Dustin Cabeal 4/17/24 Dustin Cabeal 4/17/24

Review: Karate Prom

By Dustin Cabeal

Having been a fan of Kyle Stark since Sex Castle an original graphic novel published by Image Comics; I have loosely followed about anything Kyle Starks has made. Style and humor are something that resonates with me as a reader and the places Starks takes stories to be original, interesting, and always very humorous. It is hard to find consistent writers in comics that are funny and that produce consistently funny works. That is not to say that they can never do anything other than comedic writing, but finding someone who is willing and does produce consistently funny things is a creative catch. It is something that makes you want to follow that creator more.

Seeing the words “karate” and “prom,” by Kyle Starks instantly filled me with anticipation and joy for this new graphic novel, from First Second. At its core it is shooting for a younger audience. This is not a book that is necessarily reaching out and grabbing 40-year-olds and saying read me you will find infinite amount of humor and relatable references. Instead, it is more of a story/graphic novel for tweens and teenagers. Young readers. That is the prime demographic of First Second.

Dustin Cabeal 4/10/24 Dustin Cabeal 4/10/24

Review: Rat City #1

By Dustin Cabeal

It has been a long while since I have read a Spawn comic book. I find it infinitely interesting that it is still being published monthly, probably as one of the most consistently published monthly books from Image in general but also from a founder of image. That sheer fact alone makes it an anomaly in comic books as every other creator that founded Image or has moved on from the publisher or is almost incapable of producing a monthly comic book. Eric Larsen is possibly the only other person, but even then, the irregularities of the scheduling of Savage Dragon and its spin-offs makes Spawn a standout and now in 2024. It seems Spawn is expanding its universe; it is becoming More than just Spawn and a few miniseries. I have noticed increasingly that I am seeing different titles related to Spawn, but Rat City caught my attention more than the others.

Cybernetic Spawn is not anything new to the Spawn Universe. I think it actually exists in some form in the action figures first and foremost, but it is relatively new to have an ongoing series about a cybernetic-esque Spawn. Rat City is just a catchy, grungy futuristic name. I mean, no one thinks of rats and goes, that's pleasant. Rat City gives you this futuristic Judge Dread-esque, grimy city to deal with which is a perfect fitting for Spawn and a Spawn spin-off book.

Dustin Cabeal 9/2/23 Dustin Cabeal 9/2/23

Review: Kali

By Dustin Cabeal

“Kali” is a title I read and sat on for review because it left a bittersweet taste in my mouth. Revenge stories aren’t supposed to have a happy ending, which is true of “Kali’s” ending, but they typically have a main character that you care for. Kali the character is never likable. There’s no sympathy for her plight and frankly the story moves too fast for you to feel anything other than violence. While I liked the comic, I found myself drawn to the visuals more than I was the story.

The story beings with Kali on a chain gang, that is instantly cooler because of her. The rest of the soldiers looked worn out and shitty but not Kali. She has a fucking knife sticking out of her shoulder, black leather chaps on her tight ass jeans and a rib cage skeleton shirt. She’s cool as ice as none of the kids say. For some reason, these captured prisoners of war are being interviewed to join the army that captured them. This is where Kali becomes unlikable as she rattles off a slew of exposition that stops being relevant to the story. The second she sees her former gang members. The ones that betrayed and left her for dead. Cue the beautiful violence.

Dustin Cabeal 8/31/23 Dustin Cabeal 8/31/23

Review: Cat Fight #1

By Dustin Cabeal

I wasn’t expecting a lot from “Cat Fight” when I started reading it. Based on the silly name, the extremely busy cover and the sheer number of actual cats illustrated, I began by lowering my expectations. Which was probably the right move considering it ended up impressing me in the end. I will say that the cat gimmick is heavy handed so if you can’t stomach what’s on the cover, then you will not make it through this first issue.

