Klaus #2

Things are still pretty grim in the town of Grimsvig, but we’re seeing some improvement, thanks to a barbarian who’s stealthily sneaking through the city and knocking out the guards. Not even the toughest or most thuggish of mooks seem to stand a chance against Klaus — and in the morning, all the kids in the city have incredibly awesome new toys. Will Lord Magnus and his spoiled son Jonah stand for this? By all that’s unholy and greedy, heck no!

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nice art, nice story. Fun to see burly, muscular Santa kicking up the badassery, and the stealth moments are some of the best in the story.

The Wicked + the Divine #17

Our focal character in this issue is Sakhmet, and our guest artist is the wonderful Brandon Graham. Sakhmet is a cat in human form, lazy and regal and bored and without cares and terribly, terribly dangerous — and really, the only way to keep her from going out and eating people is to make sure she’s sauced all the time. And hey, it’s the end of a storyarc — what’s the big game-changing cliffhanger this time? It’s not an earth-shattering one this time, but it’s still pretty good.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Sweet focus on the mysterious and lethal catgirl, and Brandon Graham seems like a weird artist for this series, considering Jamie McKelvie’s clean and gorgeous work, but it’s always fun to experience Graham’s squishy, detailed artwork.

I Hate Fairyland #3

As you might guess from that cover, things get a little tough for Gertrude in this issue. After she takes a terrific fall that knocks her out long enough for her to grow a beard and her henchbug Larry to build a house, get married, raise a family, get divorced, and lose everything again, Queen Cloudia talks to Fairyland’s Council of Elders and persuades them that Gertrude will never find the magic key to let her leave — so they should invite a new little girl in to take her place. And while Gert has axes and rage, bright-eyed young Happy has optimism and sweetness and terrifically destructive rainbow magic…

Verdict: Thumbs up, almost entirely for the lengthy section in the middle where Larry builds a new life for himself while waiting for Gertrude to swim back to consciousness…

It’s time for us to take another dive into our Holiday Gift Bag for great comics gift ideas for your family and friends. Today, let’s take a look at Blacksad.

So what do you get when you have two Spanish comics creators, Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido, creating a giant comic book for a French publisher about American detective stories — and anthropomorphic animals? You get something that’s way cooler than you were expecting.

Our main character is John Blacksad, a black cat and private investigator. He lives in a version of 1950s America where everyone is a semi-cartoonish anthropomorphic animal. He grew up poor, he’s pretty easy-going, but you don’t want to make him mad, because he knows a lot about dishing out violence.

What kinda stuff happens to Blacksad? Film noir stuff happens to Blacksad.

In our first story, his former lover is murdered by persons unknown, and he dedicates himself to digging through the muck of the underworld — and their big-money financiers — to learn the truth.

In the second story, he’s called upon to investigate a kidnapping involving a bunch of white supremacists — white fur supremacists, actually — and their leader is a gigantic polar bear who’s also the police chief.

In the third story, Blacksad meets an old friend, his favorite professor from college, and must help him and his associates when they’re accused of being Communists — but being a private eye isn’t going to help much when the FBI and powerful politicians get on his tail.

In amongst all this are shootings, beatings, sex, double-crosses, alcohol, cigarettes, jokes, terrors, sorrows, and a whole lot more.

Verdict: Thumbs up. These are wonderfully told stories, as hard-boiled as you can get, and lushly, astonishingly beautifully illustrated.

The art style is cartoony — Guarnido, the artist, used to work at Disney — but the content is a lot more adult. There’s sex and nudity, and people in these stories don’t bounce back from violence — there are a lot of deaths. In other words, even with the funny animal style, you won’t want to get this for your younger kids.

The stories are for adults — and even the animal characters help emphasize this. There’s nothing that quite shows how silly racism is when the white supremacist group is obsessed with the color of their own fur. Blacksad gets on the bad side of both the Arctic Pride group and an opposing gang of black-furred animals — because he’s got just a little white fur on his muzzle.

