Patrick Larose 12/7/16 Patrick Larose 12/7/16

Review: Curse Words #1

By Patrick Larose

“No curses. No wars. No love.”

These are the three rules the only wizard in New York City sets for his clients.

Patrick Larose 11/26/16 Patrick Larose 11/26/16

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.

Patrick Larose 11/23/16 Patrick Larose 11/23/16

Review: Hadrian's Wall #3 & Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye #2

By Patrick Larose

There’s a particular type of dissonance between being a consumer and a critic. As a consumer, there’s really only ever one question—is the product any good?

Patrick Larose 11/9/16 Patrick Larose 11/9/16

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.

Patrick Larose 11/9/16 Patrick Larose 11/9/16

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.

Patrick Larose 10/19/16 Patrick Larose 10/19/16

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.

Patrick Larose 10/19/16 Patrick Larose 10/19/16

Review: Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye #1

By Patrick Larose

Cave Carson was never meant to be a superhero.

When he was created in 1960 for DC Comics, he was molded to fit a pulp fiction archetype that didn’t fight crime and didn’t have super powers. Cave Carson was an adventurer.

Patrick Larose 10/17/16 Patrick Larose 10/17/16

Review: Luke Cage E.04 – “Step in the Arena”

By Patrick Larose

Luke Cage’s history of a comic book character was born from the popularization of the Blaxploitation film genre during the 1970s. A bunch of white dudes caught on by how popular these action movies made by black people and starring black people were getting that they saw a new market to, well, exploit.

Patrick Larose 10/13/16 Patrick Larose 10/13/16

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.

Patrick Larose 10/9/16 Patrick Larose 10/9/16

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.

Patrick Larose 10/7/16 Patrick Larose 10/7/16

Review: Justice League #6

By Patrick Larose

Dear Justice League #6,

It’s been quite the trip, huh?

When I found you, it was my first week writing at Comic Bastards. I was at a pretty bad place in my life then. I wasn’t happy or secure in my day job, I was feeling creatively exhausted and drained. I’d been living in Philadelphia for a year and felt as if I hadn’t moved a step from when I came.

Patrick Larose 10/5/16 Patrick Larose 10/5/16

Review: Spell on Wheels #1

By Patrick Larose

There are some things I really like about the comic book industry right now. There’s still plenty of bad to go around. The single-issue market is still broken, the comic book movie boom didn’t save the industry, and nor has their business practices ever successfully adapted to the Internet era and while diversity's up, it's never quite as up as it needs to be. All that said, however, it’s got one thing going for it that I dig a lot. Now more than ever do comics have such wide breadth of tonal and genre variation. There’s not just one perfect comic out there for somebody, there’s four or five.

Patrick Larose 10/5/16 Patrick Larose 10/5/16

Review: Intertwined #1

By Patrick Larose

Intertwined is a comic that sells itself as a mash-up between the crime noir and kung fu genres, however, I think I’d offer up a different description. Rather, I’d argue that Intertwined is a comic that uses the machinations of Hong Kong action cinema to tell a story ultimately driven by the pathos of superhero storytelling.

Patrick Larose 9/28/16 Patrick Larose 9/28/16

Review: Head Lopper vol. 1

By Patrick Larose

Over the last half-decade whenever a comic has tried to tell a fantasy story in a fantasy setting, they’ve almost always strived towards reinvention and deconstruction. We can see this with Princeless’s deconstruction and critical eye towards the damsel-in-distress and princess tropes of classic fantasy, Saga’s visual reinvention of what exactly a Star Wars-fantasy setting can look like, and in Rat Queen’s self-aware Dungeon & Dragon’s campaign of a comic.

Patrick Larose 9/28/16 Patrick Larose 9/28/16

Review: Batgirl #3

By Patrick Larose

There is so much I really like about this new Batgirl series. Rafael Albuquerque’s art is a must-see with his dynamic action scenes or the interesting and weird page layouts that demonstrate Barbara’s thought processes and movements. Dave McCaig’s colors have made these moments even more visually engaging with his attentive background color work.