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REVIEW: The 7th Voyage of Sinbad

In 1958, this was as cutting-edge as it got. Ray Harryhausen took his stop-motion special effects wizardry and applied it to his first full-color film, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, recognizing that the fantasy setting was ideal for his Dynamation creations.

Viewed today, the effects can appear dated and, at times, quaint, but for those of us raised on his films throughout the 1960s, Harryhausen was a master whose work deserves to be remembered. Even so, one wishes his films had stronger scripts to match the spectacle of their special effects.

Sony Home Entertainment has debuted the film on 4K in a combo pack with Blu-ray and a Digital HD code. We skip the famed sailor’s first six seafaring exploits and pick up with this tale, set on land and sea, as Sinbad (Kerwin Mathews) brings his bride-to-be, Princess Parisa (Kathryn Grant), home for the wedding. En route, a stop brings them to Colossa, a seemingly deserted island, until they find the magician Sokurah (Torin Thatcher) chased by a cyclops. As Sinbad saves him, the mage drops his magic lantern, setting the wheels in motion.

Sokurah wants men and a ship to retrieve the lamp and the magic genie within (Richard Eyer). When the sultan denies him, he turns the princess into a six-inch miniature and refuses to restore her without Sinbad’s help. Sinbad outfits a boat with a crew of loyalists and prisoners-turned-sailors, then sets sail.

The prisoners, of course, want to mutiny and gain their freedom, but Sinbad’s courage and sailing skills are required during a fierce storm, so they relent for the time being. Back on Colossa, they encounter the cyclops along with other memorable Harryhausen creations.

Overall, it’s a straightforward story with by-the-numbers dialogue from Kenneth Kolb and little in the way of characterization. Director Nathan Juran keeps things moving with a brisk 88-minute runtime, and the film maintains a pleasing overall look. The cast does what it needs to do: Mathews makes for a somewhat understated lead, while Grant appears to be enjoying herself and brings some welcome lightness to the damsel-in-distress role.

Of course, the principal reason to watch is to see early Harryhausen at work, and he delivers. While the effects inevitably show their age, this foundational film includes a sword fight between Sinbad and a reanimated skeleton; without it, we might not have had the more spectacular battle in the later Jason and the Argonauts.

Sourced from the original camera negative, the new 1.66:1 HEVC 4K master offers rich colors and sharp textures, while Dolby Vision/HDR gives the film’s colorful stop-motion creatures added vibrancy in 2160p. Audio options include a solid 5.1 mix alongside the original mono track, preserving the pleasures of Bernard Herrmann’s score.

The 4K disc comes with the new documentary The Harryhausen Chronicles (1:00) and the original trailer.

The 1080p, 1.66:1-framed transfer appears to be a carryover from the 2008 Blu-ray release, complete with a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The special features are also retained: a commentary track with Harryhausen, visual effects experts Phil Tippett and Randall William Cook, author Steven Smith, and Arnold Kunert; along with features carried over from the original DVD, including Remembering The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (23:31), The Harryhausen Legacy (25:32), The Music of Bernard Herrmann (26:52), a photo gallery set to music (9:34), Sinbad May Have Been Bad, But He’s Been Good To Me (3:07), A Look Behind the Voyage (11:47), This is Dynamation (Special Effects) (3:25), and Ray Harryhausen – Interviewed by John Landis (11:52).

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Daredevil: Born Again by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli

I’m sure I’ve re-read this story since 1986. You can’t prove it from this blog, though. And my copy of  the trade paperback is the original 1987 edition, with minimal credits and supplemental material, from the era when the Big Two were still figuring out the whole reprint-floppies-in-a-permanent-format thing. (I’m not sure how I can have a copy of that edition, since mine would have died in my 2011 flood, but I do and I’m looking at it now.)

This storyline obviously followed Frank Miller’s original run on Daredevil by several years: he’d worked, mostly with Klaus Janson inking his pencils and taking over writing midway through the run, on that series from 1979 through 1983, in material that’s now collected in three good-sized volumes .

