2025 Comics in Review - Part 5

7 single issue artists hit 110 pages this year, out of the stuff I bought. Devmalya Pramanik and PJ Holden each ended at 110 pages. Russell Olson was at 116, while Alexandre TefenKgi ended at 122 pages. Humberto Ramos narrowly edged that out with 125, while Domenico Carbone drew 140 pages. Props to both the Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu artists for making the list! But in first place, Batgirl's Takeshi Miyazwa, with 180 pages.

As always, I'm just ranking things I actually bought in 2025. If I didn't buy, it doesn't get considered, so go look for people who read, but didn't rank, that thing you really liked, and complain at them. 

Favorite Ongoing Series (min. 6 issues):

1. Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu

2. Batgirl

3. Fantastic Four (the second one) 

There were only 4 options, and that required counting Fantastic Four before and after the new first issue as two separate entries. The restarted numbering gets 3rd because there were a few issues that weren't event tie-ins. Batgirl, despite not having a plot I'm wildly invested in, at least looked good a lot with Miyazawa's art, and had some decent emotional beats for the title character. Fist of Khonshu comes in 1st easily though, because I thought the arc with MK trying to take down Fairchild was pretty interesting (and occasionally hilarious), and the Pramanik/Rosenberg team made it look gorgeous.

Favorite Mini-Series (more than 50% shipped this year):

1. Bronze Faces

2. Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt

3. Metamorpho

Lots of mini-series again this year. Several that didn't ship enough issues - Avengers Assemble, Babs, Calavera P.I., Red Before Black - some I just didn't enjoy enough - Dark Pyramid, Past Time, Runaways - for them to be in the running.

Bronze Faces felt like it had the strongest story, TefenKgi did some very nice work with the art. If I sometimes had trouble keeping the supporting characters in the crew straight, the issues and messy interrelationships between Sango, Gbonka and Timi always shined through clearly. And it was ultimately about them, that they all came into this with different ideas and goals, and that helped eventually wreck things, because they were never really a united front.

Great British Bump-Off probably edges out Metamorpho because I like John Allison's write more than Ewing's, and Max Sarin's art much more than Steve Lieber's. 

Favorite One-Shot:

1. It's Jeff! Jeff Week

This category was supposed to have a few other contenders, but Tuatha and Marvel All-on-One aren't here. All hail the Land Shark!

Favorite Trade Paperback/Graphic Novel (purchased in 2025):

1. Atomic Robo: The Vengeful Dead (Brian Clevinger/Scott Wegener)

2. Bandette: The Marriage of B.D. Belgique (Paul Tobin/Colleen Coover)

3. Bad Machinery: The Case of the Good Boy (John Allison) 

Obviously I've not reviewed any of this (or the next category) yet. Still got a half-dozen things from 2024 to get through first. But the Atomic Robo story tied together various threads Clevinger and Wegener had been setting up for years into a pretty satisfying package. I'm a little dodgy on stories where people try to force a couple to confess feelings and get together - it's my contrary nature - but Bandette was its usual mixture of humor and theft. I also started trying to find those collections of Bad Machinery Oni Press released last decade. of the four I've so far procured, The Case of the Good Boy was the one I liked the best. The silliness of the magic pencil charmed me, I suppose.

Favorite Manga (purchased in 2025):

1. Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General vol. 11 (Jin)

2. No Longer Allowed in Another World vol. 9 (Hiroshi Nota/Takahiro Wakamatsu)

3. Dragon Ball vol. 10 (Akira Toriyama) 

Again, haven't reviewed any of these yet, but volume 11 of Precarious Woman Executive might have been my favorite of the entire series. Jin sticks mostly to one or two-chapter stories, and focuses on the characters mostly doing mundane or ordinary tasks, but makes it funny, and occasionally touching. Volume 8 of No Longer Allowed revealed a big plot twist, and volume 9 shows how that reveal ripples outward. Volume 10 of Dragon Ball I bought mostly because it's the beginning of the second World Martial Arts Tournament arc, and I get nostalgic for when non-Saiyan characters where allowed to look like they could actually keep up with Goku.

Favorite Writer:

1. John Allison

2. Jed MacKay

3. Jin 

Just kind of playing the numbers, between Great British Bump-Off and the Bad Machinery collections, I probably bought more of Allison's writing than anyone else. MacKay is on here strictly from his Moon Knight writing, but if I find his pacing a little questionable at times, he finds some nice hooks to hang character beats on in his work. And I actually bought 2 volumes of Precarious Woman Executive, and they were both pretty good, so I figure Jin deserves some credit for that.

Favorite Artist: 

1. Devmalya Pramanik (with Rachelle Rosenberg)

2. Adam Warren

3. Takeshi Miyazawa

I didn't buy as much of Warren's Dirty Pair work as I hoped this year, but the amount I bought is probably at least as many pages as Pramanik drew. Plus it's Warren's later Dirty Pair stuff, as he was moving his style into its own more distinctive direction.

But, again, I loved the work Pramanik did on layouts and doing interesting stuff with close-ups on characters, so they get the top spot with Rachelle Rosenberg, since I know her color work is part of what made Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu (and all MacKay's other Moon Knight books) look so good.

And, we're done with that for another year. 

2025 Comics in Review - Part 4

Out of the publishers other than Marvel or DC, Mad Cave came in first in 2025, with 10 comics. First year Mad Cave tops the list. Boom was second with 9 comics, then Image with 8.

I've also been tracking cumulative totals. In 2022, it looked like we were moving towards almost a 4-way tie. Boom was at 76, IDW at 71, Dark Horse at 67, and Image 65 comics after 17 years. After the last few years, Boom's pulled away, now at 98 books, and has been in first place for the cumulative total now for 7 years. Image is up to 2nd (77 books), then Dark Horse (75), Scout (73), and IDW (71.)

Past Time #1-5: Joe Harris and Russell Olson's story of a guy who was turned to a vampire while fighting in the trenches of World War I, but now he sees in the rise of nighttime baseball, a chance to play baseball again. If he can just convince a blind, black former pitcher to give him a hand. . .

High Point - I enjoyed the baseball parts. Especially the reporter's work tracking all the different identities Henry used as he jumped from one league to another, always dipping out when he started to attract too much attention and digging into his past.

There was also the element of Henry's selfishness. How determined he was to make certain not only that he got what he wanted, but that no one else got it. Even if I have no idea how he rigged that spotlight to burst exactly when it did so a player would get hurt and open a roster spot for him. 

Low Point - Some of this is the result of who is telling the story. Ronnie is telling the story, and he only knows of Henry's past what Henry tells him. That said, it was strange for Ronnie to tell us how determined Henry was to get his way, turning Ronnie to have another in that way, and then Russell and Olson give us flashbacks where Henry seems more interested in going to war than playing college ball, or his misfortune in the trenches to encounter a German soldier that was also a vampire. They don't seem to match, and that could be a point about how what Henry's become has changed him, but I'm not sure of that. Nobody really gets into it, not even when Henry confronts another vampire.

But the actual baseball action is also incidental to an extent. The story isn't really about any tension in an actual game, just Henry trying to figure ways to keep playing.

Red Before Black #4-6: The back half of Stephanie Phillips and Goran Sudzuka's story about a former soldier trying to get a pardon by infiltrating a drug cartel a squadmate of hers works in, only to screw it all up for a wacky blonde girl. I still have no idea why Leo can see the jungle Val hallucinates, because that never gets explained. The ending feels rushed, as Leo brings Val to a spiritualist community where a woman tells Val she has to confront her ghosts, and Val dies like 5 pages later. Maybe spend less time at the gator farm Leo's step-brother ran?

Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma #1-3: Another year, another bad experience with DC's Black Label imprint. This was about a Mitch Shelly from another time or another world trying to help a different Mitch Shelly to avoid some terrible fate brought about because a WW2 Japanese officer had a taste for human flesh and gained super-powers for it. I didn't love the painted art most of the time, I wasn't invested in the changes Mitch was trying to make in his past to fix things, since he seemed to ignore the obvious ones, and the mystery of how things would be resolved wasn't worth buying 3 more issues.

