Eternals - Neil Gaiman

Eternals - Neil Gaiman

Chafing at being stuck for millions of years as in the form of an eleven-year-old (and thus missing out on Sersei's charms, among other things), the Eternal known as Sprite plays a classic Loki-like prank and arranges it so that all 100 Eternals forget their history and live their lives as normal humans.  Makkari becomes "Mark Curry," perpetually overworked resident at an emergency hospital. Zaras is a wino sleeping in an alley.  Sersei is a party girl.  And so on.  Unfortunately, at the same time, the Deviants have decided to waken the Sleeping Celestial, who will destroy the earth when he wakes.  Making things worse, they capture and temporarily kill Ikaris.  But the Eternal spirit cannot stay dormant for long, and although they can't exactly stop the Celestial, they manage to talk it down.  I think this is a pretty good attempt to integrate the Eternals into the larger Marvel universe; Iron Man makes an appearance, reminding some Eternals that they too can take action, and to try to persuade Sersei to rejoin the Avengers.  Regarding the then-pertinent question of registering and picking a side as a metahuman, I enjoyed Zaras asking Iron Man if he cared which children were playing in a trash heap.  I admire John Romita's talent, but his art never grabbed me — everything looks too blocky and doughy at the same time — and maybe I'd have appreciated it more with a more sleek, modern art style.  The first half of the story, when the Eternals are all living and working on Earth and dealing with awareness of who they are, is more interesting than the second half, in which the Celestial threatens to awake — though I did like how that storyline reminds us of the cosmic struggles going on continuously far over even the A-list superheroes' heads.  [3.5]

Danger and Other Unknown Risks - Ryan North and Erica Henderson

Danger and Other Unknown Risks - Ryan North and Erica Henderson

The good news is the world didn't end via the Y2K tech bug.  The bad news is that it ended through the sudden arrival of magic, which split the world into different realms where magic is unpredictable.. Years later, the Earth is mutating, decaying, and inherently unstable. To prevent it from plunging into total chaos, Marguerite and a talking shar pei named Daisy, under the tutelage of Uncle Bernard, set out on a quest to gather ingredients for a spell that promises to eradicate evil magic once and for all.  They meet and enlist a gung ho mall guard from 1999, but when one of their quests reveals that they're only one in an ongoing cycle of questers continually resetting the timeline, they start to question everything they believed to be true.  This is a fun story with quirky characters.  The twist is clever and not telegraphed ahead.  I thought the art was good, but the colors are sometimes too dark and monotone; I know it's meant to set mood, but I found it obscured details.  And some of the story is a little cutesy, with teen romance and girl power and young people taking charge and so on all seemingly shoehorned in.  [3.5]

Eight Million Genies - Charles Soule & Ryan Browne

Eight Million Genies - Charles Soule & Ryan Browne

In a bar in Michigan, a band prepares to set up for their gig in a bar, a young boy tries to wake his passed-out father, and a Chinese couple come in looking for directions.  At that moment, a genie appears to everyone on Earth, ready to grant one wish.  Instantly, the bartender (who seems to be more than he appears) wishes that the bar and everyone in it be protected.  Outside, the world goes berserk as every single person on earth gives voice to their craziest desire.  Some are superheroes, some save their wishes, some just want to watch the world burn.  The planet, obviously, will never be the same.  This is an intriguing through experiment brought to life by one of the most interesting writers in comics.  In terms of the "rules" of the premise, the genies sometimes are transferred to other people so they can collect plural wishes, and unless I'm missing something, this is never explained, which I find annoying.  Other than that, it's a fun thrill ride that goes in some unexpected directions.  [4]

Sebastian O - Grant Morrison

Sebastian O - Grant Morrison

In a technologically advanced Victorian England, renowned reprobate and dandy Sebastian O escapes Bedlam prison, where he has been held for writing a little book on "Uranian love,"and seeks vengeance on the powers that be that broke up his scandalous club, silencing their ideas.  The evil Lord Lavender sends some nasty assassins after Sebastian, but with the help of some tribadists and pederasts. Sebastian triumphs.  I give it points for audacity and wit, and even though it's only three issues, I though Morrison did a good job condensing his quasi-steampunk Victorian setting into an understandable gloss.  I'd like to have enjoyed it more, but it feels a little degrading to root for a "hero" who cavorts with a pedophile.  [3.5]

Drafted - Rick Parker

Drafted - Rick Parker

The Vietnam War has generated no shortage of memoirs, but Rick Parker's graphic memoir stands apart because it isn't really a war memoir at all. Instead, it's a diary about waiting for war, fearing war, and trying to survive the absurdities of military life while hoping not to be sent into combat.  Parker, a shy and artistically inclined young man who isn't particularly good in school, is drafted into the Army in 1966. Unlike in many Vietnam narratives, he never actually serves overseas. The threat of deployment looms its head every now and then, but the book's focus is on boot camp, officer training, military bureaucracy, and the strange, often ridiculous routines of Army life. Parker discovers quickly that he is profoundly unsuited to military culture and spends much of the book trying to endure it rather than embrace it.  It's a fairly sanitized account.  The only violence comes from two candidates who die in car wrecks, and sex mostly presents itself in the form of a couple of women who flirt with Parker, who is wooden and awkward and (at first) doesn't reciprocate.

