I Read Comic Books discussion

Happy June! Can you believe we're nearly at the halfway point of the year?!

What are you reading this month? Making progress on the 2025 Reading Challenge?

Tell us all about it in the thread below!

As always, if you'd like to see what the IRCB crew is reading, take a peek at the Top of My Pile posts over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ircbpodcast

Last week's adventures in comics.

Gatchaman: Only One Earth ★★★
Eh, Joe and Ken get trapped underground by a natural disaster. It's not the best story. The art's OK. To be honest, I'd rather have had Edwards draw this rather than write it.

From the DC Vault: Death in the Family; Robin Lives! ★★
I thought this was an interesting idea but poor execution. Jason lives... a very boring life while he tries to cope with the trauma of Joker almost beating him to death. Then there's the last issue where this goes off the rails in the worst way. I mean, come on. You can do better than that DeMatteis. I think we were better off not knowing what would happen if Jason Todd had lived in the 80s. What we got was much cooler.

Predator versus Black Panther ★★★
It was alright. Some Predators come to Wakanda to try and take vibranium. Random death ensues. This looks like it's on an alternate earth as the Falcon shows up but has never heard of Wakanda before.

Noblesse, Vol. 3 ★★
I think there's a lot that gets lost when this is translated from the web to the page. All of the art looks like it's floating in random boxes in space and it's really difficult to figure out what order to read the panels in. Then there are zero backgrounds in each of the panels so it just feels like random figures floating around and it just breaks any kind of flow for sequential art. The gist is there's a shadowy organization with no name that's making monsters and on the other side is Dr. Frankenstein and his thrall plus some kids who definitely take a back seat in this volume.

I Am Iron Man ★★★★
I thought this was fun. It's five untold Iron Man stories set throughout his long history in honor of his 60th anniversary. Cool art and stories.

Decade: A Dark Horse Short Story Collection ★★★★
Some of Dark Horse's top creators return to celebrate a decade of short stories over there. It's kind of amazing how many of these they no longer have the rights to after publishing their comics for over 20 years. There are comics featuring Concrete, Black Cross, Trekker, Godzilla, Aliens, Nexus, The Mask, Martha Washington, Predator, Grendel, Sin City and Ghost. With creators involved like Frank Miller, Dave Gibbons, Matt Wagner, Doug Mahnke, Steve Rude, Paul Chadwick and more. It's good stuff if you can still find it.

Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 1: Gifted ★★★★★
Still one of my favorite X-Men runs. Whedon nails the dialogue. I love that this is where Kitty and Emma Frost became frenemies. Then you've got all the friction between Cyclops and Wolverine over Jean. Mix in John Cassaday at the top of his game. This go around did make me verklempt that we will never see any more of Cassaday's pages. He was such a terrific artist. And the return of one of my favorite X-Men after being gone for a decade. Just an all around top notch X-Men book.

Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 2: Dangerous ★★★★★
I still think Danger was a really cool idea. The Danger Room that's been around for 30 years has actually been sentient and is tortured by its directives? That's pretty badass. Everything about this arc is just terrific, particularly John Cassaday's art. Whedon certainly has his issues but writing fantastic scripts isn't one of them.

Cthulhu is Hard to Spell, Volume 1 ★★
Fragments of stories about people meeting elder gods. I wish these were longer and more fleshed out. There's not much here to hang your hat on.

Gatchaman: The Solo Adventures Vol. 1 ★★★
Three solo adventures featuring Ken, Jun and Ryu. Ken gets involved in an underground fight club. Jun goes after a motorcycle gang. While Ryu tackles one of Galactor's kaiju. They're all OK.

Batman: Gotham by Gaslight - The Kryptonian Age ★★★
A solid successor to Gotham by Gaslight. This is not a Batman story though, it's a DC universe or Justice League story. These 6 issues are entirely buildup. Calling this the Kryptonian Age, I expected a confrontation with Superman but he doesn't even show up until the fifth issue. It's got a lot of ominous overtones to it reminding me more of The Doom That Came to Gotham. I really like how Wonder Woman was reinterpreted with the Skartaris angle. We'll see how this sticks the landing in volume 2.

Ultraman, Vol. 1: The Rise of Ultraman ★★★
Better than I expected. Ultraman was never really big here in the U.S. It never crossed over like Power Rangers did. But who better to write Ultraman than the writer of Power Rangers and his own Japanese inspired comics in the Radiant Black stuff, Kyle Higgins. I thought he and Mat Groom did a solid job of updating this and giving it a solid footing.

Ultraman, Vol. 2: The Trials of Ultraman ★★★
Surprisingly solid. A comic about Ultraman sounds dumb but putting it in the hands of the Massive-verse and Power Rangers people makes it work. Ultraman and the USP are public now. Yet a large portion of the population think it's a hoax, especially when some rich guy creates fake kaiju. The art's good. The story is fine. What's not to like?

Ultraman, Vol. 3: The Mystery of Ultraseven ★★★
Ultraman has been stolen from Shin and now he's seeing visions from a lost Ultraman. Plus, the evil director operating behind the scenes is brought to light. There's some good stuff here.

The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos Volume 2 ★★★
Volume 2 loses steam as it struggles to find a direction. Some of Tynion's recent stuff is just looking to get to a point. This is one of those. Thankfully, the characters are still interesting and Goodheart's art is very good.

Outsiders 2: Never the End ★★★
A cool start with an OK landing. The stuff with the Drummer and how she tied into Planetary was interesting. Then it kind of all turned into an unclear muddle because DC didn't want anything that would cause definitive changes. A bit of a disappointment after those first 6 issues actually.

Captain America, Vol. 3: Broxton Rising ★★
You know, I was all excited about Straczynski returning to Marvel when this was first announced. I guess you need to be careful what you wish for. This is not very good. Straczynski wraps up this whole life and death thing he's been doing without really giving us any kind of resolution. It all just kinds of floats away. Then he must have been really upset that Donny Cates destroyed Broxton, OK during his Thor run because this turns into a Thor story for the last 3 issues with Captain America and Spider-Man in tow where he works his best to wish the God of Hammers story away completely.

Will Eisner: A Comics Biography ★★★★★
It makes complete sense to give the creator of the graphic novel, a graphic novel biography. I really enjoyed this one. It mainly focuses on his younger years from childhood up to running his own publishing company and then syndicating The Spirit before World War II. The rest of his life is still covered, just not in the same depth. Anyway, I thought this was really informative and brings one of our most historic comics creators to light. Keep these biographies coming NBM!