Daredevil: Born Again  collects issues 227-233 of the series, a discrete seven-issue storyline written by Miller and drawn by David Mazzucchelli. Like a lot of now-famous mid-80s Big Two stories (“The Anatomy Lesson” is another major example), it’s a strong, specific story whose bones have been scattered and re-used by a thousand other hands since then to the point that they’ve become a cliché.

This is the ur-“villain systematically destroys the hero” story – the next most influential version, I think, is “Kraven’s Last Hunt,” about Spider-Man, from a few years later. But there are dozens of others by this point: everyone who has had an ongoing series over the last three decades has probably been broken down by now.

They all get better, of course. Daredevil gets better in this one. IP can’t be left to wither on the vine.

The specifics here: Karen Page, a former girlfriend of Daredevil, went off to Hollywood to make her fortune a few years earlier. It didn’t work out; she quickly got addicted, descended into vaguely-described porn, and found herself somewhere in Mexico with a bad habit and no resources. Well, she had one thing worth selling: the real identity of Daredevil (the New York lawyer Matt Murdock).

She sells that; the letter with her note makes its way to New York and Daredevil’s biggest enemy Kingpin; and Kingpin decides to use it to, as villains always say, destroy everything the hero loves or cares about.

Murdock’s utilities are shut off, the IRS audits him and freezes his accounts, and a corrupt cop brings evidence that will lead to his disbarment. Murdock already had paranoid tendencies, and he quickly spirals out of control, which overjoys the Kingpin.

But Kingpin also then blows up Murdock’s brownstone home, which even a paranoid, spiraling Murdock realizes was done by someone. And, since he’s a character in an adventure comic, he knows, correctly, who that was.

Things go on from there – I might sound dismissive, but the story is compelling and told well, with precise, emotionally taut scenes and magnificent character work from both Miller (here still underplaying emotion, unlike later in his career) and Mazzucchelli. There is a lot of violence, since this is a superhero comic, but most of it is shocking and a lot of it is fatal, which was not standard for this era. There’s even a comic-relief gangster who talks in malapropisms to keep it all from being unrelievedly grim, and a great supporting-character role for Captain America in the big climax.

Miller constructs a new reality for his main characters out of the broken pieces he reduced them to, which is one of the things that became most cliched about this kind of story. That’s not on Miller – it was an ongoing series; he had to leave something for the next writer to work with – but it has become a central aspect of superhero comics since, the big storyline in which everything changes and launches an exciting new direction in the saga of .

I think you can read this with only the vaguest sense of who Daredevil and his supporting characters are. He’s a guy in a red costume; he’s in New York; his civilian identity is a lawyer. The big fat crimelord hates him. And you get that all from the story itself.

This is still probably the best first Daredevil story for any reader, as well as the best full-stop Daredevil story. I don’t think that’s faint praise, but it does need to be contextualized: this is a genre exercise, from an era when that genre was opening itself to new influences and story-telling techniques, and one of the early attempts to “write to the arc” that was entirely successful. It is a darn good story about guys who dress up in long underwear, run around rooftops, and beat each other up – but it’s still a long-underwear story at its heart.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

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Nova is Back as are the Ten Rings of Power

New York, NY— July 17, 2026 — The legendary Ten Rings of Power are returning to the Marvel Universe, and only one hero stands in their way of falling into the wrong hands: Sam Alexander, A.K.A. Nova!

The fan-favorite hero makes an impactful return this October in NOVA: RETURN OF THE RINGS #1, a Marvel’s Voices one-shot celebrating Hispanic & Latin American Heritage Month. Written by Josh Trujillo (Planet of the Apes Vs. Fantastic Four) and drawn by Rafael Loureiro (Dazzler), the issue kicks off a major saga centered around the Ten Rings. The one-shot also includes a bonus story by Juan Ponce (Redwing: Independence Day Infinity Comic) and Andy Pereira (Wiccan: Witches’ Road) that explores how Sam balances his epic superhero adventures with being there for his family.

THE RINGS OF POWER RETURN TO EARTH!

Deemed too dangerous to remain on Earth, the Ten Rings of Power were jettisoned into the depths of space—but have since broken containment! Now, one of the rings returns to Earth with a brand-new bearer hellbent on getting his hands on the sentient supercomputer, Worldmind, as his first step of galactic domination! His target? None other than Sam Alexander, A.K.A. NOVA!