Parker doesn't reinvent himself as a hero, nor does he present military service as a grand coming-of-age journey. If anything, Parker is too taciturn — there's very little introspection, regret, or sizing himself up.  Perhaps that's just a tendency of his generation; his parents drop him off at the recruiting office (with war a very real specter hanging over him) with far less anxiety or emotion than parents today drop their kids off at summer camp.  The memoir's most memorable scenes often involve mundane frustrations, arbitrary authority, and the constant low-grade fear produced by the draft itself. Parker is similarly silent on the social and racial issues of the day.  The cartooning is expressive and accessible, leaning toward caricature rather than realism. His storytelling often recalls the autobiographical comics of Harvey Pekar: anecdotal, conversational, and more interested in lived experience than dramatic plotting.  [3.5]

Superman: American Alien - Max Landis

Superman: American Alien - Max Landis

Collecting all seven issues, this book adapts, retells, and modernizes the Superman mythos.  But as the jacket states, this is not a Superman story.  It's the story of Clark Kent, an alien wondering who he is.  Meeting Bruce Wayne and Oliver Queen and Lex Luthor, fighting the Parasite — these are not the point of the stories, but merely events that help Clark discover what he should be.  I love how Landis implied that the whole town of Smallville knows Clark is Superman and keeps it to themselves, I love the Lois Lane romance (although it's extremely compressed), I love the retelling of the Deathstroke meeting on the yacht.  Just brilliant mythmaking.  [5]

Silver - Stephan Franck

Silver - Stephan Franck

1. Of Treasures and Thieves, Book 1: James Finnegan, con man and master thief, finds he and his gang are out of luck when after a daring escape, he loses the key to their loot.  Desperate, he looks through the old journals of Jonathan Harker and learns two unbelievable things.  First, there exists a massive silver hoard called the silver dragon, worth millions.  And second, vampires exist and this hoard is in the possession of Drakh-Kahn, king of the vampires.  With the help of a sword-wielding Van Helsing granddaughter, a future-telling child, and an old ham actor, Finnegan goes for the big score, undead blood rituals and monsters be damned.  This is an exciting and fun adventure, with writing that evokes Brian Azzarello and black and white art that evokes Sin City.  Franck pays proper homage to Stoker's work, while letting Finnegan be a modern, devil-may-care hero.  This collection has six issues, stopping at a cliffhanger just as the long con gets rolling.  [4]

Plunge - Joe Hill

Plunge - Joe Hill

A small salvage crew and a marine biologist are hired by an oil company to investigate why a 46-year-old wreck off Alaska has recently begun sending a distress call.  They find the crew, all right, but they aren't alive any more.  The problem is, they aren't quite dead, either.  The beings animating the former crew need the salvage crew to do something for them, and they offer trade, or violence.  The problem is, what these beings want could result in a something very, very bad.  This is a well-written, creepy story with an eerie atmosphere, a high body count, and a few clever twists.  It's a sort of homage to The Thing, mixed with a touch of Alien.  [4]

Top 10 - Alan Moore

Top Ten Compendium - Alan Moore, Paul Di Filippo, Zander Cannon

This weighty tome contains Top 10 #1-12, Smax, Beyond the Furthest Precinct, Season Two, and a couple of specials.  It tells of the professional and personal lives of a super-powered police squad in a city where everyone is super-powered (except the Smax series, which is an excursion to Smax's home dimension of elves, trolls, and dragons).  At first the conceit seems pretty labored, but in Moore's capable hands it develops into a chaotic but human story that manages to be over the top, silly, witty, winking, and even poignant at times.  There are references to and cameos of every fictional character you can think of, from Captain Haddock and Pogo to Marvel characters and creators.  The writing wanes a bit in the later series, not written by Moore, even undoing some of Moore's denouement, which grated on me more than it should have.  [4]

Motherlover - Lindsay Ishihiro

Motherlover - Lindsay Ishihiro

This bafflingly-poorly titled graphic novel tells of the friendship between Imogen, an awkward, hesitant mother of four whose husband keeps her firmly in her stay-at-home-mom identity, and Alex, a lesbian single mom of one daughter who's returned to her home town after the death of her strict parents.  Together, they bond over a shock to Imogen's marriage and Alex's own hangups.  Friendship turns to love as they realize they have come to need each other.  This is a well-crafted story, with fully fleshed-out characters and a lack of trite, quick resolutions.  The need to work on relationships and develop trust in all relationships is realistically portrayed.   The art is colorful and vibrant.  [4]

