What I Bought 7/2/2026

I decided July is "fish or cut bait" month for several books. Maybe not the best time for it; there are already two mini-series ending this month. But there were a couple of new books I picked up I intended to decide whether to stick with them, and a couple of others that I think have gotten a fair shot, but need to really sell me on them. So we'll see how that goes.

The Deadman #2, by W. Maxwell Prince (writer), Martin Morazzo (artist), Chris O'Halloran (colorist), Good Old Neon (letterer) - Boston Brand unwittingly dissolved the blood doorway that would lead those souls back to their proper realm.

Deadman needs to know what that demon was, but the only book that would tell him was destroyed. Fortunately, not until after it was read by a guy with a perfect photographic memory, who Deadman and Batman once arrested. For breaking into a museum to read rare books, the man was sentenced to Blackgate Prison. That seems not at all insane.

Deadman tries to possess Batman to get into the prison, but Bats apparently trained his mind to resist such things. Of course he did. Plastic Man was helping Bats with some case involving drug-smuggling mummies, so Deadman takes him instead. As he's getting info, an inmate takes his meds which cause him to turn into a giant plant guy, who deals Plastic Man a mortal blow. Good work, Deadman! OK, fine, he keeps Plas' soul from moving on, and the Bibliophile tells him the creature he saw is from Hell. 

If "The Bloom" is someone I'm expected to know, I don't. Morazzo's got a little Frank Quietly in his art. Mostly I guess the texture of his characters, their faces. Sort of rough, pebbly effect to their skin and wrinkles and whatnot. His Batman definitely tends towards the broad and bulky end of the spectrum. No nimble acrobat here!

The theme of the issue might be "change." The first page is Rama Kushna explaining how souls go through cycles of rebirth, and in each life accumulate good and bad in their karmic ledgers. And Deadman keeps making assumptions about people. He assumes Plastic Man just became a hero on a whim, a flip of the coin, but learns different when he possess him. Gets caught flat-footed by Batman's efforts to not only resist possession, but develop tools to let him communicate with Deadman's spiritual form. He seems to expect the Bibliophile to be some monster, but decides just by looking at him in prison that he's no bad guy. Duh. He broke into a museum just to have new books to read.

(There's also this thing, it was in the first issue as well, that presents people as equations. "Lorna - 3 Nights Sleep = 1/2 Lorna" And in both cases, the person who has been reduced to "1/2" tries something to help, something from their past, and it doesn't work. The equation still comes out to "1/2 Lorna." So you can't fix anything going back? Well, I'm completely screwed.)

So is Deadman changing? If he keeps making assumptions about people, keeps thinking they can't or won't really change? Still hanging on to attachments from a life he can't have? 

Batgirl #21, by Tate Brombal (writer), Stephen Segovia (artist), Rain Beredo (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) -  That's definitely a very cool cover by David Talaski, with the falling flowers and the eyehole as a prison window.

While her friends try to escape the cops - who are called "TUCOs", and I'm offended on behalf of Eli Wallach's character - Cass is stuck inside some mental trigger thing. Dr. Forget-Me-Not wants Batgirl to solve the murder of the little girl, using only what she can glean from her own memories. Which she now has access to all of, even when she was a baby.

Except she (and we) see all the memories from the third person perspective. She's watching herself fight the little blonde girl, who was Forget-Me-Not's attempt to create an ultimate weapon by making a person you can program with whatever identity or thoughts you need.

Forget-Me-Not and David Cain argued about something, which Napolitano (I'm assuming) renders as unintelligible squiggles because Cass didn't understand words at that point in her life. I can't decide if that makes sense, ignoring the question of whether I should be worrying about something like that in a plot like this. I don't understand what birds are saying when they sing, but I still remember what the song sounds like. Cass as she is now could probably piece some of it together from the sounds.

