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Order and Chaos - Detective Comics v7 Anarky (2015)

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  Front cover of Detective Comics vol 7 Anarky This book collects the following comics: Detective Comics (2011) #35-40, Detective Comics: Endgame #1, Detective Comics: Futures End #1 Score (out of 5 Capes) 2 Capes out of 5 for a couple decent puzzles and included one-shots, glimmers of goodness in a pool of mediocrity. My Review With a never-ending array of Batman-centred books to choose from, what sets the Detective Comics series apart is, ideally, a focus on the brilliant deductive skills hiding beneath the cape and cowl. It is a theme running through almost all the tales in this collection, the only exception being the Endgame story. The book opens with the two-part Terminal story: an international flight has landed at Gotham Airport but all passengers and crew aboard are dead. Not only that, they look as though they have been dead for days or weeks, not mere hours. Batman and airport staff quickly realize the deaths were caused by a biological agent, a terrorist plot that ha...
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Heavenly Catbird - Detective Comics (New 52) vol 5 Gothtopia (2014)

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  Front cover of Detective Comics: Gothtopia This book collects the following comics: Detective Comics #25-29 (2014) Score (out of 5 Capes) Some delights, some meh, some unpleasant slogs all average out to 3 Capes out of 5. My Review Detective Comics Gothtopia is a surprisingly thick book despite collecting only five issues of an ongoing comic series.  All those extra pages come from the tribute issue it contains. In a clever coincidence, the new numbering kicked off as part of the DC Comics New 52 line-wide reboot landed issue #27 in the middle of the 75th anniversary of Batman's first appearance, in an earlier issue called Detective Comics (volume 1) #27. The tribute issue contains multiple short tales, each one celebrating 75 years of Batman. Some, like Brad Meltzer and Bryan Hitch's " The Case of the Chemical Syndicate, " cover old stories from a fresh perspective. See more about this tale in the "What I Loved" section below. Others nodded to the entire ...
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Peeping Val - Brian K. Vaughan's Spectators (2025)

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  Spectators (Hardcover) front This book is an original graphic novel.  Find it on Amazon   Score (out of 5 Capes) A visually attractive and entertaining commentary on our human tendency to watch things happen to other people, 4 out of 5 Capes. My Review When I saw this new graphic novel on the store shelves, by one of my favourite authors in Brian K. Vaughan, I knew I could not leave the store without it.  Vaughan has made a name for himself in the world of the "big two" comics makers and their superhero lines, of course. But where he really shines is in his growing body of creator-controlled books and long-running series. Paper Girls was sometimes deeply moving and always amazing. Y: The Last Man broke moulds and pushed boundaries. Little else compares to Saga. So my expectations were high for this new standalone book.  It did not disappoint. In this world, when people die, most pass on in short order. But not everyone. Some choose to linger, observing the "re...
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Announcing a New, Mobile-friendly Look!

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I am very excited to unveil the new look of my graphic novel and TPB review site! My site has now joined the throngs and switched to a dark-mode look and feel, with a cleaner, more compact overall layout.  Best of all - it is now "mobile-friendly!" The old layout was optimized for a laptop or computer monitor, was OK on a tablet and was almost unreadable on phones. No more! Now the layout will adjust to whatever size of screen you are using. Earlier this year I expanded the contents and layouts of each individual review. They grew from short, 500-word reflections to longer and a little deeper, 1,000-2,000 words, with special pull-out sections for things I particularly liked or did not like. With this change, all the past posts will keep their contents but will adopt the new colour scheme and be responsive to your screen size. There are a few things I am not 100% happy with so I will be tinkering a little more in the coming days. Things like adding quick-links to specific grou...
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Missing the target - Elektra: Révérence (2014)

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  Front cover of Elektra (2014) volume 2: Révérence This book collects the following comics: Elektra #6-11 (2014) Score (out of 5 Capes) 2 capes out of 5 for a book that is beautiful to look at but a story that is chaotic and disjointed. My Review Elektra's 2014 solo series proved to be short-lived, coming to an end after only 11 issues. This collection, paired with the Bloodlines volume I reviewed last week, captures the entire series and brings the many threads to a conclusion. It provides closure, if not a terribly satisfying ending. Picking up where Bloodlines left off, Elektra is in search of the leaders of the Assassins Guild. Her quest brings her into conflict first with the Serpent Squad then with a nanite-infused and revived Lady Bullseye. The experimental nanite serum used in saving her has made her able to phase between solid and gaseous form, presenting whole new challenges as a combat opponent for Elektra. After some misdirection, Elektra learns that the most likely ...
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Battle as Ballet: Elektra Bloodlines (2014)

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

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  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. Nee...
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