I read Jeffery Brown’s ‘Lucy and Andy Neanderthal’. It’s a kid’s graphic novel book that was educational in nature that taught the reader about Neanderthal life 40,000 years ago. It was a fun and quick read and he did a very good job understanding who his audience is for the book.

This past week I read the miniseries, “Crucible”. It was from Impact Comics and meant to wrap up the publishing line by bringing an end to original heroes storylines while attempting to relaunch the line.

As a fan of The Comet, I was sad to see his story end, but how it ended was such a beautiful Shakespearean tragedy, his return in Crucible completely extinguished a beautifully tragic end to a hero by bringing him back as a one-dimensional villain.

This past week I read Geof Darrow’s ‘Shaolin Cowboy’. I love his illustration style he adds so much tiny detail. He reminds me of an adult-themed version of ‘Where’s Waldo’ Martin Handford. As a reader, I can easily tell that Darrow absolutely has a love and passion for wide frame images, and the graphic novel read like a spaghetti western.

I have always been a fan of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland world, and seeing a story about the Walrus and the Carpenter was pretty fun. Landridge was able to keep the spirit of Carroll alive with the tertiary characters and sprinkling in poetry as narration.

This past week I read the first eleven of the 22 issue X-Men cross-over event, X of Swords.

There is no specific groundbreaking storytelling here, but I am enjoying how Hickman is establishing a deeper mutant mythos within the Marvel Universe.

His book was sitting on the shelf for a while, so I decided to finally read it this past week. What a fun story. My first impression review of the book is that it is a good cross between Twin Peaks and Stardust.

This past week, I pulled another graphic novel from the shelf to read. I read the graphic novel version of James Patterson’s ‘Daniel X: Alien Hunter.’

The story was pretty standard and it struggled to make the protagonist relatable, but I did really enjoy the illustrations. It was a good balance of cartoon and superhero action established in a painted style.

I just read Volume 1 of The Autumnlands by Kurt Busiek and Benjamin Drew. I really enjoyed the talking animals’ setting and the world is established. There is some insinuation that the world is our own far-flung future and I like the story so much I went ahead and found Volume 2 online and purchased it.

Society changes, writers change, art changes; and if one feels that the addition of updating the back story of a character is offensive, then do not read the comic book. Comic books have always been at the forefront of human rights and social justice issues and that will never change.

…I mentioned in some previous posts that I’m reading the in X-men titles. I read the first 4 issues of the new Cable series. I need to do a bit of research to figure out why Cable is now a young man and not the old gruff guy he was when I read him 20 or so years ago.

Over the past year, I’ve been working on coloring, re-lettering, and editing my 12 issue series about my time in the Peace Corps.

I finally was able to put it all together and publish a black and white version of the series into one graphic novel.

When my younger brother suddenly died early last year, I realized that we don’t know how many tomorrows any of us have left. For years, I have thought about publishing my comics or having a table at a local comic book convention; but I always said I could do it later.