But even with characters who are cats and dogs and bears and foxes and rhinos and turtles and owls and gorillas and roosters and lizards and deer and giraffes — there are still plenty of times you forget you’re reading a comic full of animals and start thinking of all of them as just as human as you are. And that’s one of the signs of a hell of a great story.

Got someone on your shopping list who loves hard-boiled detective stories or beautifully-illustrated comics? They’re going to love this one. Go pick it up.

Alabaster: The Good, the Bad, and the Bird #1

Dancy Flammarion, the Southern possibly-crazy monster-hunting albino girl, is back. No, wait, actually, she’s not back. She’s dead, and apparently in Hell, which is an infinite blank space inhabited only by Dancy and, occasionally, her furious, vengeful angel. Dancy doesn’t want to be in Hell, but she’s also not too keen on the angel telling her that her life was worthless or a betrayal or something that should be renounced. And while Dancy is dead, shady underworld characters in the South, including a wealthy fixer and a couple of psychos wearing cute animal masks, celebrate her end. Good times are here again for the forces of evil…

Verdict: Thumbs up. I was so excited to see this. I got so much joy out of Caitlin R. Kiernan’s amazing Dancy Flammarion stories, and it’s great that, even with a new artist, the series is still maintaining the extremely high quality we’ve come to expect from it. Y’all get in on this one early, okay?

Harrow County #8

Emmy now knows for certain that her “sister” Kammi is thoroughly evil. She’s rousted up all the most evil of the haints in Harrow County and set them after Emmy to kill her, while she plans on killing Emmy’s father, just to hurt her a little bit more. Can Emmy and the few friendly haints on her side manage to get the better of Kammi and her ghostly army? And where does the girls’ mother come in?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Less low-key creepiness this time and more out-and-out supernatural war — but there’s still a lot of good to say for this story. A confrontation between the two sisters and their contrasting views of the world probably couldn’t end any other way…

All-New Hawkeye #2

In the future, Clint Barton and Kate Bishop have been betrayed by SHIELD and imprisoned by the Mandarin. And he’s also captured one of the super-psychic kids who’d helped cause the massacre of Mandarin’s people — and he wants the Hawkeyes to get the psychic to work for him so he can use him for his own weapon of mass destruction. But Kate has an ace in the hole — her ex-boyfriend and Kree superhero Noh-Varr, who’s much better equipped to deal with hordes of robots and the Mandarin’s powers. So what’s the Hawkeyes next move?

Verdict: Ehh, close enough to a thumbs up. I like the look of the Mandarin, but a lot of the story was just kinda nowhere. The surprise appearance of Marvel Boy was my favorite bit.

The Ultimates #2

The Ultimates have a plan to neutralize Galactus. It involves obtaining the giant mechanical “cradle” that originally transitioned Galen, the last surviving being of the previous universe, into the Devourer of Worlds of this universe. While the Black Panther keeps Galactus distracted with monologuing (the only attack that all supervillains respect), Monica Rambeau and America Chavez obtain the birthing chamber and teleport it to Galactus, then the rest of the team blast him inside the cradle — and what emerges, transformed, may look like Galactus — but it definitely doesn’t act like him anymore.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s all fairly standard proactive superhero fare — but the final splash page certainly does sell the issue. It can’t last, of course, but it’ll be fun seeing how it all goes wrong.

Spider-Gwen #3

Gwen travels to the regular Marvel Universe because she’s stuck in adamantium handcuffs she can’t get off. Once the extremely pregnant Spider-Woman of our universe gets her free, it’s time for Gwen to head home, where Officer Ben Grimm has just been inducted to the NYPD’s anti-Spider-Woman task force. They suspect Captain George Stacy of being one of Spider-Woman’s assistants, because she’s rescued him twice — and others are suspecting there may be a connection, too, as Matt Murdock, blind attorney and rotten lieutenant to Wilson Fisk, pays Captain Stacy a visit.

