Battle as Ballet: Elektra Bloodlines (2014)

 

Front cover of Elektra: Bloodlines TPB

This book collects the following comics: Elektra #1-5 (2014)

Score (out of 5 Capes)

2 out of 5 Capes for a beautiful book with an unpleasant and half-incoherent story.

My Review

My two-volume set collecting the complete run of the Marvel Comics 2014 Elektra series has been sitting on my must-read list for too long. Elektra is a complicated character in the Marvel universe, with lots of tragic back-story and twists, and I have been looking forward to reading this series since I scored the books on a discount rack.

It was not worth the wait, a disappointment in so many ways from cover to cover.

What was not a disappointment was the art. Michael Del Mundo's painted pages are breathtakingly beautiful. The reds, whether from Elektra's costume or the frequent sprays of blood, pop from the page; the ballet-esque movements of Elektra in particular but other combattants; the fluidity and swirl give the action sequences a life too often absent from more standard fare.

Under his brush, each battle becomes a dance. And there are many, many battles.

The set pieces of the covers are poster-ready images unto themselves. It is also a brilliant touch to have artist Bill Sienkiewicz offer a variant cover for issue #1, a nod to his breakthrough work on the classic Elektra: Assassin series from 1986.

Where this collection falls flat is in the story itself. Author Haden Blackman throws so many ideas, elements and twists into the mix, but they fail to click into a complete and coherent whole.

A 5-page introductory narrative anchors this Elektra series in her complex, varied and not always canonical history. The rest of the first chapter sets up the central conflict of this collection: Elektra accepts a contract and sets out to find Cape Crow, while the new villain Bloody Lips comes to the same pursuit from another, darker direction.

I will say more about Bloody Lips in the "What I didn't love" section below. Suffice to say he is a ruthless killer who feeds off his victims and, in eating part of them, absorbs their talents, abilities, even memories. He draws on this internalized library of skills to make short work of secret S.H.I.E.L.D. installations to finally arrive at his objective: the comatose Bullseye.

The hunt for Cape Crow takes both assassins to Monster Island, where Elektra encounters other bounty hunters from the Assassins Guild and, eventually, Cape Crow's son who, it turns out, put out the contract in the first place. So naturally they partner up.

From Monster Island to the underwater city of Shicheng and her first direct confrontation with Bloody Lips; to a telepathic encounter with her dead mother who is not all that she appears; to the far north of the Arctic Circle and some more confrontations with the Guild and Bloody Lips. Our heroine travels far, amid constant battles which she at times barely survives.

The final confrontation with Bloody Lips gives him exactly what he craves: a good taste of Elektra. Can he handle what comes with it?

It is an ambitious, far-reaching story that ultimately cannot support its own weight. There are too many moving pieces, too many nods to some aspect of Elektra's history or wider collection of characters. The result is a story that feels both too small and too big, ultimately falling apart amidst a loose collection of ideas, characters and past confrontations.

Die-hard and long-time Elektra fans, who have lived and breathed all aspects of her evolution and appearances, might find this an enthralling tale. But ultimately the story falls apart and we are left just with the pretty pictures. And whether in the Arctic snows or the underwater hues of blue, they are beautiful.  

2 out of 5 Capes.

What I loved

Del Mundo's gorgeous painted art

Michael Del Mundo's visuals are absolutely breath-taking.

Panel after panel, page after page, he gives us images of stunning beauty, a painter's master touch tying together the action and the dramatic revelations.

When the story switches to narrative mode, a too-frequent occurrence to cover some annoying gaps, Del Mundo seizes the opportunity to riff on the subject of the beautiful, deadly martial artist assassin. The results are one and two-page spreads like those excerpted here. So evocative of key moments in the character's history, all with a smooth, fluid visual appeal.

Beautiful, flowing, violent images

As an assassin par excellence, Elektra's adventures are filled with violent, blade-filled battles. Lots of blood, stabbings, severings. Del Mundo incorporates even the most violent battles into his fluid style. Violence has seldom been so appealing to look at.

What I didn't love

Bloody Lips and his Eat-You Power

The most prominent and powerful of Elektra's opponents in these pages is the awkwardly-named Bloody Lips. Other villains - Lady Bullseye, Scalphunter, the wider Assassins' Guild - come in and out of the story, but the psychotic killing machine Bloody Lips is the most troublesome.

If only there was something, anything, enjoyable about this new character.

His abilities span the range of powers, memories and knowledge of anyone he has bitten. Someone he has killed and from whose corpse he has eaten a larger portion, passes on more of their skills and abilities. But it seems even a little nibble of someone still living, or even licking their blood off a blade, is still able to impart at least some memories and skills.

It is a disgustingly unpleasant power. But what really irks is that it is not done particularly well. 