The Spectacular Spider-Men Vol. 2: Elementary ★★★
The first 2 issues are really the end of the first arc about the Arcadium. Then the last 3 issues are all of the victims of that arc meeting to deal with the trauma of being trapped in their dream worlds. It's all fine, could do with some more excitement in those last 3 issues. Also can't these trades match up with the arcs?

The Spectacular Spider-Men Vol. 3: Strange Love ★★★
I mean, I can see why this was cancelled. It's a bit directionless and low stakes. There's also way too many characters as everyone that comes to this coffee place seems to get time in the comic. Could have been pretty good if it had some stronger plots.

Venom, Vol. 5: Predestination ★★★
There is just way too many things going on in this. You've got Venom teaming up with Toxin and something going on with Alchemax. Then you've got this Flexo character from 1942. Finally Eddie Brock who is now Bedlam floating through time with Dr. Doom and Kang. It's too much. There's no clear arc with these 4 issues. It's just hunt and peck with Al Ewing's randomness.

West Coast Avengers Vol. 1: The Gospel of Ultron ★★★
This is a new take on a dysfunctional group of Avengers. Iron Man is back in his iconic Silver Centurion version of his armor from the 80s. Ultron has joined the team and another version has started a cult. I'm not real sure how that works when Ultron destroyed a whole country back in the Kurt Busiek/George Perez days. War Machine and Spider-Woman are also on the team. So is Firestar and she's a mess after the Krakoa era of the X-Men. There's a 6th Avengers Blue Bolt who is on a work release program from prison. It's interesting, just not perfect. Danny Kim's art is heavily manga influenced with almost no backgrounds. I really hate that trend in comics.

Lunar Room ★★★
It's a supernatural crime book with werewolves, vampires, etc. all shaking each other down to chase after a MacGuffin. Unfortunately, we don't get a complete story here and it's been 4 years so I don't think we'll see any more, even with the coming soon tease at the end.

Drifters Omnibus Volume 1 ★★★
Historical figures get sucked into a fantasy world where elves and dwarves have been subjugated by Hitler. It's a crazy scenario with terrific art by the creator of Hellsing. The writing isn't as good as the art though and Hirano has a dumb predilection with breasts that keeps coming up. Every once in a while it feels like a 12 year old boy is writing the book and just points over at a woman and says "Boobs" and giggles.

System Error ★★★★★
Discovered this as a Hoopla bonus borrow. This review is for all four issues since I don't think it was ever collected. It's quite delightful. It's about a robot that wakes up in a long deserted London and is trying to determine what has happened, along the way he makes other robot friends and enemies. I'm not familiar with Chapman but I loved the art and story here. I hope he goes on to make more comics.

It looks like only issue #1 of System Error is a "bonus borrow". Maybe I'll try it but I'd hate to need 3 more "borrows" to get the whole thing.

Yeah I don't know that Blue Fox ever puts out collections. I had plenty of borrows at the end of the month so I got out all 4 of them and read it in singles.

Today's trip to the LCS.

Secret Six #4
Storm #9
The World to Come #1 <-- A continuation of Priest's Marvel Knights Black Panther run with Joe Quesada on art.
Imperial #1 <-- Marvel's summer event from Jonathan Hickman
The Sixth Gun: Road to the Six #0
Ghost Rider Vs Galactus #1
Blade Forger #3
Thunderbolts: Lost #3
Immortal Thor #24
X-Men #17
Absolute Green Lantern #3
Absolute Superman #8
Birds of Prey #22
Ultimate Spider-Man: Incursion #1
Ultimate Wolverine #6
Justice League Vs Godzilla Vs Kong 2 #1

Last week's adventures in comics.

Doom Treasury Edition ★★
While it's neat to see this blown up to treasury size, you'd have to be real bad with your money to spend $30 on a 40 page story, that comes with the same story again without coloring or lettering and the script and layouts plus 2 unrelated reprints of a Fantastic Four issue by Hickman and a Runaways miniseries from Secret Wars.

Batman: Detective Comics 5; Gotham Nocturne Act III ★★★
Good god, this story is bloated and overly long. It also has a gazillion artists working on it that add to the confusion, no matter how talented they are individually. Overall it's fine. I'd just prefer not having every member of Batman's rogues gallery and then some in this and a tighter focus on the story. Overall it rates out as fine.

The Beautiful Death ★★★
A striking looking book about the presumably last people left in the world after some space insects have wiped out humanity. It's mainly just the characters wandering through an abandoned cityscape until things take a weird turn at the end. It's alright. The art is way more interesting than the story though. The art is richly detailed. The story is not.

Trigun Maximum Volume 1: Hero Returns ★★★
I was a little confused at times by why things were happening but overall not bad. There's a lot of weird camera angles in this that sometimes made the action hard to follow. I'm curious enough about the story of this gunman to continue on. I am curious where the title comes from as his name is Vash the Stampede and he doesn't use 3 guns.

Trigun Maximum Volume 2: Death Blue ★★★
I'm still not all that clear about the story other than Vash and the other guy are travelling from town to town as if it was the Old West even though it's the future. The art is technically good but all of the extreme angles and close ups in the panels can make it hard to follow the story. Still I'm invested for now.

Trigun Maximum Volume 3: His Life As A ... ★★★
I had no idea what was happening in a lot of this. Somehow, I still kind of liked it though. The art is good, but these close up panels make it really difficult for me to follow the action sequences. I almost need a cliff notes version to make sure I didn't miss anything.

Young Avengers, Vol. 1: Sidekicks ★★★★★
This worked out very well. The Avengers were disbanded after the Disassembled event so what better time to have some kids step in and fill the gap. Well if Cap or Iron Man have a say they are getting shut down immediately. I love how all of the team members have subverted their ties to Avengers members. (view spoiler)[Iron Lad is a young Kang. Patriot is Isiah Bradley's grandson. Asgardian actually has magical powers. Hulking is a skrull, Love it all. (hide spoiler)] Jim Cheung's art is terrific. I wish he did more comics.

Young Avengers, Vol. 2: Family Matters ★★★★★
I really wish this series had been longer. It's a whole lot of fun. It's the kids trying to do the Avengers their own way with Cap and Iron Man trying to put a stop to it. We find out the real deal with Patriot, Hulking and Wiccan in this volume. I love how expectations were subverted. Jim Cheung and Andrea Di Vito's art is excellent.