Meanwhile, Gwen goes to see friends from school and runs into the long-lost Harry Osborn, one of her best friends, alongside the late Peter Parker. Unfortunately, Harry blames Spider-Woman for Peter’s death, just like everyone else — and he has plans for what he means to do about it.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellent story, fun art, all kinds of great complications getting thrown into the blender. I still think Spider-Woman being pregnant is a bit out of left field, but her scenes with Gwen are really fantastic.

Starfire #7

Dick Grayson, Agent of SHIELD — um, Spyral or Spectre or whatever he’s an agent of — is in Florida tracking some bad guys. He disguises himself to get aboard a yacht — and as it turns out, Starfire is on the same boat, so he enlists her to help out. Will they be able to stop the villains, retrieve the secret package, and discover what kind of being is stalking Kory?

Verdict: Thumbs down. Sorry — I thought it was more than a bit dull.

Time for us to get back into our pre-holiday gift recommendations, so let’s take a look at Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley.

I am, I should say, an amazingly bad cook. I have enormous trouble putting a meal together that doesn’t involve either pouring milk on cereal or sticking a package in a microwave. For that reason alone, I was hesitant to get this book — it’s got a reputation as being a comic made for foodies and chefs, so I was concerned there’d not be anything in it for me. Obviously, I was wrong.

What we’ve got here is a memoir comic — Knisley tells a number of stories from her life. She introduces us to her New York City childhood, growing up among food lovers, chefs, restaurant critics, and people who loved to eat, prepare, and share food.

We follow her as she and her mother move to the country, slowly getting used to rural life and rural cooking. We tag along as she takes trips to Mexico, Japan, and Italy, as she discovers the food cravings she shares with her mother, as we explore her secret love of junk food, her quest to create the perfect croissant, and the worst meal she ever ate.

And after almost every chapter, we get a recipe.

Marinated lamb, pesto, chocolate chip cookies, huevos rancheros, sushi rolls, sangria, shepherd’s pie, and much, much more. All of them wonderfully illustrated to help make the entire process easier and cooler.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The writing and art are both lots of fun. Knisley’s stories are grandly human and often hilarious. Her childhood trip to Mexico with an old friend is spotlighted with — aside from all the glorious details of the food they got to eat — her friend’s acquisition of a colossal stash of pornographic magazines, which he carted all over in his overstuffed backpack, convinced he’d purchased the greatest treasure of his life. Her attempts to make her own croissants are constant but hilarious failures, and her recipe at the end of the chapter recommends that readers just get the canned croissants at the grocery store. And during her teenaged trip to Italy with her foodie father, she rebels by… eating at McDonald’s.

And her skill at writing about all the glories of food — good food, gourmet food, junk food, comfort food, and every other kind of food — is where this comic is really just absolutely fantastic. I’m a terrible cook, and I have a terribly unsophisticated palate — but her writing, art, and recipes make me wish I were more of a foodie and that I was capable of navigating my way around a kitchen.

If you’re looking for a gift for someone who loves cooking and loves good food, you can bet they’re going to enjoy this. Go pick it up.

The Vision #2

Last issue, the Grim Reaper attacked the Vision’s robotic family, severely injuring Viv before Virginia beat the villain to death. She’s decided to keep the Reaper’s death a secret from her husband. She tells the Vision a story about driving him away. Meanwhile, Viv is on mechanical life support, and her twin brother Vin is not adapting well to the near-death of his sister. He attacks a rude classmate and almost kills him — and when the Vision is called to the school to talk to the principal, he uses his status as a superhero to cow the principal into not punishing his son. But things are not all okay for the Vision family. Someone knows what Virginia did, and they’re going to make her pay.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This comic is so very creepy. It’s so creepy and inhuman, I want to take every issue, lock it in a metal box, lock that box in another metal box, bury it in the backyard, and set the backyard on fire. And then, because I really, really love creepy comics, I want to then dig up the backyard, take the comic out of the box… and lick it.

