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Humble Comics Bundle: Return of the Leading Ladies
A Thing Called Truth - Mag just had her life’s work stolen out from under her (and her marriage fell apart while she was working on it). Dorian watched her mom and brother die from a genetic disease that she may also have. They accidentally end up on a wacky road-trip together. This feels like it was intended to go for multiple volumes of them following Dorian’s brother’s travel wishlist and the ex-husband trying to track Mag down and maybe even some resolution to her life’s work getting stolen. Instead, it leans hard into the two of them falling in love and abruptly ends on that after one volume. Which isn’t bad, but there’s wasted potential here.
Black Cloak (volumes 1-2) – This is a delightful cross between fantasy and noir, with the hardboiled detective (who gets injured a lot) whose past comes back to her in the form of a murder linked directly into her personal history. Volume 1 wraps everything up well, it’s well-paced, the art is pretty, it’s genuinely good stuff. The second volume feels more like a sequel, jumping forward five years with a new mystery to solve; it links back to some things from the first volume and a lot of poor choices made in the interim; I don’t think it’s quite as strong but it’s still very good. This is solid and recommended.
Black Magick (volumes 1-3) – Another hardboiled magical detective, but this one is a modern day cop and secretly a witch, who’s being targeted by some sort of rival magical organization. (This is a world where wicca and pagan practices exist, but a small number of perpetually-reincarnated witches with real magical powers hide among them/society.) Good art, interesting story, some twists as it becomes clear who the antagonists are and what they want, BUT…it’s unfinished. And it’s not clear when and if it’ll ever be finished. I’d love to know what the demons really want and how Rowan is going to resolve the various conflicts in her life, but right now it’s just a frustrating cliffhanger.
Big Girls (volume 1) - A clever sci-fi story about some [technobabble] that causes some boys to grow up into kaiju but a smaller number of girls to just turn into giant women. So the “big girls” are used to defend the Preserve and the normal-sized humans against attacks. But plenty of people aren’t happy with the status quo and the sacrifices it entails, and maybe the “Jacks” aren’t as monstrous as they seem. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but it’s a decent story.
Bolero – The tale of a bisexual disaster and the various people in her orbit as she screws up her life. This was particular interesting after reading The Midnight Library, because it has the same premise: A woman makes bad choices and falls into depression, but is given the opportunity to explore alternate universe versions based on making different choices. And just like that book…it squanders the opportunity to make good use of that premise. She speedruns through a bunch of worlds where she and her ex-girlfriend are knights or astronauts and ends up in one where she basically continues where she left off and tries to build something else; and then tears that all down because she doesn’t understand communicating with her partners. But it’s okay, because somehow her soul is healed through magical goddess dreams. Or something. Honestly, the conclusion didn’t make much sense and it squandered my goodwill by wasting the premise.
Coffin Bound (volume 1) – Do you like Grant Morrison’s strung-together weirdness books? This is very much in that vein, as Izzy finds out that there’s a contract on her life so she opts to go out and erase all traces of herself before she dies. The assassin is the “Earth-Eater” who really should be off fighting the Doom Patrol; she’s accompanied by a dude with a crow’s skeleton in a cage instead of a head; they run into strippers who take off their skin and a cult who steal body parts for their own use. The world is a nonsensical dreamscape and everything is plot-distance apart. It’s all a valuable lesson about how you can never fully erase your impact on the world. There’s a second volume of this, but no, I’ve had enough.
Crave - The new “Crave” app has suddenly appeared on everyone’s phones on a college campus, and it apparently gives you helpful instructions for all sorts of things you might crave (which, in practice, leads to lots of people banging). Except, of course, it’s actually using all of your data to manipulate you and everyone around you and it’s a secret project by rich people for nefarious purposes. So, y’know, extremely realistic but told with lots of kinky illustrations to make it more palatable. Barely counts as “science fiction,” at this point. Genuinely solid complete story in a single volume.
