Oh là là, comme il a beaucoup exigé ce livre ! Ça fait des mois que j’essaie de le lire, et les écrits d’Ellul ont souvent dépassé ma capacité de comprendre le français philosophique. Je pardonne beaucoup à ce livre pour trois raisons. D’abord, c’est surtout un brouillon, n’ayant jamais été publié, et ce qui était surtout pénible aurait sans doute été corrigé lors d’une vraie édition du livre. Deuxièmement, il y a beaucoup de pépites d’or là-dedans, même s’il faut beaucoup creuser pour les atteindre.

As a member of Community of Christ, I’m supposed to be a Trinitarian, but if I’ve learned one thing in recent years, it’s that I have very little patience for insistence on Trinitarianism. It doesn’t make much more sense to me now than it did when I was a practicing Latter-day Saint, and if I can recognize value in the theological reflections that emerge from an assumption of Trinitarianism, I am just not sold that it’s the only (or even best) way of understanding God.

Bon, j’avoue que elle devient de mojns en moins intéressant, cette série, mais je peux beaucoup pardonner pour une aventure en Alsace.

I remembered enjoying this volume, and it lived up to my memory! It’s one of the darker entries in the series, but it’s not as absurd or outright bleak as some of the others. A nice balance that was fun to revisit.

Ellul can be hard to review, and especially in this book! The core metaphor here is interesting and useful—I plan to draw from it personally and professionally. It’s also combined, though, with wild assertions, exegesis and theology that don’t land (for me), and moral panic that might be intentional hyperbole or might just be off base. So, there are some parts of this that are excellent and some parts that don’t really work.

I will be interested to see what the TV adaptation of this book is, since my least favorite books have sometimes been redeemed by the TV adaptation. For the time being, though, I didn’t love this one. It seems to exaggerate all the things about the books I don’t like, and I found the characters especially unsympathetic.

I backed this Kickstarter project several years ago, when a comic about Mormonism felt like it was right in the center of the Venn diagram of my interests. That’s still not far from the truth, but my relationship with Mormonism—and my experience as a Latter-day Saint missionary—is a lot more complicated than it was then. In fact, I’ve been thinking about rereading this for ages but have bounced off of it a few times.

Wow! Sure, coming from outside the LDS tradition, I have some theological quibbles with parts of this book, but what an amazing example it is of what I love about this series. It uses a close reading of the Book of Mormon—and some of the most obscure and overlooked parts of the Book of Mormon—to draw lessons that I can really get behind. It makes me want to already revisit the book and to the passages that it’s working with.

There are a few IDW comics that I got in a summer Humble Bundle but couldn’t bring myself to read over the summer. I’m glad I gave this one a try. I figures that after reading so much Ice Cream Man, I might be more open to a horror comic than I thought, and I think I was right. There is a lot of interesting character work, ethical reflection, and even heist plot in this one, and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next.

I feel like I should like this series more than I am. I’m caught between liking the general vibe of the comic and not really relating to the characters (and some stuff from the 2000s really not aging well). I’m committed to finishing the whole series, but I am also wondering if it’s going to reach out and grab me more.

I can’t remember how much of this series I’ve actually read, but I remember this one being my favorite of those I have read, and wow does it deliver on that memory. It’s a powerful example of what responsible, justice-oriented Book of Mormon theology can look like. It takes more effort to engage with than some of the previous volumes (especially considering how sleepy I was as I finished it this afternoon), so I think I need to revisit some of these arguments in more detail, but even though I was predisposed to enjoy this reread, I was still surprised at how many parts of the Book of Mormon it warmed me up to.

Ça faisait des années que j’avais l’intention de lire cette bande dessinée, et j’ai enfin trouvé un exemplaire en français il y a quelques semaines, grâce à mon beau-frère. On a tellement l’habitude de diaboliser l’Iran aux États-Unis qu’il est même facile d’oublier qu’il y a de quoi diaboliser ! L’histoire personnelle de Satrapi est très émouvante, et je suis bien content de l’avoir lu. Je vois pourquoi c’est une classique parmi les bd.

This book impressed me in an unexpected way. When I first read it, I didn’t think much of it. I was pleasantly surprised by how good the TV adaptation was. I see why they moved around scenes they did, gave certain characters more to do, etc. Coming back to the book, though, I think the TV adaptation opened me up to how good the underlying story could be. I appreciated the cruel wordplay and foreshadowing Herron uses in the beginning of the book, which is horrible and delightful when you already know the end.

I can’t remember if I’ve read the color editions before, but I know I haven’t read paper copies before, so this is fun. I have never seen the movie, but I’ve seen enough YouTube clips to know it’s my style. After watching enough of those clips, and knowing that I’m not likely to watch the movie (since it’s not my wife’s style, and I don’t watch a lot of movies on my own), I say “I ought to just read the books.

Bon, ce tome-ci a été moins intéressant pour moi que le précédent, mais ma fille l’a beaucoup aimé. J’ai trouvé qu’il se passait trop, qu’on n’explorait pas trop la magie dans la série, etc. Pourtant, c’est mignon. En plus, le prochain tome a lieu en Alsace, ce qui sera fort intéressant !

If I didn’t like the first book in this series as much as I remembered but was generous in my rating because I appreciate what it’s doing, I liked this second book more than I remembered but am harsh in my rating because I don’t appreciate what it’s doing. This book reads less as an extended conversation with 2 Nephi than as a wide-ranging, largely apologetic treatment of Latter-day Saint theology that happens to frequently reference 2 Nephi.