It calls to mind the Images Comics series from a few years earlier (circa 2009), Chew, about a detective who could get psychic insights into murder victims by taking a bite of them. But while Chew at times had an almost sacramental feel, Bloody Lips embodies all the unpleasant aspects of this unusual power source without any balance or nuance. It leaves too much room for writer Blackman to fudge things and cut corners narratively, a temptation he embraces too often.

 

Related Reviews

Elektra book 2: Révérence (coming soon)

Quick Reference Details

Writers:  Haden Blackman
Artists:  Michael Del Mundo
Published By:  Marvel Comics
Published When:  Nov 18, 2014
Parental Rating: Teen

Back cover of Elektra: Bloodlines TPB

Chill Ride - Review of Flash Rogues: Captain Cold (2018)

 

Front cover of Flash Rogues: Captain Cold

This book collects the following comics: Showcase #8 (1957), The Flash #150 (1965), The Flash #297 (1981), Flash #28 (1989), The Flash #182 (2002), Flashpoint: Citizen Cold #1 (2011), The Flash #6 (2012), The Flash #17 (2017)

Score (out of 5 Capes)

A scattered collection of moments in the career of a middling member of the Rogues earns a middling score of 2.5 out of 5 Capes.

My Review

Leonard Snart, aka Captain Cold, has a very long history of villainy battling the Flash. This collection mines the DC Comics archives to pull out eight of his most memorable tales.

For such a significant rival, of course you have to start at the very beginning, and the collection does exactly that, opening with the 1957 Showcase #8 debut. Written by John Broome and drawn by Carmine Infantino, who would spend decades on Flash stories and lay a foundation for his classic look, the tale introduces the "ambitious crook" Leonard Snart. Needing a way to ply his trade despite the Flash, he accidentally exposes his gun to the rays of a Cyclotron (classic 1950s origins!). The result is a gun capable of blasting ice in various forms, and producing hallucination-inducing levels of cold.

Gardner Fox's 1965 story, "Captain Cold's Polar Perils!", comes next in the collection. It adds nothing to the Snart character, but does have some full-length fun with the ice and frigid hallucinations gimmicks.

When we reach the 1981 story, "Capt. Cold's Cold, Cold Flame!", written by Cary Bates and (still) drawn by Carmine Infantino, the criminal methods and motivations are the same but the person under the parka begins to grow. Bates introduces a love interest into Leonard's life. Alas, his choice in girlfriends is no better than his career choices; behind his back, she uses his reputation and his ice gun for a burglary spree of her own. The betrayal moves him to set up an attempted murder-suicide, foiled ultimately by Barry Allen as the Flash.

By 1989, Barry Allen has been killed in the massive universe-realigning Crisis on Infinite Earths story. But the race continues for the Flash, this time with former sidekick Wally West stepping into the starring role. The William Messner-Loebs tale from Flash #28 is perhaps the most forgettable of these collected stories, as the attempt to drop a classic Flash villain into the life of the new Flash falls flat. Maybe most notable is the big stylistic difference between this era's penciller, Greg LaRocque, compared to the longstanding look laid down by Infantino.

After decades of little to no character development behind Leonard Snart's history or motivations, the new millennium brought renewed focus. The tales in the second half of the collection, dating from 2002 to 2017, start to round out Captain Cold into a less one-dimensional character.

"Absolute Zero" (2002) by Geoff Johns (discussed more in the What I Loved section below) sends him on a mission of vengeance, hunting down the man who killed his sister.

"Best Served Cold" (2011) by Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato similarly uses sibling tragedy to fire up the cold heart of Leonard Snart.

Most fun of all, though, has to be "Cold-Hearted", the 2011 limited standalone tie-in to the Flashpoint cross-over event throughout DC Comics. Our man Leonard, in this alternate reality, is Citizen Cold, the hero of Central City. He is a complicated hero, a dark and amoral edge just below the surface. Despite the adulation of the city, the cries of "Cold Snap! Cold Snap!" from his fans, he seems barely to acknowledge them.

Adding to the fun is the conflict with another icy villain, Batman's occasional opponent Mister Freeze. In this reality, he still harbours his own tragic back-story, but has been reduced to merely a head under glass. Writer and artist Scott Kolins pits the two cold-masters against one another in a fascinating, if too brief, comparison.

The efforts of all these writers over the past quarter-century help to round out this otherwise limited character. They unfreeze his back-story, give him more shape and dimension and begin to reintroduce some interest. We the readers finally start to care, at least a little, for this cold-hearted villain. I would love to see more texture added to his frosty exterior, ideally beyond tragic loss of a beloved sibling.

It is always fascinating to watch a character evolve and grow over time and this collection gives us a glimpse into Captain Cold. The nature of such a collection is to leave us hanging amidst any multi-part tales that they include, and this one is no different. And it shows the efforts and limited successes of writers who tried to make him a more human, relatable, nuanced character.

Over all, I give it a middle-of-the-road 2.5 Capes out of 5.

