The art is still good, and the story is still interesting. It may not grab me as much as some other comics, but I see why it gets the praise it does.

Generative AI has made it very hard for me to enjoy a “robots are people, too” story in the way I used to, but this is good, and I’m looking forward to reading more!

Like the first issue, there’s enough here to like but also some I could have done without. The flashbacks work for me, but the story feels a bit rushed—and as though it will need to rush more if it’s going to conclude in issue 3, as seems to be promised.

Imagine taking Star Wars, putting it in a blender with other sci-fi franchises, and then slapping an R rating onto what the results. It mostly works, especially because it’s so transparent about that being its approach, but as dumb as it is for Star Wars to pretend that its blasters can bloodlessly kill the bad guys, I prefer that to seeing the gory results of this series.

The premise of this comic—girls and women violently resist werewolves who are a mix of feminist metaphor and supernatural phenomenon—is not quite my jam, so I don’t worry about not having any more volumes of it. It’s quite good, though, and I liked it more than I expected from the first few pages.

This felt like a real rollercoaster of a read. As a child of the 90s, I knew the Jim Carrey adaptation of this (and the animated adaptation of that) existed, but I never encountered them. At some point, I learned that there was an original comic source to all of that, but I never expected to read it.

I approached the book with open curiosity, hated the first part of it, and then got mostly won over by the rest. It’s interesting in art and premise, it is dark without being too much so, and I appreciate it for what it is.

My experience of the 2008 financial crisis was an interesting one. I was living abroad as a Mormon missionary, with all my bills paid for by the church (and, indirectly, my parents, who footed the costs that all Mormon missionaries pay). I lived in a bubble of religious purpose wrapped in a bubble of privilege, and it rarely occurred to me that there was real economic crisis happening around me (and all this despite reporting to someone recently retired as a high-ranking executive at Fannie Mae).

Vampire stories aren’t really my thing, but as far as vampire stories go, this is a good one! 90s New York is an interesting setting, I like the cultural shake-up, and the art is a lot of fun.

I’m glad I watched this, but I was surprised to not enjoy it as much as expected. Part of it is the usual caveat of watching on my phone while doing chores, and part of it is age (in that its innovation has become mainstream and in that John Cleese has really taken a scary turn). Yet, I’m glad I watched it, and I’m ready to watch some other Python stuff.

Horror is not at all my jam, but I’ve recently discovered analog horror, which works better for me. I didn’t like the gorier aspects of this movie, but I did find that it captures what I like about Parsons’s original short—and the genre of analog horror in general.

Also, if it wasn’t intended to be a commentary on generative AI, it sure stumbled right into that. A “poorly remembered” reality that produces extra fingers and may be dangerous to humans but whose creators think is the most important thing for us to understand today? C’mon.

Okay, so I didn’t actually read the final TPB. I cobbled together individual issues from hoopla (boooo, hoopla) but couldn’t be bothered to review them individually.

That’s probably good, because I didn’t like the first issue at all—I had trouble remembering what had happened in the previous TPB and struggled to get back into the plot. I still think the plot is kind of dumb, but reading the remaining issues reminds me that I like Guillory’s characters, art, and clear personal investment in this story. I’m being generous with my rating, but I think he’s earned it. (Chew is still too weird for me to try, though).

There’s so much about this series that shouldn’t work. The protagonist is clearly meant to be feminist but borders on angry manhater and is clad in typical comic book superheroine attire. Would it surprise you to know the creative team is all male?

Yet, for all of its very clear faults, there’s something about it that works? Or at least that I found to be an engaging read. Maybe there’s something here under the problems, or maybe I’m just part of the problem. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Incredibly helpful collection of source documents (especially for a non-historian like me) but would not recommend to anyone that doesn’t have a specific research question. Not exactly a page turner!

It’s hard for a tv show to follow up on an amazing season 1 premise with a solid season 2. This definitely has some creaky spots in it at the beginning, but it works up to something that won my trust back. What a deliberately, excellently weird show this is.

I own a physical copy of this book but sold out to hoopla to listen to it over the weekend so I could say I’d finally read it. I appreciate just how practical this book is: outlining steps one can take rather than simply appealing to an abstract anarchist ideal.

I also felt a real tension while reading this. The ideals it sets out really speak to me, but the amount of work and commitment that it would take to actually follow these principles feels intimidating to me.

On one hand, this is the first manga I’ve read where I saw why the art form is as revered as it is. Good art, interesting premise (somewhat silly, but no more than XIII, which I love more than I should), and not too gratuitous (but still some).

On the other, I felt that it didn’t catch my attention for the whole volume, and I’m torn on whether I’d enjoy reading the next four.

A lot of what I was looking for in this book is already available in other sources, and while I appreciated the normalizing of Latter-day Saint temples for a lay audience, it would also smack of apologetics if Stapley weren’t also so unflinching in addressing controversy and taboo. It’s a wonderful resource, and it’s accounting for important events of the last decade made it an invaluable read.

Not life-changing, but a pretty good comic. I didn’t know about this apparently legendary story, but it was fun to learn about.

Like the last volume, I’m less convinced by the plot as it continues, but there’s still so much about this that’s good. I appreciate the portrayal of faith without being preachy, I like the art, and there is still plenty of humor.

This is the last PDF I own, and I didn’t realize there was a fifth TPB that rounds out the story. I’ll have to track it down somehow…

Horror is not my genre, but this was funny and interesting enough in other ways that I (mostly) enjoyed the series anyway.

J’aime bien un petit drame politique, et voici la première fois que j’ai eue la chance de rencontrer un tel drame à la française. J’avoue que je ne suis pas arrivé à tout suivre, mais j’ai été content d’avoir reconnu plusieurs détails qui auraient échapper à la plupart des Américains. J’aime le cynicisme des personnages, même si certaines parties de la série deviennent fantabuleuses.

I’m pickier about this volume because it’s harder to follow up on a good premise than to set it up, but it hasn’t entirely jumped the shark, and I’m still enjoying it.

Such a helpful collection of data, and I’m pleased by how many echoes of Ellul are in there, as I move forward with trying to apply his thought to Mormonism.

A deserved masterpiece that I enjoyed watching despite much that’s aged—some things were just out of date while others were more problematic.

I thought for sure that I would be more critical of this the second time through, but I found (again?) that the last third of this is the interesting part, even if the leading up to it feels confusing.

It’s very interesting to read this after having reread Dawn of Everything and after reading There Never Was a West for the first time. I can better see the connections between those three pieces—and how they might inform my future writing.