“Someone should make an animated series out of this,” I found myself thinking, about a third of the way through reading this comic. Yeah; I know. The thought occurred to me because the tone, pacing, and content of Jem and the Holograms Holiday Special reads like a wacky sitcom. Specifically, it fits the brisk and light tone of a Saturday morning cartoon’s Christmas special. This is appropriate. Those of us new to the comic get a very quick and very well done recap. One page, six panels, and very little text. And it explains everything I need to know to catch me up with the series in fairly decent clarity. Then the book properly starts with a bit of character establishment. In the wacky tradition of contrived sitcom wackiness, the plot of the special is kicked off by a Secret Santa scenario. The Misfits -- rivals to the Holograms -- are motivated by petty gamesmanship. Our protagonists -- led by the responsible designated adult Jerrica -- lean into the spirit of being the good guys in all things. And in that way the Holograms are embracing the spirit of the holiday season without the need for heavy-handed moralizing. The idea of spiteful gift-giving is pretty funny and I wish the book lingered a bit on this aspect of the plot. We get brief moments of our antagonistic Secret Santas buying and receiving their presents. The rest mostly feels like filler that is either following up on or leading into surrounding plot threads. As a new reader, that stuff holds little value for me.
The art’s fine. Most of its charm comes from the candy colors popping out of every page. The line art is cute in an aggressive, almost abrasive way. I did have a little trouble distinguishing characters from one another, but their personalities shone through in their energetic body language.
Your appreciation for some of the dialog will depend on your tolerance for people who say “yiss” instead of “yes” on Twitter and for folks who use extraneous letters for emphasisssss. But this is a kind of youth pandering I can tolerate because it’s not actively idiotic. I think Jem and the Holograms’ biggest problem is that it might be too precious for its own good. At times the writing may be trying a bit too hard to convince us of its cleverness. At its worst there are a few fumbled jokes, but nothing offensively bad. The family dynamic between Jerrica and her siblings is as genuine and warm as the Holograms versus Misfits rivalry is believably silly. Kimber has a particularly grating personality, vacillating between stupid and entirely stupid. The writer saves this character from loathsomeness, however. The one thing grounding her in relatable realism is her absolutely adorable relationship with Stormer of the Misfits. The two of them constantly texting back and forth not only rings true of young love, but serves as a crucial plot point.
I have a weakness for enemy-becomes-ally story arcs. I love watching people turn their foes into friends. That as a basic premise works well as the impetus for a Holiday tale. This book doesn’t deliver on that theme as well as I might’ve hoped but it is fun fluff, and likely a good transitional issue between story arcs.
Score: 4/5
Jem and the Holograms Holiday Special Writer: Kelly Thompson Artist: Amy Mebberson Colorist: M. Victoria Robado Publisher: IDW Publishing Price: $3.99 Release Date: 12/16/15 Format: One-Shot; Print/Digital
And yet, even as they dispatch cannibalistic animal rapists and feral murder children, respectively, we get in both a glimpse of a very fractured, bruised and woefully misplaced humanity...but a humanity all the same, There is no hero in this book, no one to root for -- well, unless you can choose between the suicidal immortal who was the world’s first murderer and the slaver-cum-slaughterer of the world’s leftover dregs, who would rather save maggots than a human he deems savage -- and Aaron skirts that line well in the blunt hopelessness of Cain’s narration, the violent desperation of his dialogue and the loathsomeness of his cast.
By issue three the boot part of the reboot has already happened and we say farewell to the original Rook from the previous series, as he hands the reins over to the 2015 (nice modern touch, Grant) Rook. This new Rook has no idea who any of the old villains are, or how his time traveling castle operates. Which is great for new readers, because they don’t either, so everything has to be explained all over again. Personally I have never read any of the original Eerie Rook comics so this was good for me. And I found the origin story of Restin Dane to be a fun if not slightly confusing adventure. Much like Dark Horse’s other H.G. Wells’ love letter The Steam Man, The Rook is also a kind of extended or alternate ending to Wells’ Time Machine. Issue three finds both Restin and his ancestor fighting for their survival against Eloi and Morlocks who are now both so violent that their entire society is on the brink of collapse. Both Danes find their way out, but not without bringing one Morlock back to London with them, setting up for a nice cliffhanger.
Frankly, Morrison has never been an excellent character writer. His books have functioned on big ideas and strange concepts taken to their extremes, something which is entirely lacking in Klaus beyond the aforementioned tree spirits who are not even mentioned in this issue. Without Morrison's name on the cover, one would likely never associate him with this dully by-the-numbers fantasy tale. In fact, a jolt of Morrison's usual heady sci-fi might alleviate some of the superfluousness of the series by creating a sense of wonder. For a book that purports to be the origin of a magical man who delivers toys via flying dear, the book has no sense of joys or festivity in any way (we do have some quality brooding though).
What I have been equally, perhaps even more impressed with (simply because I wasn’t expecting it) is how Young has conducted his humor narratively in this, his first creator-owned series. He’s rarely failed to elicit a titter or two in his gags, especially this time in the little asides he gives both main and ancillary characters alike. That off-handed joke near issue’s end, for example -- from the little polkadot cop-hater -- is downright dynamite, because it’s so far out of left field...just like this book in general.
After that we go to the present and find the media circus that has become Huck’s house. The neighbors that have always protected him arrive at his house to see how he’s holding up and it’s clear that Huck doesn’t like this attention. It does make you wonder why they decided to include Diane Davis in the secret so soon. She’s absent from this issue which was a nice choice as it builds her return for future issues.