Runaways #1-5: Rainbow Rowell uses a One World Under Doom tie-in mini-series as an opportunity to pick up threads from where her Runaways series ended. Karolina returns from space! Alex is running around as Doc Justice! Chase returns from the future, and he's a bigger jackass than usual! Nico tries to figure out if she has any magic besides the Staff of One! Elena Casagrande was the penciler initially, but Roberta Ingranata and Lee Ferguson drew about 40% of the mini-series between the two of them.

High Point - It didn't make a damn bit of sense, but Gert managing to take out a Doombot by hitting it with a car, without triggering the airbags, was kind of funny. Doom clearly outsourcing his manufacture to lowest bidder third parties. In that same vein, the fact Karolina has gone into space like 3 times now, and I'm not sure we've ever seen any of it. The rest of the cast just, watch her go, and then she comes back at some point down the line.

Other than that, watching Doombot try to work through his loyalty to the actual Doom, versus the idea of Doom he was programmed to emulate, was sort of interesting. His version of looking after these disorganized adolescents.

Low Point - Chase is pretty much always a low point. Returns from the future in Post-Apocalypse chic, big chip on his shoulder, barking orders, explaining absolutely nothing about whatever he is so pissed off about. The fact these idiots continue to let Alex Wilder hang around, despite the fact his is demonstrably untrustworthy, going back to that time he was setting them up to die to save him and his parents.

The Surgeon #1-6: A post-apocalyptic story about a woman who at least had some med school before society collapsed, and roams the land, being a doctor. When she's not swordfighting with marauders or something like that. John Pence was the writer, while the book went through Zachary Dolan, Stan Yak and Omar Zaldiver as penciler over the course of 6 issues.

High Point - The fight with the "Hot Animal Machines," basically a bunch of Fury Road cosplaying lunatics that stretches over a couple of issues was pretty good. Back-and-forth, not necessarily easy just because Hanover's a bad-ass with a sword, because she's still just one person.

It's not really a nice picture of humanity, but how quick people are to forget all the help someone gave in favor of one time she didn't. Hanover lives up to her bargain with the community, takes what she was promised, and leaves. When she returns later, badly wounded, the guy running the community acts like she's scum because she wouldn't stick around and be their full-time doc, or war chief, or something. Keeping in mind, they got her drunk to make the agreement in the first place. Like I said, not a great view of humanity, but accurate enough. 

Low Point - I really didn't understand who the United First Nations guys were raiding in the final issue. With their underground bunker with card readers and people kept in shower rooms in what look like hospital smocks. I guess Pence's idea was there had to be someone guys like the Hot Animal Machines sold people they captured to, and it was maybe someone who kept more of the old world than most managed, but it felt like an odd fit with the rest of the world that had been established, and it was too late in the series to expand on it.

The Thing #1-5: The daughter of a girl that was Ben's friend as a child (and the niece of a guy who picked on Ben as a child) goes missing. Ben finds her pretty easy, but finds himself targeted by a ton of costumed killers, many of them rocking powers they didn't normally have. Tony Fleecs is the writer, Justin Mason the penciler.

High Point - Ben being confused when Bullseye chucks some throwing stars at him in issue 2. More seriously, the calm way he handled The Gladiator (DD villain, not the Shi'ar guy) in issue 1. Trying to talk things out, block the punches. Failing that, take the punches as long as he can, before finally laying the guy out in one hit. Just really liked the idea that of course the Thing doesn't wallop a person as hard as he can right of the bat, only when it's really needed.

Low Point - That said, fighting the Juggernaut in issue 4 seemed like a time that it would be needed, and Fleecs kind of cheaped out on a fight I was honestly kind of geeked to see. Black Tom wanders into grabbing range like a moron, and Ben hurls the guy down the block and bails while Juggy chases his buddy.

And that's all the titles. Tomorrow, we close it out with ranking stuff.

2025 Comics in Review - Part 3

With 49 books, 2025 was Marvel's worst year in total comics, non-COVID year division, taking the spot from 2019's 52 comics. Although at 43.75%, 2025 Marvel does have a slightly larger slice of a smaller pie than 2019 Marvel (or 2022 for that matter.) On the other end of the spectrum, with 20 comics (and 17.86%), DC had its best year since 2015, which was, what, 4 linewide reboots ago? Were they still on DC You then?

The tertiary publishers ended up at 43 comics (38.39%), although I think over 30 of those came out before July. So that's a bit of an increase over 2024, but it's a lower percentage than the six years prior to that. Only 7 companies in those 43 books, down from 8 in 2024 and 11 in 2023. I don't know if it's that companies are going away, or I'm just having too much trouble finding their stuff now.

Hector Plasm: Hunt for Bigfoot #1-3: Called to a small town in the Pacific Northwest to deal with a lumberjack ghost, who turns out to have been summoned by a witch, Hector finds himself caught up in the search for a possibly murderous Sasquatch.

High Point - I liked some of the layouts Derek Hunter used. The bit in issue 2 when Hector and Lip find the odd stone pile that Hector is getting bad vibes from, for example. Hunter and colorist Spencer Holt draw these red ghostly blobs in the air above the stones, but in their own panels, emphasizing their existing in a different kind of space that not everyone can see.

Cereno writes Hector as a little awkward around most people, which made sense given how he spends most of his time, aka, killing undead things. He does alright with Lip, who is focused on proving there are Sasquatches in the area, but it's harder around people like the town sheriff, who mostly doesn't have time for that kind of nonsense. Definitely seems like a guy who might be involved in a grisly murder!

Low Point - The pacing was a little odd, maybe because each issue was a different length. 

It's Jeff! Jeff Week: Another collection of Kelly Thompson and Gurihiru's Jeff stories. In this case, mostly Jeff trying to find ways via either magic or science to steal other people's food. Which is at least more benign than a lot of other uses for such things.

Laura Kinney: Wolverine #2, 3: I think Erica Schultz was going for Laura being so frustrated and angry with the dissolution of Krakoa that she was trying to draw a line in the sand. No compromises, no more suffering for other mutants, which took the form of her charging in recklessly, then complaining that it still hurts to heal. Then don't run into a bunch of guys with guns like a lunatic. It wasn't really working for me, and Giada Belviso's oddly-proportioned art wasn't doing it for me, either.

Metamorpho: The Element Man #2-6: Al Ewing and Steve Lieber's mini-series continued to try and capture the vibe of the '60s ongoing series. Simon Stagg tries to make an artificial pop star to ruin his daughter's music career, and sics a killbot on Metamorpho instead. Jaya confronts Vandal Savage, the Thunderer returns (sort of), and it turns out Metamorpho is caught up in a battle between suns.

High Point - Well, the whole notion of the Orb of Ra as being used to empower champions in a battle between suns was appropriately bizarre, as was the conclusion. I'm not sure why Lieber drew the battle between Rex and Solaris like that one comic from the 1940s, but what the heck.

On a comedy note, the part where Rex and Urania decide there's strength in numbers and recruit the Element Woman and the Muttamorpho from The Terrifics, only for those characters to take the time to air grievances about their poor treatment. Plus, Ewing had the plan backfire, which was a nice inversion on the trope.

Low Point - I guess Ewing was hoping the book might get extended into an ongoing, but I didn't entirely understand why he spent part of issue 3 with Vandal Savage pointing out various continuity glitches, like Simon Stagg dying in The Terrifics, but being fine (for a given value of the word, he's still an incompetent gasbag) in this book.

Mine is a Long, Lonesome Grave #1, 2: A guy gets out of prison, intending to get some money to a daughter that wants nothing to do with him, and gets cursed. So he goes on a revenge spree. I gave up after 2 issues because I just didn't see anything that felt new or original.

Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu #4-15: Jed MacKay's multi-year run continues (in its third title), with Moon Knight and his crew taking care of the Asgardian Fairchild and his designer enchanted drug. Moon Knight got his Midnight Mission back, plus a soul-stealing sword that is actually a dragon. Leveling up his kit and whatnot. That part was illustrated by Devmalya Pramanik and Rachelle Rosenberg. Then the Wrecker showed up being haunted by people he may have killed while possessed (they were definitely killed, but I don't know about buying that he was possessed at the time.) Domenico Carbone and Rosenberg handled that story.

High Point - Issue #7, when Moon Knight concludes they need a bio-chemist to come up with something to get people off the drug, and decides the best option is to lure Hank Pym out of the Microverse. So he lets 8-Ball dress a bunch of them up as villains and attack Pym's daughter, the Unstoppable Wasp. Reese's pained, reluctant, "Talk to the Chalk! It's Chalk O'Clock!" battlecry will never not make me laugh.

