Review: The Ballad of Ronan #1

May 18, 2022

By Dustin Cabeal

I’ve never been an orphan, but I cannot imagine that 16 in the age in which you wash out of any orphanage program. If so, we really need to come together with our city leaders and correct this wrong. How do we expect 16-year-olds to go out into the world and support themselves when they’re not even legal adults? And yet our main character has turned 16 and is taking what little money she has to visit her dead mother’s grave and stay at a B&B… after getting a tattoo that she’s not of legal age to get.

Review: Not All Robots #1

May 18, 2022

By Dustin Cabeal

This is my first comic from AWA. I have little interest in where the company came from and all the backstory. I just know that more comic book companies are a good thing especially as legacy companies continue to be bought by corporate entities. Though I’m fairly certain that AWA is likely owned by a corporation. At any rate, this issue does not make me want to further explore their line of books. That’s fucked up right? Well, that’s how it goes. Every book has the potential to be someone’s first or first book with your company and when you’re a new company every issue potentially decides a reader’s interest in your entire line. That said, I’m not an asshole and will give them further chances, but Not All Robots is a book that I would like to never think about again.

Review: Kaiju No. 8 vol. 2

May 18, 2022

By Dustin Cabeal

I’m happy to say that the second volume of Kaiju no. 8 continued the entertainment from the first volume. The instantly charming thing about the story is the balance between embarrassing situations that Kafka creates for himself and the bad ass action.

Review: The White Lady

May 18, 2022

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.

Review: The Joneses #1

May 18, 2022

By Dustin Cabeal

Unfortunately, we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about this cover. What, the holy fuck is going on here? Who thought this photoshopped monstrosity was a good idea and that people would see it on the shelves and want to pick it up and buy it? For starters, the heads don’t match the bodies. The hair for the women are so poorly lasso’d around that it looks tragically bad. What is the dad looking at? What are the children looking at? Why is the mom so goddamn happy to be squatting awkwardly to put those leaves in the bag? I’m not done. Why do they have a wheelbarrow and garbage bags and why do none of the proportions exist on the same planet? Is scale not a thing we can do in photoshop? That wheelbarrow is fucking floating on that grass because it’s sure as shit not interacting with it. Here’s the biggest question, where did all these leaves come from? There’s not a goddamn tree in the yard to produce even a fraction of these leaves. Last one, who buys two different sizes of trash bags? The cover is enough for you to walk away from this issue. It’s front runner for the worst cover I’ve ever seen in my life. I wish that it got better from here, but it doesn’t really.

Review: Ghost Cage #2

May 18, 2022

By Dustin Cabeal

I wanted to start off with a joke about my interest in this comic being used up like natural resources, but I’m afraid the quality hits too close to home for this comic. Nick Dragotta is a talented artist. I could stare at the pages of this comic all day as they are wonderful. The visuals of the mecha/monster versions of energy resources are still a wonderful idea on paper, but the story execution has delved into predictable and erratic.

Predictable you say? Yes, it was not even remotely a surprise that it was crazy old guy’s daughter. Less surprising was the fact that crazy old guy is alive and looks shittier than his hologram self. I saw Prometheus as well, this isn’t new. It doesn’t have to be new, but the story does very little to make it relevant. We’ve had a handful of panels with the daughter, but I’m supposed to care about her reveal? Why? I don’t. I barely like Doyle and she won’t stop talking so would I care about a daughter character?

Review: The Transcendent One-Sided Love of Yoshida the Catch vol. 1

May 18, 2022

By Dustin Cabeal

I love a long-titled manga as much as the next person, but just giving your manga a long title doesn’t make it good. There is a concept introduced in the first story segment of this volume that is interesting. The gist is that an extremely attractive and hard-working salaryman moonlights as an assistant to a mangaka author that is his childhood friend. Why? Well read that exceedingly long title and you will understand.

Let's Movie - Choose or Die

May 10, 2022

Before 2020, I think this question would have been an easy answer. But how many of you picked die? Yeah, I feel you 2022 crowd. Shit is whack, but not as whacky as this movie gets. It's YA horror for the Netflix crowd. Don't worry, we don't care about stock prices so we're only going to spoil the entire movie.

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Let's Anime - Bubble

May 8, 2022

We're dedicating an entire episode to covering Netflix's latest animated movie, that's right it's Bubble time! Spoilers galore so if you wanted to watch the movie then you should turn the podcast off right away.

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Review: Kaiju No. 8 vol. 1

April 29, 2022

By Dustin Cabeal

The quick and straightforward way to describe this is a Kaiju take on Marvel’s Damage Control. Damage Control asked the question of “who fixes the city after a superhero battle” and has varying degrees of seriousness and success of the years. Kaiju no. 8 begins by asking the question, who cleans up after a giant Kaiju is defeated? Certainly not the people that put the monster down, that is for damn sure.