What I loved

Nicely done Revenge tale

More recent writers have taken pains to expand the emotional and motivational range of Captain Cold. The results are mixed, but a couple moments do stand out in this collection.

The first is the tale of justice and revenge by Geoff Johns, "Absolute Zero" from The Flash #182 (2002). Johns balances past and present; flashbacks to the abusive father and Snart's tragic childhood interspersed with his current-day quest to avenge Chillblaine's murder of his sister.

Snart knows who he is and what he will or will not do, in Johns's telling, making for a lively if chillingly cold-hearted internal monologue. The pencil-work by Scott Kolins is solid. But it is the colouring work by James Sinclair that really makes the visuals stand out, using saturation differences to communicate when the panels are current and when they are flashback.

Giving Leonard Snart a tragic back-story

 

Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato mine a similar vein in their 2012 story, "Best Served Cold" from The Flash #6. Again the death of Snart's sister is the motivation for his rampage, but this time he blames Barry Allen, the Flash.

Manapul's icy visuals are filled with clever touches, beyond the dangerous ice spikes and jagged fragments. My personal favourite is how he worked in the title of the series, "The Flash", into one of the spires of ice supporting a floating restaurant. 

What I didn't love

Wally West inherited a Rogue

With the set of eight stories pulled from various Flash series or Flash-adjacent one-shots, the hero beneath the mask switches from Barry Allen to Wally West and back again. But no matter who is the scarlet speedster du jour, Captain Cold continues to be a central rogue.

I understand that a rivalry so deep it turns to hatred will persist no matter who wears the uniform - the Yankees and the Red Sox will hate each other regardless. But when the hero's mantle is handed off to another hero, with his own life and friends, patrolling his own corner of the world, it is not necessary to continue the same Rogues' Gallery.

Simple escapes are always disappointing

Several of the stories collected here are only one part of a larger story, an unfortunate side-effect of the nature of this kind of collection. I can forgive those, frustrating though they can be.

But there is no excuse for lazy, convenient short-cuts in the story-telling. The final tale in the collection is most guilty. "Rogues Reloaded Part Four" from The Flash #17 (2017) has the Flash at the mercy of a team-up of many of his Rogues. But by some massive good fortune, Flash accidentally broke one of their weapons just enough to incapacitate all of them but not himself. How convenient. How disappointing it must have been to anyone who had followed the entire four-parter, to have it end so randomly.

Related Reviews

Here are some reviews of other books that look at a character's evolution over their history:

Aquaman's 75th Anniversary collection 

Poison Ivy's evolution told through the Batman Arkham collection

Quick Reference Details

Writers:  John Broome, Gardner Fox, Geoff Johns, Joshua Williamson, more
Artists:  Carmine Infantino, Scott Kolins, Francis Manapul, more
Published By:  DC Comics
Published When:  Aug 28, 2018
Parental Rating: Teen

Back cover of Flash Rogues: Captain Cold

Lost Girls Book 3 - The Great and Terrible

 

Front cover of Lost Girls Book 3

This book collects the final 10 Lost Girls stories

Score (out of 5 Capes)

4/5 Capes

While the art and to a lesser extent the tales suffer from a stiff repetitiveness, a strong defense of the entire project raises this to a 4 Capes review.

My Review

In this, the third and final volume of the Lost Girls work by acclaimed writer Alan Moore and accomplished artist Melinda Gebbie, any remaining norms and taboos are well and thoroughly shattered. Moore also articulates a clear thesis statement about what he and Gebbie have created, why it matters and why it is wrong to punish artistic works as obscene.

All of that and more in just the first three chapters!

The collection unfolds in the now-familiar pattern: ten self-contained tales, each eight pages in length, each with a distinct focus and drawn in oft-shifting but by now familiar patterns of artistic style.

The book opens with the fracturing of the lovers' ensemble, as the growing global unrest from the end of Book 2 crashes into their happy community. In Without the Frost, the Blinding Snow, solider Rolf is called back into service while merchant representative Harold is summoned to return to England as relations with Germany deteriorate. Almost lost amidst all the sex toys, self-pleasuring and gender-agnostic coupling are some truly hilarious double-entendres and misunderstandings between Wendy and her husband.

If the shocking variety of couplings in the opening chapter were not transgressive enough, Moore raises the bar another several notches in the following chapter, A Merry Crew, Beneath the Setting Sun. With an incest-filled narrative pulled from Monsieur Rougeur's book in the upper half and a raging orgy in the hotel in the lower half, Moore pushes the narrative through the barriers of some of the last remaining taboos.

But in breaking those taboos, Moore gives voice to counter-arguments against those very taboos. In the voice of hotelier and artist Monsieur Rougeur, Moore draws a distinction between reality and fiction, between action and thought, reality and imagination. "Fiction and fact: only madmen and magistrates cannot discriminate between them," says the hotelier. If we can and must draw such distinctions in our daily lives, why should erotica be treated differently?

