#Image Comics reviews

[dispatchdcu]

Transformers #13 Review

Transformers #13 Review #transformers #comics #comicbooks #news #imagecomics #skybound #art #info #NCBD #amazon #comicbooknews #previews #reviews

Writer: Daniel Warren Johnson Artist: Jason Howard Colorist: Mike Spicer Letterer: Rus Wooton Cover Artists: Daniel Warren Johnson & Mike Spicer; Jorge Corona & Mike Spicer; Viktor Bogdanovic; Jorge Fornés; Francesco Mattina; Homare; Ludo Lullabi; John Giang; Björn Barends; Mico Suayan; Alan Quah; Deegan Puchkors; Juan Gedeon; Livio Ramondelli; Erik Eliarrez; Tiago Da Silva; Ivan Tao; Sajad Shah;…

[rontra]

ok it turns out if you draw kawakami a lot you'll end up with a lot of kawakami pics

[pedrocomicreviews]

The Power Fantasy #6

"Okay-- it all comes down to the goth chick, right?"

I think every Kieron Gillen comic I've read defies neat classification. The Power Fantasy is very much not a superhero comic, but it has all the trappings of one, mostly for the purpose of examining and subverting them. One volume in, we're starting to see what they're going to do with it.

We are mostly done introducing the Superpowers by now, even if we still have one to go. More importantly, I think we have a pretty good idea of what they do both in this world and with each other. We have a literal guardian angel with a penchant for the greater good that goes against her best nature, a pyramid scheme conman who can actually put his money where his mouth is, a cult leader who's actually godlike-- these and more are all incredible characters that could be the protagonists of their own books, or the villains for a dozen others.

I think that's what makes this so compelling. It's not a book about how power would make villains and ruin the world, despite the world being a mess as a result of them-- it's a story about regardless of what power did to these people, they still have to live in this planet. Even if we eventually introduce aliens or other worlds (which I believe the timeline kinda implies we will?), there's no Earth-2 for anyone here. There's no easy way out, there's no Phantom Zone, there's no Arakko. They have to learn how to coexist or they'll destroy the world, and at that point, what's the point in being powerful?

And it's interesting to see how each of them doesn't fight. Etienne has fully accepted he is a well-intentioned monster and is manipulating people's entire lives to make sure things go the way he wants, planting people who he can either charm or simply mind-control one way or another to keep situations from escalating. Valentina (BRASIL NÚMERO UM PORRA) has decided to completely check out and has been living in a satellite since 69, and basically sweeps in and leaves to avoid making a mess. Superpowers joining governments, Superpowers breeding other Superpowers, Superpowers being too scary to even approach -- these characters disagree on everything, you never know what they're going to do next.

It's refreshing to read something that expects you to be at least a little grossed out at some of the things the titular characters do, and that assumes you'll have different thoughts when you come back to the book with more information and more context. It's well written, beautiful, and so far every issue has had a twist that completely recontextualizes the few pages prior.

It's rich without being overwhelming, dense despite being concise, approachable despite how deep the rabbit hole for its lore and character relationships clearly goes, and we're just seeing a glimpse of the iceberg so far. I am a massive The Wicked + The Divine fan, and I'm hoping this gets the same chances to shine as that book did.

Buy the first volume to support the series! I'm pretty sure it just came out.

[oraclereadsandreviews]

hi!! i was just wondering where you read your comics online? i wanna read so many more but i dont wanna buy them until i know theyre good 😭

i read them on batcave.biz (this is a pirated website and for that i am sorry) (however it is the best pirated website—i never get porno pop ups on here!!!) i understand people don’t like pirating comics since it’s a dying industry but since i buy the ones i enjoy and you are planning on the same thing i think it’s ok! it’s just not always feasible to afford dc unlimited and marvel unlimited. i also buy comics from tfaw.com and would highly recommend them, although amazon also works.

[ultra-phthalo]

TF EU Soundwave In Issue 7 Sky Bound

[Listens to 'Mother Russia Bleeds Night Brawlers' as I read Soundwave beating the bolts out of Starscream in a volcano.]