The story follows a thief as he’s lifting a very expensive ruby and being chased by some Italian police. He is in Venice after all. He then jets straight over to a fancy dinner party to hand off the jewel. We’re given the information that the fencer is his ex-girlfriend, the cops chasing him were not actually Italian or cops and that he comes from a rich family that’s he’s been kicked out of. It’s a lot of exposition and there was very little reason to inform the audience of the fake Italian cops. It seems likely that they’ll return to the story in some capacity or another, but otherwise it was just there to show that our main criminal character is smart. Not getting caught at all also shows us that they’re smart. A slew of cat themed thieves from DC and Marvel how shown us that much.

Dustin Cabeal 8/30/23 Dustin Cabeal 8/30/23

Review: The Ribbon Queen #1 and 2

By Dustin Cabeal

One can only imagine what the toxic side of the comic fanbase describes this Garth Ennis story as when complaining that “he’s lost a step” or some such crap. I’m sure “woke” and “broke” are thrown around, but I have no personal interest in tracking down what people are saying about comics and stories. I’m here to put out my thoughts on the lure and see what I can reel back in. That and otherwise, I would spend this entire review fighting against some opinion I saw somewhere instead of reviewing the comic.

The Ribbon Queen is a socially aware story. It’s not unusual for Garth Ennis to write a story like this; it’s just that so many people have been lost in his ultra-violent stories that they forget the underlying connection to the world events at the time of the stories' release. It’s something that he’s done throughout his entire career, be it with mixed results of course. No one nails it 100% of the time. In the case of The Ribbon Queen, a great deal of time is spent including these real-world events and subjects that have populated the news, social media, and society at large for the past several years. The main problem being that it’s not attempting to answer or solve any of these problems/subjects; it’s just stating them and using them to dive into fantasy horror.

Dustin Cabeal 8/28/23 Dustin Cabeal 8/28/23

Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vs. Street Fighter #1

By Dustin Cabeal

I fucking hate hero versus hero titles. The one and only time that it was enjoyable was DC vs Marvel (flip it, I don’t care), and even then, it was a mess of shit. That’s what made it charming – seeing the rage of the fanbases and concessions that each company had to make to keep certain characters powerful and protected. Otherwise, it’s pretty much the same dumb storyline of one or both sides of heroes being mistaken as villains and fighting each other, meanwhile the actual villains are agreeable, cordial, and already working with each other. I’ve lost track of how many of these franchises versus franchises IDW has made, but they're just to sell covers. Go ahead, ask how many covers they have for this first issue.

Thirty-one.

They cutely put “Collect them all” at the back of the issue before showing you thirty-one covers. Kudos to all the artists who got paid for the covers – get that money – but to the poor soul who felt they needed all the covers and spent God knows how many hundreds of dollars to get all the store exclusives… I wish you wouldn’t have. That purchase behavior is irresponsible and damaging to the industry as they focus on sales of covers rather than telling a story worth reading.

Dustin Cabeal 8/17/23 Dustin Cabeal 8/17/23

Review: Strange Planet – S1E01 – The Flying Machine

By Dustin Cabeal

If you've been on any kind of social media or meme factory, then you've likely seen Nathan Pyle's relatable webcomic featuring blue Allenesque beings that overly explain and yet simplify all the same things we humans do.

The first episode's title and storyline highlight this contradiction: "The Flying Machine." Of course, it's an airplane, but that is Pyle's brilliance – he takes something like alcohol and refers to it as a "Mild Poison." He's factually correct, but does anyone want to call it that while consuming it? No, but it's hilarious in this setting. And I don't really know what to call that overly complicated explanation that's somehow more direct and simplified than the word itself. I'm sure there's a simpler term for it, but I'm going to have to stick with the longer explanation that my rambling self has created.

Dustin Cabeal 8/3/23 Dustin Cabeal 8/3/23

Review: Cyborg #1

By Dustin Cabeal

You might be wondering why I'm reviewing a three-month-old comic... maybe four months, I can never tell. Well, recently, Xbox gave away a subscription to the poorly named DC Infinite, and I decided to see what DC was up to. First and foremost, there is nothing "infinite" about the app. If you want to read new books, you'll need the Ultra upgrade, which allows you to read the digital version a month after its release. So, why am I reading the first issue of a comic that's likely already on its fourth issue? That's why, that's why.