Whatever. She knows the girl was killed with a large knife. She knows she had the knife at one point during a spar with Bronze Tiger, but it disappeared. She knows Cain and the doctor left her and the other girl alone at some point because of the argument. The girl tried to hug her and Cass didn't understand what that was. And so Cass comes to the conclusion she's the killer. 

I'm assuming there's some kind of bait-and-switch there. Not that Cass couldn't have killed someone else before she learned to read body language. More I don't see what it adds to her as a character. She gets to feel bad about killing someone who was victimized at the hands of the person who should have protected her, like Cass was? Plus, Segovia's consistently drawn the killing wound as the big slash the goes diagonally across the entire torso. Would a kid roughly the same size as the victim make a wound like that?

What I Bought 6/3/2026 - Part 1

While in a meeting for something at work I have no interest being part of, we were told they were going to introduce some AI stuff. This after they tested 10 scenarios, and found one 1 where AI actually helped. I asked if we were required to use it, and they said no, if we didn't want to sign the agreement, we wouldn't be able to. Easy enough call for me. Toss that agreement in the trash.

Told my dad this, he suggested I buy in from the start, so I'd be familiar with AI, rather than having to learn it in a rush if they make it mandatory at some point. I have to wonder if he understands me at all. When have I ever shown an inclination to be early adopter of the flashy new bullshit tech thing? Never. Look at me, running a blog on fucking Blogger in the year 2026. I don't need AI to do my work, I wouldn't trust its results, so why use it? To kiss somebody's ass?

The Deadman #1, by W. Maxwell Prince (writer), Martin Morazzo (artist), Chris O'Halloran (colorist), Good Old Neon (letterer) - So is it that Deadman is protecting all those souls by containing them, or that he keeps a little piece of every person he possess or touches?

Deadman's working off his karma or whatever for Rama Kushna by acting as a, otherwordly doorman? Docent of the Afterlife? He's hanging out in a hospice, greeting people as they die or, in one case, keeping a person from dying too soon by, I don't know. One of the nurses passed through him, and he caught a glimpse of a memory of her making rice pudding (with saffron) with her long deceased grandma, and later he held up some "floral-energy chimera" of saffron and a girl's soul went back in her body and her cancer went into remission.

Then Deadman takes the bus home, spies on his widow who lives in a suburb where lots of lost souls turn up, until he has to go greet some biker about to turn into street pizza because of a deer. Except a four-armed, winged demon that seems maybe Hinduism-related given the helmet/crown thing eats part of the soul. Deadman dispatches it - by tearing off its wings after a smaller version of himself crawls out of his mouth and speaks in a different font - but he finds this unacceptable.

So Rama Kushna, who appears as a child of sorts, tells him this is a new job, and he gets a different costume. It's like when David Aja ditched the high collar and plunging neckline on Iron Fist and replaced it with more of a green turtleneck. Except it's red, and Morazzo doesn't give Deadman any sort of mask. I don't dig the look, frankly. It's a little dull for a guy who was a showoff when he was alive.

As first issues go, it's, intriguing, I guess. I don't know that I love it, but I can't say Prince, Morazzo, O'Halloran and Neon didn't do their best to give me my money's worth. It's funny in places, or trying, anyway. Between the 4th wall breaking as Deadman explains stuff, and the spoof of the 4-panel character summary from All-Star Superman. But I feel as though there's going to be a lot of metaphysical or religious stuff that'll fly right past me. Like the thing with the flower, or Deadman with a little Deadman crawling out his mouth (that was really damn weird.) Am I on the right wavelength for this book?

The colors are kind of subdued tones, moreso for the living, but even the spirits don't exactly burst off the page. Morazzo draws Deadman as more gangly than the brief glimpses we get of Boston Brand. Makes him a bit more skeletal, maybe playing up the "dead" aspect over the "man."

Batgirl #20, by Tate Brombal (writer), Stephen Segovia (penciler), Jason Paz (inker), Rain Beredo (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - The chalk outline implies Batgirl has a lamprey mouth. Disturbing, if true.

