BOOM! Studios
Bill & Ted Save the Universe reaches five of five, and is totally perfectly brilliant. Everybody gets their moment, EVERYBODY HEALS, and Wyld Stallyns rock reality. I honestly can’t say enough about how good this is, as a licensed book and as a serial. Every creative element works in good-faith tandem, every important element and character of the original series is freshly used. Magnifique. Give these Joines, Bachan, Guimaraes, Campbell, and cover artist Charm, gold medals.
Kong: Gods of Skull Island #1 is a stand alone story, apparently; not sure it it means it’s a stand alone to start a serial publication, or if it’s just “one of one.” Nola Pfau’s taking a look at this, though, so come back in a little while and find out the deets.
Go Go Power Rangers reaches #4, which I frankly don’t understand. Go Go is a different series to Mighty Morphin, but they’re definitely (I think) about the same versions of the same characters. The main appreciable difference is that in Mighty Morphin, Kimberly and Tommy are romantically involved, but in Go Go Kimberly and some other lad are doing the arm’s length courtship dance, with Tommy nowhere to be seen. Wait– solved it. Go Go is in flashback, essentially: as Mighty Morphin began after the “Green With Evil” arc from the 90s television show, with the Power Rangers properly established as a team and Tommy as their new member, Go Go reaches back and “starts” the whole story. Well, it’s as good as the rest of BOOM!’s Power Rangers comics, which is “quite,” which gives me a headache. It’s just WRONG that Power Rangers should have a thoroughly decent 21st Century American comic book. Foundations of cardboard! A kingdom of lies! But, here we are. Licenses mean eyeballs, and eyeballs deserve solid books. If you really love this book or this brand, you’ll be after the “artists’ tribute book,” coming March next year. What is it? Don’t know. Big ol’ picture book.
KaBOOM!
Coming down from last month, Misfit City‘s sixth issue (of eight) draws things out a bit further. The art is still robustly characterful and the lettering is beautifully fit for purpose but there’s an air I can’t escape… these girls are just hanging around. There’s a teenaged truthfulness to it (why are they friends? What do they have in common or like about each other? They just all live in the same rural place) but not one that makes for great reading, because it doesn’t seem to be a purposeful focus. I don’t know what I’m waiting for here– there’s no impetus! The ball’s not rolling so much as it keeps getting pushed. I can see this book working for kids who still live where they grew up, especially with the shy straight romance and the confident queer one chugging along in the occasional scene here and there, but to be honest I’m starting to look askew at BOOM!’s practice of bringing in screenwriters (in this case Kiwi Smith, of Legally Blonde and Ella Enchanted, co-writing with Kurt Lustgarten, also a film guy) to head girl-gang comics. Comics are their own medium, and girl gang titles need the validation of being written by people really at home in it.
Adventure Time Comics (#16) continues to not interest me at all, and there are no helpful inserts from contributors who do know the show this week! But that doesn’t matter, because I can tell you that it’s a collection of four short stories, three by solo cartoonists and one by a writer/artist pair, and the first one involves the #1 greatest story element of all time: a good child sad because she loves a broken toy. That blue guy looks cool too.
I’m sorry, I refuse to read a Rugrats comic. I wish it the best! But some things I must leave sleeping. I looked at the preview pages and the parents look the same but now talk about texting each other, and the babies’ baby speech is phonetic. Make of this what you will. Godspeed.
Mel Gillman and Katy Farinas’ Stephen Universe comics get their first softcover collection (Warp Tour); 1-4 for $14.99. Praise for this book is all over twitter, and watch out in the section that contains issue four for the Yuri!!! On Ice background cameos. A quick glance through proves it to be as upbeat and tragic as you could hope.
BOOM! Box
Lumberjanes just gained its own WWAC columnist, who’ll be debuting with this month’s issue (forty three). Keep’em peeled, and on here dot com!
Giant Days‘ sixth softcover collection is out this week, collecting issues twenty one to twenty four. The girls move into a shared house for their second year of uni, get closer, get burgled, get horny. So it’s business as usual, on the whole, and it’s wonderful.
News!
A new cover for that fencing romance sports comic! Dream Daddy‘s own Shanan Pae gets swordy.
David Jesus Vignolli cartooning an original graphic novel for Archaia next… April! Haha okay, let’s wait. It’s called “A Girl in the Himalayas” and is a bit of a coming of age thing. Nice clean inks.
Samoa Joe is co-scripting his feature in WWE #13 (January)! Cool and all, but less cool coming after the boys-write-Women’s-evolution-arc news from last week. What do we want? People defining their own narratives, fine. What do we really want? Women doing that! Okay!
Also in January next year,
“Hugo Award-nominated writer Saladin Ahmed (Marvel’s Black Bolt, The Crescent Moon Kingdoms novels) and artist Sami Kivelä (Black Mask’s Beautiful Canvas) about a female journalist of color in 1970s Detroit named Elena Abbott who investigates a series of grisly crimes the police have ignored—crimes she recognizes to be the work of a dark magical force—the same force that murdered her husband 10 years ago.”
If she has a ten year late husband, she can’t be all that young. So I am in general favour of this. Adult ladies doing’ stuff, sounds good. Ahmed’s Black Bolt issues are rather good, against all odds, and that’s a neckerchief she has on there. I love me some neckerchief action.
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