I enjoyed watching some of my favorite characters in this series, but it does not have the coherence or cleverness of the first one.

Still kind of meh at this point, and I’m wondering if there’s only so far that the premise of this series can go. There are some interesting plot developments, though, so we’ll see if things get more exciting in the next volume(s).

Cory Doctorow recently reviewed a newer book from Lubchansky, which I’d love to read. I can’t easily get a copy, though, so I checked this one out again from the library. It is bonkers and beautiful, and there should be more comics like it.

Parts of this are good—especially the Batman-analogue/Catwoman-analogue date subplot that bookends this volume—but a lot of it is meh. I’m also not a fan of the “rich dude has to work to make a problem go away for his company” plot, though we’ll see if that changes any.

Wow, wow, wow. I was intrigued by what I knew about this book when I first bought it but am only now getting to it, five years later. It’s a beautiful book and quietly radical, using the story of Mormon to develop a theology of the world ending around us. Miller explicitly invokes the climate crisis at the end of the book and calls for disciples to be willing to sacrifice all things instead of simply waiting to lose all things. Even outside of that context, Miller’s quasi-mystical reading of Mormon has so much to offer—and is pleasantly aligned with some of the theologies I’ve heard in Community of Christ. This is a good one.

This series continues to be compelling, even if I have some complaints about it. Casey’s dialogue for Black characters sometimes feels stereotypical, I don’t love his use (or depiction) of rape as a plot point, and (like some of the other Image series I’ve read) I feel like there’s a fine line between “comics can be a mature medium” and “let’s draw all the boobs and butts we can.”

And yet. This is a more interesting Batman story than so many actual Batman stories I’ve read. For all my baseline prudishness and legitimate concerns, I don’t (usually) think this is just mature content just to be titillating, and I really want to see how things play out.

Just over a year ago, I read and reviewed Matt Fraction’s Sex Criminals, which felt weird to read and even weirder to publicly acknowledge having read. I got why it received the acclaim that it did but didn’t really like it.

This Image comics Humble Bundle that I’ve been working my way through included the entire run of Sex Criminals, which I don’t intend to reread, but I am trying to read basically everything else in the bundle, including other series that it feels weird to read and even weirder to publicly acknowledge reading. I’ve been oblique in referencing that so far, but it’s hard to avoid with this review.

Still appreciate what this series is aiming for, and there are some good bits in here, but the plot still takes leaps I can’t follow, and my nagging concerns still nag.

So, this still doesn’t sit totally right with me. The sleaze as art choice is still not my style, and I’m not sure which side of the “artistic vs. objectifying” it falls on, though the former is clearly the goal. I also think that plot and character “development” sometimes move too quickly to really land.

If I’m more generous toward this volume, though, it’s because it’s more clear what the creators are trying to do here. The characters are more compelling, with backstories and relationships that make them interesting. The plot twists add genuine drama. It feels like they are trying to prove that comics can be a serious, “adult” (in not just one sense of the term) medium, and I think they mostly succeed? It feels like a comics equivalent of all those blockbuster TV shows I don’t watch, and I can give it credit for that even if there are reasons I tend not to watch those shows.

I keep expecting to like Matt Fraction stuff to be better than I do because I’ve heard so much good stuff about him. There’s something interesting in here, but it also seems sleazy and grimy as an intentional style decision, and I don’t know if that’s my kind of fiction. I’ll probably keep reading this, and it was helpful to read the cast pages at the end so I could remember who everyone was, but I don’t know if I’ll like it any more.

Look, now more than ever, I’m sympathetic toward a story of Canadian resistance to American bullying, and you’d think that giant mech combat would only make that more appealing.

There are just too many strikes against this to be better than “meh,” though. I don’t like blood and gore in my comics, the characters are kind of flat, and the French dialogue needs another edit.

This was dumb. It’s the kind of comic that’s intentionally offensive, but that doesn’t stop it from being dumb and offensive.

The only thing keeping me from rating it lower is that there’s the spark of something interesting in there. Compelling art! Is Jay Leno POTUS, with Dick Cheney as his VP?! It’s Alan Moore’s Comedian turned up to 12! None of that is enough to make it good, but it’s worth some recognition, I guess.

This comic has the raw ingredients (including solid art) to make a compelling story about mortality, existential dread, privilege, and so many other topics. Yet, it doesn’t seem to be able to organize them into something coherent and compelling.