Cyborg #1 follows a familiar formula for first-issue superhero comics starring long-established supporting characters now focused on as main characters. Don't get me wrong; I like Cyborg, and I understand that he's someone's favorite superhero, and that's great. Every character is someone's favorite, but not every character is meant to be a main character. It's something that's often forgotten in comics. Editors, I assume, or even corporate overlords, decide to highlight a character and try to "make them a star," I can imagine some suit saying. Will it work? I kind of doubt it with this iteration of Cyborg. He's a great supporting character, but when you move a supporting character to the main role, you open the question of "who supports the supporting character?"

Dustin Cabeal 7/11/22 Dustin Cabeal 7/11/22

Review: Deal Breaker #1

By Dustin Cabeal

Sometimes when a creator has a high concept, they focus too much on the concept and leave their characters severely lacking. That seems to be the case with Deal Breaker a story that has a main character that is forgettable, but also not very believable given their setting.

The gist of the story is easy to sum up, a man makes a wish with a coin in the fountain and gets a better life. Suddenly he’s not at a dead-end job being a security guard at a high school working with a pedophile. He has a successful career, a beautiful wife and two kids. He receives a random message saying it’s time to pay his debt which he promptly ignores because who answers messages from unknown callers? The next day his family disappears from existence one after the other until we arrive at the stereotypical scene of the husband filing a missing person’s report for his three missing family members.

Dustin Cabeal 5/18/22 Dustin Cabeal 5/18/22

Review: Blood Stained Teeth #1

By Dustin Cabeal

There’s a lot of vampire books coming out from Image Comics lately. Maybe I’ll like one of them in the future, but Blood Stained Teeth which is a grammar error that I cannot unsee or correct, is not the vampire book for me.

The entire first issue is used to create a situation for the main character to be forced to go through with the plot of the comic. Which does not make it a particularly strong first issue. Especially since it reveals its emotional lynch pin within its pages. You might be wondering to what I’m referring. It’s the plot device that’s been set up with a timer waiting to go off and emotionally manipulated the audience. It’s vampire Pixar moment and it could very well work. Emotional bombs are successful based on the amount of fuse given to them, so if Christian Ward writes a slow burn, it may be successful regardless of the rest of the story.

Dustin Cabeal 5/18/22 Dustin Cabeal 5/18/22

Review: The White Lady

By Dustin Cabeal

Death! It’s coming for us all. Of if it was that easy to sum up The White Lady with just that statement. Instead, we find a complex look at how we care for our elderly. Is there kindness we can provide at the end of one’s life be it a simple gesture of pretending to be someone’s granddaughter after they begin pulling back from them. Quite frankly, I do not think anyone has the answer and there are all sorts of legal gray areas when it comes to end of someone’s life.

Dustin Cabeal 4/28/22 Dustin Cabeal 4/28/22

Review: The Clay People: Colossus (One-shot)

By Dustin Cabeal

I had no idea that this comic was based on a song. I didn’t know there was a band called The Clay People either. I learned both things at the end of the comic and while it didn’t change anything for me, it may be information that another reader could use before deciding to purchase this one-shot from Top Cow.

I have read this story in different forms, with different lead characters dozens of times. There is something to this story that is searching for an interesting outlet, and I can see the broad appeal to using it. Afterall a clay golem that Jewish people can use for justice/revenge and stems back to World War II feels like a treasure trove of potential stories. Yet, they all pretty much end up like this one-shot.

Dustin Cabeal 4/26/22 Dustin Cabeal 4/26/22

Review: Little Monsters #1

By Dustin Cabeal

The concept of eternal children playing capture the flag and tag like the lost boys from Peter Pan is short-lived in this first issue of Little Monsters. It shouldn’t take more than the cover and a few lines of dialogue to figure out that our band of children are all vampires. And though some of them were growing bored of playing childish games, that concept of an empty city inhabited by children playing childish games for hours on end was more intriguing that the rest of the issue.

