I remain really torn on Queen and Country. It's well-plotted and the art is occasionally quite nice (depending on who's drawing the arc - I'm actually pretty fond of the one artist per arc format), but it's hard to get around the fact that Rucka seems a little overly fond of the hard-drinking, self-destructive tough gal. Things get a little more over-the-top here than in previous volumes - I have a hard time believing Chace could drink that much and live - but the real problem is the completely unreferenced storyline that occurs between the two story arcs contained here. After a little research, I figured out that Rucka had written a Queen and Country novel that occurred between the two storylines. You'd think that, in a definitive edition, there could be a short summary or at least a mention of the book. It's fairly jarring that a character who is missing from the first story (because he has moved to a "less fatal" career path) to die between storylines. Given that the entire second storyline is based on Chace's fragile emotional state due to the events of the novel, it seems odd not to mention it.

I've been putting off reading this last arc for months now, mostly because I can't really bring myself to let the series go. Y: The Last Man faltered a bit in the middle (when it started feeling a little repetitive), but it was still one of the most consistent series being published. This final group of stories ended up being some of favorites of the series. The one-offs providing follow up on early, incidental characters were a nice way to, among other things, show us how the world has progressed over the time spanned by the series. The wrap up of Yorick's story, particularly the final issue, was heartbreaking. I will admit to tearing up a little bit at Ampersand's death (especially since Ampersand was probably my favorite character in the series), and I loved Vaughan's ongoing commitment to ambiguity regarding the central premise of the series. Even with the flabbiness in the middle of the series, I still think this may be one of the best series of the decade.

When the last issue of this arc came out, I went back and read the whole arc again to see how it held together. I'm still not entirely sure how well this story works. Daniel's art is not particularly engaging, which is especially disappointing coming off the J.H. Williams III run, but what I think is really causing my ambivalence is my overall fatigue with the psychology of Batman. I'm not sure I really want to read another story about how unhealthy Batman's behavior is (particularly in regards to the Joker). Morrison is handling it well, but I'm just not that interested.

Also, could someone please explain why Morrison felt a need to finish the arc with a reference to Bendis' Avengers run? Seems a little beneath him.

I'm starting to get a little more used to Guera's artwork here, and Aaron seems to have backed off a little bit on the attempt to make Bad Horse as ludicrously tough as possible. The flashback structure of this collection actually managed to get me more interested in the plot than the first volume did. I'm looking forward to the next volume.

I like Stray Bullets and Murder Me Dead quite a lot, so I cannot begrudge Lapham this screenplay pitch in graphic novel form. This is pretty much a dumped-in-Febrary middle of the road thriller, which is fine, and I hope he's able to sell the movie rights for a significant amount, but it just didn't impress me the way his previous works did.

I tend to give Vaughan a lot of credit. I think he's one of the more consistently good writers in comics these days, and I pretty much attribute Lost's narrative recovery to his addition to the writing staff, but this didn't work for me at all. I found it generally schmaltzy, and I expect better of him.

I'm fairly certain I've heard more about Scalped than pretty much any title in years (maybe since the Jonah Hex revival?), but I'm not entirely sure the buzz is entirely justified. As I've mentioned, I tend not to dwell on the art unless it's remarkable, but I had a really hard time with Guera's art here. It's abstract to the point of incoherence. I had a very hard time differentiating characters, to the point where I couldn't be sure that the protagonist was, in fact, the only bald character in the story. It's some maddening.

Aside from the art, the story's all right. The attempts to make Bad Horse a bad ass are a little silly (nunchucks? really?), but I did find myself getting pulled in as it went along.

I picked up and put down this comic countless times at the store, every time thinking that perhaps it was something new from the guys who did Phonogram. It's perhaps unfair to compare anything to Phonogram, which is my favorite new title of the past few years, but this is pretty clearly working the same "British, pop-fixated, occult detective" storyline, so hard to avoid. Unlike Phonogram, it's not really interested in music, except as an aspect of trashy pop culture. Actually, it almost seems like a pilot for a TV series. D-List celeb, porn star/coroner, and psychic team up to solve crimes. Obviously, it would be a fairly horrible TV series, and it's not much better as a comic, but, you know, I've read worse.