The taboo themes of incest and sexual assault through power imbalance continue in You Won't Forget to Wave? Our three heroines extract some lurid autobiographical details from Monsieur Rougeur, through a consensual assault of their own. Then, having said his piece, Rougeur follows the lead of the other men and slips away from the hotel and into the growing shadows and darkness enclosing them.

As if the incest and buggery and all the other terrain Moore has led us through to this point were not enough, in The Poppyfield Dorothy recounts another part of her story with some mild bestiality mixed in. Whatever your kink, Moore seems intent on touching it, and Gebbie gladly provides some imagery. Most important, for Dorothy's development as a character, her adoptive aunt catches her playing her games with the hired hands and punishes her with some over-the-knee spanking.

Hooked is the next entry in Wendy's tawdry reminisces, as she recounts her growing awakening and variety of spicy encounters. After witnessing the man with the hooked, crippled hand pay Peter for his services and attentions, she explores the new thrills of bondage, helpless to the attentions and demands of Peter and his sister Annabel. Her fantasies grow wilder, convinced that everyone around her is as sex-obsessed as she is. 

The artistry of Gebbie's work has been slipping more and more throughout this third book, and in this chapter it finally becomes too hard to ignore. The separation in Wendy's personal divided layout, the coloured set against the the silhouetted, jumps back and forth between memory and reality.

The titular caterpillar in Alice's next tale, A Vice from a Caterpillar, does restore some hope of the provocative and subversive cleverness of Gebbie's images. With themes and characters from her Looking Glass and Wonderland roots, Alice takes us through new levels of depravity, recounting the not-always-consensual extremes to which her mistress subjected her. They risked and dared much for their obsession with these carnal pleasures!

Swallowed turns the narrative back to Wendy. The result is the strongest story of this collection, a standout among its peers. So much is going on in this one, and Moore deftly intertwines threads from the Peter Pan tales, the preceding chapters of Lost Girls, critical reflection on symbolism, even a nod of self-analysis about this whole erotic project. It's the end of Wendy's childhood tale, a final confrontation with the hook-handed man, a break with Peter, and a conscious choice to grow up and suppress her sexual passions and desires. Gebbie's illustrations continue to lean more toward the lurid and canned but she finds her power on more than a few pages, chief among them the full-page poster spread of a pants-down Hook being devoured by a suggestively-shaped crocodile.

We reach the end of Dorothy's reminisces in The Man Behind the Curtain. Her Daddy issues are laid bare in a series of encounters on a trip to New York. Every panel ratchets up the ever-increasing depravity and growing risk of exposure. This would have been the most shocking and taboo-breaking chapter had it come in volume 1 or 2, but by this point, after everything else we have seen, it is far less so. Gebbie makes good use of the larger panels that Dorothy's standard layout provides, although there is still a rote-ness at this point to her depictions of the young woman's shocking experiences.

Alice's Evidence brings to a conclusion the reminiscences of the third and final of our threesome of ladies. While the three engage in some role-playing and dominating of Alice, she manages to narrate the end of her turbulent childhood and its sexual awakening. Even as she and her matron draw others into their circle, the wheels are set in motion for their ultimate destruction. I love the way Moore weaves in the gibberish nonsense of the Lewis Carrol Alice tales as part of her psychotic breakdown.

With the 30th and final chapter, The Mirror: Reprise and Crescendo (Who Dreamed It?), Moore and Gebbie's grand opus to the erotic comes to an end. The final chapter is told from the perspective of the mirror, matching the very first chapter back in Book 1. While playtime has ended and the three must flee the advancing German army, they all express their affection for one another, and for the ways in which their newest sexual awakening has reshaped and restored their hope, their joy in the face of the coming darkness.

It is a fitting conclusion, even if the hope and joy is buried within the melancholy over the destruction all around them. Moore and Gebbie have covered an immense amount of ground, broken every imaginable taboo, unpacked and reinterpreted some deep symbolism from the Peter Pan, Wizard of Oz and Alice stories.

For all the controversies it caused, and with Book 3 occasionally suffering from overly stiff and repetitive events and art, this set is a tour de force.

4 Capes out of 5 for this final book.

What I loved

M. Rougeur fades out of the story

This final volume of Moore and Gebbie's enchanting and controversial Lost Girls stories has a melancholy tone throughout. Even as the characters pleasure themselves and one another, one senses the end approaching, that all good things must pass eventually.

This melancholy appears in all ten stories. Among the strongest is M. Rougeur's farewell. After enabling the sexual awakenings in the first Books, he ultimately bids farewell to his hotel and its erotic clients and sees himself out.

It is a moving and beautiful end to his story arc.