Fantastic Four, Vol. 3: The Impossible is Probable ★★★
The 2 parter containing the dinosaur Avengers was stupid. Dr. Doom riding a dinosaur version of himself was just too much. Plus, it drove me nuts that the Thing's head just floats atop his body like BB8. Learn how to draw a neck, the other 3 artists managed to do it in their stories. The other stories were better. One about an app that gains sentience. Then the kids return and create a disaster with their homework assignment before Reed and Sue have to deal with finding Sue's skeleton from thousands of years ago. Overall, this is pretty good. It just doesn't top the Hickman era.

The She-Hulk Diaries ★★
This was a strange one. A prose novel of She-Hulk crossed with Sex and the City. Parts were interesting. Parts infuriated me like the fact that Jennifer refers to She-Hulk as Shulkie at least a hundred times. It's odd in that She-Hulk and Jennifer Walters are two separate entities sharing a body. She-Hulk's a big mess that destroys things while partying it up. So Jennifer is practicing law with a new firm while She-Hulk fights random nonsense like Superbrat. And I have to say, it's real odd to read a She-Hulk book that mentions fellatio.

Ultimate X-Men Vol. 2: Children of the Atom ★★★
A very pretty book with very little substance. The plot seems to be going nowhere. There are too many characters and when they finally show up again, you've forgotten what happened with them before. Maybe Momoko is better off sticking to covers.

Cain's Eye (Bouncer #1) ★★★
A good but extremely dark Western about three brothers who have let a diamond come between them. This thing abounds with trigger warnings so be aware. European comics have a much more relaxed attitude towards rape and violence towards women in general. I don't really care if it was a product of the times. I can go with it being inferred instead of shown. That being said, the story of 3 brothers and a nephew all searching for this diamond is an intriguing one.

Blood Hunt ★★★
Honestly, I expected more than a by the numbers event from Jed Mackay. His other Marvel stuff has been really good. This was bland and way too much happens outside of the main book. This is 5 issues and someone else said there are 59 issues total in this event. That is just ridiculous. That is why readers are over these nonstop events.

Avengers Assemble ★★★★
I've been putting off this final volume of Jason Aaron's Avengers run for a while now. Aaron's run has swayed wildly back and forth between big and bombastic and just plain stupid and I was afraid of what we'd get here. Especially with all of these multiversal versions of characters that I's so tired of. But this was actually pretty good. Aaron makes this nonstop fighting for the most part and that works here. It doesn't make sense to give all of these versions of Captain America or Captain Marvel for example a ton of screen time. They are more there to make everything feel big and epic as they fight multiple variations of Dr. Doom and Mephisto. I do like Aaron Kuder's art more than Javier Garron's. Don't expect anything groundbreaking here, but it is pretty good.

Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam ★★★★
A really good memoir about the author immigrating to the U.S. as a child, beginning when they were on a refuge boat after leaving Vietnam. Then in a refuge camp in Thailand. Finally his family struggling to establish themselves in America. That makes up the bulk of the story but there are two interludes from later in life, one in high school, the other in his 40s. I do wish he had connected the dots more with those because I still have questions. The art style is very simple and worked well with the story.

Wendy ★★
I'd seen this recommended as a good alternative comic. Well, I didn't get the appeal of it. Wendy is part of the local hipster and art scene but she's more concerned with partying until she throws up every night. It was hard not to read this without giving all the girls valley girl accents in my head with all of the dialogue being written in text speak, u no? It drove me nuts. So did the poor lettering and art.

Muybridge ★★★★
A very interesting biography about Eadweard Muybridge, a man who early on got into photography and took thousands of pictures of nature before hooking up with one of the men behind the continental railroad. They wanted to determine how a horse runs and if it ever is completely in air. So Muybridge spent years to develop the technology to capture this. His 2 books of moving pictures are still in print today, over 120 years later. The graphic novel does reprint several of his actual pictures which I thought was great so you can see what was just so groundbreaking. The latter portion of the book goes into the further inventions revolving around motion pictures and cinema showing the whole history up into the start of the 20th century. It's a very interesting and well done book.

Justice League Unlimited Vol. 1 ★★★★
It's an interesting take on the Justice League this go-around. Every hero out there is basically a member and called in when your services are needed. There's a group called Inferno operating behind the scenes to cause problems around the world. they are revealed in issue #5 and it's exactly who you would expect. Dan Mora's art is it's typical brilliance.

I know all the solicits for this show the first 6 issues but it'll surely only be 5 when this comes out. Issue #6 is part of a 6 part crossover with World's Finest.

Ultimate Wolverine Vol. 1: The Winter Soldier ★★★
This is the true X-Men comic of the new Ultimate universe. It's about all of the mutants operating in the Underground against Colossus, Magic and Omega Red who run the Eurasian Union. They seem to be real evil in this universe. They've brainwashed Wolverine and he's a pure killing machine with no personality of his own throughout this first arc. He's just sent on missions where he's sent to kill other mutants in this universe. The art is OK, not a fan of the two Alex Lins drawn issues at all.

This week's trip to my LCS.

Absolute Batman #9
Aquaman #6
Geiger #15
Gatchaman #10
Transformers #21
Deadpool/Wolverine #6
Exceptional X-Men #10
One World Under Doom #5
Something Is Killing the Children #42 <-- Luckily children seem to be in endless supply
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #9
Ultimate Black Panther #17
Ultimate X-Men #16
Giant-Size Dark Phoenix Saga #1

Chad wrote: "Luckily children seem to be in endless supply"

lmao thankful for the endless child supply! I need to catch up on this series.

It just started up again last month after a long break. There are only two issues out in the newest story and the rest has all been collected to make it easy for you to get caught up.

It really does make you question how much peril the children could still be in at this point if they are still going.

Last week's adventures in comics.

Geiger, Vol. 3 ★★★★
Geiger and Nate the Knight find a small town that was untouched by the nuclear war when they help some children in a 3 issue story drawn by Paul Pelletier. Then we see some of Tariq's history after the bomb dropped and how he got his control rods. It's all good stuff with great art.

