Let's Anime - Band Dad and Adopted Girl - Spring Anime 2022
By Dustin Cabeal
Spring is in the anime! We're doing our Watch or Pass episode for all the new spring shows we can bear to make it through. While it's not everything, it's a lot. No list this time, just check it out and let us know on social media what shows you're watching or passing on.
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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.
Let's Anime - Thigh High Crew Socks - Winter 2022 Wrap
Its that time once again to wrap the shows we've been watching and struggling to finish this winter season. Not our favorite cour by any means. The standout shows really stood out, while the rest was just a struggle at times to finish. If you want surprises stop reading now because we're going to cover: Akebi's Sailor Uniform, The Case Study of Vanitas, The Genius Prince's Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt, How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, I'm Kodama Kawashiri, Love of Kill, Miss Kuroitsu From The Monster Development Department, My Dress-Up Darling, Police in a Pod, Salaryman's Club, The Strongest Sage with the Weakest Crest and World's End Harem. Please, tell us what you watched and enjoyed or what you hate watched from this past season on social media!
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Review: Medaka Kuroiwa is Impervious to My Charms vol. 1
By Dustin Cabeal
Manga and anime as a result have popular themes that run through them. You cannot compare it to American television because there’s always genres that succeed. You can count on their being a place for dramas and half hour comedies because they are always successful. The same is true of manga and anime, but you can peak at generations of work and figure out exactly what was popular in any given time. Currently there is a rising wave of singularly focused romcoms. No longer do we have the love story infused harem comedies in which one obvious character is pursued by every beautiful woman in the school. Instead, we have two characters simply unfamiliar with each other developing a realistic relationship while facing whatever quirky adventure into which they are thrust.
Let's Anime 153 - When His Leg Relaxed
Oh the plans we had for this episode. Originally we were going to start wrapping winter shows, but there wasn't enough wrapped... to wrap. We then pivoted to Attack on Titan for some Titan Talk, but discovered that wasn't finished yet either, but it presented us a chance to save the final episode for our wrap episode next week. That and it gave us the chance to talk about My Dress Up Darlings eleventh episode... get some clean underwear on.
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Let's Movie - Spider-Man: No Way Home
Let's finish the home trilogy... at home! That's right, no matter how many times Kevin says he's done with superhero movies, Dustin will be able to talk him into just one more. What else do you need for this description? It's Spider-Man... the biggest movie of the pandemic. We're not even covering it our usual way... Spider-Man! Thwip!
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Review: Step by Bloody Step #1
By Dustin Cabeal
While I do not foresee reviewing or even reading too many single issues, this one caught my attention because it was from Si Spurrier. I am not so delusional to say he can “do no wrong,” but he is a writer I am always willing to check out. His focus on story and how the reader digests a comic is a rarity in this current age of comics that seek commercial success in other mediums. Spurrier is also never afraid to let the art tell the story more than his written words.
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.
Review: There’s an N On Your Nose
By Dustin Cabeal
In my humble opinion children’s books can be difficult to review. The very intention of the book is to entertain children and so how does an adult objectively review such material. You could simply have a child review the book, but they’re fickle and swing back and forth on little things like using the bathroom. Usually asking them if they like something is meet with, “yes” whether it’s true or not.
Review: Bumblebee Grumblebee
By Dustin Cabeal
My first reading of Bumblebee Grumblebee was solo. There’s not too terribly much to the story making it a quick read. Initially, I wasn’t too terribly impressed. The art was interesting, but it’s just word play and rhyming which seemed almost childish in construct.
Let's Anime: Booty Tooch
https://bit.ly/LA_Booty_Tooch
We're catching up on our coverage so on today's episode we're only talking about Demon Slayer and Attack on Titan! That's right, Titan Talk is back as a segment rather than an extra episode. Hope you're caught up on both shows because we're not holding back the spoilers! Also we talk about the new Skype screen... just so you know what the fuck we're talking about in the beginning.
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Let's Movie: No Exit
https://bit.ly/LM_No_Exit
This week we dabble with a thriller. It's not typically something we'd talk about and this isn't as long as our usual episodes, but we still have plenty to say about No Exit. Like that it's a Hulu, Disney, 20th Century Fox film. Special Guest the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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Let's Anime: A Small Concussion
We've got a loaded episode for you today! We're talking Police in a Pod, My Dress Up Darling, Salaryman's Club and Love of Kill! There's more ranting than reviewing this episode. Or not!
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Let's Movie: Supercool
Jake Short is back with another movie! It's not Super Bad, it's not Super Hot... it's Supercool. A film that wants to be all of it's influences, but without the dedication it needs to be any of them. Is the boner comedy dead? Or has it evolved into Supercool?
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Review: Batman – The Imposter
By Dustin Cabeal
If there is one thing that DC excels at in the comic book and movie realm, it’s creating interesting variations of their characters. Each iteration of Batman on film has been successful because of the tweaks and adjustments. It’s the film makers version of Batman rather than the definitive version of the character. You may be wondering why I’ve brought up the Batman/DC movies on a comic book review, well because they share many similarities with what DC has always done in the comics. Look at Frank Miller’s numerous Batman titles and just in recent years the Black Label has become a haunt of different versions of Batman.
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.
Yeah… I’m thinking I’m back
When I ended Comic Bastards in 2018, I had a lot going on and while some people were acutely aware that the site was existing more as a historical record of a lot of people’s work; it was also clear that a lot of people never really paid that close of attention to the site.
Here we are four years later, and I still get emails asking for coverage on this or that. Would you be willing to interview so and so about their new project? I’ve lost track of how many email lists I’ve unsubscribed from in an attempt to gain control of my inbox and again… it’s been four years.
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.
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.
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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.