There’s a really interesting quasi-theological question at the heart of this book, and I’m rereading it for the first time in over a decade because I think it will be useful for a sermon I’m scheduled to give in a couple of months. What “imaginary versions” of Jesus do we create for ourselves and how do they get in the way of our connecting with the heart of Christianity. There’s also a goofiness to the book that almost works.

I remembered liking this book a lot when I first read it five or so years ago, so it was actually kind of disappointing to reread it now. There was a lot of it that didn’t feel relevant to me or that I felt I disagreed with. That said, I appreciate Spencer’s work a lot, and there are some great observations in here, so I’m trying to give it some grace in my rating.

Still good! Not the most life-changing of the series, but enjoyable. I have heard good things about some of the issues in Volume Eleven, so I’m really looking forward to getting that.

Another good book in the series. It’s impossible to read these without comparing them to their TV adaptations. I think the adaptation of this one made a number of wise choices in what it cut, what it changed, etc., but there are a couple of original bits that I would have liked to see preserved.

Joli, ce livre ! On l’a depuis quelques mois, mais on n’a jamais convaincu notre fille de le lire avec nous. En relisant la série Brume, on a découvert qu’un quatrième tome va bientôt sortir, et ma fille a insisté qu’on attende pour lire la troisième, comme ça on ne devrait pas trop attendre pour le quatriême. Grâce aux taxes douanières que notre cher président impose à tout le monde, il est douteux qu’on puisse faire livrer le nouveau tome de cette série-là, mais en attendant, on a enfin réussi a commencer cette série-ci.

I felt like this one didn’t stand out to me. I’ll gladly keep reading, but this was the most “meh” so far.

This continues to be unexpectedly good. I enjoy how self-referential it’s becoming with time—not the indulgent kind but the rewards you for paying attention kind. This is my second-to-last TPB I have out, and I’m already feeling like I need to reserve some more.

This volume wasn’t life-changing, but I’m hooked on the series now, and I’m enjoying even the bits that aren’t what won me over.

The Watchman parody in this volume is as good as the Superman one in the last. The self-references are also good, and I’m interested in the “maybe I don’t need to do this” theme (even if I didn’t put the book down myself when challenged to).

Okay, I still find myself repeatedly wondering if I really want to be reading this, but this volume was good. Three of the four issues had lines that I could write sermons around. For such a weird, creepy series, when it gets meaningful, it really lands.

This is good! It’s another book that I took too long to read, so it’s hard to review when I took breaks for other books between sections. It’s a very Doctorow book. I mean this in three ways: First, it makes an impassioned plea for a niche-but-important tech cause. Second, it overlaps with his fiction writing in really obvious ways. Third, it reads like an extended blog post (which I mostly mean as a compliment).

This volume wasn’t as hopeful as the last collection I read, and I have mixed feelings on the level of creepiness in these stories. The palindrome comic and the one happy story kept me going, but I’m not as keen on this series as I was a few days ago. Let’s see how things go in the next TPB.

Kiddo was off school yesterday, so we took a trip to the library, where I saw the first 7-8 TPBs of this series on the shelf. I nearly checked out the first four, but on second thought, I put them back. This series shouldn’t work for me. It’s not my preferred style of art, it’s full of body and existential horror, and one of the reasons I put those TPBs back is because I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I tried reading them.

I remembered this book being overly complicated and the TV adaptation being far superior. Revisiting it, though, is shifting my opinion. I think the TV adaptation does a good job of streamlining the story and connecting it to the broader franchise, but even if the original plot is convoluted, I think it’s better than I first gave it credit for. I also continue to appreciate Herron’s writing tics and what they add to the story that you couldn’t so in television.

Ça continue à être tout mignon et à faire marrer, cette série ! Je suis bien content de la relire avec ma famille.

This was a delight to read. While the Apple TV adaptation is excellent (I can’t help but imagine the book’s characters as the show’s actors), revisiting this reminded me just how good the source material is, too. Herron likes to play with the audience in a way that a TV show can’t capture, and some of the best lines from the adaptation are taken straight from his writing. What a gem.

Elle est jolie, cette série ! On l’a lue en famille au début de l’année, mais j’ai convaincu ma fille de commencer une relecture. On aime beaucoup les dessins, j’adore le langage (que je n’arrive pas à traduire parfaitement), et j’attends avec impatience le deuxième tôme.

This wasn’t bad, but I just didn’t find it as interesting as the first. I know the whole series is beloved by many, but I’m wondering if I just like the first novella? I ought to keep going to see if persistence pays off, but I had trouble sticking to this listen, so I think it’s time for a break.

I definitely read this one too fast, but if I hadn’t, I probably would have gotten hung up more on the continued blood and gore, which I continue not to like. As with the rest of the series, though, there’s plenty that kept me coming back, and even the stuff I don’t like is consistent(ish) with the universe that these creators have established. The happy ending is satisfying, the big swings are still interesting, and Eve gets treated better in the final arcs than in earlier stories (though I think they could have done even better by her).

I didn’t realize how quickly I made it through this! I wrote something in my review of the first compendium about the interesting things that Kirkman can do without being bogged down by a broader continuity, and that certainly applies here. I appreciate the big swings he takes and his willingness to shake up the story and leave it shaken up rather than a creep back to the status quo.