State the Last Comic Book You Read and Rate It

[Jim Kelly]

PETER PANDA 5 (April-May 1954) 9/10.

[Spike-X]

Marvel Feature Presents The Astonishing Ant-Man #4 (Jun 1972)

Written *cough* by Mike 'Oh God Make It Stop' Friedrich and drawn by Herb 'What Was All The Fuss About With This Guy Anyway The Only Time His Art Was Halfway Decent Was When He Was Inked By John Severin' Trimpe. No inker credited.

Oh wow you guys this comic was really bad. Hank Pym and Peter Parker are working on 'American Indian drugs' for some reason. They're using Doctor Curt Connors' lab for some reason. Some central casting gangster types kidnap Connors' son and demand the drugs in exchange for the kid's life. The comic can't make up it's mind if young Connors is named Timmy or Bobby. It's actually Billy. Hank Pym now has a dog who can understand commands so well it can drive a freakin' car (as long as permanently-shrunk Pym steers, of course - we wouldn't want to stretch the bounds of credibility here or anything). Peter Parker has to wait until Ant Man takes off somewhere so he can make the old switcheroo and beat up the bad guys as Spider-Man, because even though he knows Pym is Ant-Man, Peter can't return the courtesy and reveal himself to Pym as Spider-Man. Little bitch.

Ratings (ratings!): 1 "Mike Friedrich should never be allowed to write comics again"s out of 5.

[dancj]

Catch up from 22/8 till now...

Superman: Secret Origin 4/5 - Gary Frank is a very good artist, but if him drawing Superman as Christopher Reeve is a bit creepy, then him attempting teenage Christopher Reeve is worse. It's a good story though - and does look good.

MPH 4/5 - Probably one of the weaker Millarworld titles, but still enjoyable.

The Walking Dead v22-27 - 3.5/5-4.25/5 (depending on the volume) - Hats off to Kirkman and Adlard for this. They manage to keep the book consistently interesting and entertaining. Negan is just such an enjoyable character to read. It's a shame about the lack of swearing in the telly programme. Now I need to wait a few years to build up another batch of volumes so I can binge again like this. It's clearly the best way to read The Walking Dead

Summer Blonde 4/5 - More the same from Adrian Tomine. Slice of life snippets of flawed people, which always just kind of stop without any real resolution, but I think that works for these types of stories. Good stuff. It should appeal to anyone who likes Ghost World.

Ice Cream Man v1 3/5 - Nice art, and this could be good if it goes somewhere. Unfortunately this is a short 4 issue collection and only hints that it might go somewhere in the last couple of pages. The stories at the moment are very slight and seem to use the titular character as a bit of a deus ex machina device.

[Spike-X]

Superior Spider-Man (2018) #4 Written by Christos Gage, art by Mike Hawthorne

I reckon this might be my favourite Spidey title right now*, along with Friendly Neighbourhood... . We've got Otto Octavius in a cloned Peter Parker body (like those things are hard to find), complete with Spider-powers, trying his best to Do Good. However, he hasn't had a lot of practice at actually being a good person, so he has Anna Maria Marconi as his person in the chair, giving him patient, gentle guidance (screaming in his ear whenever he acts like an unfeeling, elitist douche, which is a lot). And he's gradually learning. We get a couple of really touching, human moments from him this issue.

Ratings (ratings!) - 4 Face Turns out of 5.

* 'right now' = six months ago, because Marvel Unlimited

[Foxy]

I finished the Hickman read-a-thon with the Avengers Omnibus Vol 2 and Secret Wars. That was quite a journey and I think it is good enough to warrant a reread in the future. I learned that I can trust Hickman to tie it all together at the end, even if I occasionally got confused during the run and was wondering if plot threads would be picked up again.

Now I'm finishing up on everything related to the run, i.e. Infinity Companion, which contains some enjoyable but also some forgettable material. After that, I may read teh Avengers World complete collection but then I'll be reading some non superhero book.

Standouts from this run were Secret Warriors and Fantastic Four.

[Scott Taylor]

Millenium #2. About 3/5, its the second part of a two-part setup issue completely and has flaws - mainly that we don't know what this all means yet - but the art was nice. The idea of an immortal debriefing the Legion on the past, present and future is kind of interesting though.

[Foxy]

Haven't posted in a while due to a house move. Not much time for reading. But what I read was quality:

Criminal by Brubaker and Philips Deluxe Editions 1 and 2: Awesome! This team is insta-buy for me.

Monstress Deluxe HC 1: while to me it is not the be all end all that it is to others, it does have great world-building, beautiful but sometimes a bit confusing art and a story that takes its time to develop, which I like. Can't wait to read more but it will probably be a while until the next HC.

Uzumaki by Junji Ito: wow that was sick and twisted (pun intended for those who know it). My first manga and I loved it. Needed to get used to reading in the right order

Harrow County Library Edition 4: great finish to a great series. Wasn't sure about the art style for a horror story at the beginning but boy was I wrong. This is really a great series!