“It’s such a thrill to write for one of Marvel’s biggest teen heroes!” Trujillo shared. “With so many memorable stories behind him, Sam Alexander is uniquely qualified to take on this threat! This is a high-stakes adventure with a fierce villain and huge consequences for the entire Marvel Universe. To save the day, Sam will be drawing inspiration from his fellow heroes and also his familial roots.”

“Everything has led to this moment!” he continued, “I hope new readers give this Nova special a chance. He’s an iconic character who leads with courage and heart. But it’s gonna take a lot more than that to survive this experience! Good luck!”

NOVA: RETURN OF THE RINGS #1
Written by JOSH TRUJILLO & JUAN PONCE
Art by RAFAEL LOUREIRO & ANDY PEREIRA
Cover by HUMBERTO RAMOS
Variant Cover by PHIL JIMENEZ
On Sale 10/14

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The Undertaker, Vol. 1: The Gold Eater & Dance of the Vultures by Xavier Dorison & Ralph Meyer

I try to treat books on the level I find them; it’s only fair. This one is the first of a decent-length series of Western comics by two French creators. It collects the first two, very closely linked books in the series, both originally published in 2015 and translated by Tom Imber for this 2026 English-language edition from Abrams.

I don’t know that the Western in French comics tends to be a high-octane, big-picture genre exercise. But I suspect it does: that a French comic set in the old American West is going to be a big adventure story that is plausible on the surface but doesn’t worry too much about deep thoughts as it caroms forward down its action-filled path. This one certainly does.

The Undertaker series is written by Xavier Dorison and drawn by Ralph Meyer, with colors by Caroline Delabie and Meyers. It is big and bold and full of characters saying dramatic things, moving smoothly from one big set-piece scene to another. I don’t think you should come to this book, or probably the series in general, for gritty realism, though it does aim to be gritty and has the big action-movie style of psuedo-realism.

This first American volume collects two French bande desinée – hence the full title The Undertaker, 1: The Gold Eater & Dance of the Vultures . It’s the origin story, to some degree – the main character still has some mysterious bits of his past – somewhat spoiled by the book’s descriptive copy, so I think they come up quickly in later volumes – that I think sets up the rest of the series.

The book doesn’t say when it’s set; it’s sometime in the late 19th century. A man going under the name of Jonas Crow is working as an itinerant undertaker in the usual rugged wilderness, with a black coach pulled by two horses and a vulture pal named Jed he picks up on the first pages here. He arrives in the town of Anoki City, the usual corrupt town run by one rich guy, because the rich guy, Joe Cusco, has hired Crow to bury him.

Cusco’s plan is to commit suicide by poisoning – he’s dying anyway – and have Crow bury him in the shaft of his first mine, the original source of his fortune. So far, so normal.

But he also converted his fortune into gold nuggets and ate all of those nuggets just before the poison; the point is to be buried with all his wealth, so no one else gets it. There’s an additional several levels of manipulation by Cusco with his haughty English governess Rose (?) – that’s how she’s described by the flap copy; she looks to be more of a housekeeper/head of staff – and with the Chinese woman Miss Lin, to make sure his body gets to the proper place when it’s supposed to, but that mostly comes out later in the book, in the inevitably revelation-filled plot.

Meanwhile, the miners of the town have been kept poor by Cusco for years or decades. They hope his death will mean some money for them, though I don’t see why they would ever have that expectation. But they do expect to get some of the rich guy’s money when he dies, in that something’s-gonna-break sense of people pushed too far for too long. And then they learn what he actually did with the gold, and they figure on cutting him open first to grab it for themselves. For various reasons, Crow and Rose and Lin can’t accept this, so they go careening out into the wilderness in the undertaker’s coach, closely followed by a heavily-armed band.

