Category Archives: Comics

CORPORATE GUNSLINGER by Doug Engstrom is set in a dystopian future where debt to corporate America gets you de facto enslaved and where citizens who can’t get justice when corporations screw them over have one last recourse: dueling with a trained gunman to decide the outcome of their case. Kira, the protagonist, is up to her eyeballs in debt but turning herself into Death’s Angel, an icy corporate assassin lets her keep her head above water. But becoming a professional killer takes a toll she may not be able to pay … This is much more entertaining painting a brutal, corporate-dominated future than Vigilance but it doesn’t stick the landing: it reads like Engstrom suddenly realized he’d been asking us to sympathize and side with someone making unethical choices and he got cold feet about it.CROWDED, by Christopher Sibela and Ro Stein, is set in a world where someone whipped up an app for crowdsourcing assassinations, a way to take out particularly bad politicians. Only inevitably it’s broadened beyond that, as Charlie Ellison discovers when someone uses the app to target her for death. Charlie hires Vita off a bodyguarding app but can they survive the swarm of wannabe shooters? And who put out the hit on Charlie? This was a lot of fun.

For some reason 19th century women in fiction seem to be forming lots of secret societies. I read The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels a while back, I saw an add for another recently and here are a couple more, though neither clicked with me as much as Wisteria Society.

In AN EARL, THE GIRL , AND A TODDLER: Rogues and Remarkable Women Book 2 by Vanessa Riley the society is The Widow’s Grace, a group of women who do things like rescue wives consigned by their husbands to madhouses (a common ploy to get an inconvenient woman out of the way). One of the leads is a Jamaican amnesiac member of the society, the other a black aristocrat and barrister, who together break the society’s rules on getting involved. I like the concept and I like having POC as the leads but this relied too much on having read Book One: I felt, reading it, as if a couple of key chapters of exposition had been cut out. I didn’t finish. I’m used to feeling lost when I pick up a mid-series book but this was worse than usual.

While I also didn’t finish A PERFECT EQUATION: The Secret Scientists of London Book 2 by Elizabeth Everett, the story of a secret cabal of female scientists fighting against efforts to shut them down didn’t leave me confused, it just didn’t work for me. For both books keep in mind romance isn’t my go-to genre so YMMV.

#SFWApro. Cover by Stein, all rights to image remain with current holders.

To my surprise Tom King and Greg Smallwood stuck the landing on V2 of their HUMAN TARGET 12-issue series. Chris Chance is dying, he and Ice have figured out how did it but can they settle the score and resolve their feelings before time runs out? Although it draws on a Justice League era I’ve never been fond of, it still works.MECH CADET YU Vol 1 by Greg Pak, Triona Farrell and Takeshi Miyazawa is a cheerful anime-mecha style series that doesn’t reinvent the wheel but makes the wheel work well. Only elite space-force cadets are supposed to bond with the mysterious mecha arriving on Earth, which makes protagonist Stanford, the academy cleaning-lady’s son, an outcast when he bonds. But of course, when the aliens arrive, he and a few other misfits are our world’s last hope …  Thumbs up.

ATHENA VOLTAIRE AND THE SORCERER POPE by Steve Bryant and Ismael Canales doesn’t reinvent the wheel either but the story of the eponymous relic hunter helping two British agents recover an occult McGuffin was much less engaging — I’ve seen this kind of adventure too often and it doesn’t have the energy of an Indiana Jones film or a good movie serial.

GODSHAPER by Simon Spurrier and Jonas Goonface, is more imaginative. In the 1950s, technology dies and everyone gets a small personal patron deity. Ennay is one of the exceptions, possessing no god but having the power to reshape the powers and forms of other deities. This is, of course, of interest to the wrong sort of people … Intriguing but the ending really rushes to make everything work out well.

HEART HUNTER by Mickey George and V. Gagnon is set in a realm where everyone lives forever unless they meet their soulmate; while some welcome the chance to die, others hire heart hunters to kill their soulmate and ensure immortality. Psyche, a heart hunter, accepts a hit from the ruler but of course discovers this particular job is more complicated than it looks. Good but I completely lost the plot threads midway through. However Gagnon’s Kay Nielsen-inspired art is a pleasure to see.

Jessica Abel’s TRISH TRASH: Roller Girl of Mars didn’t work for me at all: the story of a blue-collar worker trying to bust out of her drab life by entering the roller derby doesn’t gain anything but being set on near-future Mars.

PRISM STALKER Vol. 1 by Sloane Leong is one that’s more interesting than enjoyable. Vep is one of the a group of alien exiles taken in by other aliens. The price is serving as the front-line force colonizing an alien planet; Vep’s conflicted about doing so but refusing will have bad consequences. One where I might read V2 but I won’t make an effort.