The mirror's final fate

The very first Lost Girls story was told entirely through the looking-glass, reflected in an ornately carved mirror. Gebbie defined and followed distinct layouts and artistic themes and patterns based on the character at the centre of each tale, before book-ending the entire collection with a return to that ornate mirror.

The final story is again told through reflection, as the three women - Alice, Wendy and Dorothy - bid one another a bittersweet Adieu. To their great shock, Alice leaves the mirror behind without any real emotional attachment or regret.

And none too soon. The next day, the military occupiers arrive at the hotel and shatter the mirror as quickly and completely as they shattered the peace and tranquility of the former residents and their whole society.

It makes for an ending filled with the care, attention to detail and artistic touches that elevate so much of the rest of the Lost Girls series. 

 

What I didn't love

When compared to the first two, Book 3 is a swirling blend of amazing artistry and rote repetition. At the same time that the couplings and situations become increasingly fantastical, shattering any remaining societal taboos it can find, the relationships between the characters feel set in stone and their interactions disappointingly repetitive.

The panel I chose above, with Wendy seeming to bid farewell to her husband, is one of the few I can safely share in a PG review of this Mature book, as the nudity and sexual encounters saturate nearly every page and panel.

We have reached peak erotica and passed the other side, where the words of affection, aggression, interaction no longer entice or excite. They too often fall into a more-of-the-same cycle. These characters, who were so richly developed in Books 1 and 2 are now at risk of becoming boring and predictable.

Perhaps that is why the stories try so hard to shock with their portrayals of taboo and old-fashioned depravity. 

Related Reviews

Lost Girls Book One - Older Children

Lost Girls Book Two - Neverland

Quick Reference Details

Writer:  Alan Moore
Artist:  Melinda Gebbie
Published By:  Top Shelf
Published When:  Aug 26, 2006
Parental Rating: Mature (X)

A Near-Perfect Debut - Empowered book 1 by Dark Horse Comics (2007)

 

Front cover of Empowered Book 1

 

Score (out of 5 Capes)

4.5 / 5 Capes

Hilarious introduction to a barely-competent super-heroine and her universe of friends, teammates and personal insecurities.

My Review

Since 2026 marks the 40th anniversary of Dark Horse Comics, I am doing a short series of reviews that look at some Dark Horse graphic novels and trade paperbacks.

This is the fourth and final review of my Dark Horse 40th Anniversary reviews. I have more or less selected one from each of the four decades they have been around.

The books published over the years by this successful late-80s upstart comics company covers a broad range of styles, topics and genres. After some early successes, the company followed up with limited series movie tie-ins and spin-offs for popular sci-fi movie franchises like Aliens and Predator.

They have also always made room for innovative graphical storytelling and early-wave Manga.

While the Empowered books are a step away from Manga proper, they still self-consciously embrace many of the graphical and storytelling characteristics.

The stories collected in this first volume face a new-character + new-series challenge: introduce the reader, who is used to a certain kind (or range) of superhero stories and how they are told, to this unusual and pattern-defying new heroine and her bizarre group of friends and co-workers.

And they nail it! It is hard to imagine how these stories could do any better at introducing Empowered and her world. With great humour and tongue firmly planted in cheek, writer, creator and artist Adam Warren reveals, through dialog and action, the source and limits of her powers, her decidedly C-List accomplishments, her teammates, her circle of friends and their origins, and of course her manifold number of insecurities: she's too fat; too easily defeated, feels like an imposter, only has a rudimentary understanding of how her own suit works.

Warren freely eschews elements like introductory setup or denouement. With laser focus, he zeroes in on one specific theme in each of these brief tales, packing into their four to eight pages all you really need to know. Who are these villains and how did they capture Empowered? Not important! All we need to know is that her suit is once again in tatters, she is once again bound and gagged, and this time that setup will reveal the history of her unusual superhero name, for but one example.

By fully leaning into the approach, Warren makes it work. One by one short little story at a time, he fills out a textured picture of Empowered, her strengths and many, many weaknesses, her alcoholic ninja BFF, her reformed thug of a boyfriend, her rivalry with Sistah Spooky (and the Sistah's own demons and origins) and so much more.

Empowered Book 1 is a master-class in both focused story-telling and gradual exposition. 

Superb supporting characters

The laughs run through nearly every page. The sheer banality of some of the conundrums; her over-serious Super-homeys teammates; the clever dialog; the bizarre entourage.

The funniest of the supporting characters has to be the alien demon overlord who lives in a belt on her coffee table. As absurd a sentence as that was to type, it all makes sense in the universe of Empowered. And the caged monstrous villain provides the most awesome running commentary on the domestic life of our hero, liberally sprinkled with Asgard-level self-proclamations.

Of all the books Dark Horse has produced in its 40 years of existence, Empowered is one of my all-time favourites. And Book 1 is one of her very best, with its pacing, humour, and sheer ability to winsomely introduce our heroine and her rich surrounding characters and universe.