There’s also a local sheriff, who is more-or-less honest and not 100% on board with looting a corpse – but deeply suspicious of Crow, who he thinks is some legendary outlaw or other. And some Federal soldiers who wander into the action about mid-way through, to facilitate a chaotic multi-sided battle and ratchet up the tension and danger. But the core of the book is that chase: the undertaker and his companions ahead with a gold-filled corpse; a town full of angry men behind them.

The Undertaker is the title character of the series, so we know he wins. There’s a lot of stuff along the way, though – portentous dialogue, big shootouts, daring escapes, thrilling chases, shocking reversals, amazing revelations.

I think Dorison intended to have a deep theme about greed and honesty and doing what’s right despite everything, and you can line up the story to that if you want. But it comes across much cartoonier than that, to me at least, so I’ll just nod in that direction.

Meyer has a detailed art style with a strong story-telling panel flow – he varies the number of panels per page, but generally gets a lot of panels onto his big pages. There’s a lot of story here to get through, with dialogue to spare, and Meyer makes it all work on the page.

I don’t think The Undertaker is essentially as serious as I think it wants to be taken, but it is fun and it moves quickly and it crams in a hell of a lot of Western action of the kind the kids love today. (The kids love Westerns, right?)

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

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Robots, Demons & Dayjobs by David Kantrowitz

I regularly read books of funny comics by creators I’m not familiar with. This is usually great – new funny stuff! new perspectives! potentially new favorites! – and there are lots of books out there by lots of funny people.

But then I come to write about them here, and I worry that I’m saying exactly the same thing each time: this is a newish book of funny stuff, by somebody I hadn’t heard of previously, and it is funny, and you might want to check it out.

For example: Robots, Demons, and Dayjobs . It’s a 2025 collection of comics by David Kantrowitz, who has worked for Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and other places – these nine things seem to be all personal work, and there’s no sign they were published anywhere else first before this book. (Though they easily could have been.)

So it is a newish book of funny stuff, by someone I hadn’t heard of previously, and it is funny, and you might want to check it out.

(See what I mean?)

Most of the pieces here are short stories in comics form – the Table of Contents entry “Twelve Single Panel Cartoons” being an obvious exception.

The first and last pieces are in a pseudo-storybook layout, with big blocks of typeset text, and tell stories about a character based on Kantrowitz – one about finding a big trash can full of trophies, and one about accidentally wearing a red shirt to Target (and the horrors that ensued).

But most of the book is in more normal comics-format, with various odd creatures – a skull-headed restaurateur, a log-limbed ball-bodied dude named Wizard Dinks, two hard-working monsters, a succession of overly polite robots – getting through their days however they can.

Kantrowitz has mostly worked in kids’ media, I think: he has the sort of sensibility, art style, and concerns that you see in creators who have toiled on big corporate stuff for younger readers and are now doing more personal work. His art is expressive and mostly pretty crisp, though he varies his style quite a bit in these stories. The subject matter is not aimed at kids, but it’s also not “adult” (in the sex & drugs sense), either – there’s a feeling that he may be talking to adults more here than he’s used to, but it’s all accessible work, with a mostly broadly comic sensibility.

I will note that this book is not available in the usual hegemonic retailer that I typically provide links for. I linked above to the Hoopla library app, where I read it. (Your local library might include Hoopla access: if so, I greatly recommend it.) It’s also available directly from the author . I didn’t see an ISBN, so it may not be more widely available, but Kantrowitz is LA-based, so, if you’re in that part of the world, you might see him at a show somewhere, selling these. Take a look.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

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REVIEW: Pretty Maids all in a Row

The early 1970s were a transitional period for feature films. A new generation of filmmakers was making their presence known, alongside actors still unfamiliar to mainstream audiences. Content was evolving away from escapist fare toward more serious, provocative material. MGM, however, seemed slow to catch up.

When Herb Solow, formerly of Desilu and Paramount, took over as head of film production, he jettisoned most of his predecessor’s projects but retained a film based on Francis Pollini’s 1968 novel Pretty Maids All in a Row. William Hanley (Something About Amelia) had already written a screenplay, and there was something about its darkly comic, erotic tone that Solow thought could become a commercial success.