Family Tree (volume 1) - A Jeff Lemire story where people turn into trees rather than animals. I had read the first issue of this in some other bundle and bounced off of it. I made it through the whole first volume this time, but I don’t particularly care where it’s going.
Golden Rage (volume 1) - What if the Golden Girls, only they were trapped on a survivalist island? And instead of being funny, they were murderously violent? Well, over five issues we manage to go from “Lord of the Flies” to “Friendship is Magic” with only a little bit of stabbing, some weird funeral rituals, and two clowns. This is an amusing concept (with the sort of premise that falls apart if you shake it gently) but the execution is lackluster and it needs more Betty White to hold my attention.
Hinges (volumes 1-3) - A fast read because the protagonist, Orio, is mostly silent. We watch her, a hinged living puppet, “awaken” in a clockwork city and be assigned an “Odd,” a strange animal companion that in her case is reminiscent of Stitch. She’s clearly an unusual type, and has to wrangle her way into being a “mender,” a job that she’s good at and is necessary but the system doesn’t want to assign her to. But that resolution lasts less than an issue and she ends up exiled from the city, meeting another exile and learning about “dismantelists” who want to take people apart and see how they work, and eventually returning to save the city from one. This was apparently originally a webcomic, and that makes a lot of sense given the weird pacing and changes in direction and tone. Reading this one page a week (or whatever the update schedule was) must have been excruciating. It’s very pretty and I’m glad the plot actually resolves everything it sets up; but this would have worked better as a tighter single volume.
I.D. – In a future where there’s space travel and colonies on other planets, a trio (an older writer, an ex-con, and a trans man) meet in a café to discuss the fact they’re all volunteering for an experiment to change their bodies via brain transplant. This is interrupted by a riot where a bunch of people around them are killed. Then we get the “science” of transplanting their brains (spider DNA and lasers). Then they hang out together some more. Then we fast-forward and the trans man has gone through with the switch, the ex-con has not, and they heard the writer died. They got to scatter the ashes of the trans man’s old body, and there’s a stinger that implies the writer did go through with the procedure successfully. I’m not sure quite why, but this feels like a Eurocomic to me. It’s all very “well, that happened” but makes no effort to actually tie together a narrative arc. (Or the plot holes, for that matter.) This feels like the author came up with a bunch of scenes that interested them (in a world they’d clearly given some thought to) but couldn’t actually put together a full story and instead we got this.
MOM: Mother of Madness – This is a vent-piece about a woman with emotion-based superpowers dealing with her deeply sexist workplace and the crushing realities of late-stage capitalism as a single mother. So she decides to use her powers to fight crime and stop a human-trafficking ring run by an evil billionaire! There are somewhat deeper statements about patriarchy and who benefits from it later in the book, but there is absolutely nothing subtle at any point. It’s a power fantasy, and I can’t fault that, even if I’m not the target audience.
Inkblot (volumes 1-2) – This is a case of world-builder’s disease disguised as a comic about a magic cat that gets accidentally summoned one day and goes gallivanting through the various parallel worlds ruled by the many siblings of a family of sorcerers. It’s a cool idea for a world setup (the family apparently discovered experience points and started killing monsters to get stronger; and had to spread out to different worlds once they ran out of things to kill), but there’s too little actual plot and too many characters, and the cat isn’t quite noteworthy or goofy enough to be the focal point. Also it annoyed me that it’s really unclear what the state of “Mother Earth” is during all of this, despite it appearing repeatedly. (The overall story gets a little more coherent in the second volume, but it’s also clearly intended to be a long ongoing that may or may not resolve anything.)
Lovesick – This was apparently written during a worst-parts-of-the-internet-fueled 2020 depression, and it shows. Domino is an internet performer who gets incels from her fanbase to volunteer for snuff films. And cannibalism, too! It’s torture-porn by and for traumatized people. Which has its place, I suppose, but I’m not recommending it.
