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

Review: Not All Robots #1

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.

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

Review: The Joneses #1

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.