Hawkgirl: Once upon a Galaxy ★★
If you're looking for a 6 issue, stand alone miniseries, this is not it. If you're lookiing for continuation of Hawkgirl's, long messed up history without getting recapped what has happened before, this might be your bag. This comic would have Stan Lee shaking his head. He believed that you should treat every comic like it could be a reader's first comic. I don't think we need to go that far these days. However, I shouldn't need to have read a character's entire history across multiple titles to know what's going on. This is just a mess as a stand alone comic. It was nice to see Axelrod bring her character, Galaxy, into the book. I definitely wouldn't suggest reading this without reading at least the last Hawkman series from Robert Venditti, but I'd honestly just say give this a pass.

Young Avengers Modern Era Epic Collection, Vol. 1: Not What You Think ★★★★★
I really liked this. Marvel doesn't typically do sidekicks. At least back in 2005 they didn't. This is set right after Bendis disassembled the Avengers and these kids step in to fill the gap. As soon as Cap and Iron Man get wind of it though, they try and shut them down. But these kids are determined to show the "man" what they can do. I like how the kids all subvert expectations, looking like fanboy versions of the Avengers when all of them all have something different going on. I love how Asgardian and Hulking are interested in one another. Back in 2005, there wasn't much LTGBQ+ representation and these two kids are awesome. I really like Jim Cheung's art too.

Spider-Gwen, Vol. 2: Weapon of Choice ★★★
Gwen gets sloppier and sloppier about hiding her secret identity as Frank Castle tries to catch her in the act. He fixates on her and goes way past the line, yet it's her dad who might go to jail. Sloppy writing. Gwen continues to mope over the loss of her powers. The best issue was the Halloween issue with Mysterio running an abandoned amusement park.

Spider-Gwen, Vol. 3: Long-Distance ★★
Thin on actual content... or story. Honestly, the actual Spider-Gwen books (14-15 and the Annual) are entirely skippable. The Spider-Gwen Annual is complete garbage full of little throwaway stories with art that looks like a Marvel tryout. It's awful. The diamond in the rough here is the Wolverine Annual. (Of course it is, it's Tom Taylor!) X-23 and Gwen get involved in some Freaky Friday shennaigans. There's some truly funny moments here. Marcio Takara's art is always a delight as well.

Spider-Man/Spider-Gwen: Sitting in a Tree ★★★★
Miles Morales's dad has disappeared while working for SHIELD so Miles goes looking for him on Earth-65 (or Earth-GS. Get it? As in Gwen Stacy.). He meets up with Spider-Gwen and they go look for him in a club that's owned by an evil version of his dad from Earth-65. He's hooked up with S.I.L.K. to steal more stuff from Earth-616. They end up dimension hopping while trying to stop S.I.L.K. and evil dad. Gwen and Miles connect even though he's jailbait. There's some nice twists and turns and then Miles's dad shows up. They beat the bad guys. The end.

The Good: The framing sequence Bendis uses in his issues works wonderfully. Obviously, the Miles issues look great with Sara Pichelli on pencils. The twist in Earth-8 was pretty great.

The Bad: I would have loved to seen the framing sequence used in the Spider-Gwen issues as well, maybe from Gwen's perspective.

The Ugly: Robbi Rodriguez has upped his game with these issues and I didn't hate his art for the first time.

Spider-Gwen, Vol. 4: Predators ★★★
Gwen heads to Madripoor to help out Harry Osborn and comes across a familiar character there. Meanwhile, she's working with and then against, then with, then against Matt Murdock. By the end, I was really confused what everyone's goals were. The story stops midstream and then finishes with a MJ's fill-in issue. I still hate the garish clash of colors used for the color palette on this title.

Marie and Worrywart ★★★★
I do wish Woodall went a bit more into what has helped her so we can try some of those things here as well. I know there's no cure alls and there will be good days and bad days, but seeing more of what has helped others would have been wonderful.

Batman/Superman: World's Finest Vol. 7: Total Eclipso ★★★
Some classic stories maybe not quite as much fun as previous volumes. Eclipso shows up to target the Justice League and Justice Society. Then Batgirl, Elastic Lad, Ace the Bathound and Krypto team up to save the day. For good measure, Jeremy Adams inserts a hard traveling heroes era story where Green Lantern and Green Arrow are targeted by Deathstroke in a story that takes place before his first appearance in Teen Titans.

Nightwing Vol. 7: Fallen Grayson ★★★★★
I've been putting off reading this last arc for over a year now just because I didn't want it to end. Taylor and Redondo did wonders on this character, bringing him to his highest heights and then making Dick afraid to jump off those heights. I loved how he had to learn to overcome his fear of falling that he developed. Just a terrific run with banging art. I really wish Taylor had written another 100 issues.

The Rocketeer: Breaks Free ★★
Unfortunately, there's not much plot here other than "Let's fight Nazis". They just appear in San Francisco while Cliff and Bettie are visiting. There are some anachronisms too like the CIA being involved even though the CIA didn't exist during WWII. I mean, come on. If you're going to write for a time period at least know something about that time period. It's not as if there's not thousands of books and movies on the subject.

Star Trek: Defiant, Vol. 3: Hell Is Only A Word ★★★★
Oh yeah, those creepy parasitic bugs from TNG are back. The ones that take over and eat your brain and can only be killed by intense phaser fire. They managed to make this as creepy as possible. I can imagine those scorpion bugs crawling across a spacecraft floor, ticking along even now.

Star Trek: Defiant, Vol. 4: The Stars of Home ★★★
The crew of the Defiant seems to be suffering from a war of attrition as it is now down to Worf, B'elanna and Ro. Anyway, they get embroiled in a conspiracy to overthrow the Romulan government with Spock being a prisoner of the Romulans. It starts off pretty cool but kind of peters out quickly. Almost feels like an editorial thing as we go from a coup to defending 100 colonists on a farming planet. Definitely a shift in stakes. Chief O'Brian and Bashir also make an appearance and I'm guessing will set to actually do something in the future besides ride around in the Defiant and talk about Section 31.

Star Trek, Vol. 4: Pleroma ★★★★
The crew of the Theseus head outside time and space to confer with all the Godlike beings that have appeared throughout Star Trek history for the most part. Oh, and Lore's on his way to make things even worse. It's good stuff. Kelly and Lansing have definitely done their Star Trek homework.