Dustin Cabeal 4/5/22 Dustin Cabeal 4/5/22

Review: Ghost Cage 001

By Dustin Cabeal

Much of what I am going to say about Ghost Cage is going to be unpopular. Artist/Co-Writer Nick Dragotta is very beloved from his successful Johnathan Hickman comics also from Image Comics. There will be a lot of people rooting for his success as he strikes out as a writer/artist, very few will offer criticism for him and Caleb Goellner to grow as creators. Such is fandom in its current form.

Dustin Cabeal 3/16/22 Dustin Cabeal 3/16/22

Review: Lackadaisy vol. 1

By Dustin Cabeal

The cover for Lackadaisy screams vibrant, colorful, exciting story inside. It was the reason I wanted to read the story. As the saying goes, don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Usually, people use that to talk about a great book with a shitty cover, but in this case it’s a great cover with a shitty book.

Dustin Cabeal 2/21/22 Dustin Cabeal 2/21/22

Review: Vesper Vol. 1

When it comes to fantasy worlds, everyone is living in the shadows of Tolkien and other literary greats that managed to create deep back stories and rich worlds to tell their stories. It is incredibly hard to catch the attention of readers and fans with new worlds and characters. Often, as it is with Vesper, the author is acutely aware of the rich back story that they have created. Instead of unraveling it over the course of the story they instead blurt it out like an excited child who cannot wait to share their creation. The constant mention of the past and exposition dumps provided by each character as they are introduced becomes the biggest hindrance to the story.

Dustin Cabeal 8/1/19 Dustin Cabeal 8/1/19

Comic Bastards - The End

By Dustin "King Bastard" Cabeal

Long ago when I was starting this site with my good friend Kevin Beckham, we were trying to come up with names. I was drawing a blank and figured something would come to me eventually. While standing in our kitchen in North Hollywood, Kevin came up with Comic Bastards. A name I instantly hated because I knew that anyone reading it would instantly hate us. And don’t get me started on ads! Even though I hated the name, I also fucking loved it. Because it’s fun to say. It is in my opinion, the best name for any comic book website and yes, I am horribly biased.

Dustin Cabeal 1/14/19 Dustin Cabeal 1/14/19

Best Comics of 2018

No, I have not come out of retirement. This is a limited engagement, very limited. One of my greatest pleasures of running my own site was the year-end list. I have always looked forward to it even if most publishers and very few creators ever really cared that they were on it. Sure, everyone cared if they were on the worst of list, but best of, eh. At any rate, I’m back to give you my best comics of 2018 and just like before; I’ll also be back to give you my worst comics of 2018 as well. Let me be frank, any year-end list that doesn’t have a counterpart is bullshit. Did you miss me? No, you didn’t.

Oh and I know this is late, I tried to get it done in December, but that’s just how busy life has been post-Comic Bastards. Oh well, only like five people are going to read this anyway.

I’m not doing any kind of order this year so just soak it all in from start to finish. At this point in writing, I don’t actually know how many picks I have, I’m just going to go through the list I wrote down, and that’s that.

Dustin Cabeal 1/14/19 Dustin Cabeal 1/14/19

Worst Comics of 2018

By Dustin Cabeal

Again, I’m still retired, but again, I love doing the end of the year list. I don’t actually care if anyone reads this list or the Best Comics of 2018 list, but they’ll exist for me and at this point in life that’s all I’m shooting for, writing for myself.

The worst of list has always brought its share of controversy. When I started Comic Bastards, comic fandom was at a stage in which nothing could be criticized because for some reason criticism meant the end of the medium. I’d say some people still act like that, whereas every other form of media strives through criticism, but whatever. Now though, there’s a growing number of people that shit on comics just because they’re not what they liked growing up or they have minority creators and minority characters in the book. Gasp, the world changed and left all these people behind to complain about comics. You won’t find me complaining about a comic for those reasons, these are just comics that shouldn’t be celebrated and hopefully will improve in the next year… or not which is most likely what will happen, but some people can now avoid ever reading this batch of books. Here they are in no particular order.