Someone left a child's body in a warehouse with a note to Batgirl. The ink is from a fungus, the initials of the scientific name are "C.C.", so it's for Cass. And the corpse is in the dress she wore when she killed that one guy for her dad. Which starts triggering memories of a flower swinging back and forth on a chain. Like the flowers they find around the body. Forget-me-nots.

At which point Cass has a seizure and starts remembering some time where her dad had her spar with Bronze Tiger, and things got out of control. Or rather, the Tiger got out of control, to the point Cain tased him to save Cass. Which does not match my recollection of how David Cain - the man who shot his daughter when her guard was down - trained her, but OK. I mean, he apparently let her eat multiple bowls of ice cream, so he must be a good guy!

I felt like Segovia was drawing Bronze Tiger as too much of a tiger-man, in terms of the mask he wore looking more like his actual head, and the huge, clawed hands. But maybe the gloves disguise claws on brass knuckles wrapped around his fingers. Except the gloves have five digits and there's only three claws, so that doesn't make sense. Maybe that's how he was pre-Suicide Squad, but I don't think so.

Tenji tries calling his dad for help, and he just so happens to be in Gotham. As soon as Tenji mentions "Forget-me-nots", Bronze Tiger starts having a seizure, too. Meanwhile, the cops show up - the Bat-family is apparently persona non grata with Gotham cops these days, because Vandal Savage is police commissioner, which is, OK, sure, let's take a Silver Age plot and treat it seriously, the immortal caveman crook is police commissioner, whatever - and Cass is still in her own head, talking to some guy swinging the flower on a chain and with more of them covering his face. Which would be kind of stupid-looking, but I'll give Segovia credit for making the guy's almost-rictus grin terrifying enough to make it work.

There's also a panel where Cass wakes up to Batman standing over her, and another in the dream/memory where it's David Cain. Their postures and our perspective are similar, but she reads entirely different things from their bodies, which was a nice touch. And I guess the things she reads are meant to be contemporary with the time of the memory, because she thinks of Cain as "father", and I'm not sure she's applied that title to him for a long time. But if she's accepting Shiva's her mother, then it wouldn't make sense to deny Cain the same, considering he was actually part of her life for a long-ass time. 

Sunday Splash Page #131

"Ring Around a Dead Man", in Deadman: Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love #2, by Sarah Vaughn (writer), Lan Medina (illustrator), Phil Hester (breakdowns, ch. 4), Jose Villarubia (color artist), Janice Chiang (letterer)

An odd little prestige mini-series DC published in late 2016-early 2017, during the early stages of DC Rebirth (not to be confused with DC You, which was their first attempt to course correct after people soured on the New 52). I think I bought this because a) there wasn't a hell of a lot I was getting otherwise at the time, and b) it sounded unusual enough to be interesting. Deadman's always seemed like a cool concept to me, even if I've never bothered to buy any of his stories.

Deadman: Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love was a Gothic horror/romance, a genre I admittedly know basically nothing about, beyond the basics. There's usually an old house, it's got some history. A young bride, older husband, a room the bride is never to enter, mysterious presence, yada yada. In that sense, this story seems to check most of the boxes.

This house ends up with two ghostly presences, since in addition to the one already lurking, Boston Brand feels drawn to the house as well. Once he's there, he can't get out. The other ghost is alternately lost and confused, and furious, as seen above.

Medina draws all the living characters as very realistic, ordinary-looking people, and Villarubia sticks to soft tones and understated colors for them most of the time. It's Boston and Adelia that gets the brighter colors, and Adelia where Medina gets to loosen things up a bit. At times a furious, but still recognizably human woman of ink and shadows. Other times, a big, boiling cloud of anger and red eyes. It works.

What I Bought 2/18/2017 - Part 3

I had intended to save this review for next Monday, and do this week's books today instead. But I couldn't find either of this week's books, so they'll have to keep until next week. The vagaries of existence.

