THIS ONE SUMMER by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki is an odd graphic novel set during summer vacation at the beach: while it deals with familiar coming of age material it doesn’t resolve any of them, sticking to being literally a slice of life from that single summer. Readable but unsatisfying.
STUMPTOWN: The Case of the Girl Who Took Her Shampoo But Left Her Mini by Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth (who provides the cover) is the first in a series about Dex Parios, a PI with a major gambling habit and a shortage of cash to cover her debts. When a casino owner hires Dex to find the owner’s runaway granddaughter it soon turns out things are not what they seem (“She took her shampoo but left her car?”). Very well done, even though crime comics aren’t my thing.
The original X-Men team was one of Marvel’s least successful series and X-Men came to an end in 1970 (it continued to do a steady business in reprint until the new team emerged in ’75). In late 1971, Marvel tried spinning the Beast off into his own series in AMAZING ADVENTURES with Gerry Conway writing the first issue, then newbie Steve Englehart going on to write the remaining five (with Thomas Sutton on art) before Killraven took over as the book’s resident hero. I rank Englehart as one of the Bronze Age’s best writers but as he quipped later, he wasn’t the writer who could make a commercial success of Marvel’s mutants.
In the opening issue (collected in multiple TPBs even though I read it on the Marvel app), Hank goes to work as a 
biochemist, gets a girlfriend and ends up mutating himself into the furry shape he would keep until the 1980s and has switched back and forth on since. Horrified, and unaware his girlfriend is a spy working against him, Hank hides his appearance behind a latex mask and gloves then stripping down to his fur to battle the inevitable supervillains who show up, such as the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants on the John Romita cover to #13. The series was readable but nothing I’d miss; its main claim to fame is that Englehart added Marvel’s once-popular teen character Patsy Walker, all grown up, to the cast, the first of many characters he’d resurrect in coming years.
THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF THE MOON MAN: Vol. 1, 1933 by Frederick C. Davis collects some of the stories of the eponymous Robin Hood, stealing from criminals and frauds (like a couple whose charity bash will go mostly to enrich themselves) in an opaque helmet of one-way glass, then giving to those in desperate need of rent payments or medical care. Under the glass he’s a cop, Stephen Thatcher, who can’t bring himself to believe the law matters more than people’s well-being — but he knows his partner (and future father-in-law) doesn’t think the same; if Steve’s ever caught, it will be the end of everything. I’ll catch the remaining two volumes eventually.
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