So while I haven't read much since the middle of October, all I did read was great

Now onto Jack Kirby's The Fourth World Omnibus. That book is massive, let's see how long it will take me

[dancj]

Uzumaki by Junji Ito: wow that was sick and twisted (pun intended for those who know it). My first manga and I loved it. Needed to get used to reading in the right order

Uzumaki is excellent. I also recommend Gyo

[babyblob]

I just read Crimson Empire It was pretty good. I give it a 7/10

[Foxy]

Uzumaki is excellent. I also recommend Gyo

Thank you

[Foxy]

Happy new year!

So the Fourth World Omnibus took a while - not only because of its size but also because of the holidays. Overall I would say it was better than I expected but the Jimmy Olsen issues were really not my cup of tea so I skipped about half of them. The best parts are the New Gods and Mr Miracle although the latter also got a bit slower after issue 11 (when the other titles had all concluded). It picked up in its final issue (#18). Overall it's fair to say that Kirby had a wild imagination and an uncanny ability to produce output but he could have benefited from an editor at times. Also, the issues that were written a decade later to close the New Gods saga were so-so. Especially the Hunger Dogs story was all over the place.

Glad that I read it as a piece of comic book history and for the background of the New Gods and Mr Miracle.

In between I read the House of X / Powers of X OHC and was very entertained as I have come to expect from Hickman. Many people say that he sacrifices characters for plot but I have only read the UXM omnis 1-3 so far so I have no real expecations how a certain character should be. i thought this was a great book.

Yesterday, I read the Little Bird Book from Image which was fantastic, but depressing af. Definitely recommended. After that, I finally took the Carthago HC out of the shrink wrap and I'm glad I did. Very cool book. Great story, great art although some tracing here and there (especially cars and larger structures). The build quality of these Humanoids books is also very nice. Will follow up with Carthago Adventures tonight.

[Foxy]

Finished Carthago Adventures last night and really liked it. It basically takes two characters from the original Carthago book and tells their joint adventures (basically looking for various mythical or thought to be extinct creatures). Very entertaining!

Will pick the next read tonight, not sure yet what I will do. I want to do several read-a-thons (Claremont X-Men, Hellboy universe, Valiant universe), so maybe I will keep a rotation of various books, i.e. an X-Men book, followed by a stand-alone book, followed by a Valiant book etc.

Let's see if that is feasible.

[Ragdoll]

Hickman's new X-Men run has me doing a deep-dive in X-Men history, been blowing through the Claremont era. Most recent reads:

Alpha Flight v1 013. Guardian is (seemingly) dead, his wife is (rightly) bummed out. 6/10, over half the issue was a dream sequence with zero dialogue.

Uncanny X-Men v1 183. Collosus dumps Kitty after returning from Battleworld. Wolverine punishes him by setting him up to get in a bar-fight with Juggernaut. Emotional issue with a fun fight, 8.5/10. Speaking of Battleworld...

Secret Wars, by Jim Shooter. The event that invented events! Cool to finally read it but some parts were a bit of a slog, I'm giving it 6/10.

New Mutants v1 017. The end of a fun Hellfire Club adventure. I love reading old Emma Frost stories while also reading new X-men books like Marauders and seeing how much she's grown and changed, yet also how she's still the same bad-ass as ever. Next arc in New Mutants is the Spirit Bear, which I've heard great things about, plus there's a radical change in the art style starting with this arc, and it looks like it will really separate New Mutants from the other X-books with a distinct, weird/cool vibe. 8/10

[Foxy]

Finished Carthago Adventures last night and really liked it. It basically takes two characters from the original Carthago book and tells their joint adventures (basically looking for various mythical or thought to be extinct creatures). Very entertaining!

Will pick the next read tonight, not sure yet what I will do. I want to do several read-a-thons (Claremont X-Men, Hellboy universe, Valiant universe), so maybe I will keep a rotation of various books, i.e. an X-Men book, followed by a stand-alone book, followed by a Valiant book etc.

Let's see if that is feasible.

aaaand of course it went differently Couldn't decide what to read when I was inspired by a video on Gem Mint's YouTube channel to read Prometheus / Aliens Fire & Stone. So I pulled that off the shelf

[Foxy]

Finished both Fire & Stone and Life & Death. Quick entertaining reads, especially if you like the material (Aliens, Predator, Prometheus) in general.

While F&S sets up the stories that are continued in L&D, it's obvious that the latter was all written by the same writer (Dan Abnett). The plotting is tighter and the story just flows quite seamlessly. That being said, the story also flowed well in F&S, especially considering that there were different writers.

Overall, both are a lot of fun but I liked L&D better. Abnett is one of those writers who (so far) never failed to entertain me. I liked his Guardians of the Galaxy and his other Marvel cosmic stuff, as well as the few of his Aquaman issues I read.

Now to decide what to read next. I should receive the Injustice Omnibus today and everybody seems to like it. Either that or I will continue Claremont X-Men.