Hammer, Volume 1: The Ocean Kingdom ★
Oof, this was awful. I found it as a bonus borrow on Hoopla and I don't think it was worth wasting an hour on. It feels like a cartoon written by a kid. Stud is a kid whose dad leaves him alone for months at a time while he searches for his wife. While he's gone stud gains the ability to turn his fists into hammers. After a couple of chapters, he gets sucked into a book and comes out in an underwater kingdom. Nothing is explained and the exposition is told through dialogue making it so clumsy. The dialogue kept making me cringe with how terrible it was.

Profane ★★★
Peter Milligan doing his Milligan thing. A fictional P.I. comes to life to investigate the murder of his author. Things get half baked from there like a lot of Milligan's comics do. It's alright.

Aquaman Vol. 1- the Dark Tide ★★★★
It's nice to see Aquaman back in action. He has Mera's powers of aquakinesis now after the power mixups that happened in Absolute Power. The first issue begins with Aquaman returning to Atlantis to find it destroyed and all its people missing. He's drawn to a gate that takes him to another dimension that has something of a underwater Arthurian feel to it as he searches for his people. John Timms' art looks fantastic in here. Good stuff. I'll continue to get this one monthly.

Night Drive ★★★
This one should be considered only for Richard Sala completists. It's short, only 28 pages expanded with interviews and forewords. It's Sala's first work and feels like it. It does have Invisible Hands in it, which was later turned into a serial on Liquid Television.

The Sin Bin ★★★★
I didn't know what to expect here but this was fun. It's about a teenage girl and her dad who is a minor league hockey goon mentoring younger players. One night she sneaks along with him to find out he's also a monster hunter. There in the two of them fall in to fighting monsters and this queen who has a larger plan...

Alter Ego ★★★★
This is something of a sequel to Secret Identity so I do suggest reading it first. The two are only tangentially connected though by the comic book character The Lynx which both stories revolve around.

Annie Bustamonte is a film maker, one that has had her latest project shelved so the conglomerate who owned it could take it as a loss on the books like WB did in real life with the Batgirl movie after the Pandemic. To pass time while she's in director jail, she decides to return to comics. The obscure comic, The Lynx, has always inspired her being the first time she saw a latina woman's name on the writing credit on the last issue back in the 70s. So when she gets a back about the return of Triumph Comics and how they want her to bring back The Lynx, she's excited. From the get go, something seems shady with these two running the company, one who can't even be bothered to get the character's name right even though his dad owned the company back in the 70s. It all begins to spin out of control from there...

It's a good murder mystery. Revolving it around comics creators made it even better in my opinion. I also loved that Sandy Jarrell returned to give us a few pages of art from each new issue as the story went along.

Last week's adventures in comics continued. (My reading level goes up even more when we can sit outside after work and read.)

Gannibal Vol 4 ★★★
We're slowly getting somewhere. Our illustrious police officer has sent his wife and daughter away after his daughter disappeared for a day through manipulations from the townspeople and it does look like they are keeping children captive The ending seemed a bit cliched so that this town could keep what they are maybe doing under wraps.

The Ruby Throne (Michael Moorcock's Elric, #1) ★★★
Something of a terse adaptation of the popular prose series. This feels rushed and a bit by the numbers lacking nuance so we can get to the story beats. There's a lot of characters here to follow without introduction too. It feels written for people who have already read the novel as opposed to anyone who picks this up. The art is very good.

Miles Morales: Spider-Man, Vol. 3: Gang War ★★
A mediocre tie-in to Gang War. The Gang War comes to Brooklyn when Hobgoblin and Rabble try and take over there. It's just nonstop fights for 4 issues. The art is so chaotic that I couldn't follow it some of the time. Sometimes simpler is better. Also, were any of these Giant-Size one shots any good? Everyone I've read is just a short cash grab and then a couple of reprints which didn't even get reprinted in the trade.

Little Book Of Horror: Dracula ★★★
Dracula reimagined as a childrens book. Don't worry, it's not too scary for kids. Richard Sala's illustrations are great.

Ultimates By Deniz Camp Vol. 2: All Power to the People ★★★
For whatever reason, I wasn't enthralled with this volume as the first one. Maybe it just didn't seem as unique and fresh with these one off stories. That Thor and Sif issue was particularly difficult to get through.

Red Sonja Vol. 2: The Masters Return ★★
Kulan Gath is back for the gazillionth time. He's manipulating both gods and men to get what he wants. This honestly isn't very well written.

Scoundrel ★★
If it wasn't for all of the sex in here, I'd almost say this was supposed to be some kind of parable. It's about a son who inherits his parents Mexican restaurant chain and proceeds to quickly blow it all on drugs and gambling meeting a bad end. It's fine.

Gatchaman Vol. 2 ★★★
Eh, this is alright. These stories move very slowly though. Chris Batista's art isn't to my taste these days compared to the past either.

The Song (Verse #3) ★★★★
Probably could have used a recap just because it's been 3 years since volume 2 came out, but I remembered what was happening as the book went on. It's all about the end battle here as the humans here are on their last legs with the Vel. Nothing groundbreaking here, but a nice fantasy adventure.

Downlands ★★★
A teenager loses his twin sister after she sees a black dog. The story incorporates a lot of traditional ghost stories as we move more into what's going on. Not bad but probably didn't need to be 300 pages to make this story.

Today's trip to my LCS.

Flash Gordon #10
West Coast Avengers #8
Ultimates #13
GI Joe #8
Detective Comics #1098
World's Finest #40
Avengers #27
Aliens Vs Avengers #4
Absolute Flash #4
Bring on the Bad Guys: Doom #1
Godzilla Vs Avengers #1
X-Men #18
Herculoids #3
Herculoids #4

Just read volume 12 of Empowered by Adam Warren. (It doesn't yet have an entry on this site and I'm feeling too lazy to make one.)

I was surprised to see that new volumes of this were still being made. Notes in the end say this will be the last one of these 200-page volumes. Empowered will continue, but in a different form, and he will move from drawing on paper to all digital.

This volume isn't my cup of tea. It involves constant rebooting into different "multiverse" versions which bores me, even though it allows for very varied art. This volume also leans heavily into the "parental advisory", NSFW, mode.

Seven to Eternity - Deluxe Edition **** - I skipped this when it first came out, but in a letters column in The Sacrificers, Vol. 3 (single editions) Remender stated that the two series are connected, at least in his outlines. Glad I finally read it.

Young Hag and the Witches’ Quest *** - A retelling of parts of King Arthur's story, but from the point of view of Morgan Le Fay. The art is fine on paper, but doesn't look so hot when enlarged on my tablet. I've enjoyed other stories from Isabel Greenberg more than this one, but maybe because this one is aimed at a younger audience.