Solow thought the script needed a rewrite, and, as luck would have it, there was a screenwriter whose project had been canceled after he had already been paid, leaving him indebted to the studio. The writer was a vocal proponent of frank depictions of sex and sexual desire, which seemed to make him a fitting choice. He also couldn’t find work anywhere else, so Solow turned to Gene Roddenberry to rewrite Hanley’s script and produce the film.

Roddenberry had withdrawn from the third season of Star Trek to write a Tarzan screenplay that was never filmed. No sooner had he returned to Stage 9 at Paramount Pictures than NBC canceled his creation. To Roddenberry’s credit, he saw Pretty Maids All in a Row as a possible vehicle for commentary on the sorry state of public education and changing sexual mores in the wake of the sexual revolution.

The story focuses on football coach and guidance counselor Michael “Tiger” McDrew (Rock Hudson), who is ruggedly handsome and desired by the young women of Oceanfront High School. He exploits many of them and eventually begins killing them, leaving the corpses provocatively scattered around the grounds, from the football field to the restroom. Meanwhile, Ponce (John David Carson) is suffering from serious sexual frustration but develops a crush on substitute teacher Miss Smith (Angie Dickinson). McDrew convinces Smith to “educate” Ponce and help him gain confidence.

With four students dead, the police, led by Detective Sam Surcher (Telly Savalas), investigate and zero in on McDrew because, well, there is no other likely suspect in the story.

What could have been an interesting character study and commentary on teenagers, sex, and education was badly mishandled. The fault lies not so much with Roddenberry, who was inexperienced as a feature film writer, as with Solow’s odd choice of French provocateur Roger Vadim to make his first American movie. It was a poor match, and Vadim leaned into the sex while largely ignoring the commentary. That said, Roddenberry’s approach to sexuality was nearly as juvenile as the students he was writing about, and he surprisingly portrayed the police poorly, including Police Chief John Poldaski (Keenan Wynn), despite his own background as a former officer.

Much as Solow hired Roddenberry out of a measure of loyalty, the producer also brought on Star Trek’s William Ware Theiss for the costumes and hired William Campbell and James Doohan as Surcher’s fellow detectives. The maids themselves—Brenda Sykes, Joy Bang, Gretchen Burrell, Aimee Eccles, June Fairchild, Margaret Markov, Diane Sherry, and a pre-Isis JoAnna Cameron—were all hoping the project, with its star leads, would be a stepping stone. Instead, they were disappointed by the results, with some refusing to promote the film. Their nudity was copious for the day, and they appeared in the April 1971 issue of Playboy, but it did little good for their careers.

The film was a mismatch of intentions and talents, resulting in divided critical reviews. Its disastrous box-office performance made this Roddenberry’s only feature-film script credit, and his career foundered until the first Star Trek convention, less than a year later, helped rewrite the pop-culture paradigm.

Warner Archive’s Blu-ray release presents the film with an excellent 1080p transfer, offering a clean, stable image that lets viewers appreciate both the period production design and the sunlit California locations. Colors look natural, detail is strong, and the presentation appears faithful rather than artificially polished. The DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono audio track is similarly solid, keeping dialogue clear while giving Lalo Schifrin’s score enough presence to remain one of the film’s more enjoyable assets. The disc is disappointingly light on supplements, with only the trailer included, but the feature itself has been treated well. For collectors of studio-era oddities, Roddenberry completists, or viewers curious about this strange collision of talents, the release is worthwhile, even if the film remains more fascinating as a misfire than as a success.

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Fantastic Four and X-Men vs. 3K in October

New York, NY— July 2, 2026 — This October, things go from bad to worse for the X-Men and the Fantastic Four in their battle against the villainous group 3K! While Cyclops’ team engages 3K above the skies of Philadelphia to prevent the release of the X-Virus and the emergence of a dark future, the Fantastic Four have mysteriously forgotten their own identities (and how their powers work!) while on their own quest to save the master of magnetism, Magneto. As if that’s not enough trouble, the X-Men’s base in Alaska comes under attack, with John Greycrow left alone to defend it, and Psylocke stalks a mysterious monster on a dangerous solo mission that promises to reveal dark secrets. It’s all taking place across new issues of DNX, FANTASTIC FOUR and X-MEN this October.

