Reading Rambo

OKAY. I love the Inhumans. For those unaware, they're a part of Marvel's ever-expanding universe of ridiculous proportions. They live on an island called Attilan where EVERYTHING IS COOL except they maybe have a slave race? Unclear. I was introduced to Medusa in Ms Marvel where I was like who is this lady with amazing hair and why does she live on a separate island with this giant dog . So I checked this out. The ISSUE with Inhumans by Paul Jenkins is it kind of assumes you already know a lot of shit about the Inhumans. Here's what I learned from this book: 1. Black Bolt is the shit. He also can't speak, FOR THIS SMALLEST WHISPER WOULD CLEAVE WORLDS IN TWAIN. 2. Medusa is his wife. Her hair has the strength of steel? And she can manipulate it psychically to like...ensnare people. I don't get why this makes her queen of the Inhumans, but her hair does  look pretty great. 3. Kid Inhumans wait for their powers to go through some metamorphosis thing, and t...

American Vampire by Scott Snyder is a 19th/20th century American graphic novel/comic book series I-can't-quite-distinguish-between-those-two-yet about vampires. Scary vampires. Not terrifying vampires, but not your Anne Rice, Stephenie Meyer, whoever else was making vampires the sexiest versions of themselves. American Vampire  distinguishes between the Old World vampires, which are more of the Bram Stoker, how-we-know-them type, and the New World vampire, which has some convenient and fun traits and also very scarily long fingers. WHY ARE LONG FINGERS SO SCARY. WHAT IN OUR EVOLUTION MADE US THINK THAT WAS A SCARY THING. You know how squirrels and rabbits and whatever just know to stay away from certain shit? I feel like we have some instinct that's like "oh, long skinny limbs and/or fingers? Get the fuck away from that." But GOOD LORD, why .  Snyder's story starts with 2 Hollywood girls in 1925, then flips back and forth between then and the 188...

I liked the hell out of Jonathan Hickman when I read the first East of West ( remember that? it's ok if you don't — I get it, life is busy), so when I saw he had ANOTHER series called The Manhattan Projects , I went "oooh." And then Jenny from Reading the End said she tried reading it and had to stop after #1 because it is entirely dudes. And I essentially POOH-POOHED HER CONCERNS and did it anyway, because #EastofWestLove. I just finished volume 2, and wtf, man. It's all dudes. I mean ALL dudes. I mean women do not exist in this universe. I mean that I get that he's basing it off WWII-era scientists, but if you're inventing magical science shit and Buddhist monks who can open portals with their minds, MAYBE ALSO HAVE SOME WOMEN IN THERE. damnit, Jonathan   East of West  is still great. But just...damn, sir. This is some egregious shit. Unless you were doing some Fight Club  thing where Chuck Palahniuk said he was trying to create a space for ...

So ages and ages ago, I bought the new Elektra volumes by Haden Blackman and Mike Del Mundo, because they're beautiful and gorgeous and well-written. Mmm. But right after starting to read them, I thought 'Ah, Elektra seems to have been created by Frank Miller for the Daredevil series, so how about I read her stuff from the beginning? That sounds like a wise move.' Unfortunately, the show D aredevil had just come out on Netflix, so it took LITERAL months and months for the Dare devil Omnibus to come in at the library. Until finally today it did! And off I went to the library to finally obtain this surely amazingly-done treasure. So many people had been in line before me. Frank Miller has been so praised. So IMAGINE MY CHAGRIN UPON ENCOUNTERING THIS: AHHHHHHHH. OMG. THE EXPOSITION . THE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE EXPOSITION.  Both of the panels I'm posting here are legit in the first three pages of this comic from 1979. Might I remind you that by 1979, we...

I've been reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman for a while now, and I've got some feelings about it. Good feelings. Overwhelmingly positive feelings. Feelings SO positive that I will categorically state that it is the greatest contribution to comics ever QUIET ALL OF YOU. REMEMBER THAT TIME HE VISITED HELL so great. Sandman hits on almost everything I like, tone-wise. It's this mix of darkness, but not darkness for darkness's sake, and literary references and myth and seeing the story through the eyes of someone near-omnipotent, but also flawed: who's above human experience, but also enmeshed in it. I LOVE IT SO MUCH. I'm on vol. 5 of the really pretty recolored versions that came out in 2011, so I've got a ways to go, which is good because I NEVER WANT IT TO END NEVER EVER. Said recoloring. Mmm so much better now. I mean. I could do without the Hazel/Foxglove storyline, which you'd think I'd be into, because lesbians before lesbians...