Deadman: Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love #3, by Sarah Vaughn (writer), Lan Medina (illustrator), Phil Hester (breakdowns), Jose Villarrubia (color artist), Janice Chang (letterer) - I love how Stephanie Hans drew Adelia on that cover, where she's burning up from the inside.

Adelia nearly kills Nathan, but Deadman is able to bring her back to her senses long enough for her to flee. While Nathan passes out, Bernice, Sam, and Boston investigate the room he's been writing in, and learn Nathan is actually Edward Ruskin, Adelia's husband and murder, still alive through dark arts. He's actually returned to keep Adelia's spirit bound to the house and make sure it remains standing, since his life force is tied to it. Which is too bad for him once everyone else realizes the truth, because Bernice starts burning the house down, and Boston keeps Nathan where he is while Adelia finishes the job. Adelia is free, Sam and Bernice are together, and Boston, well Boston is stuck going to help the next person in need. Someone has to draw the short straw.

I didn't expect the reveal about Nathan. I'm not sure what I expected, but not that, so points to Vaughn for surprising me. I feel like there's a significance to Bernice being able to see ghosts, and Sam not only being unaware of them, but seemingly resistant to anything they can do. Almost as though Sam cancels their abilities out.  I don't know what it means, though. I wonder how much I'm missing not being familiar with the conventions of Gothic romance, horror, whichever this is. I get that you have the sweet, somewhat timid young woman and the guy she thinks she loves, so creative but physically frail. And that guy is actually horrible, but there's another person, who the young woman is also attracted to who supports her and helps her make it through. I think that's fairly typical of the genre as I understand it, but that's broad strokes. Actually, Boston's presence as a spirit, so that he understands that side of the world she lives in, is he another version of the "other person"? Different side of the coin from Sam? There's nothing romantic between Boston and Bernice, but there's friendship and understanding.

I did notice Nathan, having been caught not writing, but messing with dark magic, trying to brush off his lies and make everything about Bernice invading his privacy. Typical shitty, controlling partner behavior. And Bernice sees through it, even if she doesn't fully grasp the danger of the situation.

Adelia seems to swallow the light when she appears or is especially stressed. It's in moments where the trauma of what she suffered is especially strong, so it's blocking out everything else. Which makes Boston's ability to be present significant. As someone who can approach her, touch her, understands what it's like to be murdered. Although when she fully unleashes her pain she becomes a dark shadow, but her light is buried underneath it (her face emerges at one point when Boston pleads with her, as the shadow draws back, like how Venom would pull back from Eddie' Brock's face sometimes). The good in her is being overwhelmed, the trauma blocking the person she was and could have been, if not for her husband. The panel of her sweeping Nathan's body (with Boston driving) up into an embrace, but one of hate and revenge, that was good work. Medina, Hester, and Villarrubia convey the mood well, even if I kept getting distracted because Nathan's face at times looked like it was drawn by David Finch (he had those scratchy little lines along the jaw Finch favors). It seemed out of place in the book, but not a deal-breaker, just something strange.

What I Bought 1/6/2017 - Part 1

As you might have guessed, the comics didn't arrive on Thursday. They did arrive today. Interestingly the tracking had said the package arrived at the post office in town Tuesday. Quite why it took three days to get across town, I don't know. Anyway, reviews tonight and reviews tomorrow, and then back on schedule next week.

Deadman: Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love #2, by Sarah Vaughn (writer), Lan Medina (illustrator), Phil Hester (breakdowns, chapter 4), Jose Villarubia (color artist), Janice Chang (letterer) - I like the layout on that cover. Adelia's face with Boston looming angrily behind and above, and Bernice's face barely visible, both in front of Adelia, but behind Boston, just in different dimensions. And then whatever is there along the spine, the tentacles and eyes in that red and black.

