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Post by EdoBosnar on Feb 5, 2024 7:40:21 GMT -5
Dog Man: For Whom the Ball RollsDav Pilkey, 2019  More fun from Pilkey; this, by the way, is the seventh Dog Man book – the one I reviewed just above is the third. And like the one I reviewed above, there’s so much story packed into this one. First, Lil’ Petey tries to train Dog Man to focus, so he doesn’t get distracted by squirrels or toy balls when he’s on assignment – as happens here when a crook manages to distract him and make his getaway:  This, by the way, is something Pilkey does quite a bit in these stories: he calls it “Flip-o-rama” and you’re supposed to flip the pages back and forth quickly to get an animated effect. Meanwhile, our heroes – Dog Man, Lil’ Petey, HD 80 and the police, I guess – have a number of major major problems to contend with. First, there’s Petey, who riles up everyone in the cat jail for an uprising but then calls it off when he gets pardoned.  Lil’ Petey later tracks down Petey’s estranged father, who’ really rotten, in the hopes of some kind of reconciliation, but it doesn’t work out. Otherwise, three new villains enter the picture...  ...and Dr. Scum, who apparently appeared in the first Dog Man book, comes back with a diabolical plan to take over the world.  (Also, the narration and every character in the book doesn’t remember him and keeps calling him a ‘new’ villain, much to his constant chagrin). Again, tons of fun, action (including giant mechas) and heartwarming moments in this one – and some amusing extras in the back, like this blog post recounting the heroism of Captain Cupcake (one of Petey’s former fellow cat jail inmates) and a report about Petey’s dad getting busted.  Two thumbs up.
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Post by Trevor on Feb 6, 2024 12:14:39 GMT -5
The Best Thing I Read This Week
Week 5 of 52, ending 2/4/2024
All-Star Western (2011-2012) issues 1-6
Didn’t read much last week, just this and my daily Swamp Thing issue, so this is a little bit of a best by default, but still an excellent read.
I only read a bit of the 2006+ Gray and Palmiotti run on Jonah Hex, but enough to love it and buy it all. Need to go back and read it from the beginning someday.
This book was an anthology, and that’s my jam, bringing my back to my collecting roots where it seemed like most of DCs output was anthology books, or at least main features with a backup.
The main Jonah Hex story was fun, integrating him into old Gotham, with nods to the modern via ancestors of Cobblebot and Arkham and Wayne. The writing is well done obviously, and I’m really digging the art from Moritat. I like the storytelling device of us seeing Arkham’s journal and also his psychoanalyzing Hex, introducing new or lapsed readers into what is going on and who Hex is. The backups were good too, with I believe to be a new character, The Ghost, and re-introducing El Diablo. I forget if I bought this series in its entirety back in the day, but I’ll have to read it all after that 2006-2011 run.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Feb 10, 2024 12:05:36 GMT -5
Dog Man: UnleashedDav Pilkey, 2017  This is the second Dog Man book (I’m kind of randomly checking these out of the library as they become available), in which, among other things, we see the origin of Flippy the evil psychokinetic fish (his reanimated bionic corpse appeared in the third adventure, reviewed above). It all starts when the cops at the station send Dog Man to the pet store to buy a fish for the chief’s birthday, and he initially gets distracted by little dog named Zuzu (she’s later adopted by a reporter and becomes a regular supporting character)...  Flippy gains his powers when some brain pills the chief is taking to enhance his memory fall into the fish bowl, which makes him super-intelligent and gives him telekinetic powers, as he later recounts while monologing:  Also, a cardboard cut-out of Petey the evil cat gets animated by a witch doctor, as is wont to happen...  (* note the witch doctor's name*) ...and he and Flippy later confront each other:  Of course, Dog Man and his pals eventually set things right, albeit more by accident than competence. So all in all, another great adventure!