Howard the Duck #2

In our last issue, Howard was rescued by a couple of gender-switched clones of himself and Rocket Raccoon. In this issue, we get their backstory. After Howard and Rocket escaped from the Collector during the first series, the girls — Linda and Shocket — were cloned from their DNA, and one of the Collector’s minions, Dee, was assigned to be their foster parent. When it’s decided that the girls are going to be frozen — or maybe even killed — Dee flees with them, and they rent a time machine to send them 25 years into the past so the Collector’s henchmen won’t pursue them. But Dee is eventually killed, leaving the girls on their own — and the Collector back on their trail.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It looks like Linda and Shocket are about to be very important characters — hence the origin story. It’ll be interesting to see what Zdarsky and Fish have planned…

All-New All-Different Avengers #2

A Chitauri calling himself Warbringer has just effortlessly kicked Iron Man’s, Captain America’s, and Spider-Man’s butts, but the Vision shows up to assist. Meanwhile, Nova flies into town to confront Warbringer, only to find that Ms. Marvel is already on the scene. Nova and Ms. Marvel don’t really get along. Warbringer gets away from them, too, but they team up with Spidey, Iron Man, Cap, and Vision to confront Warbringer one more time. It looks like it’s all over for the alien after Thor makes an appearance — but Warbringer has an unseen ally on his side…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Got the whole team together in just two issues — that’s a record for new team comics these days! Good story, good art, excellent team conflicts getting set up — all around, a lot of fun.

Revival #35

Jesse Black Deer, the terribly burned reviver, has been ordered to kill Em Cypress — and in fact, he attacks her and tears out her heart. But that can’t kill a reviver, and her heart grows back. But by then, he’s got her trussed up and is about to cut her head off — he’s going to bury her head and body separately to keep her alive but helpless. But Em’s sister Dana lures Jesse’s soul to him, and Jesse burns down to ash. But one of the guards is in on the scheme, and he’s going to behead Em — at least until Dana shoots his jaw off. But now the sisters are forced to go on the run to flee the authorities.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Looks like the end of a storyarc, and it’s a pretty good one, too. Definitely upsets the old status quo — and it’ll be fun to see where the story goes from here.

Well, you know, in light of this little news item, I decided to channel my inner Captain America and see what he thinks of the whole thing.

 

(Click to Embiggen!)

Yes, indeed, real Americans do certainly love to beat up Nazis, don’t they?

Spidey #1

Here’s this great new series by Robbie Thompson and Nick Bradshaw focusing on Spider-Man when he was still in high school. He tangles with the White Rabbit, does badly on a pop quiz, get pushed around by Flash Thompson and rescued by Gwen Stacy, and visits Oscorp just in time for an attack by Dr. Octopus. Can puny Parker save the day — and what more terrible menace is now keeping an eye on him?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Fantastic story and art — the art is very reminiscent of Art Adams, by the way, which is definitely a good thing. And it’s always great to be able to revisit Peter Parker’s youth — Spidey’s glory days were definitely his high school years, and while this is modernized quite a bit — the Wall-Crawler takes a selfie of himself and White Rabbit after he defeats her — this story still has the feel of the classic era.

The Totally Awesome Hulk #1

Well, Amadeus Cho, 19-year-old Korean-American smartass, buddy of both the Hulk and Hercules, eighth smartest person in the world, now has gamma-spawned powers of his own. So he runs around the world with his super-genius sister Maddy, beating up monsters (and often getting beat up by them, too), and getting accustomed to how gamma radiation messes with his own rage issues. So is life gonna be all sunshine and bacon cheeseburgers for Amadeus?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Okay, I could take or leave Frank Cho — he draws pretty, but his arrogance always makes me want to find more interesting artists. But Greg Pak writing Amadeus Cho? Yeah, I’m down with that.