The story follows Kafka Hibino who works for a cleanup crew that hacks up and gets rid of defeated Kaiju. He is assigned a new part-timer to train, and they share an awkward exchange when it comes out that Kafka wanted to join the defense corps before setting into his role as a cleaner. The new kid, Reno Ichikawa, is interested in why Kafka gave up and at first, they do not particularly like each other. Eventually, they find themselves a ground zero for a new Kaiju appearance and Kafka saves Reno and vice versa. The two men end up in a hospital and talk about joining the Defense Corps together as Reno and reignited Kafka’s interest. Which is all great until a bug looking Kaiju flies into Kafka’s gaping mouth and turns him into a Kaiju.

Let's Movie - The Batman

April 29, 2022

Kevin and Dustin talk about 2022's The Batman... and a lot of other Batman related things.

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

April 28, 2022

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.

Review: Yellow Cab

April 28, 2022

By Dustin Cabeal

Yellow Cab is an interesting read to say the least. I spent the entire story waiting for the other shoe to drop and it never did. Instead, it’s just a look at the complicated nature of driving a cab in New York and how basically it’s a money pit trap for immigrants looking at getting their start in the country.

What’s even more disappointing is that it’s not even a true story, but instead the author of the novel has written themselves into the story to give a fake sense of realism. At least if the concept was based on fact, it would have perhaps been a story to bring up for this one interesting aspect.

Review: Little Monsters #1

April 26, 2022

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.

Let's Anime - Studylumpkiss

April 25, 2022

By Dustin Cabeal and Linday Mallard

You know we're covering more new episodes! That's why you came back this week to hear Lindsay and Dustin talk about A Couple of Cuckoos, The Greatest Demon Lord is Reborn etc, Onipan!, Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie, Spy x Family and Don't Hurt Me, My Healer!

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Let's Movie - Arrival

April 18, 2022

By Dustin Cabeal

We head back to a simpler time... 2016. Before we diverged on this hellish time line that we now find ourselves on. Don't worry, if Arrival teaches us anything, time isn't linear and we may be able to turn this ship around. Anyway, it's Arrival, a movie neither of us had watched until this week... how the hell does Sony keep the lights on?

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Review: Tying the Knot with an Amagami Sister vol. 1

April 14, 2022

By Dustin Cabeal

I will never understand how three people from the same family can have three different hair colors and look different from each other, but that’s manga/anime in a nutshell. The story behind Amagami Sisters is easy to sum up. An orphan by the name of Uryu Kamihate has aged out of the orphanage he lives in. The caretaker of a shire has agreed to take him in, but when he gets there… there’s a catch. He must marry one of his granddaughters and take over running the shrine.

Now this wouldn’t be much of a story if all parties were onboard with the plan. Kamihate has turned his back on the gods due to his mother dying of an illness when he was a child. It’s alluded to that he did a lot of shrine visits, folded a lot of cranes and basically did all the things the “gods” said to do in order to save his mother. Now he only believes in medicine, especially since his surrogate mother is a doctor that raised him.

Review: Catch These Hands! Vol. 1

April 13, 2022

By Dustin Cabeal

I will be up front, the reason I wanted to read this book was the title. There is probably not a single circumstance in which if someone were to yell “catch these hands” that I wouldn’t laugh or show interest. What made it better were the two seemingly average women with scowls on their faces on the cover. I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew someone was going to catch these hands… and I needed to be there.

The story is about an aging delinquent that finds herself the only woman from her group of friends that is unmarried, without child and without a steady job. After yet another friend lost to marriage, she decides to get her life together and stop being a delinquent. The first step in her mind is to go clothes shopping. It’s sound logic, you need to stop looking like a delinquent to first stop being one. The clerk at the store pleads with her to stay after nearly chasing her away. She agrees to help her find whatever clothes she likes, but that’s when our main character Takebe notices the clerks name tag… Kirara Soramori. Suddenly the name is familiar. It turns out that Soramori is an old rival of Takebe’s from high school.

Review: Is My Brother A Zombie?

April 13, 2022

By Dustin Cabeal

After asking the question of “Is my brother a zombie?” for thirty-five pages, the story answers the question in two short pages. Leaving me the review to wonder if we really needed thirty-five pages to answer that question. I’m of the opinion of no… no we didn’t.

Let's Movie - Death on the Nile

April 10, 2022

By Dustin Cabeal

Little Herc is back with a new movie that got fucked over on it's release mostly due to it's cast... which all deliver great performances. For the most part, for the most part. Anyway, we're going to spoil the shit out of this movie so if you have any interest in watching it do so beforehand. Stay to the end for a mini-conversation about Halo and Moon Knight!

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