Norroway (volumes 1-2) - A modernize, queer retelling of the folktale “The Black Bull of Norroway” mashed together with a few other folktale bits and giving most of the characters more depth and agency. (In both style and presentation I was reminded of Molly Knox Ostertag's The Witch Boy trilogy.) I haven’t been familiar with the original legend, but the lore they built around it is pretty impressive. Each volume manages to have a complete arc and this is one of the few comics from this bundle that I’d go out of my way to find more of (if they make it).
November (volumes 1-4) – Dee is approached by “Mister Mann” who offers her a job decoding a puzzle and broadcasting some numbers daily. Turns out that money doesn’t bring you happiness; the routine brings her misery until one day it changes and everything goes sideways. And her story is only one of many that are interwoven with each other on the night in November that things go sideways. This is by Matt Fraction, and while it might be a little too long and a little too fragmented, it does come together nicely.
Plutona – Middle school is hell, even when there are superheroes in the world. And superheroes like Plutona need to balance crimefighting with working a regular job and single parenthood...until a supervillian gets lucky and the middle-schoolers find her body in the woods. This was written by Jeff Lemire but was drawn by a competent artist; and it is dark. The initial tone does not telegraph where it’s going; and the shock (and relative suddenness) of the ending doesn’t actually help the story.
Rain - Another cute sci-fi/horror one-shot, following a young woman whose life is torn apart when crystal shards start raining and killing everyone in their path. Credit for having both a character arc and a reasonable explanation for what’s happening; though it very much follows a horror-movie arc in that regard.
SFSX (volume 1) - The Party has taken over and have imposed a fascist rain of “purity”, and it’s up to a small group of kinky queers to stop them. This is super-kinky wish-fulfillment disguised as politics; and while I can’t come down on anyone that hard for making it, it’s clear the author gets off on “striving against kinky torturers who pretend to be moral” even more than they get off on conventional kink—and that requires holes in the worldbuilding even the biggest dildo could fit through.
This also had the first 10 volumes of Saga, but I have physical copies of those. They’re very good. This had three volumes of Man-Eaters, but I read the first in a different bundle and thought it was a deeply confused polemic, which I didn’t like. I bounced off of Mirror and Fishflies. I may go back and give Paper Girls a try.
Overall: Black Cloak was particularly standout. November was interesting, as was Crave.
Black Cloak (volumes 1-2) – This is a delightful cross between fantasy and noir, with the hardboiled detective (who gets injured a lot) whose past comes back to her in the form of a murder linked directly into her personal history. Volume 1 wraps everything up well, it’s well-paced, the art is pretty, it’s genuinely good stuff. The second volume feels more like a sequel, jumping forward five years with a new mystery to solve; it links back to some things from the first volume and a lot of poor choices made in the interim; I don’t think it’s quite as strong but it’s still very good. This is solid and recommended.
Black Magick (volumes 1-3) – Another hardboiled magical detective, but this one is a modern day cop and secretly a witch, who’s being targeted by some sort of rival magical organization. (This is a world where wicca and pagan practices exist, but a small number of perpetually-reincarnated witches with real magical powers hide among them/society.) Good art, interesting story, some twists as it becomes clear who the antagonists are and what they want, BUT…it’s unfinished. And it’s not clear when and if it’ll ever be finished. I’d love to know what the demons really want and how Rowan is going to resolve the various conflicts in her life, but right now it’s just a frustrating cliffhanger.
Big Girls (volume 1) - A clever sci-fi story about some [technobabble] that causes some boys to grow up into kaiju but a smaller number of girls to just turn into giant women. So the “big girls” are used to defend the Preserve and the normal-sized humans against attacks. But plenty of people aren’t happy with the status quo and the sacrifices it entails, and maybe the “Jacks” aren’t as monstrous as they seem. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but it’s a decent story.