Prez #6

The whole country is freaking out about the cat flu, and Boss Smiley and his corporate flunkies have crafted a bill to let them cure the flu, but also give them the right to patent any living organism. President Beth Ross thinks that sounds like bull, and she throws ’em out. The bill gets passed over her objections, but a very wealthy supporter manages to patent the DNA of the corporate goons himself and threatens to sue them for existing. Meanwhile, the former War Beast drone, now calling herself Tina, wants to live her own life and is looking for a new job. Might that include protecting the President from deranged cat-flu worshipers?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Very nice political satire with a cool sci-fi edge. (The comic makes a point that Tina is transgender — which I’m not sure is entirely accurate for an only-recently sapient genderless robot. Personally, I think what makes her really interesting is her embrace of evangelical Christianity…)

Sensation Comics #17

The final issue of this series features a story by the great Trina Robbins. Wonder Woman meets up with the Cheetah, who reveals that the plant that grants her cheetah-like powers is almost extinct — and without it, she’ll die. Diana agrees to fly her to the island where the berries are native and help her harvest the last of them, but her invisible jet is shot down. They discover a mad scientist has been using the berries to transform animals into quasi-human forms. When Lex Luthor sends his goons to shut down the project, a bloodbath ensues. Can Wonder Woman rescue everyone? Can the Cheetah be saved? Or will she become worse than ever before?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The cheetah-human hybrid really is tailor-made for an “Island of Dr. Moreau” pastiche, right? The art by Chris Gugliotti is a bit funky, but I’m really happy to see any and all stories by Trina Robbins, so it’s all good, as far as I’m concerned.

All Star Section Eight #6

The miniseries wraps up with Sixpack getting to hang out with Superman in the Fortress of Solitude. Sixpack confesses that he’s afraid he’s not real, that his adventures are just the hallucinations of a drunk freezing to death in an alley. But Supes tells him it’s all real, shows him a statue of Sixpack as one of the world’s great heroes and… hands him a bottle of whiskey. But just as Section 8’s leader is ready to go, the rest of his team is falling apart. Will there be anyone to save the world from All-Consuming Evil?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The rapid self-destruction of the team is really the funniest bit of the issue, though the hallucinatory Superman telling Sixpack “It’s going to be okay” while  handing him a bottle of rotgut is grimly hilarious. Still, I do wish this issue had lived up to the promise of the previous one.

We can return to the standard here’s-gifts-you-can-buy Holiday Gift Bags another day. I’m not going to do it today, though. Today, I’m too mad.

I’m sick of mass shootings. I’m sick of politicians and pundits and social media sociopaths shrugging off white men bombing clinics one day and howling for mass incarcerations for brown people the next. I’m sick of listening to an organized crime cartel that masquerades as a gun-rights group demanding that guns be given more rights than actual living humans. I’m sick of members of the most bankrupt religion on earth offering “thoughts and prayers” — and nothing else — and then pretending to be oppressed when the rest of the world calls them on their faithless cowardice.

I’m sick of racists and sexists and homophobes and transphobes. I’m sick of people using their power, no matter how strong or petty, to bash people with less power. I’m sick of people who sneer at retail workers and baristas and waitresses and old people and young people and poor people. I’m sick of living in a nation and world where assholes are rewarded and the innocent are abused.

And I know most of y’all aren’t the problem. I’m lucky that the relatively few readers I have are good people. And I’m not asking you to go out and single-handedly fix the goddamn world.

But could I ask that, for this holiday season and every season after that, you work to foster as much compassion and empathy as you can in the world around you, in your coworkers and friends, in your children and family, in casual acquaintences and strangers?

We live in a world full of monsters, there is no doubt. We’ve been a world full of monsters for decades, centuries, millennia. It’s likely impossible for us to reverse that. But every time we light a match against the darkness of the world’s rampant assholatry is, frankly, a damn good day all on its own. It’s a good thing to do, and it makes you feel good to do it, too.

Most of us reading this damnable blog are superhero fans. Yeah, yeah, indie comics rock, there are lots of cool genres, superheroes are all flash and fight scenes — but still, pretty much all of us got our starts with Stan and Jack, with the World’s Finest and the Brave and the Bold, with Spider-Man and Ben Grimm teaming up with every dang superhero they met. And I want us all to be the heroes, in big ways and small, instead of the villains populating the world around us. Let’s be heroes this year and every year.