Also, Pramanik drew some really excellent page layouts. Using Marc ripping his mask as a panel break, or somebody's electric whips as they lash at Moon Knight. Just really good stuff. Pramanik is supposed to be the artist on the new Marc Spector: Moon Knight book, so hopefully we'll get more than 5 issues of the art in 2026. 

Low Point - Issue 11, the "Birthday" issue. MacKay uses that bit where everything is drawn from first-person perspective, so the characters appear to be addressing us. All to save up for the reveal of the identity of the character at the end. Maybe if the reveal had done more for me I would have been more impressed? Kind of doubt it, though.

Nova: Centurion #1, 2: Spinning out of whatever Hickman did with that space mini-series, Richard Rider's still trying to be the only Nova, but keeping charged up enough to sustain the Worldmind takes money, and that's thin on the ground. So Jed MacKay and Alvaro Lopez have Nova acting as a merc. But for good causes! Like finding the money stolen from an interstellar crime org! Err. . . 

Tomorrow, we wrap up the remainder of the alphabet. A bunch of mini-series, some of which I abandoned but we'll get to that. 

2025 Comics in Review - Part 2

New comics total in 2025 was 112, up 18 from 2024, but still 7 less than 2023. Worse than every other year except 2020, 2021, and 2024. Could have been a little higher if Dust to Dust #7 didn't keep getting delayed, or Tuatha actually showed up, or I found a copy of Marvel All-on-One at a price I was willing to pay.

Although, through June, I was on pace for around 134 comics. The numbers cratered the second half of the year. I went from over 11 books/month, to less than 8, as all those mini-series I was buying early in the year either ended or started missing months, and nothing much popped up to replace them.

Dark Pyramid #1-5: Written by Paul Tobin, with PJ Holden as artist, a livestreamer goes missing right after finding something strange on Mt. Denali in Alaska. His girlfriend Becca goes to find him, and runs into a lot of strange creatures, including a very persistent monster and a bunch of murderous American soldiers. 

High Point - I thought the big party of Hooky's fans Becca and Shailene briefly take cover in during issue 2 was interesting. Mostly for the mixture of personalities, and trying to figure who would be useful or detrimental in Becca's search going forward. Then they all died, either from Eve (the monster), or the soldiers. But the part where Becca insists they need to go back to try and help the partygoers not run into danger, only to get trampled by a panicked mob, was not only good for establishing Becca's character, it was funny.

Holden's design for Eve was pretty cool, especially the second mouth on the back of its head. The human-faced goats were disturbing. 

Low Point - The fact Tobin and Holden spent most of an issue on that party of weirdos, only to then slaughter them shortly thereafter seemed like a waste. Maybe it was meant to establish just how far the government was going to cover things up, but I don't think it was necessary.

The ending was kind of a downer. "You can't beat 'em, so join 'em," is rarely satisfying to me, and this example was not an exception. 

Deadpool #10, 13-15: Cody Ziglar and Roge Antonio brought Deadpool back to life through some alchemical jiggery-pokery that was supposed to keep his and Eleanor's healing factors from being as overdone. Then they went to settle things up with Death Grip, who learned that keep shards of a sword that cuts souls inside your body is a bad idea.

High Point - I don't really care about the Arakko mutants, but the fight with Solem in issue 13 wasn't bad. Seemed kind of stupid they went to the trouble of bringing a magic sword, then waited so long to use it on a guy with adamantium skin, but whatever. Solem was at least sort of funny.

Low Point - I guess it has to be the 2 issue crossover with Ziglar's Miles Morales: Spider-Man book, since I dropped the title rather than buy a crossover. But I still don't really get what Death Grip's deal was, and making a point of saying Deadpool's healing factor is weaker now just felt kind of pointless. Just stop writing scenes where Deadpool heals so rapidly from extreme damage! You don't have to make an entire storyline about it! Eleanor didn't even have a conventional healing factor prior to this, Duggan gave her some weird thing that reset her age to the point when her mutant power manifested when she sustained massive damage, which is not the same as what Deadpool has!

Dust to Dust #2-6: JG Jones and Phil Bram's Dust Bowl murder mystery pressed on. The mayor's got issues, his PTSD-suffering brother is on who knows what kinds of drugs (administered by the mayor), the sheriff's trying to dry out, the mayor's future son-in-law's a cad, the big-city photographer's snooping around in ways the mayor doesn't like.

High Point - The sepia color scheme, broken up only occasionally by stark red, really captures the bleakness of the surroundings. For a specific moment, the big rabbit-killing round-up in issue 6. It didn't seem like they were killing the rabbits for food, but simply because the rabbits might eat their crops. If, you know, they could get anything to grow. It comes off as people venting their frustration and cruelty on something they perceive as a safe target. What are rabbits gonna do? Throw on a WWI gas mask and stab them with bayonets?

Low Point - Sometimes it's more apparent than others Jones is using photo references. The photographer will look a lot like Cate Blanchett sometimes, others not so much. The sheriff's mustache seems to shift in width and bushiness from one panel to another for no apparent reason.

I also kind of wonder if Jones and Bram can pull all these elements together in two issues. The rainmaker and his assistant, for example, feel like a case of maybe one too many pieces on the board. I mean, there's also the firebrand preacher guy that feels like he should be relevant, but hasn't done much of anything yet. Maybe it's all just supposed to be texture, fleshing out the world these murders are occurring in, but I'm not sure. 

Fantastic Four #28-33: Ryan North spent the last six issues of this volume on One World Under Doom tie-ins, mostly with Cory Smith as penciler. Outside of Doom tricking Sue and Reed into finding a magic sword that might have threatened him, most revolved around Doom having turned the Thing back into Ben Grimm, and this somehow steadily negating/draining the rest of the team's powers, and them trying to reverse this.

High Point - Slim pickings. Doing extended event tie-ins ran contrary to the vibe of North established the first 2+ years on the book. Maybe issue 30, when Ben deals badly with the fact not being the Thing makes him feel weak and unable to keep him family safe, unable to feel confident when he assures them everything is OK. Or issue 33, written from HERBIE's perspective as the team makes a last-ditch effort to recharge their powers. Although Smith's art made me think the FF were being kind of malicious setting the robot up to sacrifice himself for them. Like he's a sucker they've tricked.

Low Point - The whole notion that one member of the team loses their powers, the others will start to as well is apparently left over from something Dan Slott wrote post-Secret Wars, but it's one North would have been better off leaving behind.

Sue Richards being able to create a force bubble that can protect people from time being rewritten, even after she ceased to exist (or was rewritten to never have powers), was also a thing I didn't really need or buy, especially since it just turned into a What If? issue where the most notable thing is Jean Grey and Namor being the last 2 heroes standing.

Fantastic Four #1-6: North, now paired with penciler Humberto Ramos, reboots the book back to #1, and give us 3 more issues of One World Under Doom stuff. Then, finally back to more done-in-one stuff, with aliens who mess with the parts of our brain that seek patterns in things, and the Black Cat being innocent of a crime, to Sue's consternation.

High Point - The page in issue 3 where, with Reed having tampered with Doom's "reset button" machine, Doom is stuck experiencing the same moment of the Thing smashing him in the face over and over again, because he can't simply take the hit (which knocked his mask off) and strike back. He has to make it so the hit never happened at all, because to have his mask knocked off is too great an indignity. Anyway, it's presented as the same panel, over and over, each row becoming more and more copies of the panel, for all the times Doom tries to find a way to turn things around in the split-second he's granted.

Ramos also reined in the excesses in how he draws faces and proportions enough I no longer feel like his art is slapping me in the eyes with a porcupine. 

Low Point - Some of the things North is implying the FF can do are straining my suspension of disbelief. Reed being able to stretch far enough into the Earth's crust to find stuff to make artificial diamonds to create huge subterranean arrows Sue can see from the air, a billion years in the future? Also, shouldn't those diamonds have been subducted back into the mantle by that point, due to plate tectonics?

Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt #1-4: John Allison and Max Sarin bring us another mystery for Shauna Wickle to solve, while she's stuck working in quilting shops to raise funds to repair her boat. I don't know how great a mystery it is - I had it pretty well figured out in issue 2, if not sooner - but then I didn't feel like the first mini-series really did much with the mystery, in terms of providing clues to the reader to solve it. Maybe I just don't understand baking, but I don't understand quilting either, and here we are.