God damn Soundwave is preying on Starscream. Walking around him and taking his time. Starscream is cornered. And Soundwave acts, letting it slip in the end about how bitter he was that Starscream had kicked his Ravage. The fire, smoke and sharp boulders of the active volcano. The glow of magma being the Decepticons only light source throughout the scene. Transitions. Snapping into a sunny scene on the Autobot's side away from the Decepticons. This change from fire to sunshine is meant to act as a comparison for the talk Arcee has with Carly. Carly is just as bitter about the harm Starscream had caused in her life; as Soundwave is bitter about Starscream running the Decepticons into the ground and harming the cassettes. Carly wants to take out her anger on Starscream as much as Soundwave does.

Soundwave isn't just beating Starscream for control. He's manifesting as the hate that the Autobot's claim they'll refuse to become participants of. And it's saying Carly is acting like a Decepticon. When Cliffjumper refused to kill Starscream. Carly pushed Cliffjumper away socially and doesn't want to talk to him. Considering his refusal as a betrayal to the trust she had in him. Carly does this without knowing the true reason as to why Cliff wouldn't shoot. The reason likely being that Cliff takes being an Autobot so seriously he considers killing a pleading bot a Decepticon act. But right now she doesn't care to listen to the warning the Autobots are giving her.

[lunarharp]

figured i'd do this again..bit early i guess..

[kryptonbabe]

The Closet, the existential familial horror of a broken home, a review

The Creature and concept sketches for the character From the horror comic book The Closet (2022) written by James Tynion IV, art by Gavin Fullerton

This short miniseries was much more a depressing read than a scary one, the sinister imagery paired with the very real troubles faced by the adult main characters work to articulate how kids perceive conflict and hostility. Children can be very sensitive and their world follows slightly different rules, events tend to be felt more intensely. Their whole life is on the balance, their tiny little existence, they can't see things through the lens of different perspectives only experience can help them develop. There's an urgency to your problems when you're 4 years old, like the kid in this story.

But the focus of The Closet is not exclusively about this kid's fear of a monster, we get to see the lives of his parents too, more specifically his dad, a guy living a mid-life crisis, facing the horror of who he has become and how he feels trapped in a life that he should be grateful for. Then we get to see how the dad's and the kid's fears are connected, how we affect each other sometimes without realizing, how deeply we can scar those we love. And it's terrifying, but mostly it is depressing, and the comic does a good job with the art and writing to build this little bleak yarn, so alien and yet so familiar.

This comic has only 3 issues and the themes while not heavy can be upsetting for their hopelessness, yet for its short length the narrative is well balanced in its existential musings and creepy moments. I'm a fan of the naturalism of Tynion's writing here and Fullerton's sketchy and moody looking art also work to create a somber atmosphere, fitting for a claustrophobic familial horror like this.

[mandatory-blog-stop-asking]

I have immediately realized what a mistake it is to have these reviews on my main account so I made a BRAND SPARKIN', BOLD, ALL-NEW ALL-DIFFERENT blog just for those. Go follow me at @pedrocomicreviews the new hot place for middling takes on pop culture.

you can also just follow the hashtag on this post for it to show up on your feed.

[driftwooddestiel]

charlie brooker's so obsessed with penis wars its like his jungkook

[izzys-issues]

{🚫NSFW Warning🚫}

9. "Volume One"

(Saga Trade Paperback #1, October 2012)

RATING: 8 👻 Ghost Girls out of 10

Definitely brings some "graphic" to the term graphic novel. That said, this is a fantastic vessel for storytelling. I've been trying not to overhype it like I was doing in the weeks after reading it for the first time, and that was two years ago so I've had time to temper my impressions. The world building is done in a really good way and so much of the tech and magic are incredibly fun designs. It's like if Onward was a horny, snarky, gritty space opera.

FAVORITE: The only proper way to talk to a pedophile

LEAST FAVORITE: Everything about Sextillion

[superpoweredfancast]

Witchblade #5 Review

Witchblade #5 Image Comics Written by Marguerite Bennett Art by Giuseppe Cafaro Colors by Arif Prianto Letters by Troy Peteri The Rundown: Sara attempts to resist the Witchblade and everything it offers as she continues to investigate a personal matter. Sara is having dark and disturbing dreams about the Witchblade and what it is potentially doing to her. Things become more intense for her…

[dispatchdcu]

Witchblade #4 Review

Witchblade #4 Review #Witchblade #comics #comicbooks #news #art #info #NCBD #comicbooknews #previews #reviews #IMAGE #Amazon #imagecomics

