Batman – Santa Claus: Silent Knight Returns #1 review

Santa Claus is coming to town, and that town is Gotham. Again. Last year writer Jeff Parker and a team of artists, led by Michele Bandini, brought us a terrific team-up between Father Christmas and the Justice League. And here’s the sequel, with Lucas Ketner replacing a busy-in-Santa’s-workshop Bandini. Happily, the visual quality remains high, […]

Ape-ril Special #1 review

Comic readers love apes. And chimpanzees. DC has known this for decades, relying on gorillas on covers to give individual issues a sales boost during the Silver Age of Comics. So here’s the latest example of gorillas amidst the comic shop shelves, an Ape-Ril Special that is, appropriately enough, bananas. I was expecting an 80pp […]

Jean Grey #1 review

What if you’re not the hero of your own story? What if whatever you try, you only manage to make things worse? What if you’re Jean Grey, dead again and wondering what you did to make that happen? As it happens, you probably did nothing. The former Marvel Girl’s latest run-in with the Grim Reaper […]

Monkey Prince #9 review

Another day, another city for Marcus Shugel-Shen, who’s been moving around the DC Universe since learning he’s the Monkey Prince, son of a Chinese deity. Taking him places are adoptive parents Laura and Winston who are geniuses, but pretty stupid. Stupid because they waste their intellects as henchpeople for super criminals. They also risk their […]

Monkey Prince #1 review

Years ago, in Gotham city, a young boy, Marcus, wakes to find his parents menaced by an intruder. Batman never has a chance to return as Marcus’s parents move around the United States for work. One day, though, they return to Gotham, enrolling Marcus in the local school. A run-in with bullies brings a kind […]

Titans Academy 2021 Yearbook #1 review

Here’s a different kind of summer annual, A batch of short stories giving us a closer look at some of the new students being trained by the classic Titans, framed as a high school yearbook. The cover is presumably emulating a yearbook – I dunno, I’ve never seen one here in the UK – with […]

Generations Forged #1 review

Heroes and villains lost in time. Unlikely team-ups. Angry gods. Reality rewritten. On the one hand, so far as Generations Forged goes, you’ve seen it all before. On the other GIANT cosmic hand, the aforementioned story points come up again and again for good reason – they’re guaranteed crowd pleasers when brought out by a […]

The Flash #763 review

Two weeks ago, I was jubilant that finally, after more than a decade of Barry Allen’s motivation to fight crime being the murder of his mother, he’s moved on. Departing writer Josh Williamson set aside the Geoff Johns obsession with parental tragedy. Today, new writer Kevin Shinick’s first issue opens with these panels. Oh, Kevin. […]

Teen Titans #45 review

Deathstroke tried to murder the Teen Titans. Damian Wayne has quit as Robin. Batman has ordered the Titans to disband. Red Arrow and Kid Flash aren’t ready to stop doing good, though. The archer, Emiko, has deduced that evil techie Gizmo is behind the mercenary Deathstroke’s attack of them. Not too far away, remaining ex-Titans […]

Teen Titans #31 review

Lobo’s back. That was the name of one of the best mini-series starring DC Comics’ main man, the extraterrestrial assassin with a fondness for space dolphins. His ubiquitousness in the Nineties, and creators forgetting he was meant to be a joke, led readers to tire of him, and his popularity faded. In the last decade […]