High Point - Watching Shauna try to figure out how to act like a double agent for two people at the same time was a lot of fun. Her beat poetry performance in issue 4 was very cool, or maybe that was just the outfit Sarin gave her.

Sarin's artwork, the exaggerations and flourishes she provides as the characters go through emotional turmoil, fantastic as always. The part in issue 1 where she collapses into a gloopy puddle of tears at learning how much repairs will cost, then pulls it together until the moment she has to request a job, only to revert to the puddle, was just great.

Low Point - I don't know who "Prairie Lady" is, but fortunately, it's not necessary info. It's enough the quilters regard her as a big deal.

Tomorrow is the hodgepodge day. Lots of books with just a couple of issues, things I dropped, or just didn't last very long.

2025 Comics in Review - Part 1

We're back again, to look at all the new comics I bought over the last year. 4 days on that, then the Internet-mandated ranking of stuff on Friday. 17th verse, same as the first.

Avengers Assemble #5: The last issue of Steve Orlando's mini-series about an Avengers "Emergency Response Squad." Which, as pointed out by more than one person, just sounds like the regular Avengers, but what the hell. Anyway, they stop the Serpent Society's plans to turn everybody into snake-people for Mephisto, and then I think the concept continued as one of those online Infinity titles.

Babs #5, 6: Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows' barbarian lady mini-series. Babs and her friends escape from the mines and challenge the jackass that's convincing all the idiot peasants to enslave everyone that isn't a human. It isn't a pretty win, and the peasants are about as ungrateful as you'd expect, but it's still nice to see a stupid dickhead die in embarrassing fashion. And the idiot orc guy sort of comes to his senses, without being rewarded for it, which is good.

Batgirl #3-14: Tate Brombal's story about Batgirl and a bunch of other characters fighting these angry magic-flower-huffing ninja guys. Lady Shiva appears to sacrifice herself for Cass, prompting lots of confusing grief and vengeance related feelings. Then two issues (drawn by Isaac Goodheart) of flashbacks to Shiva and her sister's past, none of which explain why the hell Shiva would have a kid with the guy (David Cain) who killed her sister instead of, you know, killing him. Then there was the reveal of a new sibling for Cass, and then more fighting flower-huffers. Steven Segovia drew the most recent issue, and Takeshi Miyazawa drew the other 9 issues.

High Point - I liked Cass' refusal in issue 3 to deal with Shiva's crap and just start throwing hands at the League of Assassin. I don't think Shiva - or Nyssa, or any of the others - have earned any leeway or benefit of the doubt, so Cass might as well follow her instincts. These are bad people, kick their asses. If Shiva wanted to be a mom, or be treated with respect like one, she should have tried being one in Cass' first however many years of her life.

Miyazawa's got a heavier line than I'm used to seeing in his art, but it gives Cass a more ragged look during the moments where she's losing her grip. And the fight scenes look really nice. 

I'm not sure whether Tenji, Cass' half-brother, is a high point or not. There's really not enough of him to tell so far. He's compassionate, but inexperienced, which seems like a bad combination in this story. I'm not saying he's got "sacrificial lamb for angst purposes" stamped on his forehead (because he'd have to be Hector Hammond, or Peyton Manning to fit all that), but I don't like his odds of surviving. 

Low Point - I feel like Brombal's going to the surprise reveal or SHOCKING BETRAYAL! well too often. Cass has a brother! Nyssa al'Ghul lied about the history of the city! The Unburied have a mole amid their enemies' ranks! This is why I suspect Shiva's not dead, because it would be another bait and switch.

Black Cat #1-5: G. Willow Wilson decided to write a Black Cat series where Felicia tries to be a hero, but is really bad at it. She tried to stop some smugglers, and got crosswise of Daredevil and a vampire. Then Ms. Marvel interrupted her attempt to stop some other guys who were smuggling alien plants. Then she got crosswise of Tombstone and ended up in jail, and I was done with this book.

High Point - Ummmmm, you know, I got nothing. The variant cover I bought for issue 3 was cute? Gleb Melnikov has drawn all the issues so far, so credit for maintaining the same artist for 5 consecutive issues.

Low Point - I could see Black Cat struggling at heroing because unexpected complications keep arising, and people make assumption. Some of that even happens, what with the guys smuggling not furniture, but a vampire. But mostly, Wilson is writing Felicia as kind of an idiot. OK, Tombstone tricked her. Fine. Why is her response to confront him face-to-face and shout schoolyard insults, instead of stealing something important or sabotaging one of his other schemes? It's just idiotic. Also don't like the breaking the 4th wall stuff. Just reinforces my feeling that this was a pitch Wilson originally intended for Harley Quinn.

Bronze Faces #1-6: Written by Shobo and Shof, with art by Alexandre Tefenkgi, a trio of friends decide to recover as many of the Benin bronzes that were taken to display in various European museums. While things start off well, old rivalries and hurts start to undermine things from within. 

High Point - Shobo and Shof really took their time with the relationships between Timi, Gbonka and Sango, pulling apart all the different tensions between them, the protective vibe that veers into possessiveness the other two seem to have over Timi. Tefenkgi did some excellent work with the layouts, like doing a double-page spread of a large, circular room for the setting of a conversation between two characters, where the smaller panels progress in a ring around the two pages. Or some of the exaggeration for effect, like Sango being drawn as huge or on fire when she loses her temper.

I also appreciate they didn't skip on showing the heists and how they were pulled off. I know that wasn't necessarily the focus of the mini-series, but I like heist stuff, so it helped scratch that itch when we get to see how Sango pulls it off in issue 5, or the train heist in issue 2. 

Low Point - There were times I felt like we needed more focus on the other members of their crew. I could usually pick up on relationships between them - two of the guys are brothers, for example - on the second read-through, but it didn't always feel like I had a grasp on them as individuals. So when one guy decides to grab the money and run, it doesn't exactly come out of left field, but it doesn't have much emotional impact.

Calavera P.I. #3, 4: The final two issues of Marco Finnegan's horror-noir story. Where the revived skeleton manages to save his friend's son from a crazy grief-stricken woman who intended to sacrifice the kid as part of some weird process to resurrect her own child. I'm not clear on how the kid made it back after he fell into the portal, whether it was something he did, or the private investigator managed, but happy ending.

That's it for Day 1. One ongoing I'm still buying, one I'm not, the conclusions of a few mini-series, and one complete mini-series. Tomorrow is pretty evenly split between ongoing and mini-series.

The Best and Worst Ways I Passed the Time Last Year

I'm not going to bother with a Music category this year. Not enough candidates. Just mark down The Catalogue featuring Requiem as the Best Album of 2025 and we'll move right along.

BOOKS

30 books read last year, 18 non-fiction and 12 fiction. The fiction was mostly in the first half of the year, and there wasn't a lot that stood out. A lot of things that were interesting or engaging in certain ways (the turns of phrase, the underlying concept), but less so in others regards (characterization, or the big reveal was something I figured out halfway through the book. Best would go pretty easily to Rebecca Roanhorse's Mirrored Heavens, where aside from one character implausibly surviving a situation with no real satisfying, she pulled together a lot of disparate threads into a cohesive and satisfying conclusion. The book never dragged, the dialogue had some snap to it, a well-written story to finish the trilogy. None of the others really come close.

For worst, as much as the good old boy in Randy Wayne White's The Man Who Invented Florida pushed all my worst buttons, I think I have to give it to Robert Richardson's The Lazarus Tree. It was a mystery, but there was never much tension or suspense. Certainly no one in the village seemed in any rush to solve the murder, and the main character really isn't trying to do that either, so much as figure out what his friend's teenage daughter is up to. It felt like Richardson spent a lot of time hinting at mysteries or secrets to us (but not his protagonist) about different villagers, but none of them were relevant to the actual story. At best, they felt like set-up for some future story, but that doesn't do much for me while I'm reading this.

The non-fiction tended to shift in areas of focus over the course of the year. A lot of baseball early, then a lot of biology in late spring-early summer. The back half of the year ran more to film history, with a little bit of political or archaeological history thrown in. I had a few more possible options here. I enjoyed Blood in the Garden quite a bit, which surprised me given my antipathy to the 1990s New York Knicks. No Name on the Bullet had some details and facts I hadn't seen about Audie Murphy, but a lot of things I had from other sources.