Writer: Marguerite Bennett Artist: Giuseppe Cafaro Colorist: Arif Prianto Letterer: Troy Peteri Editors: Marc Silvestri, Matt Hawkins & Elena Salcedo Cover Artists: Giuseppe Cafaro & Arif Prianto; Jerome Opeña & Sunny Gho Publisher: Top Cow Productions & Image Comics Price: $3.99 Release Date: October 16, 2024 Sara Pezzini masquerades as a dirty cop. She pretends she didn’t perform heinous acts…

[alexistalkscomics]

Creature From The Black Lagoon Lives! Issue #1: A promising start to the return of a classic monster

The 1954 classic, Creature From The Black Lagoon is one of my favourite movies of all time and the Gill-Man is in my opinion, one of the greatest movie monsters ever conceived.

So when I subscribed to Global Comix and saw that the first issue of Dan Watters and Ram V’s Creature From The Black Lagoon Lives! was available, I just had to read it.

Set after the events of the original film and ignoring its sequels, the comic serves as a standalone sequel that follows Kate Marsden, a journalist who is on an investigation in Peru that’s seemingly connected to a past trauma and is otherwise, completely disconnected to Gill-Man

Whilst some people might question this creative decision by the writers, I think that it very much works in the issue’s favour as it means that readers who aren’t familiar with the original film don’t have to worry about feeling locked out and it also gives the story a different set up to the film which allows it to avoid feeling like it’s just an adaptation of the movie.

The lack of Gill-Man in this issue is also another decision that works in its favour as it allows the Creature to slowly be built up as a more sinister and scary presence compared to the family friendly tone of the film.

However, the length and pacing of the issue left me feeling mildly disappointed as the page count combined with the brisk pace of the story made it feel quite abrupt when the issue ends on a cliffhanger.

Credit for creating an appropriately creepy atmosphere must also go to the somewhat scratchy (in a good way) art style of Mathew Roberts. One scenes that particularly earns him my praises is near the end of the issue where we see Gill-Man for the first time. When I read this scene, I felt the exact same sense of dread and excitement as when I first watched the film and saw the Creature in full for the first time.

My main and only real criticism for the visual aspects of the book is that the series is in colour. Even though Dave Stewart’s realistic colouring style compliments Roberts’ art well, I think that I would have preferred that the series be in black and white to enhance the feeling of the book as a tribute to one of the best movies of the fifties era.

Overall, Creature From The Black Lagoons Lives! #1 is by no means perfect or particularly groundbreaking but it gives readers a strong opening to a promising reintroduction to one of the best but often most overlooked parts of the Universal Monsters canon.

8/10

[pedrocomicreviews]

Assorted Crisis Events #1

"There is no such thing as time. Time's a trick our minds play on us to keep us going."

Deniz Camp is on a career-making run.

The first time I read something by Camp was 20th Century Men, a book I randomly saw an acquaintance say it was good without giving any context. That acquaintance was correct. It's one of the most gripping original comic narratives to come out recently; it's heavy, focused, married to its themes and does everything in its power to make sure you get its message.

Assorted Crisis Events takes a much different approach. It's an anthology drawn by Eric Zawadzki of House of El fame, colored by Jordie Bellaire of Birds of Prey fame, and lettered by Hassan Ostmane-Elhaou of Poison Ivy fame, as well as counting with Tom Muller, the designer behind the X-Men Krakoa Era's look and datapages vibe. I give you all of these names because these happen to be some of my favorite people working this industry right now; I can't quite express to you how much of an all-star cast this is, it's kind of ludicrous so many of these times-defining artists are all working together.

And then the actual book is also very good! Sometimes you're worried that too many good cooks spoil the broth, but everyone has a time to shine here. This first issue has the job of introducing us to what's actually happening and what we can expect, and there's just so much happening here that it starts feeling almost overwhelming. And I do think that's the point Camp is making with his structure here.

We follow a lady named Ashley during some of what for us, would be the worst days of our lives, but for her is just normal. The worst days of everyone's lives are now commonplace since time became unwound. Everything happens at once and a lot of it is bad.