Like Mech Cadet Yu, EVERYDAY HERO MACHINE BOY by Irma Kniivila and Tri Vuong is geared for a juvenile audience but it worked for me anyway. In what I presume is a deliberate Superman riff, the protagonist crashes to Earth, killing an old man but the man’s wife, realizing machine boy is innocent, raises him alone. When he goes off to school he makes a friend, unleashes a giant mecha and discovers worse things waiting in the wings. I was in the mood for something warm and affectionate and this did the trick.

#SFWApro. Art by Dick Giordano (t) and  Gagnon, all rights to images remain with current holders.

It took Edgar Rice Burroughs 15 years after Pellucidar to return to the hollow earth with TANAR OF PELLUCIDAR, which I presume means it didn’t sell as well as Barsoom or Tarzan; perhaps that explains why instead of focusing on David Innes, protagonist of the first two books, the central character is Tanar, an ordinary (for Pellucidar) young man in Innes’ inner-earth empire.

Like the previous book, this one has a great opening. Jason Gridley, a new resident in Burroughs’ suburban community of Tarzana (yes, it’s a real place), is a radio buff whose experimental radio frequency, the Gridley Wave, reaches Abner Perry in Pellucidar — a shock to Gridley, who’s been rolling his eyes at ERB’s insistence the stories of Pellucidar are true. This leads into Perry narrating the story of Tanar, captured by the piratical Korsars and undergoing the usual Burroughsian hairbreadth adventures, escapes and True Love. Pretty good, and some effective moments such as Pellucidarians freaking out when David leads them to the polar opening at the edge of the world — why doesn’t the horizon keep rising the way it does in Pellucidar? Contrary to my memory, it also mentions the Mahars, now even more beaten down by the attacks of the Korsars. This ends on a cliffhanger setting up a crossover with Tarzan in the next book.

GHOST DANCE JUDGMENT: A Novel of Golgotha by Rod Belcher returns to that weirdest of Weird Western towns after spending time in the wider world in Queen of Swords. In addition to the usual bizarre details such as a house that eats people, the residents, particularly the core cast, are caught between the ghost dance — a shamaness is literally raising a ghost army to massacre white settlers — and the Army showing up in force, intending to use the ghost dance as an excuse to go genocide.

Using the ghost-dance movement didn’t work for me. I’m not sure anyone could make it work because while Native Americans have grounds for an uprising against the US, I don’t want to see the white settlers butchered either; that’s a hard needle to thread. Plus we know the tribes aren’t going to win and the book’s efforts to end on a hopeful note didn’t satisfy me either. On the plus side, the usual weirdness of the series still works, as does the plot by Wyrm cultists to exploit the chaos and free their dark god. Overall I enjoyed even though it’s a mixed bag.

ARCHER AND ARMSTRONG: American Wasteland by Fred Van Lente and Pere Perez is chronologically the finish of the series, as the final volume consists of flashbacks (or so I understand). Searching for Archer’s birth mother, the heroes go up against the Church of Scientology (with the serial numbers filed off) who are apparently keeping her captive. It turns out that avatars of every iconic figure are also trapped in the church, from Elvis Presley to a legion of Lee Harvey Oswalds (one is a lone gunman, one’s a KGB assassin, one’s a CIA patsy). This ends on an ambivalent note about what’s coming next for the guys (“All I’m saying is, you’ve got to choose.”) but I think it sticks the landing.

MARVEL MASTERWORKS: THOR Vol. 5 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby continues their amazing mid-sixties run on the series. We open with Thor confronting the alien Colonizers who are about to add Earth to the possessions. When they realize Thor’s power, however, they strike a deal to spare Earth if Thor will battle Ego, the Living Planet, then we’re back on Earth where Jane has been captured by the High Evolutionary, then there’s a war with the trolls — and in the middle of all that, Jane Foster gets her chance to become a goddess of AsgardAs I noted at Atomic Junk Shop that issue stinks in several ways but clearly Lee and Kirby wanted to move on, leave Jane behind and bring in Sif as the new love interest. Overall, though, this is cool stuff.

#SFWApro. Art by Roy Krenkel, Michael Walsh and Jack Kirby (top to bottom), all rights to images remain with current holder.