In DNX #3, 3K’s counterstroke has shocked the X-Men, and Philadelphia is no less in the shadow of disaster as the Chairman’s spoilsport plan comes into effect! The X-Men must look to the least of their number while the Fantastic Four fight against time to deliver the data that can save the day.

“In all the high drama and high action of DNX, we’re also taking the time to zoom in on more personal moments, finding time to explore slightly smaller stories taking place at the same time as the big event,” details DNX and X-MEN writer Jed MacKay. “X-MEN #39 sees John Greycrow, resolutely NOT an X-Man, having to step up, while #40 explores Psylocke’s attitudes towards life and death- and when to make the choice between them. These both tie into the larger themes of the DNX event and move forward story threads that have been brewing for some time!”

In X-Men #39, enemies put their sights on the X-Men’s home base — the Factory, in Alaska. But the Factory is not undefended…and John Greycrow is an army unto himself!

In X-MEN #40, alone on what could be a flying tomb, Psylocke stalks a mysterious monster on a solo mission for answers. But the answers she finds may raise only further questions.

In FANTASTIC FOUR #18, The Fantastic Four are lost, with no memory of who they are or why they’re there — but now they know they need to find out, fast —because Magneto’s life hangs in the balance. But without identities — or a clear understanding of their powers — the FF are as much a danger to themselves as they are to their opponents.

“This is a really fun conclusion to a two-parter which, while obviously acting as an important part of DNX, also stands on its own as a Fantastic Four story for everyone else,” explains FANTASTIC FOUR writer Ryan North. “I get to bring the FF to some places they don’t normally go – both physically and emotionally – while at the same time saving the X-Men and the world. Jed has been a delight to work with, and we have commiserated over the challenge of writing Beast and Mr. Fantastic in the same room. It’s hard enough writing one smart guy, but two?  There should only be one smart guy in every universe.”

DNX #3 (of 5)
Written by JED MACKAY
Art by FEDERICO VINCENTINI
Cover by KAARE ANDREWS
On Sale 10/14

X-MEN #39
Written by JED MACKAY
Art by NETHO DIAZ
Cover by TONY S. DANIEL
On Sale 10/14

FANTASTIC FOUR #18
Written by RYAN NORTH
Art by VINCENZO CARRATÙ
Cover by GIUSEPPI CAMUNCOLI
On Sale 10/28

X-MEN #40
Written by JED MACKAY
Art and Cover by TONY S. DANIEL
On Sale 10/28

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The Complete Hate, Vol.1 by Peter Bagge

There was a time when slackers were hip. Especially young slackers, particularly in Seattle or thereabouts. I don’t know why. I don’t remember the sequence, thirty-some years later – I think it was a “scene” first, even before Nirvana hit big, with breathless media coverage about what all these wacky young people were doing.

But it was a big deal, for a while. Just before and during the first wave of grunge, when my generation, GenX, was young and aimless and energetic, with hair and abs and knees as good as any of us were ever going to get. A lot of us resented the attention and the stupidly breathless media focus on mostly dumb egotists doing mostly dumb egotistical things, while the vast majority of that generation were living ordinary lives and doing normal things – much like what the average Boomer probably thought about hippies, come to think of it.

I think Peter Bagge’s Hate comics series might actually have been one of the early signposts of that scene – the first issue came out in April of 1990, well before Nirvana’s Nevermind or the movie Slackers. Oh, it was definitely already a scene – Bagge himself had moved to Seattle, for reasons I’m sure he would argue long and loud had nothing to do with any of that, a few years before – but I think in Spring of 1990 it was still a mostly underground scene, known by cognoscenti, and not the media extravaganza it became a year or so later.

The Complete Hate, Vol.1  collects the first half of Bagge’s 1990s Hate comics: the first fifteen issues, from 1990 to 1994. (He’s done other things called Hate since then, first an Annual for about a decade, then an newer Revisited that I haven’t seen.) This is the full Buddy-in-Seattle run, starting with a minor time-skip from the end of the Bradley family stories in Neat Stuff .