Kinski *** - A short story of a guy whose life is spiraling out of control due to some bad choices, and of the dog who rescues him, sort of.

Birdking Volume 1 *** - Read this with my real life group. We gave it a collective "meh". The art resembles Mike Mignola but with brighter colors.

The Deviant Vol. 2 **** 1/2 - Sticks the landing on a story of a gay man who gets too close to a [wrongly?] convicted murderer. Deals with the ways fear of gay men has changed over the years -- or maybe just gone undercover.

And, in French: Nombre - Intégrale *** 1/2 - Story of a girl, Ada, growing up in the England of the 1800s as the child of a mathematician, Charles Bubbage [sic], and her interactions with an idiot savant called 'Number', an odd poet obsessed with Baudelaire, and a serial killer. Deals with society changing due to a new scientific worldview and slowly increasing rights.

Interesting enough for 3.5 stars, though I was quite annoyed with the many times these 18th-century gentlemen used the word 'yeah' which felt anachronistic. [I read it in French. English words were sprinkled around, and it was only 'yeah' which felt out of place.]

“Yeah” is still considered informal, and Marian-Webster traces it only to 1863. Not quite a definite anachronism, but very questionable in its setting. Languages have time depth and social context to keep in mind.

Last week's adventures in comics.

Conan the Barbarian Vol. 5 Twisting Loyalties ★★★
Conan and Belit run into Set's followers while trying to steal an artifact. Then we jump to after Conan has left Belit behind and is plagued by an infection from his encounter with Set's followers. I appreciate Zub delving into Conan's long history. At the same time, I don't really want to read a bunch of text pages to figure out all that history.

Victory ★★★
Fun and at the same time trashy like most things in Vampirella's universe. Vampirella's ex, Victory, is on her own with the Belial ring which every demon is looking to steal. This is an interesting comic because it uses extremely crude language but redacts f-bombs. Makes no sense when a comic mentions in detail about licking someone's ass but can't say fuck. Lets just get rid of the false pretenses here. The art is hit and miss. When Weldele takes his time on a page, he reminds me of the Hernandez brothers. But often a page looks like shitty thumbnails. probably to meet an artificial deadline for a miniseries.

The Night Eaters, Vol. 3: Their Kingdom Come ★★★★
The final volume in the Night Eaters trilogy sees Milly and Billy waking up for the apocalypse or that's how at least a lot of people are taking it. Monsters are beginning to come out into the open. There's a lot of random social media posts in this. I guess that's replaced the talking heads on the news of the 80s and 90s. I really like how much this is about family. Milly's and Billy's parents love for them in straight contrast to Ming who is willing to sacrifice his family to get what he wants. It's great stuff, compounded with Takeda's interesting East meets West artwork.

What We Wished For ★★★
A group of kids stumble into a cave and are each granted a wish. However, they take too long and the comet they wished on has already passed. 38 years later the comet is back and so are the children's wishes. The problem is a child's wish often isn't practical to being an adult with some of these wishes reeking havoc on their lives. It's a fast-paced read.

Cherish: Born in Fire ★★
Well, that was terrible. Some woman with a bunch of high-tech toys is trying to get revenge on the people who killed her father when she was a child, something to do with a corporate takeover. It has a bunch of twists and turns, but most of them don't make a lot of sense.

Dead Space ★★★
A prequel leading right up to the beginning of the games. I thought this was a pretty good tie in. (The games are fun if you are into survival horror.) I'm not the biggest fan of Ben Templesmith. Sometimes his art is more fugly than scary but it works for the most part here. There's a nice feel of dread. The story you've seen variations of in a lot of other space related horror stories. An ancient monolith is found and people start acting crazy. This one has the addition of a crazy cult.

Bowling with Corpses & Other Strange Tales from Lands Unknown ★★★★
Mignola's got a brand new bag, starting up another new universe. This one seems more fantasy based. It's a bunch of short stories, told in taverns and the like. It gives off dark fairy tale vibes. The stories are good, filled with the undead, vampires, talking animals and the like. Who am I kidding though, I've been in the bag for Mignolia since the 90s. I will say it's really nice to get an entire comic that he both wrote and drew.

Barbaric Vol. 4: Born in Blood ★★★★
Nothing much new here in volume 4 but still fun. Owen and Soren return to Owen's home to find out his barbarian clan isn't protecting the other tribes they pledged to. Why not is a bit telegraphed early on.

Purgatori Must Die! ★★
Your standard generic comic set in the Vampirella universe, this one about Purgatori. She gains some random power to absorb the universe and the Gods along with all of the Vampirella characters are out to kill her. It's the kind of half baked writing I've come to expect when Christopher Priest isn't writing these.

The Collected Will Eisner's John Law ★★★
John Law was a character Will Eisner created back in the 40's when The Spirit was going strong in newspapers. He wrote 3 stories with the character but they never saw the light of day because his publishing side venture folded first. Then in the aughts, Eisner decided to hand the character over to Gary Callander. This collection collects the 3 original Eisner stories and Callander's contributions a half century later. There are also a bunch of essays from Denis Kitchen about the character. Law was the only honest police detective on the force, often helped by an orphan who shined shoes. It's good stuff.

Vampirella/Dracula: Rage ★★★★
Vampirella's and Dracula's son is taken and Vampirella goes after the cultists that took him. This is almost a straight forward comic from Priest. That seems to never happen.

Miles Morales: Spider-Man, Vol. 5: Blood Hunt ★★★
Miles deals with becoming a vampire, sort of. It all seems to come pretty easy for him. Then Black Panther shows up and gives him a new trash looking costume. Miles is constantly getting new costumes. Are these all getting turned into toys or something? A lot of the arc is the Vulture back in the picture trying to kill Miles because he thinks he turned Starling against him. It's not great. Here's hoping we can actually go a full year now without getting interrupted by an event. It hasn't happened yet.

X-Men: Blood Hunt ★★
A bunch of stories of mutants fighting vampires. Nothing egregious but also not really worth your time either as these are all your standard stuff that can be skipped from the big nothing event.

Blood Hunt: Marvel Universe ★★★
Some OK stories featuring a vampire Black Panther, the Strange Academy kids and the Hulk in the old West fighting vampires. Like the rest of Blood Hunt, it all gets a "meh" from me.