Repo Man is one of my all time favorite films, and I'd been meaning to read this quasi-sequel for a while. Allegedly, Cox wrote this as a screenplay and handed it into the studio for consideration. I cannot imagine what the studio execs who read this would have thought. Every character is now a different character, which is certainly a unique way to handle a sequel (though, you'd think the studio would appreciate the casting flexibility it gives them). It's also even less plot-oriented than Repo Man, feeling more like a series of vignettes in which Otto/Waldo tries to hold down a job long enough to be able to claim a Hawaiian vacation. I'm not sure how it would have been as a movie, but, as a fairly quick read, it was enjoyable enough. At least enjoyable enough to hold me over until Repo Chick comes out.

This is the second of Geary's books on Victorian murders that I've read. I don't necessarily seek them out, but there always seems to be a different one in stock at the library, so why not? Like the last one, this was well done and enjoyable. I had been arguing about Lincoln at a party shortly before reading this, and the quotes from his second inauguration just served to reinforce the argument I was making that Lincoln didn't really seem to appreciate the moral violation of slavery and seemed fairly interested in forgiving the South as soon as possible. I tend to fall pretty strongly on the Reconstruction side of things, so I'm always glad to have more quotes handy to illustrate Lincoln's softness towards the South.

I feel like I've heard a number of good things about this comic, but I never found it in at the library, since it was filed in the kids section. Seems odd. I mean, there's nothing objectionable in here, but it's a pretty talky comic. I guess anything fairy tale-related will get filed in the kids' section unless it's explicitly adult (like Fables).

I'm pretty sure I've never read a mention of Castle Waiting that doesn't reference Fables, which isn't entirely fair. Yes, they're both about the continuing stories of characters from fairy tales and nursery rhymes, but Medley seems much less pleased with herself than Willingham is. I mean, I like Fables, but even I must admit that it occasionally feels like he's trying a little too hard to show how clever it is (and how "adult" it is). Castle Waiting is much more relaxed in it's storytelling. It's less about highlighting the act of appropriation and more about just presenting characters and stories.

That said, this collection is a little light on plot. I have some faith that will pick up somewhat in later collections, so I'm willing to give it a pass on that.

It's perhaps hard to judge this series as series, since I don't really know what Gerber and Skrenes intended for the characters. The first couple issues are compellingly weird, but then it becomes a showcase for a series of forgettable fights with obscure villains I only know from childhood readings of the Official Handbook of Marvel Universe (e.g., Nitro, Foolkiller), all of which are accompanied by very lengthy musings about the nature of self-knowledge. I can sort of get what they're going for and perhaps the endless series of guest-stars was editorially mandated to boost sales, but it sort of detracts from the tone of the first couple issues. I certainly wonder what, exactly, Gerber and Skenes had in mind. I certainly understand why Jonathan Lethem felt a need to take a crack at the series, but it's sort of a shame we'll never get a chance for Gerber to try it again.

First off, I'd really like to know if anyone can come up with a less-offensive interpretation of the teaser at the end of Mr. Miracle #12, which refers to the next issues as (and I'm paraphrasing, since I don't have the book in front of me) "the most shocking thing since the summer of '44." Best I can come up with is the public discovery of the Nazi concentration camps, which seems like something you might not want to trivialize by comparing it to an issue of Mr. Miracle. I mean, maybe I shouldn't question Kirby, who is both Jewish and a WW2 Veteran, but it just seems a little tacky. Or perhaps someone out there has a better interpretation.

All that aside, this is a fairly disappointing collection. Most of it consists of Mr. Miracle issues in which Kirby was attempting to distance the series from the Fourth World mythology. It's a little painful, and enjoyable enough, but certainly not quite on the same level as the earlier stuff.

This was also the first time I'd read The Hunger Dogs. I'd heard unanimously bad things about it, but it's a pretty interesting work. Sure, it provides some resolution to the epic storyline he started in the 70's, but it's mostly about Darkseid's sadness at the development of technology that makes war less of a noble struggle and more just business as usual. It's certainly an odd direction for Kirby to have gone in, and I can see why it was not received well, but I really like the feeling of wistfulness that permeates it.

This is the second Tezuka work I've read (after Buddha), and this is as good as I'd heard, but it does make me wonder a little bit about Tezuka's personal religious beliefs. Buddha takes a fairly hostile attitude toward organized religion, which, in that case, is Hinduism. Here, a number of stories deal with the degrading influence on Buddhism in Japan. He's particularly opposed to the opposition of Buddhism as a state religion, which is fine, but he goes out of his way to portray Buddhism as a specifically Indian import and diametrically opposed to the indigenous Japanese beliefs. I'm not taking sides here, but it just strikes me as odd that Tezuka was simultaneously interested in producing a fairly thorough biography of the Buddha (that made a pretty convincing argument for Buddhism), which being generally opposed to the export of Buddhism to Japan. I'm not sure when exactly these were written, so maybe there was a progression there that isn't readily apparent.