This book starts off strong, with a very interesting exploration of Christology in the Book of Mormon. There are some other interesting observations, too (including a frank-to-the-point-of-productive-discomfort evaluation of race in the Book of Mormon). If I were only reading the conclusion, I’d likely give it full marks. A few things keep me from doing that for the book as I read it, though.

I admit that some of those things are entirely my fault. As with the last two books in the series, I’ve read this one too quickly to appreciate the arguments it’s making. Furthermore, I confess that I have personal biases against a couple of the authors cited even though I don’t know much about those authors—it’s the laziest kind of bias, and while I might still dislike those authors after a thorough evaluation of their work, it’s not solid ground for grumping about their appearance in this book.

This series ended as a disappointment. The grace I was willing to give it with the last volume is gone after it finishing in a pile of anticlimaxes and overused science fiction tropes. Meh.

Okay, once I got over the ways that generative AI have ruined the premise, it’s not a terrible story. It’s not deep or particularly original, but I enjoyed it enough to be more generous this time around.

I read this series ages ago; when I got it through an Image Humble Bundle, I decided it was worth a reread.

The art isn’t bad, and the basic ideas of the series are interesting, but it’s remarkable how much generative AI has kind of ruined what the series could be.

So much of this reads differently now: the premise of people seeking companionship in sycophantic robots, the secondary premise of people being convinced that there’s true intelligence behind the scenes just waiting to be unlocked, the idea of “robots rights” in a society that’s skeptical of artificial intelligence. What would have been pretty standard scifi 4 years ago now hits differently, feeling like an allegory for the most delusional parts of pro-AI advocacy.

This book is great: its emphasis on sight and invisibility, its meta-emphasis on self-evaluation and self-deception, and its leaning into the Book of Mormon’s condemnation of wealth and departure from contemporary Latter-day Saint understandings. So much good stuff in here. The only thing keeping me from giving full marks is that I’ve skimmed it too quickly to critically evaluate (or appreciate) the throughlines of the book.

I struggled my way through this book, but I also liked it? My wanting to quickly fly through this series hampered my ability to sit with it and evaluate its arguments in the way that it deserves, and it feels weird to review the book based on the skim that I ended up settling for. Yet, I also really liked the directions Wrathall explored, and I would be eager to reread what he has to say with more care and attention sometime in the future.

This remains one of the best pieces of short fiction I’ve ever encountered, and I have trouble imagining ever finding anything that replaces it in my mind. It is existentially terrifying and yet beautiful, it’s clever in even the smallest details, and I will never stop thinking about it.

I’ve been meaning to reread this for a while, and I’m glad I finally got to it. It’s fifteen years old now and feels it sometimes (not necessarily in a bad way), but it’s a fun read.

I appreciate Doctorow’s use of MMOs as a metaphor for economics, and even if I’m not economically savvy enough to follow all the details or evaluate their accuracy, it’s a lot of fun to read about “Great Recession, but a heist carried out by unionized workers.”

We bought the English translation of this comic after falling in love with the series in the original French. The goal is to donate this copy to kiddo’s school library, but we couldn’t help but read it as a family first. It’s darling and wonderful, but it loses a bit of the fun in translation.

There’s a lot I like in this book: the call for urgency; its focus on bottom-up movements; echoes of Ellul, Graeber, and other authors I’ve appreciated. It feels like an example of the prophetic voice, and I hope to keep it in mind in the years to come.

I’m not an economist or an environmental expert, so I feel inadequate in my ability to thoroughly review it. I wish it were easier to translate those lofty ideals into daily action, though maybe part of the point is that there are no easy answers to this.

I was more generous to the first series this time around because I was impressed by how tightly it works as a single story, despite being episodic. While there are lots of gems in this series, it doesn’t feel as tightly constructed, and there are also some weird things that don’t really work for me (like a conspiratorial diatribe against the FBI?). I don’t regret rewatching it, but it just isn’t as good as the first series.

This season wasn’t awful so much as “just okay,” but I’ve come to expect more from the show. It took my least favorite book and changed it in weird ways that didn’t feel like they fixed much. A few changes were good, but others felt like they added too much complexity to the plot or that they were trying to lend a gravitas to characters that don’t need it.