• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Comic Book Herald

A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans

  • Reading Orders
    • Marvel
    • My Marvelous Year
    • DC Comics
    • All Comic Book Publishers
    • Most Recent
  • Beginner Guides
    • Beginner’s Guide To Comics In 2023
    • Marvel 2023: Where to Start?
    • DC 2023: Where to Start?
    • Best of Lists
    • Tablets for Comics
    • Guides for Digital Readers
  • Reviews
    • Marvel Comics
    • DC Comics
    • Comic Book Movies
    • Comic Book TV
    • Video Games
  • Podcasts & Video
    • My Marvelous Year
    • Best Comics Ever (CBH)
    • CBH on Youtube!
  • About Me
    • My Favorite Comics of All Time
    • Columns
    • CBH Email Newsletter
  • Support Comic Book Herald
    • Ways to support

Mark Turetsky

About Mark Turetsky

Mark Turetsky is an audiobook narrator and voice actor who sometimes writes about comic books. Originally from Montreal, Canada, he now lives in Northern Louisiana.

Best New Graphic Novel: Dead Dog’s Bite

December 16, 2021 by Mark Turetsky Leave a Comment

I was first exposed to Tyler Boss’ work, as I think many people were, in 2016-17’s 4 Kids Walk Into A Bank from Black Mask Studios, written by Matt Rosenberg. The miniseries tells the story of four friends who, well, plan a bank heist for a variety of complicated reasons. Rosenberg’s writing is charming, the voices of the kids clear and distinct. But what really wowed about the series was Boss’ idiosyncratic artwork.

4 Kids was a critical success, and it seemed a no-brainer that Boss and Rosenberg would follow it up quickly, and indeed, at February 2018’s Image Expo, they announced they were re-pairing, with a new series titled What’s The Furthest Place From Here? This new series seemed imminent, with the pair selling an ashcan edition of the first half of issue #1 in November of that year at New York Comic Con. The ashcan promised a smart, weird and moody comic, set in a near-future apocalyptic world with no adults. Alas, we waited and waited for a solicit that seemed to be forthcoming any month now, but never seemed to materialize.

Then, on May 16 of 2019, Boss tweeted out a cryptic message: a red emoji heart, a black emoji heart, the hashtag “#welcometopendermills” and an illustration showing a peculiar cast of characters and the edge of a “missing” poster: [Read more…] about Best New Graphic Novel: Dead Dog’s Bite

Filed Under: Featured, Reviews Tagged With: best new graphic novel, best new graphic novels

Eternals & Asimov: A Robot, An Eternal, and a Philosopher Walk Into a Trolley

November 6, 2021 by Mark Turetsky Leave a Comment

The Principles:

Protect Celestials

Protect The Machine

Correct Excess Deviation

It would be an exaggeration to call the great Jack Kirby’s The Eternals an inarguable classic. To most, it’s a curiosity: an abandoned story that introduces some genuinely brilliant concepts into the Marvel Universe (not the least of which is the Celestials). But ultimately the series pales in comparison to its sister story, the DC-published Fourth World saga.

The Eternals have returned numerous times, perhaps most notably in 2006, when Neil Gaiman and John Romita, Jr. relaunched The Eternals with a miniseries which, while much praised, did little to position the Eternals as consistent members of the Marvel Universe. Even as recently as 2018, Jason Aaron, Paco Medina and Ed McGuinness‘ Avengers #4 made the Eternals the ultimate footnote to their more successful Celestial counterparts, when a change in the status quo of the Celestials caused the Eternals to commit mass suicide, taking them entirely off the board for Aaron’s Celestial-centric story. [Read more…] about Eternals & Asimov: A Robot, An Eternal, and a Philosopher Walk Into a Trolley

Filed Under: Featured, Marvel Reviews Tagged With: eternals, isaac asimov

Best New Graphic Novel: Usagi Yojimbo – Homecoming

May 1, 2021 by Mark Turetsky 1 Comment


In 2019, Stan Sakai announced that he would be moving Usagi Yojimbo to IDW from Dark Horse, his publisher for more than 20 years. Certainly it wasn’t the first time that Usagi had moved houses, with early stories at Thoughts & Images, then Fantagraphics and a brief stint at Mirage Studios, but despite all of these moves, the collected format of these comics had remained remarkably consistent.

The trade collections, numbered volumes 1-33 (available in paperback and limited hardcover editions), maintained the same size (roughly 6” x 9”) and, for collectors, looked really nice all collected on a shelf. The smaller-than-floppy size wasn’t a huge drawback, because Sakai’s uncolored clean lines and lettering lent themselves to being resized while retaining the beauty of the art. With the paperback editions kept perpetually in print, these were the most convenient way to collect the series.

The omnibus editions of the series consisted of a special edition hardcover slipcase from Fantagraphics which was later republished as a paperback which has become almost equally hard to find (though there are rumors of a reprint hardcover edition coming later this year). From Dark Horse, the limited hardcover Usagi Yojimbo Saga collections (volumes 1-9 and Legends, collecting non-canonical stories), remain something of a gold standard for omnibus collectors. These editions feature full comic sized pages, and each collects three of the numbered editions.