Anyway, aside from that, these were highly enjoyable. The sci-fi volumes had the same sort of preoccupation with morality and ethics of not-yet-existent situations (e.g., do robots have souls if they are programmed from a person?) that crops up in a lot of Philip K. Dick's early works. I love that sort of thing. The historical stories were a little less engaging (or at least less memorably weird), but still good. I'm still not someone who would consider himself a manga fan, but I will certainly read more Tezuka stuff.

Pretty great. I loved the Moebius-filtered-through-graffiti art, and it's hard not to like a story against the Disney-fication of cities. I'm kind of curious to see the feature film adaptation, though I have a hard time imagining how they'd preserve the style of the artwork. I really have no complaints here, other than that, by the end, I was sad it was over. That's probably the best thing I can say about any kind of work of art.

Despite Wolk's insistence, I'm not convinced that Gilbert is particularly skilled at drawing distinct individuals, particularly given his fondness for jumping across time periods. I routinely had to flip back to remember who is related to whom, which made the story a little less engrossing than it might have been.

My issues with the art, however, were nothing compared to my issues with the characters. Particularly Luba. I know there's nothing wrong with having a generally unsympathetic character (and, again, this may just be my reaction - Hernandez is clearly interested in the character) is that it becomes hard for the reader to really stay involved. It's hard to put a finger on what, exactly, made me react so negatively to her, but it made it hard for me to really appreciate what I was reading.

My attempts to read everything Douglas Wolk cites in his book continue. I've tried to read Love and Rockets several times, but found it completely unengaging. I think I get thrown by the anthology format, particularly by the various Gilbert-written bits of insanity that occupy quite a lot of the individual issues. Anyway, I figured reading the main storylines on their own might work better, and I am certainly glad I tried reading them this way. The first several years are nothing special, but, once he drops the sci-fi trappings, I really started to appreciate the characters. "Wigwam Bam" does one of the nicest jobs of any work I can recall in capturing the slipping away of time and the jarring realization that other people's lives move on. It's unsettling to read, but stunningly well-done.

I should also point out that, even for someone like me who tends to gloss over the art in comics, Jaime's art is stunning. It helps that I grew up reading DeCarlo-era Archie comics, but the degree to which he's able to convey subtle things like aging using that style is very impressive.

I always have a hard time deciding what to say about anthologies. Curses leads off with a fairly obtuse story ("Green Tea") that isn't particularly engaging, but then has "28th Street" which is excellent. Aside from the closing piece (which is somewhere in the middle as far as quality goes), the rest are short little pieces of varying quality. I think this is all coming out harsher than I want it to. I really like Huizenga's art. Aside from one piece, it's very reminiscent of Herge, which is always a good thing. His storytelling skills are excellent, but he does tend to choose materials that don't really lend themselves to graphic storytelling (a history of starlings in North America, long chunks of 19th century writing), which is, I guess, ambitious, but not necessarily compelling. Still, an enjoyable collection, and one I've recommended to others.

After Reading Comics, I figured I should probably read all the items he reviews. Somehow, I never really got around to reading Maus, so I figured that was a pretty glaring hole in my comics literacy and set about correcting that one first. It's certainly better than I expected, given the lousy other stuff I've read of Spiegelman's, and, if nothing else, helped me out with some of the awareness of the Holocaust timeline questions I'd been trying to sort out after watching To Be or Not To Be (would seem that if Spiegelman's family didn't really know how bad the camps were in late '41, Lubitsch probably didn't either). I guess my only real criticism of the story is that Art's storyline is significantly less interesting than Vladek's. I understand this is supposed to foreground the author's presence in the storytelling so as to avoid claims of objectivity and give the story a more accessible entry point for those who wouldn't relate as well to a directly told story of Vladek and his family, but it ends up just sort of feeling like an ongoing fit of egomania. I don't particularly feel any need to get to know Art, so he ends up feeling like an impediment to the more interesting and moving story.

I sort of turned on autobiographical/ultra-realist comics a while ago after one too many issues of Optic Nerve, but this was really incredible. Like The Squid and the Whale, it's got just enough elements that feel like they're lifted out of my childhood to be really moving (actually, it's that sense of growing up in a family that prides itself on being intellectually superior to the rest of the world in both works that connects the most for me). Anyway, I suspect I'm one of the last people to read this, but if, for some reason you haven't, I highly recommend it.