4.5 Capes out of 5! 

Note: the book is rated Mature. While there is no explicit nudity, graphic depictions of violence or sex, and even the naughty language is bleeped out, the themes and very suggestive materials are definitely intended for adults!

What I loved

Indignant Emp lectures her opponent 
on her suit's capabilities

As a parody of the superhero genre, Empowered has a bizarre set of powers, limitations, friends and enemies. Creator Adam Warren gives every superhero comic book trope imaginable a clever twist.

But it means that we can't bring any of our assumptions about how comic book superheroes work. And this introductory volume must disabuse us of any notion that we know how anything works in her universe.

Like the super-suit as the source of her powers. It is certainly not unheard-of, calling to mind the symbiote of black-uniform Spider-man-slash-Venom or, to a lesser extent, the armor of an Iron Man.

But with a twist of unpredictability, lack of an instruction manual and shockingly easily reached limitation.

In perfect graphical narrative manner, Warren shows us both this fact and its implications through story rather than telling us in long paragraphs. By the time we reach the pictured confrontation with someone after the suit for themselves, we are all to aware of how little it works for her, especially the precipitous drop in power levels once it gets ripped. So these panels just put into humorous words what we've already seen in stories.

More suit limitations explained

Or back-stories of supporting characters or Emp herself. Sure, the well-worn trope has the villain inserting a long monologue to gloat about their grand plans or sad-sack origins. But here, Warren gives us a new twist: not an origin of powers and dedication to justice, but rather an explanation of where the very unique moniker "Empowered" came from.

Rival Sistah Spooky taunts for more explanation

With many such clever, creative and well-paced explanations and moments of revelation, Warren introduces us to the unique powers and insecurities of Empowered as well as to her fellow heroes, villainous opponents and supporting characters.

What I didn't love

Inter-Story 4th-wall breaking chats

A typical superhero trade paperback collection will put the cover of each issue in between the stories themselves. Does the volume collect six issues? You are likely to see the covers of all six collected issues, possibly with variant covers included as a bonus.

The Empowered stories in this collection are shorter than the typical superhero comic, so more than three dozen fit into this volume. But since these stories did not follow the typical path of a superhero comic, they don't have covers per se.

In place of the non-existent covers, Warren precedes some stories with standalone images. Others have Empowered break the fourth wall of theater and address the reader directly.

They add humour and illustrate some of her personality and especially insecurities. But they are also the most cringe-worthy parts of the book.

Warren does such a great job, within the story, at making us laugh or feel her pain at the humiliations and embarrassments, that these interstitial addresses add little to the experience or the character. They work best when, like the example above, they become more meta, focused less on the character and more on the story of Empowered as an artistic endeavor.

Related Reviews

Henchgirl by Dark Horse Comics     

Starblazers space manga volume 1 

Assassin's Creed Mirage

Usagi Yojimbo Book 1 

Quick Reference Details

Writers:  Adam Warren
Artists:  Adam Warren
Published By:  Dark Horse Comics
Published When:  April 3, 2007
Parental Rating: Mature

Back cover of Empowered Book 1

Wandering Warrior Rabbit - The Usagi Yojimbo Saga book 1 (1997)

  

Front cover of the Usagi Yojimbo Saga book 1

This book collects the following comics: Usagi Yojimbo Volume 2 (1997) #1 - 16 and Volume 3 (1998) #1 - 6

Score (out of 5 Capes)

4 out of 5 Capes

Award-winning beauty, history and entertainment earns 4 Capes out of 5.

My Review

Since 2026 marks the 40th anniversary of Dark Horse Comics, I am doing a short series of reviews that look at some Dark Horse graphic novels and trade paperbacks.

The publishing catalog for this remarkably successful late-80s upstart comics company covers a broad range of styles, topics and genres over the years. They found some early critical success with the likes of Paul Chadwick's beautiful and profound Concrete series. Dark Horse then moved into limited series movie tie-ins and spin-offs, with popular movie franchises like Aliens and Predator.

More recently, their tie-ins have been in the gaming universe with titles like Assassin's Creed and Halo. And always they have made room for innovative graphical storytelling and early-wave Manga.

Dark Horse has long been the publisher of Stan Sakai's award-winning work with the rabbit warrior and samurai, Miyamoto Usagi, and his tales chronicled in Usagi Yojimbo. The earliest appearances, dating to the late 1980s, were published by Fantagraphics but, starting in 1997, Usagi Yojimbo moved to Dark Horse.

This hefty book, well over 600 pages, collects in one handsome collection the first 22 issues published by Dark Horse. It was originally published in 2014, with a second edition released in 2021, coinciding with the 10th Eisner Award won by Usagi Yojimbo, this time for "Best Continuing Series"

The issues included, dating from 1997-98, date from the era of the first Eisner Awards it won, including the 1996 award for "Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition." 