Amazing Spider-Man: Blood Hunt ★★
There's really only 3 new issues here as the Spider-Man and Miles Morales issues are collected as part of their regular runs as well. So the only new thing here is the 3 issue The Amazing Spider-Man: Blood Hunt. And it's, well, it's crap. Stupid Maxine is back from the the Beyond Corporation and she just may be the worst character in the Spider-Man character. I just hate her so much. It's a half-baked story about creating vampires so Beyond can cure them. It makes no sense. ASM #49 may be my favorite of the Blood Hunt crossovers as it actually feels like it matters and actually has some character. The Miles issues are really poor. He teams up with Blade's daughter to fight a vampire and he's a vampire too now but they do a really crap job of explaining that. I was real excited about Blood Hunt before it came out but it was a huge disappointment.

The Forever War, Vol. 1 ★★★
A dry adaptation of the novel. All of the emotion seems to have been sucked out of this in order to just hit the story beats of this war across vast distances. Relativity making centuries happen between battles. It all becomes pretty bleak early on. I can't say I really enjoyed it.

Arkadi and the Lost Titan ★★
An epic story that spanned 20 years of Caza's life to create. It's a tomb at over 500 pages and finally translated to English. This is set on a Earth 10,000 years after it has stopped spinning. The last people live in villages in the twilight demarcation between day and night. Most people have some kind of mutation. Way below the Earth exists one last city, its citizens pampered and run by an A.I. What follows is a really long adventure spanning 2 generations. It's full of things to say, never straight-forwardly, leaving you to figure out what Caza is getting at. Caza's art is really detailed, giving off a Moebius and Cam Kennedy vibe.

The House ★★★★
Three adult siblings return to their family's vacation cottage to fix the place up to sell a year after their father died. Along the way, they bear old grudges, have fond reminisces of the past and try to decide what to do with the place. As someone who is at the same stage of their life as these kids, I identified a lot with this simple story.

Spider-Man: Reign ★★
The Dark Spider Returns. I suppose this is supposed to be a homage to Frank Miller's magnus opus. I mean it goes as far as naming the news reporter Miller Janson. It doesn't have the same kind of gravity though. It spends too much time on a broken Peter Parker. A Peter where Mary Jane died 30 years ago and it was inadvertently his fault. Now he's just a broken senile old man. The pacing is just way off. This story of who has taken over the city is pretty dumb as well. There are some cool visuals though. Andrews is a quirky artist and this book is interesting looking. If you haven't read it, check it out on Marvel Unlimited or from the library just for that.

The Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 11: Going Green ★★★
At this point the Green Goblin has turned into the Joker of Marvel comics. Just a completely overused character that needs to stay gone for a long, long time. Making him a separate supernatural entity is just stupid. That being said, this wasn't all that bad. It's drawn out and I want all the supernatural stuff out of Spider-Man unless he's helping Doctor Strange, but given what's come before, this at least made sense.

Amazing Spider-Man By Zeb Wells Vol. 12: Dead Wrong ★★★★
Wells finishes his Spider-Man run strong after roller coastering us between highs and lows over his 60 issues. Most of this is a big fight between Spider-Man and Tombstone which seems fitting given that Tombstone was one of the main villains of this run. I love how the covers were really just the next page of the fight and you just dig right into it. It's not often you see something more or less original in a comic book these days. JRJR goes all out on the art and I'm glad to see his art style transition away from the blocky style of years' past with this latest ASM run. All of the little tacked on stories at the end didn't do a whole lot for me.

Today's trip to my LCS.

Predator Versus Spider-Man #3
Incredible Hulk #26
Feral #14
Hyde Street #7
Absolute Martian Manhunter #4
Absolute Wonder Woman #9
Rocketfellers #6
Ultimate Spider-Man #18
Uncanny X-Men #16
Void Rivals #20Justice League Unlimited #8
Giant-Size X-Men: Age of Apocalypse #1
Blade Forger #4

Last week's adventures in comics.

Aliens vs. Avengers ★★★
I had high hopes for this one with Jonathan Hickman writing it. The Avengers of another universe fight aliens as David-8 and the Engineers decide to wipe out humanity across the multiverse, I guess. that last part isn't all that clear. This is bleak, real bleak. I wondered if this would be the same universe that the Predators keep showing up in, attacking Marvel characters and this makes it clear that this is not the case.

Alice in Cryptoland ★★
While this is a decent primer to what cyptocurrencies are, this is written as if it's propaganda on the pros of crypto. I mean it mentions NFTs more than once which are little more than scams for the gullible. I was looking for a more unbiased and balanced look than this.

Spider-Man: Reign 2 ★
This. was. unbelievably. stupid. Completely incomprehensible plot that's all over the place. Time travel. Alternate universes. Matrix like fake outs. Rip Van Winkle Spider-Man running around in his underwear. Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?



The Treasure of the Black Swan ★★★★
The government of Spain sues a treasure hunter who finds a Spanish galleon and proceeds to secretly harvest its contents. They try to pass the contents off as another ship and what follows is a legal battle with plenty of shady asides to try to get it back. This is supposed to be based on true events by a diplomat who witnessed the actual events. Paco Raco turns this into a really good page turner of a book even without a lot of action. Apparently this is an AMC+ series that I was not aware of called La Fortuna with Stanley Tucci.

Dracula: Blood Hunt ★★★
For a series with Dracula's name in the title, he's not in the story very much. This is Bloodline's baby. The problem here is that it doesn't stand on its own. It dances between the rain drops of the main series and really only works if read that way. The art is good.

The shining star in this is the Union Jack the Ripper mini. It's British Punisher fighting vampires and it's everything that seems to be missing in the actual main event and all of these tie ins. The vampires feel threatening. It feels like things are going to happen. Part of that is Kev Walker's tremendous artwork. I love Jed MacKay even though Blood Hunt was ultimately empty calories. But Marvel needs to give Cavan Scott more work based on this and the Shadow Service comic he put out a few years ago that I absolutely loved.

Blood Hunters: Once More Into The Darkness ★★
The first issue of this anthology was great. Mark Russell and Bob Quinn made a really fun Hawkeye story. So was the story with J. Jonah Jameson and his son who is also Man-Wolf. The Blood Hunters story running through the back of each issue is really just setup for the miniseries spinning out of this. But then we get to issue 2. Kaare Andrews writes an indecipherable Hulk story that doesn't mess with the Hulk: Blood Hunt one shot at all. Bruce flashes back to when he had to shoot his dog as a kid. WTF? Then there's a shit Ann Nocenti, Kate Bishop Hawkeye story. Issue 3 brings back Hellcow which is a literal cow that became a vampire. The rest isn't really even worth mentioning. There's also a Hollow's Eve: One Big Night one shot from Halloween which I guess was thrown in because it came out too late to came out with her collected miniseries.