But for the best, I'd pick Roger Kahn's Good Enough to Dream and Edward George's The Cuban Intervention in Angola. Kahn captured a lot of the things I enjoy about baseball, without the irritating nostalgia-tinted perspective that jarred me out of David Lamb's Stolen Season. And Kahn also built a lot of humor into the book when describing the chaos of trying to run a minor league team on a shoestring budget. As for George, he gave me pretty much exactly what I was hoping for when I got curious about Cuba inserting itself into things in Africa. I got a sense of the different powers, the push-and-pull between them, the problems complicating any sort of resolution, and the descriptions of the battles were aided with actual maps and a clear organizational philosophy to the writing. On the Road of the Winds by Patrick Vinton Kirch would be a close third.

Worst would have to be Peter Polack's The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War. It was more narrowly focused than what I was hoping for, concentrating on one extended battle in Angola without going much into the context or history. But it still had time for strange digressions about how many private security companies from South Africa operate in the Middle East these days. The description of the battle and movements of the various sides weren't well-illustrated to where you could picture what happened, and there was little clear flow in how he went about describing it.

MOVIES

First off, films covered as part of Overdue Movie Reviews are not eligible, because they aren't new to me, which is what this is focused on. Which leaves 44 movies, 11 of which were from the 2020s. Which is not a pattern I would have expected at the start of the year. Second most common decade was the '50s (7 movies.)

For best films, for all the late-70s to late-80s comedies I watched, I'd say How to Beat the High Cost of Living was the best of the lot. Or at least the one that made me laugh the most. Kid Glove Killer was a quick, compact but clever little thriller, and Escape to Athena was fun simply for the bonkers cast it had. But the top 2 would have to be two movies I watched very early in the year, No Name on the Bullet and Prey.

The former was great in the way this one person arrives, and his mere presence - because Audie Murphy mostly just sits, drinks coffee, and watches people go by - causes to the town to basically tear itself apart. All the ugliness and guilt the supposedly nice citizens are hiding makes them throw away what they profess to believe in so easily. The latter just built things up so well, paralleling the Predator taking on greater and greater challenges while at the same time Naru is slowly building herself up into that great challenge, using the skills she already has.

On the negative side, well, even James Coburn couldn't make me enjoy Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (combined with the general dud that was Killer Elite, not a great year for me and Peckinpah movies.) Arrowhead had potential, but it was a '50 Western, so it was never going to be what I wanted. But I think I knew what the two worst films were going to be back in the summer, and sure enough, it's The End and Fear Blood & Gold. I mean, Throw Momma from the Train wasn't really funny outside a couple of moments of physical comedy, but it was funnier than The End, which went to exhausting lengths to assure us Burt Reynolds' character was a self-centered coward, then doubled down on that through the rest of its run time.

And Fear Blood & Gold? Just nonsensical. If Santiago wants to escape from Oscar, why doesn't he run when he successfully spikes his beans? Why does Oscar, having been drugged once by Santiago, accept a hallucinogenic drug from his later? Why does Oscar shoot with his revolver turned sideways like he's some '90s gangbanger? Why does the film need the odd old man? Who captured Oscar and Santiago at the beginning of the film, and why did they never appear again? Just a total disaster, and not even bad enough to put me to sleep. 

VIDEO GAMES

I beat a lot of games this year, although maybe that's the wrong word, given how so many of them were structured around dialogue, with only a limited amount for you to actually do. Did I really "beat" Dear Esther or Firewatch, or did I just reach the end of them? Maybe "finished" is a better word.

Anyway, worst game is really easy. It's 890B, which was a frustrating, pointless piece of crap with stiff dialogue, no character development, with almost all the run time burnt on puzzles I could play on a graphing calculator back in the '90s. The game apparently has good and bad endings, but it there's just a single Achievement for beating the game, regardless of which you get. Because they know nobody is going to play this trash twice without being reimbursed for it. A buck-and-a-half, and still a waste of money. I mean, I figured out after 30 minutes that Hello Neighbor was not for me, but I can see how someone else might enjoy that game. Not 890B. 0 out of 5, send the game designers to the gulag and leave them there.

Best games is trickier, because, with all these short, fairly limited games I played, it's a case of which thing a game focused on that I preferred. Abzu was a beautiful game, and mostly very relaxing to play, but not exactly challenging or the sort of thing where I felt really invested in the story. On the other hand, I enjoyed aspects of the story and the character development in The Fall, but it was such a murky-looking game and I really hate aiming using the right joystick.

So, if I just pick two, I guess it'll the The Stanley Parable: DeLuxe Edition, and The Sinking City. Stanley Parable simply because it was hilarious. It's probably the thing I laughed hardest at all year, outside of conversations Alex and I had at various points during our trip in October. As for Sinking City, while I'm not a huge fan of sanity meters, and definitely didn't love the wobbly screen effects that accompanied a wavering sanity, there was still a lot to enjoy in the game. Searching for evidence, being given the option what to do with that evidence once you had it. The visual look of the characters and setting. They kept crafting simple and straightforward, so it was useful without having so many options I got paralyzed by choice and couldn't figure out what to do.

2024 Comics in Review - Part 5

Last day is, as always, devoted to rankings. That's what everyone's on the Internet for, right? To shout their opinions about which things are better than which other things?

Favorite Ongoing Series (min. 6 issues):

1. Fantastic Four

2. Deadpool

3. Vengeance of the Moon Knight

That's it, that's the 3 options. Of those, FF was the pretty clear winner. I didn't love every issue, but there were a couple - Reed & Johnny's Halloween adventure, Ben & Johnny's grocery store competition - that I liked much more than any issue of the other two books. The other two books were probably a tie. If you asked me tomorrow, I might flip their order.

Favorite Mini-Series (>50% shipped in 2024):

1. Blood and Fire

2. Babs

3. Deer Editor

All told, there were 18 mini-series. Eliminate the ones that I didn't finish - Body Trade, Dazzler, Power Pack, Morning Star, Jackpot and Black Cat - that leaves 13. Eliminate the ones that shipped half their issues of less - Coda, Red Before Black, Calavera P.I., Midnight Western Theatre: Witch Trial, Dust to Dust - we're down to 8. Black Widow and Hawkeye isn't moving to the permanent collection, neither is Night Thrasher. 6 candidates remaining.

Avengers Assemble doesn't match up with the others on the art, and Ms. Marvel: Mutant Menace had that dud of a 2nd issue. And I just didn't enjoy Blow Away as much as the other 3. Sami Kivela's art is excellent, but Deer Editor's story doesn't totally hold together in places. Then Blood and Fire has the advantage of having finished, so I know it stuck the landing. Whereas with Babs, that remains to be seen.

There were no one-shots, so moving right along to -

Favorite Trade Paperback/Graphic Novel (anything purchased in 2024):

1. Star Power and the Mystery of the Zel Gux Dynasty by Michael Terracciano and Garth Graham

2. Kid Eternity book one by Ann Nocenti and Sean Phillips

3. Total Suplex of the Heart by Joanne Starer and Ornella Greco

I didn't buy many TPBs or GNs last year, but these were my favorites of what I did get. Star Power volume 3 might be my favorite in the series, as it's sort of an Indiana Jones-style quest involving figuring out puzzles and passing trials to unlock an old secret. I didn't even know Nocenti wrote a Kid Eternity book until Googum reviewed an issue of Random Happenstance. There is a lot going on in that book, as usual for Nocenti's writing, but that makes it fun to try and dig through. Total Suplex of the Heart was a more personal book about someone trying to figure out what they really wanted and then trying to get it, while also coming to some sort of peace with themselves, but it pretty heartfelt and messy in good ways.

Favorite Manga (anything purchased in 2024):

1. Cross Game volume 7, by Mitsuru Adachi

2. The Crater, by Osamu Tezuka

3. One Piece vol. 43, by Eiichiro Oda

In contrast, I bought a lot of manga in 2024. Some of it better than others, some of it I'm withholding judgment until I see how things play out. For example, the first volume of Yakuza Fiance had a really cool moment that the book then undercut a few volumes later, which diminished my feelings somewhat.