Thanks, and happy holidays.

Silver Surfer #15

Together, the Silver Surfer and Dawn Greenwood have recreated the Earth and the universe — but the Surfer has left out stuff he didn’t like, and Dawn’s knowledge of Earth is really pretty limited, plus she’s created an imitation Surfer to keep her company. And even worse, their assistants, Glorian and Zee, are actually villains in disguise. Glorian steals the power of the Shaper of Worlds, while Zee reveals himself as the Incredulous Zed. Can Dawn and the Surfer figure out a way to stop Glorian? How will they choose which universe survives the end of everything? What does the future hold for them?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Great to see an excellent end to this series (although I’m pretty sure it’ll continue with yet another new #1 issue) by Dan Slott and Michael Allred. It’s charming and funny and bold and exciting, and it’s some of the grandest storytelling we’ve seen about the Silver Surfer.

All-New Wolverine #2

Laura meets with the security officials at Alchemax Genetics, which created Laura’s new clones. They want her help in tracking down her renegade sisters, who have powers different from her own. She initially agrees, but then meets one of her clones at her apartment, and she tells Laura that Alchemax just wants to kill them and harvest their DNA. Wolverine ends up joining their group (after they shoot her a bit) just before Alchemax’s security forces invade their hideout. But do even four Wolverine clones stand a chance against a small army of mercenaries?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good story, good art, several really nice character moments, very nice action sequences, too. Didn’t enjoy this one quite as much as I did the first issue, but it was still good superhero fun.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #1

So what do you get when an immense, quasi-intelligent tyrannosaur travels through time and meets a schoolgirl with a genius intellect and limited social skills? You get a great big bucket of glory, that’s what you get.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Oh, come on, you didn’t even need that much plot outline, did you? Brandon Mongclare and Amy Reeder write the story, and Natacha Bustos provides the art. We get a wonderful heroine in intelligent, awkward, arrogant Lunella Lafayette — and in the original Moon Boy’s brief appearance, he winds up being more interesting and appealing than he’s been in most of the other times we’ve seen him. Devil Dinosaur himself is still a bit of a cypher, but I’m sure that’ll change in future issues.

Itty Bitty Hellboy: The Search for the Were-Jaguar! #1

Art Baltazar and Franco bring Mike Mignola’s pulp horror heroes back in kid-friendly form. Hellboy and Liz are on the way to the Island of Rogers, where all the Rogers the Homunculi live. They only have one pair of underwear, and the one who wears that single pair is the leader of the whole island. So this mission of mercy is to bring all of them underwear. Because, good grief, those homunculi need undies! Meanwhile, Rasputin and Karl are on their way to the island to photograph the mysterious were-jaguar, but they’re soon captured by the Rogers. Hellboy and Liz meet up with Kate from the BPRD, and Lobster Johnson and Smitty go after the bad guys, with limited success. Will the Rogers ever get their undies? Will the were-jaguar make his appearance?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s always wonderful to see Baltazar and Franco making great all-ages comics, and they really out-do themselves when it comes to these normally-dark characters.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #2

Some dire villain has used a convenient Time Platform to erase Squirrel Girl and Tippy-Toe from the current timeline while also sending them back in time to the 1960s! And the only person who can remember her at all is her roommate Nancy! Can Doreen and Tippy get accustomed to life in the ’60s? Can they make contact with other time travelers? Can they figure out how to get back to the present? Will Nancy find out who’s responsible for this villainy? Maybe someone who owns a Time Platform and hates Squirrel Girl and is on the cover of this comic anyway?

Verdict: Thumbs up. All the stuff we love about Squirrel Girl, just transported back to the ’60s. There are lots of little moments to appreciate here — Doreen’s newspaper ad trying to get in touch with other time travelers is really excellent, for example.