It is easy to see, in these pages, why it has won so many awards over the years. The visuals are lush, rendered with a deceptive simplicity that rests on top of a real depth of knowledge of the era and of the foundational principles of visual storytelling. And the tales themselves are often serious, intelligent, moving, sometimes challenging, always grounded in its anthropomorphic portrayal of 16th-century Japan.

One of my personal favourites comes early in the collection. Entitled Jizo, it is a short 8-page story about a woman who lost her son, murdered by five bandit outlaws. She erects a simple carving of a god near the spot on the road where the attack happened, dresses it in a coat for warmth, and makes a simple offering, hoping that other travellers will be encouraged to do the same, and that the god will protect the travellers from the same fate suffered by her son. Every panel reuses the exact same framing: statue in the foreground, crossroads, road-sign and trees in the background, passers-by in the middle. Within this simple framing, and with very few words, the story of the bandits and their defeat unfolds. This short, simple tale has so many layers and beautifully encapsulates much of the best to be found in Usagi Yojimbo as a whole.

The wandering Ronin samurai warrior rabbit has so many adventures in these pages, most of which include at least a few battles with sword, staff, fist, foot and other weapons of the martial arts. Writer and artist Stan Sakai does amazing work in these battles. They are intense, violent, filled with many emotions beyond the basics of anger and fear. Yet they always remain both compelling and accessible. Does blood, stabbing and slashing make you queasy? Have no fear in these pages - it is visually very clear what happens, yet nothing is shown that you would want to hide from your child. The violence and killings are safe and sanitized for young or sensitive eyes.

Especially charming is the skull-in-word-balloon motif Sakai draws for showing the death of a combatant. 

Some stories, like Usagi's Garden or Battlefield, shed light on Usagi's youth and his training under his Sensei. He has much to learn in these tales, about honesty, honour and courage. The wise Sensei guides the much shorter-eared young lad in thinking through his lessons.

The most regrettable choice I see in these pages is the presence of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In some ways - courageous and heroic martial artist warriors from the animal kingdom - it seems like a natural pairing, to have Usagi and the Turtles meet. And no doubt it would raise awareness of the rabbit, to overlap with the more famous turtles.

The result is a three-part Shades of Green tale, pitting rabbit and turtle against a clan, the Neko Ninja, and their feline members. Cross-over marketing is the only purpose I can see for the turtles; Usagi Yojimbo's world is so rich, so well-developed and beautifully rendered, that the famous turtles add little to the tale itself.

It also is the lead story in a collection called "Book 1" even though it is clear that this is not the first time rabbit and turtle have met and shared an adventure. Had it come farther into the tome, it might have passed more quietly, but by leading with a tie-on, it feels like the otherwise fantastic Usagi Yojimbo is grasping at the coattails of some more successful creatures.

Beyond that rough start, this is a stellar collection. With Sakai's beautifully simple and textured art illustrating his richly layered and historically rooted stories, this award-winning series got an amazing new collection from Dark Horse. Keep your eyes open for future editions!

What I loved

Battle scenes are violent without being visually disturbing

Creator Stan Sakai gives us page after page of amazing images. With his deft touch, these images look so clean and simple, yet are so layered, detailed and lovingly shaded that the results are all amazing.

A samurai rabbit must of course get into some battles. Sakai renders each battle in the same simple yet deeply layered ways. And manages to keep the bloody and often fatal battles clean and PG.

He does not hide from the slashing and killing, but never indulges in any gore or on-panel blood-letting. Let your eyes wander to the evocative faces of the combatants in these battles.

Beautiful nods to Japanese history and culture

Sakai also weaves Japanese history and culture through these tales. Be they social structures and the relationships between peasants and their overlords, food and drink, religious practices and more, they add an educational depth to the tales.

What I didn't love

Animal martial artists from another universe make appearances

As I mentioned in the main review above, I find the presence of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles an annoying distraction. Their modern-day, urban human world is so starkly different from the amazingly textured and nuanced historical and pastoral Japanese setting of Usagi's tales that they bring immediate stylistic contrasts and challenges.

The differences are too stark to overcome the similarities of anthropomorphic animal martial artists fighting for justice and freedom.

Usagi Yojimbo might not have the pop cultural cachet of the turtles but suffers more than benefits from their presence. 

Dino-lizards are more annoying than comic

The stories in this collection are sweet, exciting and intense, almost always with a serious and carefully considered tone.

Almost. But every once in a while a lighter tale, a comic moment of humour, slips in. Usually the comedy is carried by the small dinosaur-like lizards, animals that are portrayed as animals and not people.

The comedy too often falls flat. The break from the more common serious tone is not needed. 