But the 7th volume of Cross Game had plenty of the baseball action that reminded me what I like about the series, and The Crater offers a lot of different sorts of stories by Tezuka. I definitely don't understand all the historical context that informs a lot of them, but the stories still work even from my much-different temporal and cultural perspective. Volume 43 of One Piece is a major turning point in the Ennies Lobby arc, when it looks like the Straw Hats, having beaten what looked like the major antagonists, find out their troubles are really just getting going.

Favorite Writer:

1. Ann Nocenti

2. Eiichiro Oda

3. Ryan North

I would say think of these less as rankings, and more as me just selecting one writer each from new comics (North), manga (Oda), and the tpb/back issue stuff (Nocenti). North's very good at coming up with clever problems for his characters to confront and solve, Nocenti's work always has a lot of things going on with it to dig through, so even if I can't follow some of it, there's still plenty to hold onto. And Oda, for all that it's a story about a bunch of kids deciding to be pirates, can put a lot of heart into it about despair and the abuse of power and how sometimes you have to decide to break unjust laws to do the right thing.

Favorite Artist (min. 110 pages):

1. Mitsuru Adachi

2. Kevin Maguire

3. Adam Warren

I considered ditching the 110 page restriction, but deciding to simply stop restricting it to new comics. So any artist that I bought 110 pages worth of their stuff this year was fair game. With Warren, I've been tracking down his various Dirty Pair mini-series. I mostly got the earliest stuff, but it's nice to watch the progression of his art over time as the lines get thicker, things get more exaggerated and frenetic, the panels full of all sort of machinery and speed lines and everything else. Maguire is courtesy of all those Justice League International issues I grabbed at that convention last January. It's all about the expressiveness of his art and the comedic timing. As for Adachi, I love the way the action on the field is portrayed, the small panels focused on specific moments, while also being able to sell quiet moments and the funny parts.

OK, that's it. We're done with last year. Forward, to a most likely horrifying future!

2024 Comics in Review - Part 4

Only five artists made it to 110 pages this year. There were a few others with a shot - one more issue of Babs and Jacen Burrows was in -  but close doesn't cut the mustard here! Niccola Izzo (Blow Away) and Marco Finnegan (Morning Star, Calavera P.I.) each reached 110 pages. Roge Antonio was somewhere between 110 and 130, because I don't know how to divide up issue 4 of Deadpool between he and Eric Gapstur.

In the end, it came down to either Carlos Gomez (Fantastic Four) or Alessandro Cappuccio (assorted Moon Knight stuff.) Gomez had 150 pages, but thanks to the first issue of Fist of Khonshu being 25 pages, Cappuccio just edged past him with 155 pages, making this two of the last three years Cappuccio's been the most prolific artist in pagecount.

Night Thrasher #1-4: Dwayne Taylor's back from the dead (courtesy Secret Wars), but has decided the best thing to do is close the Taylor Foundation's doors and start fresh somewhere new. Unfortunately, there's a lot of stuff going on in the old neighborhood he might have to address first. J. Holtham writes, Nelson Daniel draws, Matt Milla's the color artist.

High Point: I think Holtham's sets up a nice internal conflict for Dwayne. He thinks he's better off going some place without the baggage, that he can still help people, but without feeling dirty for using a Foundation that started from something ugly. But the "baggage" includes people who relied on him, or looked up to him, like Elvin (aka, Rage.) Dwayne ultimately can't walk away from them, so he can't walk away from the neighborhood.

Low Point: The end, where Dwayne is able to convince the local councilman (concerned with preserving the neighborhood, including the locals and their lives) and the heavy-handed cop (concerned with protecting the gentrifying upscale businesses) that, really, they want the same thing and should work together. That was the least believable part of the mini-series, and possibly the least believable thing I read in a comic the entire year.

The Pedestrian #1-4: Joey Esposito and Sean von Gorman's story about a town that seems to drag you down. But there's a mysterious stranger looking out for people, even as there's another presence encouraging others to give in to their worst impulses and just rage and destroy.

High Point: I like that they introduced a handful of regular folks, each of whom are in some sort of frustration with their life, and then have them react in different ways. The scene in issue 3 where the "Don't Walk" sign is flashing and each time it flashes, another of the creepy guys appears around. That was some effectively ominous build-up.

Low Point: I still don't really get what's going on with the dimension with the enormous stoplight, other than it seems to possess someone to get them to act as its avatar. The whys and wherefores have not been explained so far.

Power Pack - Into the Storm #1-3: Louise Simonson and June Brigman with a story of the Power kids and Franklin Richards getting caught up in a struggle with a Snark princess out to reclaim her ship, and a Brood Queen out for revenge. The theme of all the kids, regardless of species, struggling to meet their parents' expectations while still being themselves had some legs, but there was too much other stuff in the mix.

Red Before Black #1-3: A former soldier tries to bring down a drug lord to get out of prison, only to end up on the run with the lady she was supposed to kill to prove her bonafides. At least so far, I'm enjoying this better than anything else of Stephanie Phillips' I've read.

High Point: The odd jungle Val descends into when she gets too stressed/has a PTSD episode is well-rendered by Goran Sudzuka (artist) and Ive Scorcina (color artist). And the notion Leo can see it for some reason could be interesting. I'm also curious if Phillips has the two main characters become friends, or remain unwilling allies against all the people breathing down their necks.

Low Point: There hasn't really been anything too bad yet. Um, I wish Leo was listening to a different book on tape in issue 3?

Rogues #1, 2: I think this was El Torres bringing back some characters he'd published at a different company previously. Bram and Weasel do different stuff for money, and it usually doesn't work out too well for them from what I can tell. And speaking of things not going well, Scout solicited 6 issues of the book, but only managed to ship 2!

Vengeance of the Moon Knight #1-5, 8, 9: So after MacKay killed Moon Knight off at the end of the previous volume, he did this, where the rest of the cast try to continue the work. Except there's an imposter Moon Knight running around. Then Blood Hunt got going. Alessandro Cappuccio drew the first five issues, Devamlya Pramanik the final two, Rachelle Rosenberg did the color work on all of them.

High Point: I was pretty pleased with myself for guessing the Shroud was the phony Moon Knight after issue 2. Look, I don't get many predictions right, let me have this one. I mentioned Rosenberg's color work yesterday. I like the version of his costume Pramanik uses, where most of the bodysuit is black once you get past the chest and the guards on the shins and forearms. I think it looks a little cooler than the all-white costume.

Low Point: That said, I didn't love the Shroud getting used as the unhinged, second-rate antagonist good guy here any more than I did when Mark Waid and Chris Samnee did it in Daredevil. Poor dude's a punching bag every time he pops up for the last decade. Also, I refused to buy the Blood Hunt tie-ins, so they go here by default.

Werewolf by Night #1: Jason Loo and Sergio Davila with what seemed like a Werewolf by Night/Elsa Bloodstone team-up book, where Jack thinks he's lost control of his wolf side, but there's probably more to the story. But Loo brought the Hood into the mix, and Davila makes Jack's werewolf form look more like a were-gorilla and I just wasn't having it.

Alright, tomorrow, the ranking of things against other, arbitrarily similar things!

2024 Comics In Review - Part 3

After a couple of years of buying from 13 different publishers, it was down to 10 this year. If certain things had shown up as solicited, it might have gotten to 12, but that's not how it worked out. With Diamond filing for bankruptcy, I wonder if the downward trend is going to reverse. Only 3 publishers - Marvel, Boom!, Mad Cave - got more than 5% of the total, and Marvel was the only one that broke 10%. And obviously, all the other publishers combined didn't come close to adding up to Marvel's total.

Jackpot and the Black Cat #1: Mary Jane's doing the superhero thing, but in trying to help the Black Cat (who is being blackmailed via app), ends up blackmailed herself. I figured the app had become sentient, which Fantastic Four had done literally two months earlier, so I didn't want to deal with that again, and didn't care enough to hang around and see if it was something different (I think it turned out Felicia's new girlfriend was the one behind it all.) But at least Celeste Bronfman and Emilio Laiso got a little more creative with MJ's powers than MacKay was during that lousy Dark Web tie-in.