As it often is with Bagge, all of his characters are horrible people who make universally bad decisions, with massive anger issues and an almost total lack of impulse control. (I enjoyed that in fiction a lot more at the time, before people almost exactly like that took over all the levers of my government.) Buddy Bradley is the central character, and the one who comes closest to being a functional adult – oh, he still makes bad decisions every time he gets the chance, but we see his thought processes as he almost resists his impulses and sometimes even feels bad about the things he does. Well, he mostly feels bad because bad things happen to him because of his stupid decisions, because he’s a Bagge character and they have no capacity to mentally model other people’s thinking at all.

Buddy is working in a used-book store: it’s a McJob that lets him steal stuff from work and doesn’t require too much effort or thinking. (Slacker, remember?) This is actually a step or three up from where we saw him at the end of Neat Stuff – he was living on a beach at that point, having gotten kicked out of every home he possibly could have – so baby steps, huh?

His childhood friend Stinky (Leonard Brown, the guy on the cover) also made the trek, and is more suited for the fake-it-till-you-make-it culture, having no self-awareness at all and only ego. Their third roommate is the socially awkward loner George Cecil Hamilton III, who mostly stays in his room, reading and writing conspiracy-theory materials. (Yes, people like that existed before the Internet – they tended to use the mails, they had a much lower profile, and the world was better for their relative disconnection.)

And Buddy’s ex-girlfriend Lisa and new girlfriend Valerie (as of the beginning of the series) are also roommates, making more sitcom-like opportunities for drama.

These fifteen issues take that cast, add in a few supporting characters, and bounce them off each other violently and chaotically for what seems to be maybe a year or so in-universe. (There’s no way the timeline is as long as the four-plus years the issues took to come out.) Nobody learns anything, nobody gets better at anything, nobody advances in their careers – people do move in and out, change jobs and chase dreams (like Stinky’s band, which almost takes off), and break up and form new “relationships,” because things are always happening in a Bagge comic.

It’s energetic and nutty: these people will always make the worst choice possible when given the chance. I don’t think Bagge even wrote it that way; this is just how he sees people. It intersects with his core libertarianism, of course: he’s of the school that you should just let people do whatever, because people are universally horrible and that (somehow) keeps everyone off his lawn. I still think that Bagge characters + libertarianism = something like The Purge all night every night, but I’m not here to enforce logical consistency into fictional worlds.

His cartooning is still aggressively rubber-hose here, with the old faithful concentric-circles to show that characters are running really fast, too. It’s very wordy, too – his characters may not be good at getting what they want, but they can yell back and forth at each other for pages on end.

Hate is a time-capsule now, this first batch probably the most so. This was a time and place in American culture, and Bagge had a predictably sour and jaundiced take on it before it had even properly gotten started. If you can have sympathy for characters who resolutely refuse to do anything to deserve sympathy, you can have a great time reading it.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

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REVIEW: Spider-Man: Mighty Mayhem! 

Spider-Man: Mighty Mayhem! 
By Mike Maihack
Abrams Fanfare/96 pagers/$12.99

After teaming up with the Avengers, Fantastic Four, and the Guardians of the Galaxy, Mike Maihack is back pairing your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man with the Throg and the Norse gods of Asgard.

The Enchantress has turned the thunder god back into his frog form, and the rest of the Asgardians have been similarly transformed into odd objects or animals (a lovely chance to work in the alligator Loki). As a result, Odin, the one-eyed radio, turns to the wall-crawler for help, accompanied by Steve the bird, providing the reader with a fast-paced tour of the nine realms according to Norse myth. Spider-Man must find these ordinary objects (which are actually powerful artifacts) before the Enchantress does. 

Along the way, familiar faces from previous volumes (complete with footnotes), and Spidey does his level best to help the plagued gods. His humor and sense of responsibility are intact despite the chaos. In some ways, Maihack swerves too much into the oddities and definitely relies too much on Steve, rather than the title character, to get things done.

It’s a shame that Sif and the Warriors Three are mostly sidelined here (as they have been in the feature films), but they do make their presence felt.

Maihack nicely bookends the story with Spidey’s own conflict with the Rhino, along with a fun running gag involving ice cream. There’s even a post-credit sequence.