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Post by EdoBosnar on Feb 12, 2024 13:45:50 GMT -5
Dog Man: Lord of the FleasDav Pilkey, 2018  As is quite apparent at this point, I’m really enjoying these Dog Man books. This fifth one again offers many laughs, adorable moments and giant robots created by both Petey the morally conflicted cat and Piggy (it’s here that he’s shrunk down to the size of a flea – as we saw him and his lackeys in the seventh adventure reviewed previously - just scroll up to the top of this page). Not much point in doing a rundown of the story, but I think it’s worth highlighting some of the many things I like about these. Like the fact that Dog Man’s house (like, I guess, Dr. Who’s headquarters) is way bigger on the inside than on the outside – there’s even an upstairs...  ( also, I forgot to mention that HD-80, the robot and occasional cybernetic armor, wears flip flops) And there are always nice little moments like this, when HD-80 comforts Dog Man after Lil’ Petey is taken away to go to school by a psychologist worried about his welfare (which ends up being a ruse, as the psychologist is just Petey in disguise).  And Lil’ Petey is hilariously annoying to all of the adults, but esp. Petey and villains like Piggy.  A running gag in this book is that he keeps telling really bad knock-knock jokes in which the punchline is always someone’s head or part thereof getting pooped on. p.s. Another thing I should note is that when the punny titles are taken from literary works, like this one, or "A Tale of Two Kitties" or "For Whom the Ball Rolls," those works are referenced one way or another in the book itself.
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Post by Trevor on Feb 13, 2024 15:36:34 GMT -5
The Best Thing I Read This Week
Week 6 of 52, ending 2/11/2024
Why Don’t You Love Me? by Paul B Rainey
As everyone probably knows, the less you know about this going into it the better. Ordered it months ago, probably when it was first mentioned on the podcast, but moved it to the top of the stack the other day.
Have always been pretty empathetic, and this one really moved me, to tears at that last panel. Having a wife and daughter diagnosed with depression certainly ’helped’ in that regard.
Loved how Rainey played with the art form here, using the Sunday strip format to write the novel. It gets a little difficult to read and samesy feeling the first half, but stick with it. I didn’t read a lot of OGNs from the last several years, but this may be the best one (so far).
Books like this is why I’m still a consumer and collector of the medium after all these decades.
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Post by wickedmountain on Feb 14, 2024 8:17:52 GMT -5
Mitch #1 Pretty cool issue i enjoyed it  |
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Post by wickedmountain on Feb 15, 2024 0:58:09 GMT -5
Junior Vol 1 TPB Cool scifi story i enjoyed it |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Feb 17, 2024 14:14:17 GMT -5
Dog Man: Brawl of the WildDav Pilkey, 2019  The sixth of the endlessly enjoyable Dog Man books. I just realized that I did not previously mention that these stories are ‘written’ by Pilkey’s alter-egos, the elementary school kids George Beard and Harold Hutchins, who are also the ‘creators’ of his other, far more popular, series, Captain Underpants. Each book starts out with an introduction by them...  Another thing is that most of the chapter breaks are done like comic book covers, since the stories are supposed to be comics produced by George and Harold (working in their tree house):  Otherwise, it’s again an incredibly exciting story with all kinds of twists and turns as well as the usual humor...  ...and that includes the little details like the furnishings in the cell in “Dog Jail” where Dog Man gets put away for a while after being wrongfully accused of robbing a bank (he was framed, obviously). 
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Post by Dizzy D on Feb 17, 2024 15:01:00 GMT -5
I got the first trade of Image Comics (Top Cow) Antarctica by Simon Birks and Willi Roberts. One of the series I got because I really liked the covers on the individual comics.
Plot: Hannah Curtis life falls apart when her father disappears on a mission to Antarctica, years later after spending some time homeless, she gets her life back together with the help of a kindly dinner owner named Jim. After Jim's death, Hannah trains to be an engineer so she can be sent to Antarctica and investigate her father's disappearance.
Quite enjoying it so far, there is a mystery here, it's a sci-fi series and I really like the art, so those are all good points for me. I guess I need to see if they can stick the landing in the next trade before I recommend it to others.
