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Kevin Klemme
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Mycelia Board Game Review

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River Wild Board Game Review

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Outback Crossing Review

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What COMIC BOOKS have you been reading?

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18 Mar 2016 23:57 #224593 by SuperflyPete
Read the wool TPB. It didn't really capture the theme of the book, and they changed the ending which robbed it of its power.

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19 Mar 2016 06:53 - 19 Mar 2016 06:54 #224594 by KingPut
New stuff includes Guardians of the Galaxy, Gaurdians of the Galaxy XD, Starlord, Rocket&Groot and Drax. I've also gone back and read some Civil War stuff to get ready for the new movie and older Guardian stuff.

XD is following the same plot as the cartoon so it's a toned down Disney comic but in many ways this most similar to the movie.

The current Guardians add in Kitty Pride (Xmen and Starlorsds girl friend), Flash Thompson aka Venom and Ben Grimm, The Thing. The Kitty Pride is great addition to Guardians. The Peter / Kitty Pride relationship has been a lot a fun and adding a 2nd female character works. Venom and The Thing are a waste. Ben Grimm is my favorite from Fantastic 4 but I don't need two dumb tough guy on the Guardians.

Starlord is an alternate origins story with a heavy dose of Yondu.
Last edit: 19 Mar 2016 06:54 by KingPut.

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21 Mar 2016 14:21 #224642 by Cranberries

Tim Champlin wrote: I had been planning on reading the Atomic Robo series for the last couple of years having heard great things about it. I ordered the Everything Explodes collection, which collects the first 3 trades into one book and is published by IDW (fantastic deal as you're getting the quantity of 3 trades for under $30.) Anyways, I'm about 2/3 through it and have really fallen in love with it. It's like Hellboy and Indiana Jones but with a robot. Pretty much anytime there's Nazis as bad guys and some kind of sci-fi or supernatural theme I'm already sold. This is really fun stuf. I'm excited to read the rest of it when I get the chance to pick it up. I've spent the majority of my life wishing I was a mutant and a member of the X-Men. Now I want to be an Action Scientist.


I love these books so hard. Even though I have read the first three trades, I need to own this.

Also, a lot of the comics are free on their website.

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06 Apr 2016 10:40 #225370 by san il defanso
I discovered the entire run of Animal Man by Grant Morrison at my local library. I'm just three issues in, but I'm really enjoying it. I always appreciate a writer pouring his own passions into his work, and Morrison's focus on animal rights is really compelling. I love that his family is such a key part of it, and I also really like the "low-rent superhero" feel it has, like his interactions with Superman in the first issue or two. And some of the stuff it's thrown has been totally bonkers, especially the giant pile of melted monkeys.

It's surprisingly adult, more than I expected, but I do like that it's more colorful than a lot of the grimdark comics of the late 80s and early 90s. Really having a ball with it.

I also got Superman For Tomorrow, mostly because I felt like reading some Superman too. We'll see how that one is.
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06 Apr 2016 11:34 #225377 by Shellhead
Picked up the first four trades of Kill Shakespeare from the library. Like everybody, I had to study Shakespeare in school. But I enjoyed it enough that I also took a college class in Shakespearean plays for my english lit requirement. The professor was passionate about Shakespeare and really brought the material to life. So I thought that I might enjoy Kill Shakespeare, but it's not very good. The artwork looks like a sloppy imitation of Gabriel Rodriguez's nice work on Locke & Key. The writing is shooting for Fables in style, but falling very short. The dialogue is actually decent enough, but the story is overly familiar.

The concept is that lots of Shakespearean characters are living in some mysterious medieval land where they are considered to be Prodigals who are somewhat superior to normal folks. Richard III is an oppressive king, and Juliet Capulet is leading a rebellion. Hamlet arrives according to some ancient prophecy, and just wants to go home instead of taking a side in the conflict. I've finished the first trade, and it's okay enough that I will continue reading, in hopes that it gets better.