 

Night Fever - Ed Brubaker

Night Fever - Ed Brubaker

A disaffected book editor gets insomnia while at a convention in Paris.  He wanders into an underground masked ball for super-rich bored people, taking the identity of someone on the guest list.  This leads him into a dark world of drugs and murder.  Jonathan is not a hard boiled noir character, but an office guy who gets drawn into chaos and violence and finds he likes it, until it turns out he's the patsy.  This isn't Brubaker's finest work — it's not as intricately plotted as Criminal, and there are some odd plot points that don't really go anywhere (like Jonathan finding his own dream in a manuscript), but it's a fun read.  [3.5]

Space Dumplins - Craig Thompson

Space Dumplins - Craig Thompson

Craig Thompson is mostly known for Blankets, which I haven't read.  This one is about a girl named Violet who lives aboard a garbage-hauling spaceship with her father, a "lumberjack" (in this case hauling and refining space-whale excrement) and her mother, a fashion designer's assistant. When her father's deep-space fishing vessel disappears amid a crisis of — sigh — whale diarrhea, Violet sets off on a rescue mission with a fearful, erudite chicken and a small but exuberant orange alien.  The art is obsessively detailed: every panel is packed full of bizarre creatures, elaborate machinery, and throwaway visual jokes.  The pages burst with movement, and despite the density of detail, the storytelling is remarkably clear.  The emotional core is somewhat less successful. Thompson probably means the story to be about family, grief, responsibility, and growing up, but it's also a whirlwind of episodic adventures from a child's point of view, with childish physical combat being the deciding factor in many cases.  There are several comments about how the elite and the rich screw over the working class, and some examples of private school bullying, points which all land without being preachy.  Beneath the eccentric creatures, cosmic junkyards, and gleeful absurdity lies a charming adventure with genuine heart.  [3.5]

Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees - Patrick Horvath

Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees - Patrick Horvath

Sam Strong, an anthropomorphic bear and the owner of a hardware store in the tiny town of Woodbrook, has a secret.  Every now and then, she goes to the city to kill strangers.  Just to take the edge off, you know?  But she really does love her town.  So when someone else starts committing grisly (ha ha!) murders in Woodbrook, the usually serene community is thrown into chaos — and Sam needs to find the killer before the police start looking too closely at her own movements.  This is a pretty standard thriller plot with few surprises in the endgame.  It stands out in that the protagonist is also a serial killer, and the "talking animal" setting adds a novel, ironically cute layer to it.  Horvath’s illustrations reinforce this tone beautifully. His thin lines and warm, gentle colors evoke children's books and Sunday funnies, while his real strength lies in facial expressions: the animals' placid smiles, flickers of fear, and moments of barely concealed menace carry much of the emotional weight.  [4]

Shortcomings - Adrien Tomine

Shortcomings - Adrien Tomine

A black and white slice of life graphic novel set in the Bay Area.  It follows Ben Tanaka, a movie-theater manager, drifting apart from his girlfriend, Miko, who is involved in Asian-American organizations and art.  She suspects him of fetishizing blonde white girls.  He is indifferent to her flirtatious come-ons and spends his days looking at DVDs and venting to his only friend, Alice Kim, a sharp, socially confident lesbian who plays the field and occasionally punctures his self-image.  When Miko takes an internship in New York City for four months, Ben has no intention of accompanying her, and their already strained relationship threatens to break.  Tomine tells this story with his trademark minimalist precision: spare lines, controlled pacing, and a cool observational tone that lends the book a strong sense of realism.  But since Tanaka is such an unpleasant character — he is in fact all that his girlfriend accuses him of, and more, yet reacts to her suspicions, and Kim's mild criticisms, with outright hostility — I finished the story with antipathy and a shrug, not admiration.  [3]

The Mystery Play - Grant Morrison

The Mystery Play - Grant Morrison

In a small English village of Townely, a revival of a medieval mystery play is being put on, when suddenly the man playing God is murdered just offstage.  Enter Sergeant Frank Carpenter, a bearded, taciturn detective, coming to solve the murder in a rather peculiar way: "I don't want to examine the smashed pieces of an event, you see what I mean?  Fragments are no good to me.  I want to see it whole, in relation to everything around it."  Carpenter uncovers some rather unsavory practices in the local politician, and a reverend who lost his faith and didn't get along with the deceased very much, but none of it adds up to anything.  Then a reporter uncovers a macabre secret about Carpenter,  and things start to get weird.  Carpenter is haunted by his past and every clue he finds.  I didn't really engage with this one much, despite Morrison's erudition and the interesting twists.  I liked his clever coat motif and the mob frenzy at the end, but I'm not wholly onboard with Morrison's ideas that we're all part of a collective organism or story, and the individual pieces don't matter as much.  And the symbolism is just so heavy handed. I mean, his name is Carpenter? and he gets a wound on his hand?  "The house is empty"?  It's all a bit on the nose.  This book has some interesting themes and exciting moments, but ultimately I found it just a collection of ideas rather than a complete work.  [3.5]

