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.
CBFMP 255: Even I Have My Limits
By Dustin Cabeal
It's NYCC time, which used to be a happy time... now it's just a con I used to know (fuck you Justin for getting that song stuck in my head forever!). How are you? I ask that because that's how Warren Ellis writes his newsletters and he's in charge of WildStorm now! That's at the end, though, we start with Power Rangers and Logan. Lion Forge makes big moves and there's other actual comic news to come from NYCC. I know. Comic news on a comic podcast, what will we think of next?
Holliston Signing at Dark Delicacies
PRESS Release
In celebration of the upcoming release of the graphic novel Holliston: Friendship is Tragic, based on Adam Green’s comedy/horror TV series, there will be an in-store signing with both cast and crew of the television series as well as creators of the graphic novel. Tuesday, October 18th, from 7pm to 9pm (PST) fans can come to the Dark Delicacies bookstore in Burbank, California to get an exclusive Dark Delicacies variant graphic novel, before the title’s release date! (Regular store release date is October 26th).
Review: Monster of the Week #1
By Dustin Cabeal
For the longest time on the site, we supported Kickstarters and crowdsourced comics in general. After a long while, I noticed that we stopped moving the needle on these projects. There were too many, and our audience either became numb to them or worse, stopped caring about them. Either way, we dropped Kickstarters from the site unless we could review the material. Of course, all this feeds into Monster of the Week which is heading to Kickstarter. The book is finished which is always the best way to bring your comic to Kickstarter, and so the creators sent it my way to check out. I’ll tell you right now: this is the type of book we were always looking to support and help out.
The Best Graphic Novel You Won't See at NYCC
By Pablo Arriaga
Karl Slominski is a weird dude. Karl Slominski is a guy who loves to make comics more than anything else and has dedicated his life to do so. A Kubert School graduate, he has worked on several beloved indie titles like Golgotha, a book about a man addicted to drugs and H.P. Lovecraft is on the hunt for the people who have exhumed his corpse. Karl also lent his talents for Ashes, a comic about a NY firefighter relearning how to approach his career after a traumatic experience where he loses a leg. And being part of the DC/IDW Comic Book Anthology Love Is Love, to honor the victims of the horrific Orlando attacks, he will join the superstar names like Patton Oswalt, Phil Jimenez, Olivier Coipel. Karl Slominski knows three things really well and has them on his business card. Noise. Paint. Love.
Review: The Walking Dead #159
By Robert Larson
This is an oddly lifeless issue of The Walking Dead (har har). The battle between the Whisperers and Rick’s people ends in a kind of stalemate, which makes most of the fighting filler for what comes next. Paradoxically, the most interesting moments occur off the battlefield, as there’s a hidden threat in the Kingdom that might derail some of Rick’s plans. But that can’t change the fact that this is a thoroughly middling issue, some filler on the way to something else. Warning: I will be discussing spoilers in this review.
Review: Justice League #6
By Patrick Larose
Dear Justice League #6,
It’s been quite the trip, huh?
When I found you, it was my first week writing at Comic Bastards. I was at a pretty bad place in my life then. I wasn’t happy or secure in my day job, I was feeling creatively exhausted and drained. I’d been living in Philadelphia for a year and felt as if I hadn’t moved a step from when I came.
Review: X-Men: Apocalypse
By Dustin Cabeal
I’ve never called out someone else’s review in one of my reviews before. It’s tacky and pointless, but when you’re the only quote on the movie box, and you’ve dubbed this movie, “One of the coolest superhero movies of the decade”; I have to wonder what fucking movie you watched. To quickly sum up what you can expect from this film: everything Bryan Singer has ever done in an X-Men movie. The buildup is the same, the pacing the same. The really bad attempts at comedy… sadly still there.
Review: Croak #2
By Wilson Taylor
I've actually been kind of dreading this review. Out of nowhere the Croak #1 review became my most viewed review on Comic Bastards and perhaps technically my most well-known piece of super-obscure writing. The moment I realized it was getting attention, I began internally begging writer Corey Sousa to knock the rest of the issues out of the park because what I had praised in Croak #1 was its promise of intrigue and I had specifically noted that it was building a particularly fragile house of cards. So how does #2 stand up?
Review: Autumnlands #13
By Robert Larson
In keeping with the revelations from the last issue, we learn a lot from Autumnlands #13, enough to change our perception of this world. Last issue was about the creators of the Autumnlands, who were really nothing more than irresponsible party boys who used the planet as a kind of pleasure resort. The frat bros made a mess, and now somebody’s been sent to clean it up. But for the residents of the Autumnlands, particularly Dusty and Aelbert, a clean-up crew is not going to be a good thing.
Review: Evil Ernie: GodEater #3
By Kaleb Herbert
God-Eater is quite the fitting name for the grotesque, gigantic creature that was trapped on Earth and is now free. Through the artwork of Worley and Razek the reader can really get a sense of how immense the God-Eater truly is and how SOL Ernie is in terms of facing off against this monstrosity. Besides the big reveal of exactly who the God Eater creature is this was a rather slow, dreadfully uneventful, somewhat disappointing issue in comparison to how the first two issues went. The first two issues had great character build-up, a solid pacing in terms of events taking place, and this issue just lacked any kind of real motivation to progress the story. From what Jordan and Davidsen delivered previously, maybe there was just a high expectation for them to keep following up with better and better material. Perhaps this slower issue will lead into greater things which is expected from what the past issues have delivered.
