book review
-
Jughead is best when his story stops being THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY and attempts to be Degrassi High. I preferred Volume 2 of Chip Zdarsky’s Jughead over Volume 1. It felt a little deeper than the first. More thoughtful. Volume 1 felt unimaginative despite the Jughead’s fanciful daydreams. It was formulaic and overly…
-
We Are Robin…, Volume 2: Jokers by Lee Bermejo WARNING! POTENTIAL SPOILERS! It’s the last story in WE ARE ROBIN VOLUME 2: JOKERS, “The Hero Business,” that I enjoyed the most. The inclusion of “Jokers” made the volume’s title provocative but the story itself was a let down — No new addition or twist to…
-
Gotham Academy, Vol. 2: Calamity by Becky Cloonan WARNING! POTENTIAL SPOILERS! Waiting for the next volume of your favorite comic book series is like waiting for the next season of your favorite TV show to stream on Netflix. Sometimes it takes too long, so you forget certain details that help the story in the new…
-
Aleksandar Hemon’s book of essays, The Book of My Lives reminded me that when I moved back home after failing to make it on my own after college, Yugoslavians were leaving their homes to escape what The Atlantic called “horrific acts of ethnic cleansing” in a “long, complex, and ugly” war. Hemon’s book documents his search for a new…
-
Thanks to PBS, every English school boy I read in the first person sounds like Gian Sammarco’s Adrain Mole, the title character from the ITV series based on Sue Townsend’s book, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole. The protagonist from Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean At The End of the Lane is no exception. He may…
-
From The Flash Volume 2 Rogues Revolution: A gorilla priest explains how the Flash will save Gorilla City from ruination. In my review of the first New 52 Flash book I called the Flash the anti-Batman because despite losing his mother in a similar manner to Bruce Wayne’s, Barry Allen retains his optimism and faith…
-
The Spider-Man Noir cutscenes from Shattered Dimensions have a Sin City feel that makes it noir. I call it the “Batmanification” of Spider-Man, the darkening of a usually wise-cracking, trickster spirit into something severe and brooding. My first introduction to Spider-Man Noir was the video game, Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions. It shares the same setting and…