Laura Kinney - Wolverine #1: We just reviewed this last week, but writer Erica Schultz seems to be having Laura Kinney respond to Krakoa's fall by trying to protect any mutants in the most ham-handed, counterproductive manners possible. Giada Belviso's art works better in the quieter scenes. Postures and proportions start to get weird during the action. Still, I'm curious to see how long Laura can keep just charging into problems and attacking everyone that tries to help.

Metamorpho - The Element Man #1: Only one issue to work from, but Al Ewing and Steve Lieber seem to going for the same vibe as the original Haney-written series, right down to the happenin' lingo and oddball villains. I'm far from the biggest Ewing fan, but if he can avoid turning this into another story about stories or myths or whatever, I'll probably hang around a bit.

Midnight Western Theatre - Witch Trial #3, 5: One of these issues actually shipped in '23, but I couldn't get it until 2024. Ortensia loses her adoptive mother figure at the same time she learns said mother figure had been keeping things from her all along. Ortensia decides to embrace her alleged destiny in a way where she's at lest setting the terms, although she still needs outside interference to actually get the bad guy. I don't know if Louis Southard will ever get the third mini-series published, or if Butch Mapa will be the artist if he does, but they make a good creative team.

Moon Knight - Fist of Khonshu #1-3: We'll get to the series that preceded this tomorrow, but at any rate, Marc Spector's back and Jed MacKay's got him trying to bring down a drug dealer. Not having much success so far. Lost his house, got the cops on his ass, Tigra's pissed he didn't tell her Hank Pym's not dead. Alessandro Cappuccio was back as artist for the first two issues, but Domenico Carbone drew issue 3, so I wonder if Cappuccio's moving on.

High Point: Rachelle Rosenberg's color work is aces. She's helped keep a consistent feel to all these Moon Knight books Mackay's written, even as the artists keep changing. Domenico's art is at lot rounder, the lines less sharp than Cappuccio's, but the book still feels the same. On another note, he's not a major part of the book, but I like that 8-Ball sticks around. That Moon Knight didn't throw him out, but let's the guy stay and work. And 8-Ball is presumably smart enough to figure he gets beat up less this way.

Low Point: As always, MacKay's pacing is not something that really works with me. Stories seem to move very slowly, then accelerate suddenly all at once for the conclusion.

Morning Star #1-3: By writers David Andry and Tim Daniel, plus artist Marco Finnegan and colorist Jason Wordie, a mother and her two children travel to the forest where her firefighter husband died, to scatter his ashes. Then one of the kids goes missing, and there's all kinds of weird shit in the forest.

High Point: The different ways the members of the family had adjusted to the guy's death was interesting, at least in theory. The older daughter who tries to take over as protector, but doesn't get to be much of a kid. The younger brother who retreats into imagination. That kind of stuff.

Low Point: I don't feel like Finnegan's art was a good match for a series that needed things to look weird. It works on Calavera P.I., because even as a skeleton, Calavera basically acts and dresses like a human, and everyone else appears to be human. It sort of ignores the weird until it's relevant. But here, the weirdness seemed like a big part of the point, and while there were some panels that were ominous, on the whole it differentiate the weird stuff from the normal people caught in it.

Ms. Marvel - The New Mutant #1-4: Kamala tries to resume her life as Ms. Marvel now that everyone hates and fears her as a mutant. Including all her friends and family who were mindwiped of her death. Meanwhile, that one ORCHIS scientist is still messing with Kamala, via reanimated corpses of various X-Men. And her powers are acting up. Iman Vellani and Sabir Pirzada were the writers, Scott Godlewski drew 3 issues, but Rob Di Salvo drew issue 2.

High Point: Kamala fighting her own reanimated corpse, complete with the mutant (movie-esque) powers that haven't activated yet. And winning via essentially hugging her other self felt appropriate for someone who only occasionally wins with punching. That it turns out her powers are freaking out because the X-Men were so arrogant as to resurrect her with her powers, without considering the role the Terrigen Mists played in them. Excellent work, X-Morons! Great hustle!

Low Point: Issue 2, where Kamala gets roped into helping Lila Cheney rescue a bunch of her fans from Mojo, by making Ms. Marvel (pretending to be Lila's drummer) into a viral sensation. Except it seemed to have nothing to do with the rest of the mini-series - beyond maybe the notion she could only become as popular as she once was by being someone else entirely. Except it isn't like she was popular with her old friends, it was just a bunch of goobers watching Mojo TV that liked her.

I should have described this as the day where subtitles run amok. Anyway, tomorrow covers the entire back half of the alphabet.

2024 Comics in Review - Part 2

Only 94 new comics this year. Which is down 25 from last year, and the lowest non-2020 year by 13 comics (2021's 107 comics). Couple of causes. One, I dropped several books after 1 or 2 issues (one of which we'll look at in a minute.) Two, a lot of stuff didn't ship, or didn't ship as often. Scout Comics alone had around 13 books I expected to see sometime in 2024 that just, didn't materialize.

All that being the case, Marvel went way up in percentage from 2023 (59.57% vs. 49.58%), despite having 3 fewer books (56 vs. 59.) It's Marvel's biggest piece of the pie since 2017. DC did drop a little, from 9 books to 3 (7.56% down to 3.19%), though there wasn't much room to drop. It was the other publishers that took the real hit, from 51 comics to 35 (though that's only a drop from 42.86% to 37.23%.) Either way, it's the other publishers worst year since. . .2017. Why can't I get anything good to revert to 2017? I'd like to be 7 years younger right about now.

Coda #5: The conclusion to Si Spurrier and Matias Bergara's return to the adventures of Hum and Serka, as they try to stop two different forces, each with a following that want to surrender control of their life to something or someone that promises to make it all make sense. It's not a perfect ending, but that's part of the point of the story: perfect doesn't exist, but you do the best you can.

Dazzler #1, 2: And here's a mini-series I abandoned after two issues. I wasn't invested enough in the mystery of who was staging these attacks on Dazzler, and some of the characters' decisions didn't make a lot of sense, or were immediately contradicted. Domino agrees Dazzler shouldn't use her powers in an offensive (meaning, to attack) way if she's attacked, and Dazzler agrees, only to ditch this at the end of her fight with Scorpia at the end of issue 1. Also, the lyrics for her songs are awful. So I wasn't digging Jason Loo's writing on any level, and Rafael Louriero's art wasn't bad, but also wasn't going to keep me buying the book.

Deadpool #1-9: Cody Ziglar puts Deadpool initially on his own, save his symbiote-dog daughter, Princess. But he's targeted by the leader of a strange cult and needs money to find him, so he brings in Taskmaster and becomes a full-fledged merc business, until his other daughter Eleanor shows up. Then Deadpool dies. Then, by which point Ziglar's sharing writing credits with Alexis Quasarano, Deadpool comes back to life. Roge Antonio draws most of the issues, albeit one with Eric Gapstir, and Andrea Di Vito draws the other 3.

High Point: The friendship between Eleanor and Princess is alternately sweet and funny. It was nice to see the book avoids having the two in some rivalry for their dad's affection. Likewise, that we learn in issue 8 that Deadpool and Valentine's relationship failed because the two of them couldn't find work-life balance, rather than the sort of disasters that usually mark Deadpool's relationships.

Low Point: I'm still not sure what Death Grip's fascination with Deadpool was (is?). Also, I'm not sure about Eleanor's inherited healing factor giving her aspects of Taskmaster's ability (at a much slower rate.) Mostly though, I'm wondering where the heck Preston is? Her adopted daughter just up and vanishes, now there's a girl Deadpool running around and Preston is, apparently, doing nothing about it?

Deer Editor #1-3: Ryan Lindsay and Sami Kivela, who teamed up on Everfrost, team-up again in a story about a newspaper editor (who is a deer that walks on two legs and talks) who starts digging into some weird stuff about the mayor and finds vampires.

High Point: Kivela's art is excellent, and finds a balance in drawing Bucky moving like a human, and the times where he moves or acts more like a deer. I don't know why the character's like that, as Lindsay doesn't go into it (not explaining things seems to be a trait of his.) The ending leaves certain things unresolved, but I think Lindsay makes that work within the context of the story. Bucky's not a cop, or even a private eye. He broke open a particular story. Now he's on to the next lead, even if it's for something else.

Low Point: There are some things that happen or are revealed in the third issue that feel rushed or kind of cheap. A character not only isn't dead, he's been acting as a mole for months, which we'd seen none of.

