Category: reviews

Strange and Stranger:
The World of Steve Ditko

By Blake Bell Published by Fantagraphics Books, 2008; 220 pages; $39.99 “Strange and Stranger” by Blake Bell is an intriguing biography in the life, career and politics of Steve Ditko, best well-known in the pop-culture world as the co-creator of Spider-Man, but also creator of several other characters like Dr. Strange, The Question, Captain Atom…



Prince of Persia

By A.B. Sina (W) and LeUyen Pham & Alex Puvilland (A) Created by Jordan Mechner Published by First Second, 2008; 190 pages; $16.95 Prince of Persia is a graphic novel inspired by the era, setting and general mythology of the video game series of the same name, though not directly starring or attempting to personify…



Book of Doom: Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds

Well, it’s that time of the week again. Actually, it’s a day late, but whatever. This week, for the Book of Doom, we decided on the first issue of the new miniseries “Legion of Three Worlds,” a tie-in to “Final Crisis.” Written by Geoff Johns, drawn by George Perez, it focuses on Superman and the…



Green Manor vol. I:
Assassins and Gentlemen

By Fabien Vehlmann (W) and Denis Bodart (A) Published by Cinebook, 2008; 56 pages; $13.95 I won’t risk losing any readers by saving the verdict for the end — I loved this book and cannot heap enough praise on it. A puzzling scenario opens the collection, as a psychiatrist arrives at a mental institution to…



The Doomino Effect for Aug 20, 2008

I’m going to pack two weeks of comics into this week’s Doomino Effect, but starting off is a new one from this week, Guardians of the Galaxy #4. GotG has become one of my favorite series, even inspiring me to dig out my old ’90s Guardians of the Galaxy comics (and then quickly putting them…



Astonishing X-Men under Ellis is … actually not as bad as I thought

I’ve written a couple posts about some issues I have with Warren Ellis, specifically his taking over of Astonishing X-Men. When the news came out last year, I posted about it, saying: But here’s the thing. His writing is dense. Not just “dense” dense. Unreadable dense, the kind where fourth or fifth time is a…



Secret Invasion Is Boring, Stinks

This summer, I’ve only been paying attention to three “event” comic series, and, so far, all three of them are really letting me down. It’s no secret that I’ve really disliked Final Crisis, but I’ve also been fairly annoyed with Batman R.I.P. The art in both of those has been pretty stellar, but Grant Morrison’s…



Book of Doom: Final Crisis #3

Man, Final Crisis just isn’t going to get any better, is it? We’re about halfway through now, and the third issue was just as poorly paced and written as the first one. As you may have been able to tell from the past few days of posts, the other guys here have similar feelings. So…



Where Were You…?



Where Were You…?