little Man was only marginally better. Self-indulgent autobiographical comics without much to them.
- No Mercy is a slasher film / misery parade in which a busload of prefrosh Princeton students are in a bus crash on a Central America humanitarian trip and suffer in all sorts of exciting ways. Basically, the students are all stupid, entitled and incompetent (except the deaf kid, who is apparently a ninja); and the locals are all mobsters, corrupt, rapists or nuns.
I Don’t Get it / It’s Not “For” Me:
- Bone apparently isn’t for me. It’s like a Donald Duck comic with the serial numbers filed off and fewer jokes.
- Love and Rockets I couldn’t get into at all. It’s clearly meant to be a take-off on the old romance comics, but I found it just…tedious?
- Bravest Warriors is a goofy Power Rangers pastiche with an Adventure Time aesthetic. It’s cute and has some funny bits, but I grew tired of it.
- Kaptara - It’s He-Man, it just isn’t shy about exactly how gay He-Man was. They filed off the serial numbers and there’s a storyline with some knockoff Smurfs, but really, this is the He-Man fanfic Zdarsky has been writing since he was eight.
- Essex County is about several generations of a hockey-playing family out in the boondocks. The bittersweetness of it works, but I never really like Lemire’s artwork and really don’t care about hockey.
Superman is Crazy / Evil / “Realistic”:
- Irredeemable was my favorite of the lot. Mark Waid does, “What if Superman went totally nuts?”
- Rising Stars was a decent self-contained yarn; J. M. Straczynski with a “What if all the 100+ heroes were the same age and grew up together, and then someone started murdering them?”
- The Boys: Herogasm has Garth Ennis mixing corrupt superheroes with his favorite topics: Gay sex and horrible bloody violence.
- Jupiter’s Circle is Mark Millar’s take, revealing the dirty laundry of an early Silver Age Justice League. Apparently this is the prequel to a “troubled production” story about the next generation of characters in that world; I feel no need to seek that out, but this stands alone decently.
- Invincible mostly focuses on Superman’s son and I really liked it for the first dozen issues…until we hit the big reveal that it fell into this category (which I really should have seen coming), and I was just, “really?” Because the interactions of a loving super-dad and his teenage son (who has teenage problems) made for a fun and interesting book. I’ll likely read the later volumes anyway, but this irritated me.
The Best:
- Lumberjanes is adorable, generally PG-rated (they tend to curse with, “What the junk?” and “Holy [historical feminist figure]!”), very progressive and has decently well-contained arcs. Highly recommended.
- Are you reading Saga? Because it’s fantastic and you really should. Also, if you like rpgs at all, you should be reading Rat Queens.
“Recommended With Reservations”:
- Midnight Nation is J. M. Straczynski working through some of his issues with religion, death, predestination and the state of society. It has some interesting ideas, but also some glaring issues.
- The Freshman was co-created by Seth Green, and feels like it. A lab accident grants a bunch of college students superpowers, and while the story mainly follows the telepathic girl and the non-powered Batman character, the other characters include a guy who can pass on his drunken state, one who’s perpetually sticky, and one with an enormous “third leg”. If that seems your brand of humor, go ahead.
- Sunstone, despite being a Top Cow book, does not involve any magic stones at all. It’s a highly NSFW story of a lesbian couple having a meet-cute over their shared love of BDSM.
- Outcast is about a demon-haunted man with some kind of exorcism powers; it’s by Robert Kirkman (of Walking Dead fame) and has a similar aesthetic, which I don’t really go for, but I suspect would go over well if you like his work.
- Trees is Warren Ellis asking, “What if aliens arrived but didn’t care about us at all?” It’s a series of interwoven stories about people and how they react to giant alien trees all over the world.
The Worst:
- League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 3 seems to mostly be an excuse to drag the old gang out of hiding and draw a lot of boobs. The first two volumes could qualify as art. This? Meh.
- Genius has an interesting concept—every generation has a “greatest military mind”, and this one happens to be a black teenage girl in Compton who has taken over and organized the gangs against the police. The execution is pure Blaxploitation, though, and mostly an excuse to show gang-bangers and cops being assholes and shooting each other.
- Self-Obsessed is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s like the second coming of Harvey Pekar, except with even less narrative thrust and artistic consistency.
- For that matter, The Little Man was only marginally better. Self-indulgent autobiographical comics without much to them.
- No Mercy is a slasher film / misery parade in which a busload of prefrosh Princeton students are in a bus crash on a Central America humanitarian trip and suffer in all sorts of exciting ways. Basically, the students are all stupid, entitled and incompetent (except the deaf kid, who is apparently a ninja); and the locals are all mobsters, corrupt, rapists or nuns.
I Don’t Get it / It’s Not “For” Me:
- Bone apparently isn’t for me. It’s like a Donald Duck comic with the serial numbers filed off and fewer jokes.
- Love and Rockets I couldn’t get into at all. It’s clearly meant to be a take-off on the old romance comics, but I found it just…tedious?
- Bravest Warriors is a goofy Power Rangers pastiche with an Adventure Time aesthetic. It’s cute and has some funny bits, but I grew tired of it.
- Kaptara - It’s He-Man, it just isn’t shy about exactly how gay He-Man was. They filed off the serial numbers and there’s a storyline with some knockoff Smurfs, but really, this is the He-Man fanfic Zdarsky has been writing since he was eight.
- Essex County is about several generations of a hockey-playing family out in the boondocks. The bittersweetness of it works, but I never really like Lemire’s artwork and really don’t care about hockey.
Superman is Crazy / Evil / “Realistic”:
- Irredeemable was my favorite of the lot. Mark Waid does, “What if Superman went totally nuts?”
- Rising Stars was a decent self-contained yarn; J. M. Straczynski with a “What if all the 100+ heroes were the same age and grew up together, and then someone started murdering them?”
- The Boys: Herogasm has Garth Ennis mixing corrupt superheroes with his favorite topics: Gay sex and horrible bloody violence.
- Jupiter’s Circle is Mark Millar’s take, revealing the dirty laundry of an early Silver Age Justice League. Apparently this is the prequel to a “troubled production” story about the next generation of characters in that world; I feel no need to seek that out, but this stands alone decently.
- Invincible mostly focuses on Superman’s son and I really liked it for the first dozen issues…until we hit the big reveal that it fell into this category (which I really should have seen coming), and I was just, “really?” Because the interactions of a loving super-dad and his teenage son (who has teenage problems) made for a fun and interesting book. I’ll likely read the later volumes anyway, but this irritated me.