Doctor Strange #13, 14: Dr. Strange needs to get his hands on a sentient D&D book, and recruits a bunch of other characters Jed MacKay's written recently to help. Mordo gets involved, it's a whole thing. I really would have liked more time on them navigating the game aspects of the situation they were in, but MacKay treated it more as everyone being in a generic swords n' sorcery setting, like Kulan Gath showed up again.

Dust to Dust #1: It's only been one issue so far, but there's a rich guy throwing his weight around, a sheriff with a jaw bone he's got no answers for, a photographer in from Chicago, and a bunch of people looking for greener pastures elsewhere. I have no idea how all of that is going to combine.

Fantastic Four #15-20, 23-27: Let's see, with Ryan North writing, Steven Cummings drew an issue about Ben and Alicia's daughter trying to prove shapeshifter are good and cool. Francesco Martarino drew the issue about Val and Franklin nearly dooming the world with a universal solvent. Ivan Fiorelli drew the conclusion of the story about an app gaining sentience, plus Reed and Johnny's Halloween adventure. Carlos Gomez drew all the other issues, involving time travel, alternate universes, Trapster getting everyone stuck in a noir. You know, the usual stuff.

High Point: Nicki's impression of her dad in issue 27 was pretty funny. So was the Halloween issue, as Johnny's boredom gets him to egg Reed into indulging his curiosity in bad ways. The skull with it's little top hat that says "bleh" while it spews blood cracked me up. I think I liked issue 20 the best, though. Ben and johnny competing for Employee of the Month at the grocery store. Gomez drawing Ben with a pencil taped to his finger to act as a stylus or to punch buttons was a thoughtful touch. cash registers are not built for fingers like The Thing's.

Low Point: I guess I could default to the two Blood Hunt tie-in issues, since I just skipped them. As far as issues I bought, the one where Doom's magic shield sends them back in time. Not that the notion of an Earth where the Moon never formed isn't intriguing, but how easily Reed tosses off a solution kind of diminished the scale.

Tomorrow, a bunch of stuff I, for a variety of reasons, bought 3 or fewer issues of!

2024 Comics in Review - Part 1

OK, here we go! I was a little annoyed the weather delayed the post office getting me those last 3 comics. Then I remembered how in 2014 and 2015, I couldn't do this until February because of that useless guy that was running the store I used to buy from. Third week in January doesn't look so bad now. Same format I've used since 2009, so I'm not going to waste time explaining it.

Avengers Assemble #1-4: First four issues of a 5-issue mini-series about a special "emergency response squad" version of the Avengers, where whoever's at the mansion responds. Steve Orlando's writing it, but with a different artist in each issue (Cory Smith, Scot Eaton, Marcelo Ferreira, and Valentina Pinti, respectively), though Sonia Oback's been the primary colorist for each issue.

High Point: The mix of done-in-one missions, with the Serpent Society scheme building in the backdrop is a nice idea. The Red Ghost being hunted by the ghosts of all the apes he experimented on that didn't get powers was a cool idea. I like that Orlando brought in a few unusual choices like Night Thrasher and Lightspeed to go with old stand-bys like Captain America and Hawkeye. Having the same colorist helps the book maintain a similar feel from issue-to-issue (though none of the artists are so wildly different as to be distracting.)

Low Point: This thing really needs more than five issues. Orlando and the artists are trying to show the characters interacting at the mansion, but it's got to be confined to just a couple of pages. Because there's still that issue's mission to explain and confront, plus devoting pages to the Serpent Society plot. So there's not really time to build any sort of subplots out of those character interactions. Also, the fact that character voice balloons keep showing, "AVENG.E.R.S." How would they even say it like that? Just call yourselves Avengers and be done with it.

Babs #1-4: Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows with a story about a warrior lady, trying and mostly failing to make a buck in your sort of generic medieval fantasy world (albeit one filtered through Ennis' sense of humor.)

High Point: The backstory for Babs the group of angry nerds managed to piece together in issue 3 was pretty funny. For the range of things she's apparently gotten tangled up in, and how often they've terribly for her. It's a lot of those smaller bits that I enjoy, like Babs' harmless encounter with the cursed group of undead warriors needing directions to the next town they need to haunt. With little gags like the futility of even enchanted hair care products when you're a cursed, shuffling corpse.

Low Point: As far as the larger plot, with the knight vowing to expel all the "weird" creatures from the lands, when he's really just putting them into slavery, I'm just waiting for the point when Babs hopefully kills the guy in some suitably humiliating and painful way. Until then, Tiberius Toledo and his Make This Generic Fantasy World Great Again stuff is just irritating noise.

Batgirl #1, 2: Tate Brombal and Takeshi Miyazawa are trying to explore Cassandra Cain's relationship with her mother. With the added difficulty of super-powered ninjas trying to kill them both for reasons that haven't been explained yet, but I hope are not going to annoy me.

Black Widow and Hawkeye #1-4: Stephanie Phillips and Paolo Villanelli with a story where Hawkeye's on the run for killing a Russian diplomat, and the Black Widow's trying to help him, but neither of them is really listening to the other. Also, the Black Widow has a symbiote now, and Damon Dran's involved.

High Point: I like the flashback parts that seem to be set during the '60s era, even though I don't think the continuity lines up. But there's no symbiotes, which is a definite plus. The conceit behind the series, that Clint and Natasha's friendship has become reduced to each of them dropping everything to help the other whenever their in danger, and that not being a great basis for friendship isn't a bad notion, though I have no idea if it actually holds up to scrutiny if you actually check their recent comic history.

Low Point: I mentioned the symbiote, right? Neither character needs one, but they both end up using it at some point.

Blood and Fire #1-3: A samurai accompanies his lord to the death of his elder brother, only for them to fall prey to an ambush by the other brother. The samurai attempts to return to his wife and child, only to end up on a quest for revenge. Aaron Wroblewski writes it, with Ezequiel Rubio Lancho as the artist.

High Point: The art is mostly in black-and-white, save the blood that gets splashed around from all the swords (plus all the arrows to the throat.) But makes it eye-catching, and Lancho's very good at using his shadows as things take a turn towards supernatural horror in the third issue. I was very sure I knew how things were going to go after the first few pages in issue 1, and they took a route I didn't expect, but in a way I really enjoyed.

Low Point: I didn't really have any complaints with it. Wroblewski and Lancho seemed to have a pretty straightforward goal with the story they wanted to tell, and they did it.

Blow Away #1-5: A photographer tries to rebuild her career by capturing proof a rare bird is nesting high up on a frozen mountain. Instead, she captures video evidence of a murder. Or does she? Zac Thompson's the writer, with Niccola Izzo as artist and Francesco Segala and Gloria Martinelli as the color artists.

High Point: Thompson, Izzo, and the colorists really work well together to make the audience question whether anything nefarious took place. Thompson gives Brynne a backstory where she kept digging when people told her to stop, and it ended in blood, but keeps the specifics hidden for a few issues. So you can wonder if she's overzealous, or desperate for a story. And Izzo keeps the characters distant enough, even in the video playbacks Brynne's scouring, that they aren't much more than stick figures Segala and Martinelli apply a splash of color to. So Brynne sees a shove, but do we see that? It's nicely done.

Low Point: The fifth and final issue didn't really clear up as many things as I would have liked. We know whether Brynne saw what she thought she did, and some people who were involved. The way the sheriff was acting doesn't really make a lot of sense, and I'm still only halfway confident I understand what the hunter guy's role was.

The Body Trade #1, 2: Zac Thompson again, this time paired with Jok as his artist. A man who is complicit in the death of his own son, finds out a company offered to pay the kid's medical bills in exchange for getting his body after death. But the man wants his son's body to bury, so he's gonna get violent about it. But I didn't really care about him, and while the art may fit with how twisted and broken everyone in the story is, I didn't like looking at it either, so I stopped buying it.

Calavera P.I. #1, 2: Marco Finnegan with a story about a private investigator who returns from the dead for one night to help an old friend locate her missing son. The person who orchestrated the kidnapping wanted him brought back, though the whys haven't revealed themselves. Honestly, the characters didn't seem to be showing much urgency in issue 2, given  Calavera's got just the one night to crack this case. Maybe he'll get the lead out in issue 3.

That's Day 1 (and a crapload of mini-series) out of the way.