Bolero – The tale of a bisexual disaster and the various people in her orbit as she screws up her life. This was particular interesting after reading The Midnight Library, because it has the same premise: A woman makes bad choices and falls into depression, but is given the opportunity to explore alternate universe versions based on making different choices. And just like that book…it squanders the opportunity to make good use of that premise. She speedruns through a bunch of worlds where she and her ex-girlfriend are knights or astronauts and ends up in one where she basically continues where she left off and tries to build something else; and then tears that all down because she doesn’t understand communicating with her partners. But it’s okay, because somehow her soul is healed through magical goddess dreams. Or something. Honestly, the conclusion didn’t make much sense and it squandered my goodwill by wasting the premise.
Coffin Bound (volume 1) – Do you like Grant Morrison’s strung-together weirdness books? This is very much in that vein, as Izzy finds out that there’s a contract on her life so she opts to go out and erase all traces of herself before she dies. The assassin is the “Earth-Eater” who really should be off fighting the Doom Patrol; she’s accompanied by a dude with a crow’s skeleton in a cage instead of a head; they run into strippers who take off their skin and a cult who steal body parts for their own use. The world is a nonsensical dreamscape and everything is plot-distance apart. It’s all a valuable lesson about how you can never fully erase your impact on the world. There’s a second volume of this, but no, I’ve had enough.
Crave - The new “Crave” app has suddenly appeared on everyone’s phones on a college campus, and it apparently gives you helpful instructions for all sorts of things you might crave (which, in practice, leads to lots of people banging). Except, of course, it’s actually using all of your data to manipulate you and everyone around you and it’s a secret project by rich people for nefarious purposes. So, y’know, extremely realistic but told with lots of kinky illustrations to make it more palatable. Barely counts as “science fiction,” at this point. Genuinely solid complete story in a single volume.
Family Tree (volume 1) - A Jeff Lemire story where people turn into trees rather than animals. I had read the first issue of this in some other bundle and bounced off of it. I made it through the whole first volume this time, but I don’t particularly care where it’s going.
Golden Rage (volume 1) - What if the Golden Girls, only they were trapped on a survivalist island? And instead of being funny, they were murderously violent? Well, over five issues we manage to go from “Lord of the Flies” to “Friendship is Magic” with only a little bit of stabbing, some weird funeral rituals, and two clowns. This is an amusing concept (with the sort of premise that falls apart if you shake it gently) but the execution is lackluster and it needs more Betty White to hold my attention.
Hinges (volumes 1-3) - A fast read because the protagonist, Orio, is mostly silent. We watch her, a hinged living puppet, “awaken” in a clockwork city and be assigned an “Odd,” a strange animal companion that in her case is reminiscent of Stitch. She’s clearly an unusual type, and has to wrangle her way into being a “mender,” a job that she’s good at and is necessary but the system doesn’t want to assign her to. But that resolution lasts less than an issue and she ends up exiled from the city, meeting another exile and learning about “dismantelists” who want to take people apart and see how they work, and eventually returning to save the city from one. This was apparently originally a webcomic, and that makes a lot of sense given the weird pacing and changes in direction and tone. Reading this one page a week (or whatever the update schedule was) must have been excruciating. It’s very pretty and I’m glad the plot actually resolves everything it sets up; but this would have worked better as a tighter single volume.
I.D. – In a future where there’s space travel and colonies on other planets, a trio (an older writer, an ex-con, and a trans man) meet in a café to discuss the fact they’re all volunteering for an experiment to change their bodies via brain transplant. This is interrupted by a riot where a bunch of people around them are killed. Then we get the “science” of transplanting their brains (spider DNA and lasers). Then they hang out together some more. Then we fast-forward and the trans man has gone through with the switch, the ex-con has not, and they heard the writer died. They got to scatter the ashes of the trans man’s old body, and there’s a stinger that implies the writer did go through with the procedure successfully. I’m not sure quite why, but this feels like a Eurocomic to me. It’s all very “well, that happened” but makes no effort to actually tie together a narrative arc. (Or the plot holes, for that matter.) This feels like the author came up with a bunch of scenes that interested them (in a world they’d clearly given some thought to) but couldn’t actually put together a full story and instead we got this.
