By Ben Snyder

After years upon years of fruitless waiting, Frank Miller finally released his companion to 300. Unfortunately Xerxes: The Fall of the House of Darius and the Rise of Alexander #1 doesn’t reach anywhere near the same lofty heights as its predecessor. Miller delivers a surprisingly predictable and seemingly unnecessary companion to his original masterpiece. But it also continues a trend of Miller returning to his earlier works with noticeable less success, as he did with the Dark Knight III. Similarly to the Dark Knight III, Xerxes just doesn’t seem to add much to the landmark graphic novel.

By Dustin Cabeal

My name is Dustin, and I survived the grunge era. Sure, I was pretty much a kid, but I still recall how terrible it was. That’s my clever way of saying I was never a fan of Nirvana, which I’m sure many of you will be mortified to learn. I once had a teacher in college that worked on a Nirvana music video, and I stared blankly because I had no idea what fucking song she was talking about and I sure as shit never watched the video.

By Dustin Cabeal

I’m not going to lie; I have a lot of envy and jealousy for this book. I originally passed on it because I was unfamiliar with the podcast that it was based on and have been burned by podcast adapted comics too many times to try again. As fate would have it though it arrived in the mail for me to read and I figured, what the hell… let’s give this a go.

By Dustin Cabeal

If there was one book I wasn’t expecting to continue due to how batshit crazy it was, it was Mean Girls Club. I’m stoked that it did because the first volume/story of this series was absolutely mental. It’s also amazing in what it does. I won’t say that these women are strong role models, but I’m happy the story exists. In thinking of it, I flipped the genders, and suddenly I could think of similar stories that I had read. I couldn’t think of another single story that had women.

By Dustin Cabeal

Instantly from the cover, I was intrigued by this book; it would be short lived once I dived into it. It is essentially a collection of webcomics from creator Rosemary Mosco; some of which I had read on my various journeys on the internet.

By Sam King

Sci-Fu takes a young boy from Brooklyn who likes to “drop sick beats and rhymes” and tosses him onto a planet where he must battle robots with a musical, science fiction kind of kung-fu. The story seems to love combining hip hop, science fiction elements, and martial arts, which I can applaud since it is a unique mix. However, this one didn’t hit the right beats for me, and it felt very messy at times.

By Dustin Cabeal

There is only one problem with this final volume of Goodnight Punpun, and it’s the white fucking cover. I instantly got the cover dirty from flipping the pages inside because there’s a lot of ink on those pages. Probably because of the hyper-realistic art from Inio Asano, but it fucked up the cover which saddened me. It didn’t sadden me as much as this book though.

By Dustin Cabeal

If only I hadn’t sat on these books for so damn long. You’re looking at the last holdouts of manga that have been gracing my desk for the past few months. They all four deserve their own review, but that timing is off right now, so here we go with one last big bundle review.

Like most people, I read the manga after watching the show. While I enjoyed the show a lot and would even place it very high on my all-time anime list, I have grown to love the manga ten times more. The main reasons being that there is nothing else like Tokyo Ghoul on the market. The way it looks, the tone, its overall creepiness in design. The violence and the costumes. It’s a world you love but would never want to visit. The art alone is groundbreaking and different from anything else I’ve seen. Perhaps it will one day become one of the “norms” of manga, but for now, it’s originality places it by itself.

By Sam King

What is Santa Claus Private Eye Vol. 1 about? Take a magical childhood icon, add festive humor, mix in detective fiction, and sprinkle it with murder. Pour all of that into a hot chocolate mug, and you’ve got Santa Claus Private Eye in a chestnut shell. That is the best way I can describe it. We have all heard that Santa Claus knows who has been naughty and who has been nice. This story has a fresh take on how he gets his information…or rather what his magical intel can reveal when applied to another occupation.

By Garrett Hanneken

We are at a time where human beings are obsessed with sharing their personal lives which is why Come Into Me’s concept may seem bizarre but, more importantly, realistic.

In this comic, you will get a feel for what it would be like if someone shared their consciousness with another. After a failed presentation with the transfer of one mind into another’s, the founder of this scientific advancement becomes desperate. He decides to continue with his practice experiments on others and then ultimately on himself. However, something goes terribly wrong.