Previous SFF Author: Suzanne Collins
Paper Girls (Vol 5) by Brian K Vaughan (writer) & Cliff Chiang (artist)
This is the fifth volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s PAPER GIRLS, and the larger story is really starting to take shape. The early volumes were quite elliptical and disorienting, so it’s great to be able to understand the various storylines and the larger world-building that is revealed, and get to know and like the four main protagonists even more as they are thrown into a series of tense adventures across time.
January 11th, 2019. Stuart Starosta´s rating: 5 | Brian K. Vaughan | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Paper Girls (Vol 4) by Brian K. Vaughan
This is the fourth volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s Paper Girls, and we are finally given enough glimpses of the larger plot to make sense of what’s happened until this point.
[SPOILER TERRITORY AHEAD – DON’T READ UNLESS YOU’VE READ VOLUMES ONE-THREE]
After being thrown into the distant past and battling cavemen and befriending fierce natives, the girls once again in their future (and our past), namely during Y2K before the millenium.
January 5th, 2019. Stuart Starosta´s rating: 5 | Brian K. Vaughan | Comics | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Criminal (Vol. 4): Bad Night Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
Jacob Kurtz is the focus of Bad Night, the fourth volume of Ed Brubaker’s wonderfully disturbing noir series Criminal. His job is writing the newspaper comic strip that shows up in Criminal (vol. 1): Coward. The comic, based on Dick Tracy, is entitled Frank Kafka, Private Eye, and it’s as puzzling as the stories written by Franz Kafka, after whom he’s named. Frank is put on cases that go nowhere with leads that could never result in understandable clues.
December 29th, 2018. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Ed Brubaker | Comics | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Criminal (Vol. 3): The Dead and The Dying Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
The Dead and The Dying, the third volume in the Criminal series by Ed Brubaker, continues the noir tales that began in volume one. In this series, we get the background on a few characters we’ve already met in the previous two volumes, and we are reminded that in the world of noir, the meaner you are, the more likely you are to end up on top,
December 15th, 2018. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Ed Brubaker | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
SAGA Volume 3, Issues 13-18 by Brian K. Vaughan (author) & Fiona Staples (illustrator)
This highly original space opera romance is incredibly popular, and for good reason. Anyone who has read Saga Vols 1 & 2 will undoubtedly be fans of star-crossed lovers Alana & Marko, who come from opposing sides of a galactic war, Marko’s sharp-tongued mother Klara, freelancer assassin The Will and his lie-detecting cat, and Marko’s ex-fiance Gwendolyn. Not to mention the difficult-to-hate Prince Robot IV and all the other bizarre creations of Vaughan and Staples.
December 7th, 2018. Stuart Starosta and Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4.5 | Brian K. Vaughan | Comics | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Criminal (vol. 2): Lawless by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
In Criminal (vol. 2): Lawless, Ed Brubaker tells a noir story of family loyalty. One brother — a criminal — dies and the other seeks justice, doing what he can to be an avenging angel on the wrong side of the law. When we meet Tracy Lawless, he’s been in the military, and for some unexplained reason, he’s been thrown in the hole for eighteen months (we do get the explanation later in the book). When he gets out,
November 24th, 2018. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Ed Brubaker | Comics | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Criminal (Vol 1) by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
In Ed Brubaker’s Criminal (vol 1): Coward, we get noir comics at their best. Until I first read the Criminal series about ten years ago now, I was still not persuaded that comics could be a great form of art. But once I read this series, I was convinced I should read more: I thought, if comics can be this good, then there must be many more out there like this one. And so my passion for comics began with the story of Leo,
November 17th, 2018. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Ed Brubaker | Comics | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Batman: Year One by Frank Miller
Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986) completely reinvented Batman as an angry and bitter older man coming out of retirement to stem a rising tide of crime in Gotham City alongside Police Commissioner Jim Gordon. This was a dark vision of a complex and troubled soul driven to fight crime to avenge his parent’s senseless death, and it resonated with a new generation of readers and gained comics greater credibility among mainstream readers. Just one year later Miller produced a four-part story arc called Batman: Year One (1987).
November 10th, 2018. Stuart Starosta and Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Frank Miller | Comics, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Clockwork Apple by Osamu Tezuka
Clockwork Apple by Osamu Tezuka is a collection of short stories from Tezuka’s most mature period of writing. The stories were published with dates ranging from 1968 to 1973. The collection itself was translated by Steven LeCroy and published in English by Digital Manga, Inc., a company that is making it possible for fans to read in English the great works of the “God of Manga.” There are eight stories in this collection:
“The Execution Ended at Three O’Clock” is about a Nazi officer who tortured and killed many people,
October 13th, 2018. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Under the Air by Osamu Tezuka, a collection of fourteen manga stories, was published from 1968 to 1970 and translated in 2017 by Grady Martin and published by Digital Manga, Inc. This collection is the place to start if you have never read any Tezuka. That this is a five-star collection would not be debated by any who read it; even Tezuka thought highly of it, and he was very critical of his own work. The afterword to this collection is the first one I have read that did not include Tezuka’s humble apologies for a less-than-perfect work.
October 6th, 2018. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Previous SFF Author: Suzanne Collins
COMMENT Was I hinting that? I wasn't aware of it. But now that you mention it.... 🤔
So it sounds like you're hinting Fox may have had three or so different incomplete stories that he stitched together,…
It's hardly a private conversation, Becky. You're welcome to add your 2 cents anytime!
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I picked my copy up last week and I can't wait to finish my current book and get started! I…