Aimed at readers 6-9, the book will most definitely satisfy and amuse them.

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Shaolin Cowboy: Start Trek by Geof Darrow

There are some creative projects that you’re pretty sure just aren’t for you. Maybe it’s in a genre you know nothing about – and aren’t inclined to learn. Maybe it’s a creator that just doesn’t click for you.

Or maybe you know that the project is doing something you’re not really interested in. And then, twenty years later, you see it again, and don’t remember exactly why you avoided it, and remember liking that creator’s work, once upon a time.

So you try it. And you remember: you were right to begin with.

I am not going to be praising Shaolin Cowboy: Start Trek . Geof Darrow is an amazing artist, delivering a long sequence of magnificent, eye-catching pages here, and his imagination is clearly equally fertile and weird.

But I’ve always been a fan of story. And Darrow makes only the most minor, vague, smirking-into-his-sleeve attempts to tell a story here. This is not so much a book as it is a series of ultraviolent moments, frozen in time and memorialized on large pages. The best way to experience it, I think, would either be in a volume at the size of the original art or, even better, that actual art, on the walls of some museum somewhere, maybe even in a slightly confusing layout so that the viewer can’t quite read it as a story at all.

The premise is that there’s this guy – both an ex-Shaolin monk and a gunslinger, somehow. He’s dumpy and not-young, leaning a bit into the kung-fu movie trope that the really old guy is the scariest killer. He’s out in the desert somewhere, probably the American West. It’s an unspecified time – now or a little later – with a lot of modern-looking people but also whatever fantastic-looking monsters and supernatural entities that Darrow feels like drawing at that moment. As the first page of the book puts it: “Someplace in the middle of nowhere, the day before yesterday and a week before tomorrow.”

A lot of people want to kill this guy. The one reason we learn here – from a talking crab, no less – doesn’t show any evil on the cowboy’s side, but the crab has good reason to be eternally angry and to swear vengeance in the traditional manner. We can assume all of the other dozens or hundreds of odd and heavily-armed people assembled in this desert have reasons as well – maybe equally good, maybe worse, maybe better.

I tend to think that if hundreds of people are insistent enough on your being dead enough to gear up and chase you into a desert, you’ve definitely done something you shouldn’t have. But maybe the cowboy is just really, really karmically unlucky, and that every action in his previous life horribly damaged someone else in ways that he couldn’t predict and didn’t notice. Either way, we start with – hundreds? dozens? lots – of people assembled, as the cowboy rides up on his talking mule, and announce that they’re going to kill him.

Well, the Talking Killer Gambit never works, of course. So we get a bunch of hyper-detailed double-page spreads of dozens of these unnamed people being murdered in horrible ways – but it’s by our hero, which means we’re presumably happy about it.

So that happens. Then the cowboy is moseying on a bit further, and discovers a talking baby and three flying supernatural demonish entities. One of those entities, of course, decides to fight him, and the dialogue this creepy skeletal whatsit yells at him during the fight gives the usual confusing and half-baked explanation, in which the talking baby is cosmically important and the Fate of the World lies in its bloody hands. (Did I mention the creepy baby has blood-soaked hands for no specific mentioned reason? He does.)

But we need to go through about a hundred pages of fighting in weird ways, before we get to the it’s-not-the-end. (It all just stops when we hit the last page. There were some more Shaolin Cowboy issues after this run, which have been collected elsewhere; I have no idea if they “end” the “story.”) We do see a lot of very impressive spaces and monsters, and plenty of detailed double-page spreads of zombie hordes and seas of dismembered corpses and people flying through space doing that holding-up-two-fingers-to-show-its-martial-arts thing. It is exceptionally visually inventive.

But, as an actual book that tells a story, I can’t say there’s much of anything here. There’s a kind of comic that is driven by whatever the artist felt like drawing at that moment; this is perhaps the exemplar of that style. Continuity and logic and plausibility are not its strong suits.

If you have the visual tastes of a hyperactive fifteen-year-old-boy, this will be the greatest comic in the history of everything. For anyone else, adjust your expectations accordingly.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

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