A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans
I’d always liked Judge Dredd.
I remember seeing the 2012 film adaptation, starring Karl Urban and Olivia Thirlby. It was a tremendously entertaining film. I thought it rather a shame that it didn’t do better commercially, thus being viable for more sequels. Alex Garland and Pete Travis’ film was a tightly constructed story, and a good time. I thought ‘neat’.
But I didn’t love Dredd. [Read more…] about The Moment I Truly Loved Judge Dredd
X-Men #5 and 6, published just before Lockdown—and therefore at the tail-end of the Before Times—were the two issues of Hickman’s run that each most clearly prefaced a mystery whose suspense was left to hang for a long time, with the mystery of the mutants in the Vault having been recently and only partially resolved (of course), in X-Men #18-19, and with the mystery of Mystique’s scheme apparently now in payoff mode with the Inferno miniseries. In the Dawn of X, it seemed likely that these and the HOX/POX mysteries—which is obviously where the Destiny plot thread started—would all come crashing down simultaneously when the time came. And they still might, but these days, it seems likelier that these early story seeds will each develop further and resolve at least somewhat on their own and with hopefully more decompression, perhaps aided by a more adroitly staggered publication schedule. Although each of these issues is a teaser and no longer appears to offer any clues to the near future, they still read well and look gorgeous. [Read more…] about (Re)Read Hickman’s X-Men: The City and the Mask – X-Men #5 & #6
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:
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This week’s Casual Krakoa will answer:
+ How’s Inferno looking at the halfway point?
+ What do you think Hickman’s writing for Marvel next?
+ How SWORD continues to delight and Marauders continues to maraud!
[Read more…] about Casual Krakoa: Inferno #2, SWORD #9, Wolverine #17, Marauders #25!
Over many decades, Deathstroke has come to be regarded as less of a villain and more of an antihero, due to his complicated loyalties and occasional tendency to switch sides mid-fight when his limited conscience happens to get the better of him. He remains very much a “love him or hate him” character among DC’s pantheon. To be clear, I fall on the “hate him” side of this. He is the worst!
Yet it’s possible for an unlikeable protagonist to make for a great story when placed in the hands of a capable creative team. Deathstroke has had his moments, from his early days in the Marv Wolfman and George Perez New Teen Titans to his more recent runs. Still, it was not until writer Christopher Priest penned his incredible fifty-plus issue arc with the character as part of DC’s Rebirth relaunch that Slade Wilson’s Shakespeare-meets-Dynasty-meets-The-Professional vibes came to their full fruition in Deathstroke Omnibus.
Collects: Deathstroke: Rebirth #1, Deathstroke #1-50, Deathstroke Annual #1, DC Holiday Special 2017 #1, Titans #11, Teen Titans #8, #28-30, and Titans: The Lazarus Contract Special #1 [Read more…] about I Don’t Like Deathstroke (And I’m Not Supposed To) In the Deathstroke Omnibus
“If I could I wouldn’t want you/
but it’s getting late now and I can’t stop”
-Winona Oak, “Break my Broken Heart”
We can’t always control our emotions. Hell, I’m not sure I have many of those myself and even I know that. I’m sure emotions arrive and disappear in different ways for different people. Are they like tides, ebbing and flowing with varying intensities? Is it a flame, there in an instant, burning brightly until it’s extinguished, easily able to roar out of control? Is it a gust of wind, sharp, sudden, there one minute and gone the next? I suppose I would liken my own to the Christmas lights in my neighborhood. Absent most of the time, appearing slowly at first, shining brightly but briefly, and then, in almost an instant, gone with no trace that they were ever there at all. But there are parts we can control. We can control how we express those emotions and convey them to the world, and we can control how we receive the emotions of others.
In Hollow Heart from Paul Allor and Paul Tucker, El is a tortured soul within an electromechanical body experiencing immense pain. He’s an amalgamation of organs and machinery who has led an existence sheltered from virtually all experience and therefore from a vast array of emotions. All he feels now, trapped, poked, and prodded inside a windowless room devoid of life, is a pain so intense that escape is the only option, even if it means death. This is El’s expression. This is the cry El releases into the world in hopes someone will hear him. [Read more…] about Break My Hollow Heart: The Emotional Complexity of Vault Comics’ Latest