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06 Apr 2016 19:07 - 06 Apr 2016 19:09 #225431 by Cranberries
I finally followed everyone's advice and checked out Alan Moore's Swamp Thing Vol. 1 from the library. It is better than a lot of comics, but not as good as a lot of books and movies, if that's fair to say. I like it, but I enjoyed Planetary and Animal Man more, and also other stuff by Alan Moore. Did I hit the main run, or are there additional issues that are must-read? I'm a terribly comics reviewer, so I'll stop now. Oh wait--my wife picked it up, saw a mention of a kid with autism, and said, "Oh, is this the comic about autism you wanted the kids to read?"



Oh, I also checked out David Small's "Stitches." Love the art, loved the story, couldn't put it down.

Last edit: 06 Apr 2016 19:09 by Cranberries. Reason: Added pretty pitch-ers
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07 Nov 2016 12:09 #237608 by Shellhead
What comics are you reading? (I feel like we had a thread with this title, but my Search failed.)

I'm still in a Halloween mood, so I have been reading horror comics lately. I went to a Halloween dance as John Constantine, so I checked out several Hellblazer trades from the library. Shoot included a really nice two-part story involving an immigrant family, and O. Henry might have admired the ending. Another two-part story in Shoot was a savage return to Constantine's early debacle in Newcastle. The feature four-part story from Freezes Over was enjoyable, but focused more on crime than the occult. The title selection from Staring at the Wall was classic Constantine, rich with sarcasm, chilling moments, and a major supernatural threat.

Coffin Hill was disappointing. This 20-issue Vertigo title is collected in three trade paperback volumes, and features some good artwork with occasional flashes of excellence. The protagonist, Eve Coffin, is a witch and a cop, and she comes from a small town in Massachusetts with a curious number of massive gothic mansions. There are some spooky individual scenes, but they are undercut by a very choppy writing style that bounces all over the place chronologically. It reads as though the writer wrote from two to six page a day, because that's how long a scene lasts before the next abrupt jump to a different year/century/location/sub-plot. Though the subject matter and medium is different, I think a fair comparison would be In the Mouth of Madness, a movie that looked cool and made almost zero sense as a story. It bothered me that about 75% of the named characters were either witches or cops or both. It also bothered me that the town sheriff looked like a 27 year-old Billy Joe Armstrong. Some of the plots get resolved along the way, and a few more in the final issue, but it does seem like Coffin Hill got cancelled due to low sales. If Karen Berger had still been with Vertigo, she would have either rejected this series from the start, or else helped it become better.

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07 Nov 2016 12:47 #237615 by ChristopherMD

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07 Nov 2016 19:30 #237676 by John Myers
" I'm still in a Halloween mood, so I have been reading horror comics lately. I went to a Halloween dance as John Constantine, so I checked out several Hellblazer trades from the library. Shoot included a really nice two-part story involving an immigrant family, and O. Henry might have admired the ending. Another two-part story in Shoot was a savage return to Constantine's early debacle in Newcastle. The feature four-part story from Freezes Over was enjoyable, but focused more on crime than the occult. The title selection from Staring at the Wall was classic Constantine, rich with sarcasm, chilling moments, and a major supernatural threat."

If you haven't read it yet, Dangerous Habits is not only my favorite John Constantine story it's probably in my top five favorite works of fiction ever.
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14 Nov 2016 10:53 - 14 Nov 2016 10:55 #238310 by Shellhead
I have been reading Scott Snyder comics again lately: American Vampire and Batman Eternal.

