Reviews and Comments

You're Jim Lee, and you've got money to burn. You manage to throw though cash Uncle Al's way to get him to work on a cheese cake title and he does the best he can with what he's given.

Trying to inject actual Hatian voodoo into the character was a noble idea that mostly lands flat in execution but I appreciate the effort.

There's nothing worth mentioning about the Michael Lopez's art, but at least Adam Hughes turned in some good Mucha inspired covers.

I loved this but the edition that I read and is widely available features truly awful recolouring. It speaks to the insecurity of publishers that they think anything old needs to be "modernized" for the sake of commercial viability.

The beautiful, warm, sun soaked colours of the original are replaced with sterile, overly rendered colours that detract from Stevens' immaculate line art

His figures are incredible, his layouts are energetic. The character design is vivid. It's good pulpy fun.

The original publications aren't cheap to track down so I dunno, it's either the $200CAD artists' edition or scans ☠️ to get the best experience.

Even so, it's not like the IDW edition isn't enjoyable and it does include both arcs. Stevens left us far too soon.

To parents thinking about reading this with their young child: there is a brief moment of violence and blood.

Both my child and I loved this. The setting feels like something out of Heavy Metal; an Arzach or a Den. You're seeing creation and destruction on many different scales, from the cosmic to the personal and tying those together into an ouroboros.

Gagne's a masterful illustrator. Rex's face is incredibly expressive. You can read body language in non-anthropic aliens. A planet is sliced open to reveal an inner planet, like a cosmic Matryoshka doll. Gagne's comsos pulses with Kirby crackle.

As someone that adores bookstores and booksellers, this book speaks to me. Honda's cartooning is great. That she's able to make a skeleton so cute and expressive shows such a deft hand.

I experienced a bit of a cultural disconnect with a lot of the humour though and that's firmly a me thing. The perpetual mortification of Honda did not mirror my experiences in customer service to say the least.

It's gonna be a gift for the booksellers in my life.

I've found most of Tezuka's hard-boiled manga suffers from some degree of tonal whiplash, or otherwise loses its grounding. Ayako on the other hand is a mature work from a steady hand.

The sense of place created with Yodoyama in the shadow of the American occupation is visceral. The Tenge family are clinging to what remains of an old way of life. They are the last rasping breaths of a dying dynasty.

Ayako is a story about Japan and its sequestration in the fallout of the second world war. Suppression is the arm of corruption and domination.

Currently this is my second favourite Tezuka manga after a Phoenix.

More than being propelled by a coherent plot, Gyo is driven by its action. Our protagonist is pulled from one situation to the next as the world gives way to a marine apocalypse.

It lacks a lot of what made Uzumaki so disturbing. You don't have that teleological unraveling of reality. Gyo is a lot more pedestrian in its horror, but that's also what makes it fun. It's kind of Dawn of the Dead with fish.

I think all men, and anyone socialized as a boy will see aspects of themselves in this book. Connell peels back the layers that constitute the practice of gender in a way that will shape my thought forever.

Magic Knight Rayearth has a beautiful aesthetic. Cifero is a rich fantasy setting, but unfortunately you just don't get to see that much of it. Panel layouts are generally incredible. CLAMP's artwork is fantastic, although it often focuses so much on its main cast that you're wanting for a little more variety.

The storytelling is pretty formulaic. I can see exactly how this would map to the Super Famicom RPG. I suspect reading it serialized would have been less trying, where each girl's coming into their abilities wouldn't hit as quite so formulaic.

The abrupt ending is honestly one of the stronger qualities of the story, and it's enough to get me to pick up the second omnibus after some time away.

I really enjoyed this collection but I think her full length work has more to sink your teeth into.

Standouts were the Willow Tree and Iguana Girl.