Comic Reviews Patrick Larose Comic Reviews Patrick Larose

Review: Batgirl #5

By Patrick Larose

I initially intended this review to be a follow-up, post-mortem of my review for issue #4. I wanted to summarize in a type of I-Told-You-So style about how the series failed to utilize its own new concepts and rushed its story to the end.

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Manga Reviews Patrick Larose Manga Reviews Patrick Larose

Review: Psycho-Pass: Inspector Shinya Kogami vol 1

By Patrick Larose

The police procedural is to me what grilled cheese is to most people—it’s my comfort food. The narrative beats and structural format hit me like a good song with that experience of getting to watch some jaded but good-hearted cops push through the morbidity of the every-day murder and the explore the personal frustrations and weaving webs we create just in carrying out our day-to-day lives.

 

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Comic Reviews Patrick Larose Comic Reviews Patrick Larose

Review: Batgirl #4

By Patrick Larose

A part of me wonders that when an independent comic creator enters the mainstream superhero genre, there’s this pressure to emphasize the superhero aspect in a superhero story.

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Comic Reviews Patrick Larose Comic Reviews Patrick Larose

Review: Hadrian's Wall #2

By Patrick Larose

Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with being a good one of those.

Hadrian’s Wall is a murder mystery, or rather, a locked-room detective story set in space. One where a would-be detective investigates a mysterious death aboard a space station only the victim here isn't some random astronaut but instead the investigator’s former best friend and his ex-wife’s current husband. Out here in the quiet dark of space, everyone's a suspect and everyone has something to hide.

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TV Reviews Patrick Larose TV Reviews Patrick Larose

Review: Luke Cage E.03 - "Who's Gonna Take the Weight"

By Patrick Larose

If the first two episodes of Luke Cage were like watching superhero Shakespeare, then "Who’s Gonna Take the Weight” is all about becoming an emotional catharsis to answer our pent-up frustration with tragedy. When people talk about Shakespeare or when they call something Shakespearean, they’re usually talking about dudes in puffy shirts, star-crossed characters, and big speeches. You won't catch me doing that, though. I'd offer up , rather, that at the core of every Shakespeare play are characters who are driven by complex needs and forced to navigate their complex social and political hierarchies. They’re a realm of emotional politicking and that description is what the first two episodes of Luke Cage felt like.

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Comic Reviews Patrick Larose Comic Reviews Patrick Larose

Review: Green Valley #1

By Patrick Larose

Green Valley #1 is everything I hate about reviewing single-issue series. This isn’t even really the fault of the comic itself but instead all the hype and marketing around it. When Green Valley was first announced there was this intense secrecy about it. Every interview following its announcement showed four knights facing off a barbarian horde. They’re friends, this is a fantasy comic it should be straight-forward but the writer, Max Landis, made sure to preface every interview with an “I can’t tell you anything about it without spoiling it.” The tagline itself invites us to question everything that happens in this comic: Kill a wizard, and slay his dragons. But there’s no such thing as wizards, dragons don’t exist.

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