A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans
On my weekly livestream, Casual Krakoa Live, I review the week’s X-Men comics, and answer big questions about what’s going on with Marvel’s merry mutants! You can listen or watch below:
This week I’m joined by Ernie from Blerd Without Fear!
* Spoilers Follow *
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
[Read more…] about Casual Krakoa: X Deaths of Wolverine #5 Post-Game (W/ BlerdWithoutFear!)
Chelli Lona Aphra, best known as Doctor Aphra, is a Star Wars character created by Kieron Gillen, Salvador Larroca, and Heather Antos. She is an archeologist – with (really) questionable morals – recruited by Darth Vader to help him get an army of droids. She has a great start fixing two murderous psycho droids, Tripe-Zero and Beetee; they remain Aphra’s companions for a very long time.
After a while, Aphra starts showing more of her feelings and a wish to be a better person, she’s still pretty cold and unreliable sometimes. The quote that best expresses her feelings is this one: “I just… I get things wrong. I’m selfish. I… I use people. But…I don’t expect to sleep well. Ever.” (Doctor Aphra #19).
The current Doctor Aphra series is from writer Alyssa Wong and artist Marika Cresta. If you have read past Doctor Aphra stories and didn’t like them, I really hope you give this one a try; it feels like something completely different from what came before, and even the cast is mostly new. Give it a shot, you won’t regret it. [Read more…] about Doctor Aphra Reading Order
This review contains light spoilers for the entirety of The Death of Doctor Strange
A both touchingly somber and by-the-numbers celebration of the life and death of the titular Sorcerer Supreme, the five-issue miniseries The Death of Doctor Strange by writer Jed MacKay, artist Lee Garbett, colorist Antonio Fabela, and letterer Cory Petit occupies a unique, challenging position as the end of one long and winding story and the beginning of another.
Starting with a touching introductory issue eerily similar to All-Star Superman, which sees Stephen Strange acting as an adept and newly grounded mentor, teacher, friend, and, well … only okay-ish pet owner, and ending in his untimely death (spoilers!), Death of Doctor Strange finds itself mostly preoccupied across the remaining four issues with investigating who perpetrated Strange’s death, along with inter-dimensional invasions setting a dire background. [Read more…] about The Death of Doctor Strange (#1-5) Review!
X Lives of Wolverine #4 // X Deaths of Wolverine #4
[cover by Adam Kubert and Frank Martin Jr.]
Wow. Last time, I said Moira had gone full evil. But with X Deaths #4, it’s clear she’s gone well beyond, and we’re meant to understand she had already left any sense of humanity behind (let alone mutant kinship) long before she decided to track down tech mogul Arnab Chakladar in her crazed eagerness to give herself over to the Phalanx, clearly with her own purpose in mind—as if she could beat them at their own game, somehow. Never let it be said that Moira’s ego is lacking!
This is quite a change from the woman we knew before HOX/POX. But with Hickman’s retcon, we should really understand that she actually completely lost touch with valuing individual life after her first few lives, and most certainly by the end of her thousand-year Life VI.
It’s just that now, in her last life (without external assistance this time), the mask has slipped off—and, ugh, that metaphor has tragic and grotesque resonance later in X Deaths #4.
Spoilers ahoy! [Read more…] about Dr. MacTaggart, or How She Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Robot
Trigger warning: Discussion of sexual assault.
2008’s Transhuman
The difficulty with this is it’s also one of the most significant pieces of his early career, as a massive conceptual antecedent to some of his most prominent and wildly successful later output. For perspective on the man’s work, it’s as indispensable as it is indefensible. [Read more…] about Hickmania 3.1: On The Matter of “Transhuman”