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

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.

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.

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.

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 !

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

I have some mixed feelings about Invincible, though they obviously are positive enough for me to start a full series reread. In college, I used to own a hardcover collection regrouping the first several TPBs, but I gave it away when moving to grad school. I was bothered by the violence and gore then, and now I can add to that the casual homophobia and ableism of the early 2000s and the low-level objectification and misogyny that are in most superhero comics.

A relatively short comic with good art and a compelling story. In some ways, I would have liked a written memoir more, but this was a good read.

Dumb but fun is how I would describe this. It’s got good art and an interesting premise, but the longer it went on, the more tired I got of twists and the harder time I had following the story. It wasn’t bad—but nothing special either.

This one almost won me over. It has good art, and the kind of worldbuilding that goes with an interesting idea rather than explain things. It had a bit more violence than I like and some objectifying art that wasn’t really necessary, but what really lost me was an unnecessary fridging late in the second arc. It could have been something interesting—and frankly still was—but that scene cancelled out a lot of that potential.

I didn’t want to like this. The IDW comics bundle I’ve been working through has been kind of a mixed bag, and this was weird from the get-go. A fast-food employee robs an entire strip mall, which gets him entangled in an effort to summon the devil on earth. It doesn’t sound like my thing at all. It’s so unashamed of its weirdness, though, that it comes all the way around to amazing.

I feel kind of weird rating this above any of the Earthdivers volumes, but hey. The art feels a bit off sometimes, and there were some bits that I didn’t quite follow. The character designs and worldbuilding were great—weird sometimes but stronger for it. The plot was interesting, with some good twists that kept me hooked.

En fait, j’ai lu Stay, la traduction anglaise que j’ai trouvée à la bibliothèque chez moi. Je n’aime pas lire les BD en traduction—traduire « kebab » comme « gyro », ça se comprend, mais c’est quand-même insupportable—mais je ne voulais pas rater la possibilité de lire une vraie BD non plus, L’art est magnifique, et si l’histoire est un peu bizarre, elle est touchante aussi. C’est impressionnant combien cette équipe a pu raconter une histoire tellement émouvante avec si peu de paroles.

This is a very Ryan Northy comic, and I mean that as a compliment. It’s a great adaptation of the Lower Decks vibe (and Fenoglio’s art is a fantastic recreation), but it also has a lot of North’s signature moves. I love his physical comic adaptation of webcomics’ alt text jokes, his voice in those jokes, and his fun with science and public domain characters. I don’t know how much more there is in this series, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for additional volumes.

Maybe I’m dumb—or not reading closely enough—but I just cannot follow the twists and turns of this series. I love the back of the envelope idea of Indigenous time travelers trying to set things right, but I am very confused by the execution.

This feels a lot like the first volume: great premise, great art, but very hard to follow. Maybe it’s me not paying close enough attention, but it just feels twisty and turny without enough signposts to keep the reader on track.

There’s a lot going for this book: A compelling premise (Indigenous survivors of a climate apocalypse send someone back in time to kill Columbus, hoping that no America will avert said apocalypse), a willingness to interrogate the premise (violence begets violence, can the past be changed, etc.), and great art. I felt like it didn’t live up to that potential, though. I had trouble following the timey wimey twists, there were a lot of shortcuts, and the dialogue and characters sometimes felt flat.

This webcomic is just so good! I really enjoy reading it in collection format, even if it hasn’t been all that long since I read it strip-by-strip. This holds true even if this collection doesn’t have my favorite storylines in it. Looking forward to next year’s collection!

I picked this up (along with Arca, some titles I’ll be reading and reviewing in the future, and a few that I’m going to skip because they are Not My Thing) in a Humble Bundle for recent IDW titles. I’ve read Wilson’s run on Ms. Marvel (or at least most of it), but I’ve bounced off some of her other stuff, so I wasn’t sure what I’d think of this.

I forgot for a while there that I was waiting for this to come out on hoopla! I finally remembered yesterday, looked it up, and checked it out. I think I’ll appreciate this volume more when I can binge read it alongside some of the others. I forgot some of the context for the major plot developments, which got in the way some. It continues to be a weird-but-amazing series, though, and I can’t believe how easily it hooks me, despite forgetting the context and despite the levels of blood and violence being higher than I usually tolerate.

Arca isn’t perfect—the plot moves at the speed of convenience, the characters aren’t terribly deep, and the twists are either predictable or “huh?” Even with those critiques, though, I nearly gave it full marks, because it’s really good. I love the art and panel design, and the dystopia as metaphor for modern social problems lands really well. I really enjoyed the read!

This is more the kind of thing I’d expect from OOTS “purchase only” content. The additional stories were fun, the author commentary was interesting, and there’s at least one panel I might be able to work into a conference presentation, so that’s nice.