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Quick Reference Details

Writers:  Stan Sakai
Artists:  Stan Sakai
Published By:  Dark Horse Comics
Published When:  April 6, 2021 (2nd Edition)
Parental Rating: Parental Guidance

Back cover of the Usagi Yojimbo Saga book 1

Killer Brutality - Assassin's Creed Mirage: Soar of Eagles (2025)

  

Front cover of Assassin's Creed Mirage: A Soar of Eagles

This book collects the following comics: Assassin's Creed Mirage: A Soar of Eagles #1-3

Score (out of 5 Capes)

1.5 out of 5 Capes for a dark, dismal, confusing tie-in to the 2023 release of Assassin's Creed Mirage, the latest installment of the better-known video game. 

My Review

Since 2026 marks the 40th anniversary of Dark Horse Comics, I am doing a short series of reviews that look at some Dark Horse graphic novels and trade paperbacks. And a hard cover, in this case.

The catalog for this remarkably successful late-80s upstart publisher has includes quite a range over the years. There were some early critical successes that got the company off to a great start, things like Paul Chadwick's beautiful and profound Concrete series. They published several limited series spin-offs from popular movie franchises like Aliens and Predator. 

More recently, their tie-ins have been in the gaming universe with titles like Assassin's Creed and Halo. And always they have made room for innovative graphical storytelling and early-wave Manga.

Speaking of video game tie-ins, this week's review is of the hard cover book Assassin's Creed: Mirage - a Soar of Eagles. It collects the three-issue limited series by the same title, a prequel story to the release of the 2023 release of the Assassin's Creed Mirage video game, the 13th in the Assassin's Creed universe.

Gathering into one place only three comic issues, then adding just a handful of special features like the artist's sketchbook, this is a surprisingly thin volume. It is unlikely to persuade many new players for the video game, for many of the reasons that led me to score this just one and a half capes out of five.

The video game itself is set in 9th-century Baghdad and centres on the one playable character, Basim Ibn Ishaq. He leaves behind his street-thieving ways to join the Hidden Ones in their battle against the Order of the Ancients.

The tale told in this comic series, published nearly two years after the game, predates the game by several years. A young Fuladh has a dream vision of a messenger eagle with the image of a snake encircling Saint Abuna.

Fuladh returns to his homeland with Roshan, hoping to uncover a possible secret fortress of the Order of the Ancients. They seek his old friend Nibiris, eventually rescuing him from an Aksumite general.

Nibiris briefs them on what to expect when they reach the fortress, drawing on his own knowledge and memories from his time raising and training eagles there. When the invaders arrived, Nibiris escaped with his best eagle, Memnon, while his apprentice Kaleb remained behind to try and protect or free the remaining eagles. It was a bad decision.

Fuladh must then fulfill his quest and do battle with the general, a cult leader and the wanna-be snake god.

Writer Michael Avon Oeming's plot has a lot of pieces but even as the body count grows, the details remain frustratingly hard to follow. He crams a lot into the growing tension, and everyone collides in the violent climax, but any clarity in his own mind fails to come through on the pages.

The confusing narrative is not helped by Mirko Colak's brooding and moody art. So much ink was spilled on these pages, with solid blacks dominating every page and panel. A lighter touch might improve the visual storytelling, as much is lost in the shadows here. But perhaps the creative team felt that so much of the story was dark and foreboding that the heavy inks supported that tone.

Colak and Oeming also too often revert to silent panels to convey the action and drama, but the muddy, chunky images are short on detail and ultimately fail to carry the narrative without accompanying text.

Overall, this is a brief and unpleasant read. An odd choice, given the established nature of the Assassin's Creed franchise. Was this a story that needed to be told? Maybe to fill in seams and gaps in the video game and its mythology? Maybe it all made sense in a new and exciting way upon playing the Assassin's Creed Mirage game (full disclosure, this reviewer has not played the game)?

For its many flaws as a story and as a hard cover collection, I give this 1.5 capes out of 5.

What I loved

Occasional bursts of stunning colour

In the midst of this brutal and visually unpleasant book, filled with deep black inks and confusing images, come moments of true beauty.

This is most apparent in the colour work of Lauren Affe. The gradations and colour-work produces things like these stunning sunset panels. Even better, the colours turn the blackness of Mirko Colak's over-inked images into silhouettes, a definite upgrade.

What I didn't love

Confusing flow of images and excessive ink

Artist Mirko Colak's visuals are excessively inked, to the point of losing detail. Spilling so much ink on page after page ultimately sacrifices the potential for powerful contrasts between the dark and the light.

The two slim bonus pages from Colak's sketchbook only serve to prove that his heavy inking hand is deliberate. Sadly, the sea of ink does nothing to save from drowning an already confusing plot, but rather adds to the confusion.

Related Reviews

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Quick Reference Details

Writers:  Michael Avon Oeming
Artists:  Mirko Colak
Published By:  Dark Horse Books
Published When:  Nov 18, 2025
Parental Rating: Teen

Back cover of Assassin's Creed Mirage: A Soar of Eagles