Mike Badilla 11/30/16 Mike Badilla 11/30/16

Review: Tank Girl: Gold #2

By Mike Badilla

Tank Girl: Gold is the first TG series I've ever read, which I know is blasphemy among certain comic book circles. I own some of the trades, I got the gist of it before, but I just never gave it the time of day. So glad I did now, as this is one title that I look forward to. Last issue saw the resurrection of Sub Girl as well as the discovery of billions of dollars worth of gold on the sub. Other stuff happened, including that dingo (name forgotten) getting some action that caused his..... member to get swollen. STD? I guess. The whole this is weird, but in a fun way. Don't read into it so much.

Dustin Cabeal 11/30/16 Dustin Cabeal 11/30/16

There Can Be Only One: Image Comics 11/30/16

By Dustin Cabeal

That’s right; I’m back with another review in which I punish myself, at least depending on how you look at it. Since I need a break from DC’s titles and they weren’t shipping much, I decided to turn to the only publisher that didn’t take the week after a holiday off and that’s Image.

Mike Badilla 11/30/16 Mike Badilla 11/30/16

Review: Seven to Eternity #3

By Mike Badilla

It's already been a month since the last issue of Seven to Eternity? Well that's just enough time for me to have forgotten everything about this book except for the fact that I enjoyed the last issue. Recap; Adam is the head of what was a royal family that was cast out of their royal setting by the Mud King, a guy with the power to put a 'whisper' into anyone's head, which not only can manipulate the person but also allows the king to hear anything through the persons ears. Cool, right? Adam was told by his father to never make a deal with the king, but because Adam is dying and his family is constantly being harassed, he decides to make a deal. The deal Adam is offered? Being cured of what is killing him.

Dustin Cabeal 11/30/16 Dustin Cabeal 11/30/16

Review: No Angel #1

By Dustin Cabeal

I really, really, really fucking tried to overlook the fact that this was someone in Hollywood using comics as a backdoor to getting a passed on project made. It’s not uncommon, hell that’s how Cowboys and Aliens got made. Adrianne Palicki’s involvement made me weary of this comic because of that, but it is a Black Mask title so I hoped it would be different.

Chris Tresson 11/30/16 Chris Tresson 11/30/16

Review: Batman Annual #1

By Chris Tresson

We’re nearing the end of the year and that means it’s annual season in the comic book industry… Since becoming a comic book shop owner, I’ve been paying more attention to annuals (I’ve picked up a fair few this year purely because I can.) Before that all I ever got was Daredevil annuals and Batman annuals.

Dustin Cabeal 11/30/16 Dustin Cabeal 11/30/16

Review: Savage #1

By Dustin Cabeal

I’m going to try and stay as positive as possible on this opening. Savage is a great looking book. It is by far some of the best art coming out of Valiant at the moment, and Lewis Larosa and Clayton Henry only seem to get better every time I see either of their work. If you go for art over the story, then this is the book for you.

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.

Dustin Cabeal 11/30/16 Dustin Cabeal 11/30/16

Review: M.A.S.K. #1

By Dustin Cabeal

I’m sure when a lot of people heard that MASK was coming to comics they were excited. I mean, it’s one of the few 80s toy franchises/cartoon series, to not having its corpse mangled and rebooted in the modern era. Even setting aside the fact that IDW was in charge of the comic reboot, the first thing everyone should have asked is, “Why’d it take this long?”

Justin Wood 11/29/16 Justin Wood 11/29/16

Review: The Mindgator

By Justin Wood

You never notice the scars reviewing indie comics have left on your love for the medium until you read something like The Mindgator. Cracking open the review copy blind, I had to check to make sure it was a genuine indie. No publisher bullet, no hyperbole laden pull quote from one of Matt Fraction's Image Gang. An actual self-published work. And it looked really good. Not 'good for you', like a majority of the self-published books that cross the Bastard bullpen. Actual high-quality artwork. Now, I'm front loading this review with this praise because my take on the book that is The Mindgator isn't all glowing, but coming across a book that looks like this that isn't a marketed property by a titanic publisher makes me want to climb to the highest point of Comic Con and shout “This! You don't have any excuse other than your talent!”. We'll get to my detractions, but there is more praise coming as well.

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.