MOM: Mother of Madness – This is a vent-piece about a woman with emotion-based superpowers dealing with her deeply sexist workplace and the crushing realities of late-stage capitalism as a single mother. So she decides to use her powers to fight crime and stop a human-trafficking ring run by an evil billionaire! There are somewhat deeper statements about patriarchy and who benefits from it later in the book, but there is absolutely nothing subtle at any point. It’s a power fantasy, and I can’t fault that, even if I’m not the target audience.
Inkblot (volumes 1-2) – This is a case of world-builder’s disease disguised as a comic about a magic cat that gets accidentally summoned one day and goes gallivanting through the various parallel worlds ruled by the many siblings of a family of sorcerers. It’s a cool idea for a world setup (the family apparently discovered experience points and started killing monsters to get stronger; and had to spread out to different worlds once they ran out of things to kill), but there’s too little actual plot and too many characters, and the cat isn’t quite noteworthy or goofy enough to be the focal point. Also it annoyed me that it’s really unclear what the state of “Mother Earth” is during all of this, despite it appearing repeatedly. (The overall story gets a little more coherent in the second volume, but it’s also clearly intended to be a long ongoing that may or may not resolve anything.)
Lovesick – This was apparently written during a worst-parts-of-the-internet-fueled 2020 depression, and it shows. Domino is an internet performer who gets incels from her fanbase to volunteer for snuff films. And cannibalism, too! It’s torture-porn by and for traumatized people. Which has its place, I suppose, but I’m not recommending it.
Norroway (volumes 1-2) - A modernize, queer retelling of the folktale “The Black Bull of Norroway” mashed together with a few other folktale bits and giving most of the characters more depth and agency. (In both style and presentation I was reminded of Molly Knox Ostertag's The Witch Boy trilogy.) I haven’t been familiar with the original legend, but the lore they built around it is pretty impressive. Each volume manages to have a complete arc and this is one of the few comics from this bundle that I’d go out of my way to find more of (if they make it).
November (volumes 1-4) – Dee is approached by “Mister Mann” who offers her a job decoding a puzzle and broadcasting some numbers daily. Turns out that money doesn’t bring you happiness; the routine brings her misery until one day it changes and everything goes sideways. And her story is only one of many that are interwoven with each other on the night in November that things go sideways. This is by Matt Fraction, and while it might be a little too long and a little too fragmented, it does come together nicely.
Plutona – Middle school is hell, even when there are superheroes in the world. And superheroes like Plutona need to balance crimefighting with working a regular job and single parenthood...until a supervillian gets lucky and the middle-schoolers find her body in the woods. This was written by Jeff Lemire but was drawn by a competent artist; and it is dark. The initial tone does not telegraph where it’s going; and the shock (and relative suddenness) of the ending doesn’t actually help the story.
Rain - Another cute sci-fi/horror one-shot, following a young woman whose life is torn apart when crystal shards start raining and killing everyone in their path. Credit for having both a character arc and a reasonable explanation for what’s happening; though it very much follows a horror-movie arc in that regard.
SFSX (volume 1) - The Party has taken over and have imposed a fascist rain of “purity”, and it’s up to a small group of kinky queers to stop them. This is super-kinky wish-fulfillment disguised as politics; and while I can’t come down on anyone that hard for making it, it’s clear the author gets off on “striving against kinky torturers who pretend to be moral” even more than they get off on conventional kink—and that requires holes in the worldbuilding even the biggest dildo could fit through.
This also had the first 10 volumes of Saga, but I have physical copies of those. They’re very good. This had three volumes of Man-Eaters, but I read the first in a different bundle and thought it was a deeply confused polemic, which I didn’t like. I bounced off of Mirror and Fishflies. I may go back and give Paper Girls a try.
Overall: Black Cloak was particularly standout. November was interesting, as was Crave.