American Vampire: I just read the first two volumes of the second cycle, having already read the first cycle but not the spin-off one-shots. Although American Vampire remains Snyder's best work, my enthusiasm for it has declined since the first volume of the first cycle. Snyder has a few good ideas, and I like the way this story is moving through the decades. I am even hoping that future installments might move into the future, like maybe cyberpunk. The artwork continues to annoy me in the fight scenes, where the vampires manifest HUGE FANGS and GIGANTIC CLAWS and the pages are soaked in red ink. The stakes of the action keep going up, such that the latest threat involved all-out nuclear war, but the Gray Trader was massively over-powered to a degree that breaks the vampire concept. I will keep following as long as my library keeps getting trade volumes, but I don't think this is a series that I will ever pay to own.

Batman Eternal: One of the most impressive things that DC ever published was 52, a year-long weekly series featuring several third-tier characters, several great DC writers, and adequate artwork given the relentless timetable. The various storylines overlapped and eventually converged somewhat, and while there was an unfortunate spin-off mini-series right near the end, the overall outcome was great. Batman Eternal was an attempt to do another 52, only focusing specifically on Batman and Gotham City. Aside from Scott Snyder, the line-up of writers this time around was unimpressive. The story features the return of the crime boss who ran Gotham before Batman started his career, at least according to the iffy chronology of the New 52 continuity (2011-2016, followed by a soft and vaguely defined continuity reboot). Batman Eternal includes lots of familiar faces from the amazing run by Grant Morrison, especially Professor Pyg, as well as characters from Snyder's excellent Black Mirror run in Detective Comics. But this story is overstuffed with heroes, villains, and supporting characters, and the multiple writers don't work as well together as the original 52 writers did. So while the pace is fast, the story beats tend to land without impact and some of the major plot points are very daft. Batman Eternal is the comic book equivalent of one of those best-selling page-turner lawyer novels like The Client or The Practice. Plenty of action, light on substance, and absolutely forgettable.
Last edit: 14 Nov 2016 10:55 by Shellhead.
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16 Nov 2016 12:17 #238570 by Shellhead
I am now into the second trade volume of Batman Eternal, and it keeps getting worse. Too many characters getting run through too many plot points, and even Batman himself has taken a back seat to this incoherent story. This might actually be the worst comic run that I've read in many years.

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17 Nov 2016 19:47 #238719 by Michael Barnes
I'm reading Bone and Amulet to my kids. Santa is bringing us all of the above.
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18 Nov 2016 08:53 #238746 by Legomancer
Cross posting from a different thread.

If you've seen the trailer for Valerian and are interested in the comics, Cinebook has been releasing English translations of them. They're available on Amazon in physical form (just search for "Valerian and Laureline") and this site (which I have not yet used) has them in digital.

This is French sci-fi from the late 70s/early 80s, and it was very influential at the time. The stories are fun and funny, with lost of action. It very much goes hand in hand with the look and feel of, say, The Fifth Element (a movie I'm not crazy about, but love the look of).

Cinebook also has the Orbital series, which is great stuff.

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01 Jan 2017 18:40 #241660 by Tim Champlin
I've been reading James Robinson's Starman. LOVE IT. I had heard lots of great things and still was not let down with the high expectations. It turns out there was some great comic coming out in the 90's after all. I've been buying them in omnibus form and just ordered the 6th and last one. The annoying thing? Volume 3 is out of print, so I had to jump from vol. 2 to vol. 4. Still worth it though. Anyone read this series before? This and Atomic Robo were my favorite comic discoveries of last year.

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01 Jan 2017 22:00 #241666 by John Myers
Starman was part of a class of comics from that era that I was absolutely in love with, especially during the period where Tony Harris was on art, there are some genuinely amazing pages and panel designs during his run. I haven't revisited because I was worried it might have aged very well but I'm glad to hear you're digging it, it give me confidence that my memories are valid. I was reading it in high school and through college, so it really did drive me to take an interest in more obscure books and movies.

Honestly, for all the "90's were a terrible time for comics" that was a pretty great stretch for DC in general. Robinson' Starman, Ostrander's Spectre, Waid's Flash, Morrison's JLA, Ennis' Hitman and some really off beat stuff like Chase and Resurrection Man.

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