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).

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 dragged this season out over too long to fully appreciate it, but it was a fun sendoff for the series. It’s the only Star Trek series I’ve watched in its entirety, and I think it might be my favorite!

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.

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). It’s a good series, despite my reservations, and I hope it never gets rebooted.

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 really like the first novella, and this one isn’t bad, it’s just hard to live up to the strong first start. I’d like to continue working on the series, since I know it’s all well regarded, but I don’t remember many of the details from the first time I tried this, so let’s hope it sticks more this time.

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. There’s some not to like in this series.

I love this story, and the radio production is excellent. I like the supporting cast of oddball characters (especially Connie and Toby), and the idea of George’s struggle with his age and his morals is compelling. Maybe it’s still being torn about Honourable Schoolboy, but it just didn’t land as well this time as it has in the past.

I mostly skimmed this book, and I would have some quibbles with it if I got more into the details, but I found it really good. Musical theater is far, faaaar outside of my research interests, but this book articulates a fascinating “theology of voice” within Mormonism that will be helpful as I look to write something on Ellul and Mormon Studies.

This book isn’t the best of the anarchist fiction I’ve read—it feels a bit stilted or maybe even too didactic at points—but it grew on me, and I enjoyed the story a lot. (It’s also not the worst anarchist fiction I’ve read—looking at you, V for Vendetta). Cory Doctorow mentioned Killjoy’s most recent book on his blog, so I’m giving some of her older stuff a try, and so far, I think it’s pretty good.

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.

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 wasn’t quite what I was expecting (I think the “biography” subtitle is misleading), but it’s good! It’s organized around specific understandings or depictions of Jesus in Mormonism, and while it isn’t afraid of exploring the weird and controversial (I may be citing this at some point for a paper that touches on arguments about a polygamist Jesus), it’s also good about contextualizing Mormon beliefs within broader trends, thereby making (some) things (slightly) less weird. I’ve had this book for a while and am glad to have finally read it!

I’m glad I found this book through the UK library. I had read that it’s foundational for the ideas Ellul would explore through the rest of his career, and that pans out. I don’t agree with everything, and I think he overreaches sometimes, but I did find this book compelling, and a good addition to my Ellul studies.

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.

Cory Doctorow reviewed this book on his Pluralistic blog recently, and since I typically enjoy the books he recommends (well, the ones I try, anyway), I gave it a try. The writing style is not my favorite, and I don’t know that it needed to be one of those books that is written by an in-universe character, but both of those fit really well into the themes of the book, so I shouldn’t complain.

This apparently took us two months to watch, and I think I would have enjoyed it more if that hadn’t been the case. I actually didn’t really enjoy the season arc so much—individual episodes were great, though, and the show continues to be fun. Hard to believe there’s only one season left to get through!