Dustin Cabeal 11/24/16 Dustin Cabeal 11/24/16

Review: DC Comics 11/23/16 – There Can Be Only One

By Dustin Cabeal

We get a ton of DC books, and due to a thinning of the ranks, a lot of them have gone un-reviewed for weeks. Not that I particularly care, but to amuse myself I read all of their releases this week and shit… it was a lot more than I was expecting.

Mike Badilla 11/23/16 Mike Badilla 11/23/16

Review: The Killer Inside Me #3

By Mike Badilla

Jim Thompson's 'The Killer Inside Me' is based on an old book of the same name. It's now a comic. It's supposed to be a glimpse into the mind of a serial killer long before we knew about men like Dahmer and Gacy and all those family favorites. This is issue 3 of 5, and I haven't read 1 or 2, so this may not be the most succinct review of the story so far, but I sure do like serial killers, so lets dive in.

Laramie Martinez 11/23/16 Laramie Martinez 11/23/16

Review: Night's Dominion #3

By Laramie Martinez

The last two issues of Night’s Dominion have taken us through an interesting and exciting world at a breakneck pace. We’ve seen a team come together, a heist go awry, and uncovered a conspiracy underneath the city. This issue, by comparison feels like the issue where we pay the piper. Slower than the previous two, Naifeh introduces a lot of new characters and storylines. While I have previously welcomed his twists and turns of the narrative. The ones introduced here feel like he’s trying to do too much. Overall, the pacing doesn’t ruin the issue but it does bring it down from the heights this series has achieved in the past.

Mike Badilla 11/23/16 Mike Badilla 11/23/16

Review: Frostbite #3

By Mike Badilla

Frostbite. From about 12 seconds of research online, I've found that this series takes place in the future. Global warming has caused the world to become a frozen wasteland. We see how people are reacting and living in this future time. Every one loves apocalyptic future stories, right? Right? It's also being described as a 'western', but it takes place in a frozen Los Angeles. Hmm...

Dustin Cabeal 11/23/16 Dustin Cabeal 11/23/16

Review: Snotgirl #4

By Dustin Cabeal

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. It still hasn’t and with this issue I feel like I did after the first issue. Excited, confused, and anxious for more. In this issue, so many minor things happen it’s hard to talk about it without spoilers, but even with spoilers, I don’t know if it would make sense without reading it.

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?

Chris Tresson 11/23/16 Chris Tresson 11/23/16

Review: Bloodshot U.S.A #2

By Chris Tresson

This week sees the release of the second issue of Valiant Entertainment’s Bloodshot U.S.A by Jeff Lemire and Doug Braithwaite. I quite enjoyed the first issue and I’ve been looking forward to seeing where this one would go since the cliffhanger in the last issue. Let’s get going, shall we?

Chris Tresson 11/23/16 Chris Tresson 11/23/16

Review: The Goddamned #5

By Chris Tresson

I’m not one for biblical shite. Never been a religious guy and quite frankly, I try to avoid any sort of religious stuff at all costs… But I have been reading Image Comics’ The Goddamned. It’s back from whatever happened to it and I haven’t got a fucking clue where it left off, so I’m just going to stumble through this and pretend like I remember what happened before… Let’s see what Jason Aaron and R.M. Guéra have been up to.

Jordan Claes 11/23/16 Jordan Claes 11/23/16

Review: A.D.: After Death - Book One

By Jordan Claes

I remember the first time I ever really questioned or attempted to come to terms with death and my own mortality. It was shortly after the passing of my grandfather: I was twenty-five years old, I’d never experienced real loss in my life and for the first time I felt like I truly understood what it was to miss someone. Just little things at first: the intangible, indescribable parts that comprise the whole.

Dustin Cabeal 11/21/16 Dustin Cabeal 11/21/16

Review: Doctor Muscles – Journal Three

By Dustin Cabeal

It’s been an interesting ride with Doctor Muscles. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this series has been the creator’s ability to capture a past era’s storytelling, without making it feel dated. I have said in my last two reviews that Doctor Muscles looks and feels like a story that would have been extremely popular in Heavy Metal Magazine back in the eighties. The setting and look play heavily into this, but the key thing is that it doesn’t read like an 80s comic. I recently read a comic that was attempting to read and feel like a 60s TV show and accomplished that goal. The problem was, it was fucking terrible for it. That is why Doctor Muscles succeeds because it doesn’t try to be an 80s comic.