My tenth book read this year is another great graphic novel from Image comics: Descender volume 1. With fabulous painted art from Dustin Nguyen and a compelling science fiction story from Jeff Lemire this book begins the tale of Tim-21 a robot programmed as the companion of a human boy. With parallels to Spielberg’s AI… Continue reading Descender vol 1
For the first month or two of 2015 I was writing in my blog almost daily; one of the weekly ‘features’ was sharing questions on my mind. Given that my blog is entitled In Truth It’s Not That Simple it ought to come as no surprise that sometimes I feel like I have more questions… Continue reading Questions on my mind
There’s not much better to do when you’re in bed sick all day than read comic books. There are lots of great ways to read them, including one I’ve mentioned before: Thrillbent (www.Thrillbent.com). This digital comic service offers a platform for writers and artists to publish digital comics that take full advantage of the medium… Continue reading The Damnation of Charlie Wormwood – vol 1
Because I’m reading a couple of long books that will take me months to complete, a lot of the reading I am finishing so far in 2016 has been trade collections of comic books. That’s true for this eighth book I’m finishing in 2016: Southern Bastards volume 1: Here Was A Man. I grew up… Continue reading Southern Bastards – vol 1
I’ve been reading comic books pretty much my whole life (with a break in my 20s and 30s that lasted about twenty years). I got my first bunch of books at about age five from my grandparents, a random assortment of comics including Archie, Richie Rich, and Scoobie-doo. I read those books over and over… Continue reading Make mine Image
At this point I’ve read roughly 220 pages of the massive 1020 page tome that is David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Every time I get to the point of wanting to dismiss it as stream of consciousness disconnected random thoughts strung together with no apparent concern for plot or characterization, I stumble into passages of… Continue reading Not quite knee-deep in Infinite Jest
I find our current culture’s fascination with spirituality interesting given that it is paired with a growing percentage of the population that affiliates with no specific faith tradition. I’m not sure how much this milieu contributes to the broad appeal of the comic book The Wicked + The Divine (my seventh book read so far… Continue reading The Wicked + The Divine – Vol 1
One review calls it “a comic book love letter to non-compliant women.” I’d call this sixth book I’ve read in 2016 a great story from Image comics and Kelly Sue Deconnick. Volume 1 of this book introduces some strong characters and also contains some funny and poignant back matter further fleshing out the world of… Continue reading Bitch Planet
Today I finished reading my fifth book this year, a delightfully twisted graphic novel from the folks at Comixtribe. Here’s a sample panel from early in the first issue: Oxymoron is a villain on the order of The Joker who spends this arc tormenting Officer Mary Clark and exposing the hypocrisies he sees in… Continue reading Oxymoron: The Lovliest Nightmare
I recently finished reading my third ‘book’ this year: Spiral is a 5-issue arc in Amazing Spider-Man 16.1 – 20.1 written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Carlo Barberi with inks by Juan Vlasco and colors by Israel Silva (plus letters by Joe Caramagna). I could also talk about ‘reading’ a fourth book since I… Continue reading Spiral
InTruthItsNotThatSimple 