This was Richard Sala’s first book; this edition is (at least for the moment) Richard Sala’s last book. Sala died in mid-2020, alone at home, of what turned out to be a heart attack. He didn’t die of COVID, but I have to believe he’s one of the many, many people who would have had…
This one collects seven more issues of the early Usagi Yojimbo comic, plus a story from Critters, though the dates in the book are a little confusing. The book itself claims a first edition in September 1991, but says the stories included are copyright no earlier than 1992. Now, Stan Sakai is a fantastic creator,…
SYNOPSIS In this fantasy-adventure, set in a world peopled by creatures of myth and magic, a prince embarks on a quest to find the magical Glaive and then rescue his young bride. Colwyn (Ken Marshall) is the leader of a mythical sword-and-sorcery group in pursuit of “the Beast” that has kidnapped his fiancée, Lyssa (Lysette…
The single-name thing seems to have leapt from Eurocomics and landed on North American shores – well, we’ve always had it in other fields, like music (Cher! Madonna!), but comics-makers are embracing it as well. I may be concerned that our Strategic Name Reserve is in danger of being depleted – there aren’t that many…
The publisher calls this book “Hellboy meets Redwall,” which hits the major touchpoints, as far as that goes. Yes, fighting supernatural monsters. Yes, medieval times. Yes, anthropomorphic characters. But it’s much more authentically medieval than a reader would expect, in quirky and unusual ways, much more inspired and growing out of actual research than it…
This is not a sequel to Darwin Carmichael Is Going to Hell . It is, though, the only other project I know of by the team behind that webcomic, and it’s set in a world very similar to Darwin Carmichael‘s. It may even be the same world, though not necessarily so. Darwin Carmichael ran from…
Song of the Lioness Book One: AlannaBy Tamora Pierce, Vita Ayala, and Sam BeckAbrams Fanfare/256 pages/Hardcover (($26.99), Softcover ($17.99) Tamora Pierce crafted Song of the Lioness, a four-part story tracing the making of a hero in the form of twins Alanna and Thom. Across the young adult novels, she dealt with gender and bullying, set…
Comics artists of a certain age always want to draw Loki in a helmet with big twisty ram’s horns. I know why, they know why – we all know why. But reminding readers of bombastic comics for kids, hacked out monthly and printed on the cheapest paper available, might not be the mental connection you…
Knowing what needs to be said in a story, and what can just be implied, is always tricky. We can all think of works that fail in both directions – overexplaining, or leaving things too murky. I think The Unlikely Story of Felix and Macabber doesn’t quite explain all of the things it should have…
The fourth collection of Stan Sakai’s long-running Usagi Yojimbo series collects a long – some would say “epic” – storyline that started in 1989 and ran through six issues of the comic. It’s largely the “gather all of the popular, previously separate, supporting characters” arc, and it has the same largely historical accurate but softened…
Do you ever find yourself complaining about the genre premises of a work? It’s not helpful, I can tell you. And it can waste a bunch of mental energy while reading until you realize that’s what you’re doing. For example, in a graphic novel mostly aimed at teen readers, with a mostly teen cast and…
This is the one where things become both more and less complicated. On balance, probably less overall, by the end, which is unusual for the mid-point of a series. For any Gen Z readers coming to Scott Pilgrim for the first time (or, I guess, older people who managed to miss it): this is a…