Blood Hunters: Mean Streets ★★
Good lord, Marvel is putting out some slapdash books lately. This feels like they created it in about 30 minutes and given how bad the art is, that may be how long Robert Gill had to draw it as well. Even with zero backgrounds, Gill couldn't keep up and needed help with the last 2 issues and the art up to that point looked like breakdowns that Rain Beredo attempted to hide behind his colors and speed lines. If you give one Marvel series a pass this year, I'd make it this one.

The Winter of the Cartoonist ★★★★
The true story of 5 artists in 50s Spain who attempt to go on their own in an era when companies retained the rights to all the characters they had created. It dips a little into living in a country run by the dictator Franco as well. What I really enjoyed though was Raco's artwork. I've been to Barcelona and this felt like a return to the city, instantly recognizing the streets and even the food. It was a nice little additional touch in this story about how publishers used to crush the creatives working for them.

The Rocketfellers Volume 1: First Family of the Future ★★★★★
I really dug this. It's about a family from the 25th century who came back to 2024 to hide out from an evil corporation that is trying to kill them. The larger story is taking a while to tease out but that didn't even matter. I loved the family dynamics. Tomasi is one of those writers who I just really jive with. And Francis Manapul is killing it with his art. That's one thing you can say about Ghost Machine. They've really picked the cream of the crop for artists. Oh, and there's at least one person in these comics who are aware of all the different universes out there which I found interesting.

Hyde Street, Volume 1 ★★★
Geoff Johns gives us his version of The Twilight Zone. Hyde Street is where those going to Hell often wind up and those living there can escape if they capture 10,000 souls. It's not bad but could use more of a through story. Like every other Ghost Machine book, Ivan Reis's art is great.

Midnight Sons: Blood Hunt ★★★
A sidequel to Blood Hunt that has little to do with Blood Hunt or really the Midnight Sons even. It does have the Ghost Riders in it so I guess you can nominally call it Midnight Sons. They get sidetracked from going after Blade and take care of a demon. It's actually not bad but has little to do with Blood Hunt.

Werewolf by Night has even less to do with it. The new Native American Werewolf by Night (can't he get his own name with the original still running around.) goes to an abandoned amusement park in Arizona where he ends up fighting a possessed kid. Marvel could at least try to make this an actual tie in. Yeah, yeah, they throw a couple of vampires in there but Meh.

Blue Beetle Vol. 1: Scarab War! ★★★
This was alright. Kind of sick of all the Blue Beetle retcons but at least he seems stable again now after a move (but moving his friends along with him which kind of makes no sense.), the return of Ted Kord who apparently now has a sister and a bunch of additional Beetles. This felt very decompressed. I also thought Guitterez's art was just OK. Too many lack of backgrounds that he tried to hide behind a lot of effects. Otherwise, not bad.

The Best American Comics 2007 ★★★
Lots of inane comics this so around that or more or less just journals of daily life. A lot of those together can get pretty monotonous. Stand outs were Charles Burns, Adrian Tomine, Gilbert Hernandez and Jeffrey Brown. Since Ware was the editor of this edition, he didn't have any stories in it this year. I think it's funny that Brown slipped a Chris Ware reference in his story by talking about the Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire album that Ware did the artwork for (which also happens to be one of my favorite albums of all time).

Uncanny X-Men By Gail Simone Vol. 2: The Dark Artery ★★★
Some shorter stories mainly revolving around the Outliers or basically the new New Mutants. I like how Simone is incorporating the creepiness of New Orleans. At this point, they should probably start crossing paths with Strange Academy since they are all in the same area now. Hopefully, we'll see more of Gambit's past take center stage as he's from New Orleans too. Makes sense to throw more thieves and assassin guild stuff in there. Luciana Vecchio is joining the art rotation with David Marquez and that's a good thing.

Geiger, Vol. 4 ★★★★★
This was quite good, but then again the whole run has been. The story gets more complex with the addition of Ashley Arden and the return of Junkyard Joe. I like how you can feel the threads Johns has laid out begin to pull together here. I do wonder how long it'll be before we actually get to see what happened with the Unnamed War. Gary Frank remains an artist of the top of his game.

Ultimate Spider-Man By Jonathan Hickman Vol. 3: Family Business ★★★★★
Continues to be the best comic Marvel makes. I love that permanent things are allowed to happen in thins universe. Hickman's writing isn't way out there like some of his heady concepts in other books. It's just terrific stuff. Same thing goes for Marco Chechetto's art. He may be the best artist currently working for Marvel. Love the differences in Kraven, Mole Man and Mysterio. This comic is just the best.

Gunnerkrigg Court Volume 2 Limited Edition ★★★★
Antimony Carver finds out more abut her past while she attends her school full of fairies, robots and shadow creatures. It's fun stuff.

Batman: Detective Comics Vol. 1: Mercy of the Father ★★★★
Tom Taylor's done it again, crafting another story that I dug. There's a new serial killer in town, this one is charging juvenile delinquents, believing they don't deserve second chances. Plus, there's this new treatment for the ultrawealthy to keep them young so we have Bruce Wayne investigating them in the daylight and Batman coming at them after dark. It's good stuff. Mikel Janin makes the art sing, even coloring the book as well as drawing it.

The New 52: Futures End, Volume 1 ★★★
Another one of these weekly anthology comics that DC loves to do. This one is about 25 years in the future. Brother Eye has turned the whole planet into cyborg zombies. Only old man Bruce Wayne and Terry McGinnis are left so Terry is sent into the past like Reese in Terminator to stop the machines from taking over. However, he comes out 5 years in the New 52's future where apparently everyone is a douche bag after a war with Earth 2. Then we follow around 4 or 5 different stories while Terry kind of tries to stop his future but really does nothing and we see this future begin to come about. For some reason, Mr. Terrific is completely out of character. He's like a rap mogul / tech inventor and the biggest a-hole in existence. I wanted to punch him nonstop when he used to be one of my favorite DC characters coming out of JSA and Checkmate.