When it comes to reading a Judge Dredd book, and being the metalhead that I am, I can’t but have “I Am The Law” by Anthrax playing in my head on repeat. One of the biggest questions I ask myself when reading a Dredd story is does it fit with the song? Does this play well as a soundtrack to this new Dredd story I’m reading? This new issue of Judge Dredd passes that test with flying colors. The characters are well established, there are two different timelines and motivations happening, and they both thread together nicely towards the same place for different reasons. The interaction of the hard-hitting judge with meddling children who’ve never heard of any law before feels fresh and contrasts well with each other. At the end of the day the right questions are asked, where is Dredd now? What happened to Mega-City One? Where are the kids trying to go?
"WOO!" That was my reaction in reading the last page of 
The set up for the story is important but, come on, what’s really important is the titular Steam Man. A giant steam powered fighting machine built to combat the horrors brought into our dimension. The Steam Man is piloted by a crack team, each member specializing in something or other, they’re your usual giant robot crew. The entire thing is one big send-up to the fighting robot genre, but placed in a steampunk universe. Turns out that even though the Steam Man’s team is seemingly driven by reward money, their captain is motivated by revenge. Years ago the Dark Rider, a mysterious figure who slaughters entire towns and moves on, killed the captain’s wife, and ever since they have been chasing him relentlessly through the barren West. The comparison to Stephen King’s Dark Tower is obvious, and definitely fits in well with this comic, it’s apparent that the authors are huge fans of sci-fi and horror literature. The Dark Rider is actually the protagonist from The Time Machine that I mentioned earlier, but in his journey through time he became a monster, and now the Moorlocks (the bad guys from The Time Machine) are his minions and he has a taste for human flesh. So obviously he must be stopped at any cost.
The aforementioned titles were both one-shots, joined by 
The story is enjoyable. I wouldn’t say it’s original as I’m pretty sure the core of the story has been taken from a movie and retooled here. But it’s not hiding that. Creator Jonas McCluggage even lists the inspirations at the end of the story. Hell, I even think that an entire line of a dialogue is borrowed from a movie, but the presentation is incredible and more importantly it’s fun.
Elf's story is a simple one. Buddy the Elf (Will Ferrell) lives at the North Pole with Santa and the other elves, making toys for Christmas. But despite his name, Buddy isn't really an elf at all. Buddy is a human, an ophan who accidentally made his way into Santa's sack one Christmas. Kind-hearted Santa Claus (Ed Asner) keeps the child at the North Pole, where he's raised as an elf by, well, Papa Elf (Bob Newhart). As Buddy grows he becomes much taller, stronger, and clumsier than the other elves. Realising he's adopted, Buddy ventures to New York to find his real father Walter Hobbs (James Caan).
PS: What was the biggest challenge in taking over such a distinctive looking project like Nowhere Men from another artist?
STEPHEN BISSETTE: Jason just cuts loose without inhibitions, and he has drawing, color, and sequential narrative chops that are always spot-on and that work for me. I love his drawing AS drawings, and I love his sense of the comics medium as inherently impatient and assaultive. He knows what he wants to do: he gets us there, and gets it done, with alarming clarity.
Jason is as sick of, say, the tedious templates of Robert E. Howard-derived barbarian comics and the “you have to set up your story” narrative forms as he is with the formalism of Clowes or Ware. FUCK IT: Jason's covers and splash pages promise the steak AND the sizzle, he'll brook about three panels or one page of setup, at most, then all hell breaks loose. It's giddy and utterly alive.
Rugg could only concur, comparing Karns’ work to 70’s grindhouse exploitation trailers and posters, only “unlike those trailers, FUKITOR delivered the goods.” When he took a pile of Karns’ books to an independent comics expo in Pittsburgh and found that nobody knew anything about them, Rugg decided that he “didn’t want to live in a comics world where Karns’ work isn’t widely known and celebrated.”
Karns is one of those guys who is almost “too real” to be part of the contemporary comics conversation. Just about everything compared to his work seems “pretentious”. Karns is not trying to do a throwback style or appropriate “bad comics” in order to make some sort of art comic. This is the real deal. This shit is SERIOUS!
The whole sorry circus perhaps reached its nadir when some of the more hysterical obsessives in this first wave of FUKITOR-hate began chasing down other online articles about Karns and his work, using the comments sections to high-five the like-minded and shame the apostates. One could almost picture them, gathered together in crowds (for protection), their arms outstretched, trembling fingers pointing, faces twisted with rage as their jaws dropped slack and guttural moans formed, then erupted from their gaping mouths, like Donald Sutherland in the final scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), screaming: “FUKITOR IS DOUBLE PLUS UNGOOD RACIST!!!”
MT: It must have felt like a vindication of sorts, like your years of hard work have finally started paying off.
MT: You say that exploitation movies from the 70’s and 80’s – specifically “slasher” horror and violent action flicks – have been a big influence on you. Would you care to share a few of your all-time favorite films? Do you have a Top Ten?
The bright spots are few and far between. Nick Notle plays his role with a twinkly-eyed charisma that suggests he thought he was in a different film entirely; Harvey Keitel chews the scenery with gusto as a malevolent saloon owner and John Turturro channels Peter Sellers as Abner Doubleday, the man who invents the rules of baseball (which calls "Sticky McShnickens") as he goes along. The baseball scene is incongruous because it's easily the film's funniest moment, and has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. It's funny purely because of Turturro, too, who does all the heavy lifting opposite a dead-eyed Sandler.
Eric Stephenson: It’s essentially picking up where it left off. Issue seven has been written since 2013 and much of the later issues planned out from there, so it was really just a case of just cranking the machine up again.