Which is a long, circuitous way of saying that, moving forward, IDW will not be publishing new Usagi content collections consistent with the Fantagraphics and Dark Horse collections. The smaller 6” x 9” format for trade collections has been abandoned in favor of full-sized editions. This presents the art in a larger format that’s more consistent with the monthly comics, but, as many collectors find important, it won’t gel well on the shelf with prior collections. The numbering scheme has also been restarted, with “Bunraku and Other Stories” being the new volume 1, and “Homecoming,” the collection under discussion, as the new volume two. [Read more…] about Best New Graphic Novel: Usagi Yojimbo – Homecoming

Filed Under: Featured, Reviews Tagged With: best new graphic novel, best new graphic novels, usagi yojimbo

Critics of Vision: Parenthood, Humanity & The Repetition Game in “Vision”

February 12, 2021 by Mark Turetsky 2 Comments

I was in a theater conservatory program in college. One day I was moving into a dorm in New York City’s East Village. A few days later I trekked across town to my first day of training in a nondescript second floor studio space amongst the warehouses and unmarked nightclubs of Chelsea’s meatpacking district. Our syllabus had the sorts of classes you’d expect from an acting school; Script Analysis, Movement, Voice, Speech, Performance Technique, but there was one class listed that I could not figure out: Repetition. [Read more…] about Critics of Vision: Parenthood, Humanity & The Repetition Game in “Vision”

Filed Under: Featured, Marvel Reviews Tagged With: scarlet witch, vision, wandavision

Primary Sidebar

The Comic Book Herald Podcast!

Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsRSS
My Ultimate Year podcast and reading club

Recent Posts

  • X-Men #15-17 in Review—Return to the Vault! March 29, 2023
  • “Mister Mammoth”, “Spy Superb” & “Hairball” with Matt Kindt | CBH Interviews #108 March 28, 2023
  • 2002 Pt. 4: X-Force, Chamber, & Exiles March 27, 2023
  • Pax Americana and The Infinite Loop Of Imperiums March 25, 2023
  • Fall of X Teasers & Al Ewing’s Sins of Sinister | Comic Book Herald Live! March 24, 2023
  • “Sins of Sinister” Part 6: Immoral X-Men #2—in Review! March 23, 2023
  • DESTINY OF X | The Krakoan Empire Divided March 22, 2023
  • “Secret Identity” with Alex Segura | CBH Interviews #107 March 21, 2023
  • 2002 Pt. 3: Daredevil & Elektra March 20, 2023
  • Immoral X-Men #2 and Wolverine vs. Dark Beast! | Comic Book Herald Live! March 17, 2023
  • X-Men: The Animated Series Season 2 Rewatch! March 16, 2023
  • “Sins of Sinister” Part 5: Nightcrawlers #2—in Review! March 15, 2023
  • My Marvelous Interview: Paul Jenkins on Wolverine Origin, Inhumans, Spectacular Spider-Man, & More! March 13, 2023
  • The Dark Knight Trilogy 15 Years Later: Film & Comic Influences! March 11, 2023
  • Sins of Sinister: Nightcrawlers, X-Men #20, New Mutants: Lethal Legion #1 | Comic Book Herald Live! March 10, 2023

Popular Articles

DC Rebirth Guide

Batman Reading Order

DC New 52 Reading Order

Marvel Ultimate Universe Guide

Civil War Reading Order

Marvel Cosmic Reading Order

The Best Comics of All Time!

Deadpool Reading Order

Justice League Reading Order

Complete Thanos Reading Order

X-Men Reading Guide (Modern Era)

Age of Apocalypse Reading Order

Modern Marvel Universe in 25 Trades

Best Tablet For Digital Comics

Is Marvel Unlimited Worth It?

Footer

New to Comic Book Herald?

Hey there - my name's Dave and this is my comic book blog. It's my way of sharing my borderline obsessive addiction to the comic book medium, and I hope you like some of what's going on here.

Most people that come here are looking for my (WIP) Marvel reading order guide. You can probably also get a sense if CBH is for you by taking a look at some of my columns.

If you like what you see, let's connect on Facebook or Twitter. Or, leave a comment on the blog here, I'm always looking for new awesome people in the comic book community.

More on Comic Book Herald

  • Home
  • About
  • Support CBH
  • My Marvelous Year
  • Join!
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service

Recent Posts

  • X-Men #15-17 in Review—Return to the Vault!
  • “Mister Mammoth”, “Spy Superb” & “Hairball” with Matt Kindt | CBH Interviews #108
  • 2002 Pt. 4: X-Force, Chamber, & Exiles
  • Pax Americana and The Infinite Loop Of Imperiums
  • Fall of X Teasers & Al Ewing’s Sins of Sinister | Comic Book Herald Live!

Copyright © 2023 · Metro Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in