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Feb 17, 2024 17:09:33 GMT -5
I got the first trade of Image Comics (Top Cow) Antarctica by Simon Birks and Willi Roberts. One of the series I got because I really liked the covers on the individual comics. Plot: Hannah Curtis life falls apart when her father disappears on a mission to Antarctica, years later after spending some time homeless, she gets her life back together with the help of a kindly dinner owner named Jim. After Jim's death, Hannah trains to be an engineer so she can be sent to Antarctica and investigate her father's disappearance. Quite enjoying it so far, there is a mystery here, it's a sci-fi series and I really like the art, so those are all good points for me. I guess I need to see if they can stick the landing in the next trade before I recommend it to others. This is a that intrigues me every time I see it on hoopla, but I haven't actually borrowed it to check it out yet. -M |
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Post by wickedmountain on Feb 21, 2024 0:50:06 GMT -5
Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver #1 ( 2024)
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Post by EdoBosnar on Feb 21, 2024 14:58:03 GMT -5
The Brandenburg School for BoysAlex de Campi (script), Tony Parker and Blond (art), 2023  This is a follow-up to Mayday, by the same creative team, which I reviewed above (and, like that one, this is also available at Panel Syndicate). It features two returning characters, the fearsome Soviet intelligence operative (and hitman, basically) who we only know by this codename, Felix (that’s him on the cover), and a CIA agent named Jack Hudson – he was part of a detail trying to apprehend Felix when he was on the run in California in the preceding story. The setting is West Berlin in the spring of 1972, and Hudson is on a deep-cover assignment, pretending to be a young Cuban revolutionary who joins a German communist organization that’s a fictional stand-in for the Baader-Meinhof group (also known as the Red Army Faction). The group is planning some kind of major terrorist bombings and Hudson has to find out the details; however, Felix is sent to participate in the operation by the KGB and this puts Hudson in jeopardy because Felix would recognize him immediately.  ( Hudson returning to the group’s squat after spending a few days in jail – and yeah, I censored a bit of the dialogue just in case…) Like Mayday, this is a pretty good period piece; de Campi really did her research to get all of the details right (for example, the title is apparently what the CIA and other US intelligence operatives called Berlin, i.e., it was a place to ‘school’ agents on the finer points of espionage, etc.). However, I didn’t like it quite as much, mainly because – even more than its predecessor – this one seems more like storyboards for a movie than a comic. And it’s pretty light on story – you can read all five issues in about a half-hour or so.
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Post by Trevor on Feb 25, 2024 18:31:23 GMT -5
The Best Thing I Read This Week
Week 7 of 52, ending 2/18/2024
Kick-Ass issues 1-8 and The Magic Order volumes 1 and 2
Feel like I’m always talking about how I’ve never read or at least finished comics, so much so that you all probably think I don’t read many comics at all. I really do, just end up reading a lot of the average stuff as I put aside the stuff I know I’ll like for a rainy day that rarely comes as i keep reading new stuff all the time. So anyway, not sure if I’d ever read anything by Mark Millar, at least to completion. A lot of it has been in my piles to get to, and decided to take the plunge last week.
Fun stuff, particularly enjoyed The Magic Order but I’ll read more Kick-Ass too. Guess I’ll keep going with Millar stuff, have The Night Club sitting here, and then read The Big Game.
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Post by wickedmountain on Feb 27, 2024 15:23:27 GMT -5
Out # 5 ( 2022 )
Jay Garrick the flash #1 - #5 (2023 - 2024)
Justice Society of America #1 - #8 ( 2023 )
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Post by Trevor on Mar 3, 2024 18:31:10 GMT -5
The Best Thing I Read This Week Week 8 of 52, ending 2/25/2024 yeah, a bit behind, but today’s post is in the works Saint Cole by Noah Van Sciver Have only read a couple short stories by Noah before this, but he might become a favorite. Almost turned me off early on as it appeared to possibly be a book about a slacker, something that generally turns me off. But there’s an honesty in Joe’s depravity and recklessness. The story is gritty and funny and heartbreaking and shocking at least a couple times. The utter hopelessness of his situation and the harsh economic inequity of this country shines thru and almost makes us forgive him. And maybe the crazy ending gives him one more chance to get his life together? Still not sure if I feel a bit sorry for Joe, or don’t at all respect people that make choices like his. But I’m still thinking about this novella a week later, and am anxious to read more of his work. I’ll be spending some of my Fantabucks on more work from the decent Van Sciver brother..  |
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