But that's not even the worst part, and I think this theme is where the anthology will shine: the worst part is how banal everything becomes. Movies start profiting off the apocalypse, people still have to go to work even if work doesn't exist, and unfathomable personal tragedy is just a fact of life. Nothing seems to work but everything has to keep going, and the constant exhaustion Ashley feels is beautifully rendered by everyone involved.

It is not a very happy book to read right now, when the world is actually imploding, but that too is part of the point. While Camp writes an exaggerated caricature of a world that could never really keep going, it is hard to say ours is feeling much more "realistic" right now. Casualties and horrible events become just something else that happened in our commune, entire countries go into upheaval and devolve in and out of fascism at the drop of a hat, and yet we still have to go outside and pretend life is just normal enough that we need our minimal wages.

Seeing a world where time is broken and yet still seeing our world in it is a little more depressing than I was expecting, but it never stops being interesting. It's a big, ~43 pages long book, and some portions do feel repetitive, but Ashley also feels like all the blood, guts and horrific events are repetitive. We get accustomed to her way of looking at things so fast and so seamlessly, it's almost a jump scare when the inevitable conclusion comes, just the way you knew it would.

I wouldn't mind seeing Ashley again, especially because I adore her design. But I'm very curious what the rest of the anthology is going to be like. Even if it's very good, I do feel like there's only so much you can write about the end of the world before it becomes too repetitive even for these themes of time feeling unreal. Still, Deniz Camp has yet to publish a bad script, so I'm all in either way.

Get this in your pull list, if only so you can see what's in the man's head when he's not writing Ultimates.

[oraclereadsandreviews]

comic review: invincible (2003) vols. 1-3 by robert kirkman

⭑ ⭑ ⭑ ⭑ (4/5 stars)

yays: i’m so glad to finally be getting around to this. one of the best superhero comics of all time and by far the most impactful non-dc/marvel superhero comic. i watched the pilot episode of the show tonight, and read the first 3 volumes. my favorite part is already the parody/bait-and-switch of typical comic stereotypes. there’s a classic “that type of thing only happens in comics” moment, and more specifically there’s a page where mark talks to a comic book writer and the writer makes a joke about reusing panels, which then occurs one level above, in invincible. really fun meta details. also, i can feel the complications ready to arise from the main villain being mark’s father. i’m really excited for that.

nays: so far, the story is very predictable and i’m waiting for it to get more emotionally vulnerable and complex. the plot twist with omni-man was better done in the show in my opinion, that is, it was far more unsettling. i would be annoyed by the obvious justice league rip-off (guardians of the globe) but that’s a cheap gripe, considering they were there for one specific reason, and having them be already familiar characters makes the shock value stakes higher for the audience. they also added a lot of character to mark’s mom in the show, that the comic is lacking in these first 3 vols.

worth a purchase: jury’s out on this one, i don’t want to say until i get further in. i’ll continue reading and watching the show for sure.

[calvinreadscomics]

Joe Death and the Graven Image by Benjamin Schipper is Bananas. I love this comic to death. The most immediately striking thing about Joe Death is its illustrations, which are drawn in an incredibly individual style born of an amalgamation between Mignola spot blacks, rubber hose style cartooning, an incredible eye for abstraction and appealing simplification, and gorgeous flat coloring which makes ample and ingenious use of gradients to hint at lighting, accent shape, and give scenes greater depth. Benjamin Schipper is also consistently innovative and impressive with his page layouts and paneling, frequently breaking panel borders and otherwise playing with the conventions of comics presentation to the benefit, usually, of both the flow of a page and its aesthetic appearance as a whole. The dialogue in Joe Death is also highly commendable for its style. Schipper writes in an archaic and lyrical style, peppered with aphorisms and bits of folk wisdom, which I found incredibly delightful and impressively literate and genuine, reading like a blast from the past rather than a modern writer putting on airs. The world-building in Joe Death is similarly engrossing. There's a sense of mythos, personal history, and social ecosystem permeating every new location, character interaction, and new piece of information. A world made wholly new, like the art style, from familiar pieces and a fascinating individual sensibility. If Joe Death stumbles anywhere it's occasionally in readability, as the style once or twice obscured certain details from me and caused me to lose track of what was happening. That's a minor gripe though, especially in a story where obscurity often seems to be the point and vibes, environment, and again that pervading sense of mythology take precedence. Joe Death was an incredibly exciting and enjoyable read, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

4.5/5