Review: Red One #4
By Robert Larson
I’ve figured out Red One’s schtick. Imagine a hard-core pornographic film that had no sex in it: some initiating dialogue, a premise, but ultimately no payoff. That’s basically this book. It works at a literal level, because Vera keeps talking about sex but never actually having any (though we’re treated to a porno fluffer sequence that ranks up there with the most pointless moments in all of print media); it also works because we keep having this conflict between her and the Carpenter teased, but now the arc is over, and we wait another year for it to be finished. All promise and no payoff.
Review: The Shaolin Cowboy: Shemp Buffet
By Justin Wood
This may be one of the hardest books to review I've ever come across. In fact, I'd argue nothing I've read can compare to this. Shaolin Cowboy: Shemp Buffet, collecting the Dark Horse era of Geoff Darrow's cult classic miniseries in hardcover, is evidence of an epic undertaking with over 120 pages of Darrow's immediately recognizable hyper-detailed linge claire style, meticulous from beginning to end. It's also an epic undertaking to read from cover to cover, a true endurance test. I can't quite tell how to classify this book. It's either a fascinating piece of experimental art or an insufferable oddity that only exists as evidence to Darrow's inexhaustible patience of drawing the exact same thing for months on end. Or maybe it's both.
Review: The Great Divide #2
By Kaleb Hebert
Fisher might just be on to something here. It has been a long time since a post-apocalypse style story has peaked my interest like this. The concept of a simple skin on skin touch killing a person and that person becomes part of you is frightening. Who would want to live in a world where any form of bare touching could kill those you love. Though death essentially lurks around every corner, there are still things people can do for fun in this new world, so it isn't all down in the dumps. There are still strippers, and even prostitutes, but this is a highly regulated profession since any skin on skin contact would lead to death for one person.
Review: Jackboot and Ironheel #3
By Mike Badilla
In issue 3 of Jackboot and Ironheel, we find our hero, Eddie, has been recaptured by the Nazis and returned to Lungotz prison camp. For those that missed my review of issue 2, Eddie was given a chance to escape from the camp by some of the nuns working there. However, he was unable to make a run for it as he was confronted by something creepy in the surrounding waters. A Nazi soldier is recounting the capture by radio to his commanding officer, including that one of the soldiers was lost to the threat in the water, called "Muggenthaler," by the soldier.
Review: Grimm Tales of Terror vol. 2 #13
By Chris Tresson
This is the third time I’ve decided to review an issue of Zenescope Entertainment’s Grimm Tales of Terror Volume 2. The last two issues failed to impress somewhat, the stories weren’t that great, the art was average and the overall feel of the books hasn’t managed to do anything for me yet. So without further ado, let’s jump into my review of Grim Tales of Terror Volume 2 #13.
Review: Death of Hawkman #1
By Dustin Cabeal
I give the notion of killing Hawkman a 5 out of 5. Unfortunately, I won’t be giving this comic the same score. As far as comics go, this one is generic and lacks any real consequences. If Hawkman actually dies, that will likely be the only thing to happen in the comic. The main reason is the underdeveloped DC space line of books. What’s currently going on in them? Are there any? Nothing and no are the answers to those questions so being thrust into space to watch Hawkman die is almost as anti-climactic as seeing him alive at the beginning of the issue.
Review: Spell on Wheels #1
By Patrick Larose
There are some things I really like about the comic book industry right now. There’s still plenty of bad to go around. The single-issue market is still broken, the comic book movie boom didn’t save the industry, and nor has their business practices ever successfully adapted to the Internet era and while diversity's up, it's never quite as up as it needs to be. All that said, however, it’s got one thing going for it that I dig a lot. Now more than ever do comics have such wide breadth of tonal and genre variation. There’s not just one perfect comic out there for somebody, there’s four or five.
Review: Intertwined #1
By Patrick Larose
Intertwined is a comic that sells itself as a mash-up between the crime noir and kung fu genres, however, I think I’d offer up a different description. Rather, I’d argue that Intertwined is a comic that uses the machinations of Hong Kong action cinema to tell a story ultimately driven by the pathos of superhero storytelling.
Review: Shade: The Changing Girl #1
By Dustin Cabeal
Madness is a challenging story to tell. It can be everything and anything, but giving it structure and keeping it feeling like madness… is a difficult task. That’s what this series is up against, and after reading the first issue, I can understand why of all the titles announced for DC’s Young Animal, that Shade had people the least optimistic about it.
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By Justin McCarty
I picked up Transdimensional having no prior knowledge of the subject. Not even the Kickstarter description. If I had, I probably would have skipped it. I am probably one of five comics fans that don't get into sci-fi horror. The Kickstarter describes the comic as being a sci-fi horror in the same family as Alien and The Abyss. I’ve seen Alien maybe (just the one - sad face from you probably), not The Abyss. I wasn’t the proper audience for this comic. However, if I was into this type of story, I could see its appeal.