Boston meets Adelia, the spirit that haunts Glencrest. Her connection to the dark shadow is uncertain, as is what precisely happened to her. It involved a knife, though. The two emerge from wherever they were and find Bernice has been scouring the house for clues of what happened. Without much success, so she goes into town to check the library. Which only tells her Adelia went missing the night she and her husband moved into Glencrest. She returns to Glencrest to find Nathan ecstatic that he's finished his book, so they can go back to the city. And he wants to marry her, which seems to cause a freakout in Adelia and she may actually be the dark shadow as well.

Vaughn also includes a lot about Boston Brand recognizing perhaps he isn't as unique a case as he thinks, there's other people with similar experiences. I thought the idea that Brand can't remember how long ago he died was significant. Was it the result of his brief merging with Adelia, who also lacks memories, or a more general statement about spirits? Bernice mentioned something to herself about people fixating on what might have been, and letting it take deep root inside them. Are ghosts so locked in on the possibility if only they hadn't died as they did that it keeps them rooted in one place, and makes them lose track of the truth? It applies to the living as well, of course. I know I struggle not to get stuck looking backward, sometimes all I can do is say to myself, "That's over, you chose something else, deal with it." Hard telling how well that works from the inside. Also I wonder what Bernice's "If only. . ." is, or maybe what it will be, pending her decision on Nathan's proposal.

Medina's art comes up a bit short when it needs to depict more extreme amounts of motion of energy. When the shadow emerges at the end of the issue, and everything is flying about, the imagery doesn't have much impact. The characters' body language is more restrained than it feels it ought to be; I get the sense of what is supposed to be conveyed, but I feel I'm filling in the gaps a lot. Also, there's a point where Adelia and Boston can't follow Bernice into her room because of a barrier, but as Boston explains this, we clearly see him sticking his fingers through the barrier. If there was a sense he was in pain, or struggling to do so, that would be one thing, but that isn't the case. It looks more as though the barrier was meant to keep them out, but they're in the process of discovering it doesn't work.

That said, Medina does quite well in giving that sense of Boston and Adelia as spirits. The times we see them floating in a doorway or window, watching quietly evokes some image I associate with spirits. Approaching a spooky house and seeing someone in an upstairs window watching you, but not finding them when you go inside, that kind of thing. There was a book I reread in elementary school, Christina's Ghost, it used that I think. I loved that book back in the day. It and The Two Moons of Mars, I read those multiple times up through 6th grade. Back to Medina's art. Deadman is drawn in such a way that even when he's close to another character, there's some sort of distance. There's a disconnect, even with another ghost. Typically floating above and behind Bernice. The way his face goes into shadow when Adelia shouts out that she was murdered, we know he suffered the same fate, but it's curious Medina opts to obscure his face, rather than depict sorrow, or some sense of commiseration.

When Bernice and Sam return to Glencrest, the sun is setting behind it somewhere, with yellow near the horizon, and red higher up. Inside the house, when Nathan proposes, there's a window behind them, and there's still a bit of red and yellow near the top, but blues and greens, cooler colors lower. The red is up where Adelia is floating, the blue and green down with Nathan and Bernice. Presaging Adelia's strong reaction, and some level of indifference on Bernice's part?

Now I have to wait until next month for the conclusion. I don't know if Vaughn and Medina will stick the landing, whatever that would look like, but I'm cautiously optimistic.

What I Bought 10/12/2016 - Part 2

Nothing like having a question about some movie we're watching and not wanting to ask because I know my dad will launch into some overly long, ten-minute dissertation on the thing.

Blue Beetle #1, Keith Giffen (story and script), Scott Kolins (story and artist), Romulo Fajardo Jr. (colorist), Josh Reed (letterer) - Seems like more of a Spider-Man pose there than one for a character that can fly.

Curious issue. Jaime relates a dream he had to Brenda of Dr. Fate fighting a giant beetle. Brenda is extremely acerbic and not helpful. Then Ted ropes Jaime into investigating a tip from a super-powered street gang, concerning a bunch of missing kids. One of whom Jaime runs into, and the kid now has shadow-melting powers. Jaime fights him off, but then the aforementioned super-powered street gang shows up.