When I read KC Hunter’s Curse of the Shinigumi last year I said I liked it enough to try one of the Kana Cold series novels (it was a prequel). Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy  KANA COLD: The Deception of Seraphim Asylum as much as I’d hoped. After Kana picks up a couple of new cast members on a mission in Africa, the FBI recruits her to find the villain of her previous book; meanwhile her sidekick AJ discovers his dad has fallen victim to the family curse and tries to break it. Wouldn’t you know the two plotlines turn out to tie together?

There are some elements here I like such as AJ’s father being a thorough villain who disposed of threats to his clients by dosing them with psychedelics, then geting them locked up in Seraphim Asylum. Hunter’s writing, however, plods in the quiet scenes and drags down the action; I can’t say I have any urge to read further.

Barbara Hambly’s MOTHER OF WINTER is one I missed despite being a fan of Hambly and her Darwath series (this was book four). In the aftermath of banishing the Dark from the world, everyone is trying to figure out the new status quo. However winter is coming (ROFL) and it looks to be brutal; worse, a mysterious fungus is wiping out food supplies and mutating anything or anyone who turns to it for sustenance. Can Gil, Rudy and Ingold save the world again?

Hambly has written about what a Lovecraft fan she is and it’s well on display here. The fungus is kin to the mutated horrors of “Color Out of Space” and the whole book is a successful mashup of fantasy and horror. Plus Hambly’s an excellent writer.

As I’ve written before I don’t like much of Tom King’s work. Human Target has been an exception and now I have to add SUPERGIRL: Woman of Tomorrow by King and Bilquis Evely (who provides the cover here). The narrator, Ruthye, seeks revenge on Krem, the thug who killed her father. By lucky chance she meets Supergirl, visiting Ruthye’s world because it has a red sun so she can feel the effects of alcohol. Helping Ruthye out draws her away from the bar scene and before long they’re going planet to planet, battling evil along the way, but with Krem staying one step ahead.

I can’t quite pin down what made this the best Supergirl arc of the 21st century; admittedly the competition isn’t much but this was genuinely good. Where King can’t stop getting darker and darker in his Batman books, here he gets the right mix — things are grim but Supergirl isn’t giving in to it. If he wants to do another volume I hope DC lets him.

EXTRA VIRGINITY: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil by Tom Mueller show olive oil’s role in European history is much larger than I ever guessed. When people needed oil, it was usually olive oil: holy oil for church anointings, an unguent for Greek athletes, fuel for lamps, the basis for early perfumes and, of course, a major role in food, contending over the centuries with Northern Europe’s enthusiasm for butter. Extra virgin olive oil is the top quality, virgin in the sense it has been adulterated or heavily treated. Unfortunately, as Mueller details, fraud is rife in the industry as various producers or wholesalers substitute cheaper oils for olive or take crap oils and treat them to the point they can pass as quality stuff. This squeezes out some of the genuine quality product because it’s so much cheaper. Equally unfortunate, most regulatory bodies either don’t care — if it’s not going to kill anyone, they’ve got bigger fish to fry — or they’re under the thumb of the big companies invested in keeping the fraud going. Interesting though none of the oil producers and farmers Mueller profiles were terribly memorable.

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

BATMAN: The Silver Age Omnibus Vol. 1 by multiple different creators shows that much as I like 1950s Batman, by the time this volume starts in 1956 (skipping a couple of years since the last Golden Age volume — fortunately the gap will be plugged later this year) the decline that would lead to New Look Batman had begun. True, we get the original Batwoman and I’m fond of her, but we get more and more trips to uninteresting alien worlds, more and more aliens showing up in Gotham City — and editor Jack Schiff wasn’t a good SF editor. There are still some excellent stories, such as “Prisoners in the Batcave” (the Dynamic Duo are trapped in their lair with no way to get evidence to Commissioner Gordon in time to stop an innocent man’s execution) but the ratio of good to bad is getting steadily out of whack. Though i bought this and I’m sure I’ll buy the next one.

Maria Llovet’s PORCELAIN boasts some great art but a story that doesn’t make enough sense to work. A teenager finds herself trapped inside a mysterious house where the sinister Dollmaker eventually turns all her guests into dolls — can our protagonist make it out in time? It says a lot about what dissatisfies me that while there’s a big emphasis on whether to use the Thanatos Door or the Eros Door to attempt an escape, it doesn’t seem to add up to anything.

I’m not sure STARGIRL: The Lost Children by Geoff Johns and Todd Nauck is out in TPB yet but it’s only a matter of time, so … this has Stargirl and Red Arrow (Oliver Queen’s half-sister Emiko) traveling to a lost island where the sinister Childminder has plucked countless kid sidekicks out of time, some familiar (Dyna-Mite, Wing, the Newsboy Legion) and some new (Cherry Bomb for the Human Bomb, Molly Pitcher with Miss America). Can Stargirl get them back home? Given the sad fates that await some of them, should she? There are things I like about this such as the opening, where Dyna-Mite explains sidekicks weren’t abused or exploited, they were neglected orphan kids with nothing to live for; the heroes gave them a purpose.