Hakim's Odyssey - Fabien Toulmé

Hakim's Odyssey - Fabien Toulmé

1. Book One: From Syria to Turkey - With simple, two-toned line drawings, Toulmé tells the story of Hakim, a young Syrian who owns a gardening store in Damascus.  After Assad comes to power, there are protests that are put down with brutal violence.  Hakim is picked up by the state police for helping some protesters. After being interrogated and tortured, he is released, but decides he must flee his business, family, and country.  Moving from Jordan to Antalya, Turkey, he discovers that life as a refugee consist of low wages, suspicion, and anger from the locals.  In Antalya, he marries a fellow refugee, then leaves with her family for Istanbul, where the book ends.  Especially given the strongman tactics of the American wanna-be king in the 2020s, this is an important, chillingly relevant, and upsetting story.

 

Morning Glories - Nick Spencer

Morning Glories - Nick Spencer

Volume One -  The Breakfast Club, or maybe "Gossip Girl," meets Cthulhu.  The story opens in a prestigious boarding school, Morning Glory Academy, where six academically gifted but troubled teens arrive, and very quickly things seem eerie and off  The six characters find they all share the same birthday, and the teachers are adept at evading questions. Spencer leans into secrets, hidden agendas, and "something is very wrong here" energy.  The kids' cell phones lose signal, their parents claim not to remember their very existence, and the sinister teachers seem to have planned a series of deathtraps for the teens unless they toe the line.  However, I thought it was ultimately unsatisfying.  Spencer stirs a lot into the pot early on, including a set of murdered parents, with mysteries and questions building without immediate payoff.  I also found the characters thin and overly stereotyped, while the writing was of the self-conscious, quippy kind (think "Gilmore Girls" meets "West Wing") in a rapid-fire babble that doesn't match how anyone, let alone teens, talk.  "Our little suicide girl is your carrot on a stick, and they know it."  "This is Guantanamo Bay for the statutory set."  "Or we wave the white blouse and beg for clemency before these psychos get all Clockwork Orange-y with us."  Lines like that might dazzle in a writer's room, but no panicked teenager would ever say them. Joe Eisma's art is crisp and detailed, but I found it also glossy and flat, with little dynamism or depth, in that way matching the writing.  By the "shocking twist" on the final splash page, I found myself less intrigued than indifferent. The mystery may run deep, but the characters and dialogue never made me care enough to follow it further.  [2.5] 

The Bat-Man: First Knight - Dan Jurgens

The Bat-Man: First Knight - Dan Jurgens

Set in 1939, this story drops us back into Batman's formative nights, when he still had a hyphen, wore purple gloves, and relied on a handful of crude gadgets, a big red roadster, and raw nerve. There's no Alfred, no Robin, just a grim vigilante stalking Gotham's alleys as the effects of the Great Depression lingers and the shadow of global war creeps closer.  A mysterious zealot called the Voice seeks to turn Gotham into an isolationist fortress, commanding an army of brutish, inarticulate "monster men"—reanimated corpses of recently killed men. With moral counsel from a sympathetic rabbi and some unexpected tenderness from a Hollywood starlet, the Bat-Man, still dismissed by most as a myth or a lunatic, fights to stop the Voice before the city is consumed by his madness.  It's a stylish throwback with pulp grit and surprising heart.  [4.5]

 

Dark Night: A True Batman Story - Paul Dini

Dark Night: A True Batman Story - Paul Dini

Dini, a writer for Batman and Animaniacs, is brutally beaten and mugged, and uses his imagination to get through a difficult psychological healing process.  The determination and heroism of Batman in particular convinces him not to sink permanently into despair.  This is an honest, courageous tale, brought to life brilliantly by Eduardo Risso's art.  It's moving and troubling but at times funny and ultimately optimistic.  A real masterpiece.  [4.5]

Boy Wonder - Juni Ba

Boy Wonder - Juni Ba

Writer and artist Ba tells the story of Damian Wayne, the outsider whose brutal outlook seems to prevent him from fully joining the royal Bat-family: the king and his three adopted sons, brave and rageful and clever in turns.   Infusing the story of the Robins with Asian legend vibes, focusing on the confusion and need for acceptance of the skilled but antisocial Damian, and having one oddly unafraid hostage tell it like a fable to a confused robber, Ba has created an intriguing, quirky, and visually dynamic tale that stands out from the glut of Bat-books.  [4]