For some reason, Giffen and Kolins are writing this so no one gives Jaime any sort of straight answer. Brenda is unhelpful, Ted's assistant and Ted both ignore any questions he ask, not to mention any objections he has. Overall, it makes Jaime look like a dope that's letting everyone herd him around. Like, refuse to keep going along with Ted until he produces some concrete answers.

The high point was probably Ted making a brief allusion to knowing Nightshade (as an example of someone with shadow powers) from his own time as a superhero. I had thought this Ted was a superhero wannabe, but it sounds like he was the Blue Beetle at some point. Which improves the chances of Booster showing up sometime soon, which ought to be good.

I like the designs for the Posse, especially the vibrating reddish guy, and the purple, Candlejack looking guy with the glowing weapon thing. We'll see if it translates once they get into action, but they make for interesting visuals, at least. I don't entirely like how he draws Blue Beetle, his lines make the suit look odd somehow, like the elements don't fit. I do like how the suit morphs, expands, gets more sharp as the situation grows more desperate. Plays into that dream, with a giant beetle monster fighting Dr. Fate.

The potential is there for me to enjoy this book, but toning down the antagonism between the characters that are supposed to be friends would be a help.

Deadman: Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love #1, by Sarah Vaughn (writer), Lan Medina (illustrator), Jose Villarubia (color artist), Janice Chiang (letterer) - That's not really good attire to be roaming through a massive yard at night with a candelabra.

Glencourt Manor is the "dark mansion" in question. It has the ghost of a young woman named Adelia Ruskin in it, as well as something else, an oozing dark shadow. Berenice is living there with Nathan, who is trying to get some novel written. But Nathan's health isn't great, and Berenice sees ghosts, so this isn't the best place for either of them. And into all this flied Boston Brand, only to find himself on unfamliar ground. Berenice can see him, not that she wants to. The house has trapped him, where he can't escape, and sometimes can't pass through objects. There's also Berenice's friend, Sam, who Boston can't possess for some reason. And by the end of the issue, Boston and Adelia vanish together, leaving a confused Berenice alone.

So there are a lot of mysteries in here, which is fine with me. Gives me something to mull over, whether they're interconnected or not, coming up with strange theories. I don't know if the book is meant as a Gothic horror story, or Gothic romance, or both. Nathan seems like the soulful, deeply troubled pretty boy, and Berenice the kind, but shy and uncertain heroine. Except Berenice is shy at least in part because she tries to shut out the spirits she can see around her. Not sure how Sam or Boston fit in, but we're up against the limits of what I understand of the genre.

Most of the colors Villarubia uses are fairly muted, kind of mundane. Which makes the parts where he steps outside that all the more effective. The bright yellow when Boston meets resistance to his passing through something. The pitch black shadow. I think Adelia is drawn in by Lan Medina, then not colored in, similar to what Declan Shalvey did in Moon Knight. Makes her seem disconnected from the whole thing in a way none of the other characters are. Which is interesting, since you'd think she'd be distinctly connected to the place she's haunting.

Medina does a solid job with the figure work. There are a few places characters seem a little stiff, but overall, the expressions are good, and when Medina gets a chance to draw more of the house, and use it to create a sense of looming threat, he does it well. The panel of her helping Nathan down the hall of doors, with the hall curving out of sight at the end, that one worked really well. Not sure why, some sense of the hall extending on forever, and endless string of identical doors that Berenice could see if she only went around the bend a little further.

And I like how for the first half of the book, written from Berenice's perspective, we see Boston flying around the manor, testing the place, and she has no idea what's going on. We understand why Boston Brand would show up, but she doesn't know him, and the issue shows him a lot with Berenice watching him from a distance. Even though he might be close to us, it helps put the reader in the mindset of seeing it how she is. Bizarre, something she can't understand, and doesn't want to get close enough to that she could.