Utterly dreadful. You don't even have to read further, this is a pathetic book and even analysis is a waste of time. It doesn't have the arrogance of 'Lone Star Soul's marketing strategy or the illiterate pretension of 'Paragon'. Instead, it's just a waste in every regard.

I threw some praise Love Machines's way for the first issue, bathing in the goddamn weirdness of the book. However, like all things strange, I wasn't sure if it would end up being a one-note novelty. As much as I have a genuine love for the unusual, I couldn't totally say I took the first issue 100% seriously.

This is one of those products I'm never quite sure how to review. It's not awful, I just find it pointless. It's not that it doesn't have a market, I just don't know what it is. It's something that exists in a sort of mediocre limbo that leaves you with questions and no real passion about having them answered.

There is something monumental about murder. Something about it that elevates it above more deserving accomplishments in history, the names of famous killers repeated today alongside the names of history's creatives and world builders, permanent mental landmarks.

This is a hard one to comment on, mostly because it's such a singular work of weirdness. A combination of deep sea fever dream and a rousing Baptist sermon, 'Book of Da' has no obvious influences, no clear message, and no easy selling point. This isn't the kind of book you spin a career or money out of, suggesting a personal desire to tell this story, leaving you wondering how someone came to this as their personal story. What is this? Why does it exist?

This October, in the spirit of Halloween, I've been working through the Netflix collection of Mario Bava films. It's been fun experiencing that distinct era of storytelling, his films a combination of lovingly shot crumbling European architecture, beautiful long lashed women, and spontaneously nonsensical plots. Bava was a master of style over substance, a craftsman of trash so talented he made impossible to ignore his artistry amid the excess.