Monday, June 21, 2021

Reviewing the Mail: Week of 6/19/21

This week I have seven books from the library that I'd reserved knowing I was taking time around the 4th of July holiday and would have more physical-book-reading time than usual. (We'll see if this is what I end up reading on those days.) This is what I got:

A Gift for a Ghost by Borja Gonzalez -- this is a graphic novel from a Spanish creator that came out last year. It got some good reviews, it's one of those two-intertwined-stories-in-different-time-period things, and my library had it: that's about the sum total of my knowledge.

Folklords is, I think, a full story - at least, I'm not seeing a "volume one" on it anywhere - that collects a five-issue series written by Matt Kindt with art by Matt Smith and Chris O'Halloran. And it seems to be about a kid in a suit in a fantasy world, and where he really fits in. That looks quirky, and I generally like quirky.

Ascender, Vol. 2 - as I said when I wrote about the first one, I think I'll keep reading these as long as I can get them free at the library; this one and the next are currently available. The series is written by Jeff Lemire and drawn by Dustin Nguyen, and this one is subtitled "The Dead Sea." Given how non-subtle the series is turning out to be, the deadness of the sea will definitely turn out to be vampires, or zombies, or something similar.

Black Hammer, Vol. 2: The Event is the second collection of the collection about the superhero team written by Jeff Lemire, drawn by Dean Ormston, and colored by Dave Stewart. (This time, it looks like some of the art is by David Rubin; I'm not sure if he does some of the pages or works with Ormston.) I've already read the first book and written up a post, but it hasn't quite gone live as I type this, so I can't link to it. In short: this is a well-written but vastly more conventional (DC-style) superhero series than I expected, so I find the gushing praise from the usual nerd-lebrities a little much. But I'll keep reading it, since apparently we can never get away from superheroes no matter how much we try.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol. 9: Squirrels Fall Like Dominos - this the the transition book, the point where co-creator Erica Henderson stepped down and a new artist took over. So this volume has a team of writer Ryan North, new artist Derek Charm, and continuing colorist Rico Renzi. And it looks like the story is pretty much the same thing as before.

Cave Carson Has an Interstellar Eye - pretty clearly, this was the follow-up to Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye, part of the hip "Young Animal" line at DC a few years back that was pretty transparently an attempt to re-do Vertigo all at once without Karen Berger but with a minor rock star. (Narrator: it did not work as they hoped.) I read Cybernetic earlier this year, and saw my library had the follow-up too, so I figured, what the heck? This is once again by Jon Rivera, Michael Avon Oeming, and Nick Filardi, without the minor rock star even getting a "kibitzing" credit the way he did the first time.

And last is The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, Vol. One, the American collection of the stories Don Rosa created almost thirty years ago for the vast Disney comics universe worldwide. I'd thought this was the whole thing, but I see by looking for closely that this book only has the first half, and none of the libraries around here have seen fit to get the second book. I don't think that will matter much, but it's what I've got.

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