The downside? Invoking lots of DC history loses its punch when history’s been so shredded: Wing was an adult, Dyna-Mite wasn’t an orphan, for instance. The ending is way too rushed to work especially as it’s going to have repercussions in the regular DC universe, and some of the sidekicks don’t work (Cherry Bomb and Dr. Fate’s sidekick Salem the Witchgirl).

THE SHADOW/GREEN HORNET: Dark Nights by Michael Uslan and Keith Burns has the two 1930s crimefighters join forces when the Shadow’s old foe Shiwan Khan, having launched WW II just as he brought about the First World War, targets America with a scheme to disable its industries and to obtain the Shadow’s fire opal ring for its secret mystical power. He knows he’ll have to deal with the Shadow but assumes the Green Hornet — who poses as an underworld figure eliminating his rivals — will be a convenient ally.

This is fun and Uslan does a great job capturing both heroes’ personality. However I could have done without Shiwan Khan as the villain. Not only is he a straight-up Yellow Peril type (a descendant of Genghis Khan, he will conquer the world like his ancestor! Genghis Khan descendants in fiction always want to conquer the world) but he’s way overused. Yes, he’s the Shadow’s archnemesis but as I’ve mentioned before, he still only appeared in four Golden Age stories. Having him show up in every comic book run from Archie Comics —— to both DC’s series —— is a bit much.

#SFWApro. Covers top to bottom by Sheldon Moldoff, Hauck, Paul Reinman and Michael Kaluta, all rights remain with current holders.

But a couple of them were terrific, starting with the first volume of KATIE THE CATSITTER by Colleen A.F. Venable and Stephanie Yue. All Katie wants to do is earn enough money catsitting for her upstairs neighbor to join her BFF Bethany in summer camp. But the cats are uncanny, including master thieves, ace hackers, martial artists and acrobats; the neighbor may be the supervillain Mousetress; and Bethany seems to be changing into a different person while they’re apart. Can Katie hold it all together? I’m hardly the target demographic for a middle-grade graphic novel but I liked this one. And I loved the parody of Batman’s origin in which a superhero talks about the tragic day he lost his parents (“Son, you only lost sight of us for five minutes.”).

GIRL GENIUS: The Second Journey of Agatha Heterodyne — Queens and Pirates by Phil and Kaja Folio is fun, as the series always is: while Agatha’s Mom begins terrorizing Europe, Agatha and most of her supporting cast wind up in England where they get some help from its immortal queen, though possibly with strings attached. Fun, but unsatisfying: this lays the groundwork for what feels like a dozen future story arcs without enough stuff paying off in the here-and-now. Still, it was nice to see Krosp and Gil again.

BRITISH PARANORMAL SOCIETY: Time Out of Mind by Chris Roberson and Andrea Mutti (Dark Horse credits Mike Mignola too, but he’s not on the cover as a creator) is also unsatisfying and nowhere near as much fun. Set in the Hellboy Universe, this has Simon Bruttenholm and new character Honora Grant visiting the small village of Noxton where the standing stones are sinister and the summer festival is creeper than Honora expects. This wasn’t bad but it’s interchangeable with a long list of charming English villages with creepy undertones.

FOR WHOM THE DOORBELL TOLLS by multiple creators has the interesting idea of adapting Ernest Hemingway stories for Disney characters — though the adaptations are more inspirations to the point I wouldn’t recognize the connection if they didn’t spell it out (in fairness, I’ve read little Hemingway). The stories include Goofy as a blues singer struggling to go country, Scrooge McDuck reliving his glory days and Mickey realizing a life of adventure can be a good thing. I’m not enough of a fan of Disney comics to get into this.

WILDING WILLOWS: Where the Wild Things Are by Dave Elliot and Barnaby Bagenda is a Victorian-character mashup in which Alice (of Wonderland) is the daughter of Dr. Moreau, who’s genetically engineering flying monkeys for the Wicked Witch of the West while Dr. Doolittle’s son discovers Mowgli is the kid he didn’t know he had and Frankenstein’s creature squares off against Peter Rabbit. It’s been a long time since I reacted to things like this with “Holy shit, a mashup!” rather than “what, another one?” — not that a good one doesn’t work for me, but this left me completely uninterested in reading V2.

#SFWApro. Cover by Yue, all rights to image remain with current holder.