I put together the initial looks at DC and Marvel’s best comics of 2022 around the same time, and the biggest thing that stood out to me was DC’s fragmented line of imprints and miniseries made it a lot easier to fill out a list of at least 10 recommended reads. Marvel’s on less solid ground this year, although certainly there are still good to great comics in the lineup. Let’s take a look at the best of the best! [Read more…] about The Best Marvel Comics of 2022!
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Sabretooth #3-4 in Review! Laying Down the Gauntlet – Any Takers?
[covers by Ryan Stegman, JP Mayer and Frank Martin Jr.]
Horror novelist Victor LaValle’s 5-issue Sabretooth miniseries continues to be a surprisingly deep meditation on the ruthlessness of the carceral state and character study of not just the title character but the five mutants who are his fellow inmates, four of whom have been generally overlooked (like Nekra) or not well served (Oya); Third Eye, on the other hand, is a fascinating LaValle creation, whose backstory starts to clarify with just a few evocative details in issue #4. I say the quality of this story is surprising, given Sabretooth’s nature as a two-dimensional psycho killer whose history of racialized sexual predation Marvel of course doesn’t really want to deal with. That he is now simply to be depicted as a stone-cold murderer from a childhood of trauma and nothing more problematic, author LaValle is doing top-shelf work that speaks to the modern moment, but in a way that won’t become dated – as it’s only our contemporary culture that’s finally waking up to the crimes of its forebears and the continued structural brutalities the mainstream has largely been blind to or just willfully denied.
This is not your crusty uncle’s ’90s Sabretooth title that’s just about cheap shocks and sex that puts women in the shadow of Marvel’s creepiest yet bizarrely widely beloved sexual predator.
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Sabretooth #5, Legion of X #3, Jim Lee X-Men Trading Cards Unboxing | Comic Book Herald Live!
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:
* Spoilers Follow *
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
[Read more…] about Sabretooth #5, Legion of X #3, Jim Lee X-Men Trading Cards Unboxing | Comic Book Herald Live!Doomed Queer Longing in Maria Llovet’s Eros/Psyche
We begin at an ominous boarding school for girls that seems to exist in its own removed plane of reality. The students are free to stay indefinitely, so long as they adhere to a series of strict, seemingly nonsensical rules and participate in bizarre extracurricular group activities. The cult vibes are strong, but that doesn’t stop our protagonist Sara from becoming entranced by the school and her fellow students alike.
Eros/Psyche
Who Watched the Watchmen? Before Watchmen: Rorschach
It is often said that Watchmen
Let’s get this out of the way; Yes, Rorschach is the coolest character in Watchmen. Now, I know a lot of people don’t like to hear that. Twitter leftist types mainly. “Oh, now can you say Rorschach is cool? He’s violent! He’s a bigot! He doesn’t support restorative justice and police abolition!” And to that I say…so what? None of that changes the fact that he’s the coolest dude in the book. Sure, Rorschach is a bigoted rape apologist who reads the 1980s equivalent of Brietbart, but Alan Moore still gave him all the coolest parts of the story. No one else erupts from a fridge. No one else kills a man by breaking a toilet. No one else says, “I’m not locked up in here with you. You’re locked up in here with me,” which is possibly the coolest line ever written in comics. Being a good person has never been a requirement for being cool. The key to Rorschach’s coolness in Watchmen are two factors: his brilliantly crafted dialogue and the creativity of his violence.
Watchmen gives Rorschach a plethora of cool lines. The screaming “I’m not locked up in here with you.” The calm, couldn’t-care-less-about-your-threats delivery of “Tall order” and “Fat chance.” The sheer power of “I’ll look down and whisper No.” I may not personally care for the work of Alan Moore, but I will freely admit that the man is a dab hand at dialogue. Before Watchmen: Rorschach, conversely, doesn’t give Rorschach a single good line. His first line of spoken dialogue in this comic is “Bitch to be you right now.” This, to put it mildly, fucking sucks ass. This line is so bad I just had to google it to make sure it wasn’t a reference to a crime movie I haven’t seen. Alan Moore gave Rorschach a very deliberate way of speaking. He has an incredibly brisk manner of speaking that implies a calculated utilitarianism in what he chooses to say (comically at odds with the overwrought manner in which he journals). I would posit that Rorschach has one of the most defined character voices in all of comics, and Azzarello has ignored it on the first line to have Rorschach talk like a second rate Yoda.
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