Patrick Larose 1/11/17 Patrick Larose 1/11/17

The Best 6 Things I Stared at in 2016

By Patrick Larose

2016 was a year largely characterized by loss. Whether that loss be felt personally, culturally or politically, there's an overwhelming sense that the good guys are thinning out and the bad are encroaching closer every second.

2016 was also the year I started writing for Comic Bastards. The year I got to start writing about one of my favorite mediums on the Internet. For the first time I got engage and keep up with modern comics from the big and small publishers and, despite being a long-time comic fan, that was a completely different experience.

Patrick Larose 12/23/16 Patrick Larose 12/23/16

How Green Valley Pulls Off a Reveal

By Patrick Larose

“A disgraced group of four knights, once close friends, are given one last shot at redemption: kill a wizard, and slay his dragons. But there’s no such thing as wizards, dragons don’t exist, and nothing is as it seems in the town of Green Valley.”

Patrick Larose 12/16/16 Patrick Larose 12/16/16

Hadrian's Wall #4 and the Art of Breaking Up

By Patrick Larose

The first time you see Simon and Annabelle together--they’re smiling. This is the future so they’re in a hover car but still they’re driving along the coastline at sunset, dumbly grinning and badly singing Tom Petty’s “American Girl.” A warm orange glow wraps around them and when they kiss, cartoon hearts fill the spaces between them.

This is not a happy memory. This is a cruel reminder.

Patrick Larose 12/7/16 Patrick Larose 12/7/16

Review: Curse Words #1

By Patrick Larose

“No curses. No wars. No love.”

These are the three rules the only wizard in New York City sets for his clients.

Patrick Larose 11/30/16 Patrick Larose 11/30/16

Review: Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes #3

By Patrick Larose

There’s an experiment you can play while reading Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes, every time the current tension has played out and they’d need to cut away to move forward—stop on that page.

Then, as you slowly turn the page, see if the next one has dinosaurs attacking.

Patrick Larose 11/26/16 Patrick Larose 11/26/16

Review: Batgirl #5

By Patrick Larose

I initially intended this review to be a follow-up, post-mortem of my review for issue #4. I wanted to summarize in a type of I-Told-You-So style about how the series failed to utilize its own new concepts and rushed its story to the end.

Patrick Larose 11/23/16 Patrick Larose 11/23/16

Review: Hadrian's Wall #3 & Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye #2

By Patrick Larose

There’s a particular type of dissonance between being a consumer and a critic. As a consumer, there’s really only ever one question—is the product any good?

Patrick Larose 11/18/16 Patrick Larose 11/18/16

Review: Green Valley #2

By Patrick Larose

The Knights of Kelodia are in a bad place.

Patrick Larose 11/16/16 Patrick Larose 11/16/16

Review: Spell on Wheels #2

By Patrick Larose

When I reviewed the first issue of Spell on Wheels, I made it clear that this was a comic clearly not aimed at me. There was a certain stylistic flair or ancestral structure to the issue that called back to predecessors that I didn’t really like or participate in.

Patrick Larose 11/9/16 Patrick Larose 11/9/16

Review: Psycho-Pass: Inspector Shinya Kogami vol 1

By Patrick Larose

The police procedural is to me what grilled cheese is to most people—it’s my comfort food. The narrative beats and structural format hit me like a good song with that experience of getting to watch some jaded but good-hearted cops push through the morbidity of the every-day murder and the explore the personal frustrations and weaving webs we create just in carrying out our day-to-day lives.

Patrick Larose 11/9/16 Patrick Larose 11/9/16

Review: Batgirl #4

By Patrick Larose

A part of me wonders that when an independent comic creator enters the mainstream superhero genre, there’s this pressure to emphasize the superhero aspect in a superhero story.

Patrick Larose 11/9/16 Patrick Larose 11/9/16

Review: Intertwined #2

By Patrick Larose

Intertwined continues to be a series that I dig shamelessly. Sure, the line-work can be choppy and the colors sometimes muddy but the pages wield a pin-point focus on what it sets out to do and be, nailing that target wholly.

Patrick Larose 11/9/16 Patrick Larose 11/9/16

Review: Violent Love #1

By Patrick Larose

Something tells me that when Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were robbing hardware stores in East Texas, they weren’t doing it because it’d make a good story. Likewise, when Charlie Starkweather and Caril Fugate were torturing industrialists in Lincoln, Nebraska, they didn’t do it so in the early ‘90s people would make a couple counter-cultural films about them.

Patrick Larose 11/2/16 Patrick Larose 11/2/16

Review: The Solar Grid #2

By Patrick Larose

To put this simply: The Solar Grid is the best science fiction comic coming out of anywhere right now.

If you haven’t read either of the two issues yet and want to go in spoiler free or just want to escape before I start throwing around phrases like “consequential dissonance” let me just stress how good this comic is.

Patrick Larose 10/26/16 Patrick Larose 10/26/16

Review: Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes #2

By Patrick Larose

Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes has no right to be as good as it is.

Patrick Larose 10/19/16 Patrick Larose 10/19/16

Review: Hadrian's Wall #2

By Patrick Larose

Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with being a good one of those.

Hadrian’s Wall is a murder mystery, or rather, a locked-room detective story set in space. One where a would-be detective investigates a mysterious death aboard a space station only the victim here isn't some random astronaut but instead the investigator’s former best friend and his ex-wife’s current husband. Out here in the quiet dark of space, everyone's a suspect and everyone has something to hide.

Patrick Larose 10/19/16 Patrick Larose 10/19/16

Review: Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye #1

By Patrick Larose

Cave Carson was never meant to be a superhero.

When he was created in 1960 for DC Comics, he was molded to fit a pulp fiction archetype that didn’t fight crime and didn’t have super powers. Cave Carson was an adventurer.

Patrick Larose 10/17/16 Patrick Larose 10/17/16

Review: Luke Cage E.04 – “Step in the Arena”

By Patrick Larose

Luke Cage’s history of a comic book character was born from the popularization of the Blaxploitation film genre during the 1970s. A bunch of white dudes caught on by how popular these action movies made by black people and starring black people were getting that they saw a new market to, well, exploit.

Patrick Larose 10/13/16 Patrick Larose 10/13/16

Review: Luke Cage E.03 - "Who's Gonna Take the Weight"

By Patrick Larose

If the first two episodes of Luke Cage were like watching superhero Shakespeare, then "Who’s Gonna Take the Weight” is all about becoming an emotional catharsis to answer our pent-up frustration with tragedy. When people talk about Shakespeare or when they call something Shakespearean, they’re usually talking about dudes in puffy shirts, star-crossed characters, and big speeches. You won't catch me doing that, though. I'd offer up , rather, that at the core of every Shakespeare play are characters who are driven by complex needs and forced to navigate their complex social and political hierarchies. They’re a realm of emotional politicking and that description is what the first two episodes of Luke Cage felt like.

Patrick Larose 10/9/16 Patrick Larose 10/9/16

Review: Green Valley #1

By Patrick Larose

Green Valley #1 is everything I hate about reviewing single-issue series. This isn’t even really the fault of the comic itself but instead all the hype and marketing around it. When Green Valley was first announced there was this intense secrecy about it. Every interview following its announcement showed four knights facing off a barbarian horde. They’re friends, this is a fantasy comic it should be straight-forward but the writer, Max Landis, made sure to preface every interview with an “I can’t tell you anything about it without spoiling it.” The tagline itself invites us to question everything that happens in this comic: Kill a wizard, and slay his dragons. But there’s no such thing as wizards, dragons don’t exist.