A Month of Wednesdays: February 2025

 BOUGHT: 

Shazam! Vol. 2: Moving Day (DC Comics) Well, that didn't last long.

The World's Finest team of Mark Waid and Dan Mora launched the latest Captain Marvel series, this one simply entitled Shazam!, in the summer of 2023. Mora lasted six issues, the entirety of the first story arc, before moving on. This was, perhaps, inevitable, given how labor-intensive drawing comics is, and the fact that he had other Mark Waid-written comics to draw too, like the then-upcoming Absolute Power and the aforementioned World's Finest...not to mention covers for books throughout DC's line. 

Waid stuck around for three more issues than Mora did, penning the two-parter that opens this second collection of the series and then a done-in-one featuring a team-up with The Creeper, of all characters. The former was drawn by Goran Sudzuka and the latter by Emanuela Lupacchino. 

Lupacchino remained on art duties when the new writer, The New Champion of Shazam!'s Josie Campbell, took over, drawing most of her first three issues, although Mike Norton helps out on the last of these. (Yes, that's a lot of artists for just six issues, and unfortunately none of them are Chris Samnee, who is literally right there, providing variant covers for the series). 

I imagine that Waid and Mora never intended to stick around too long, given the many other books they're working on, and instead wanted to give the new series a strong start, lending not only their considerable talents to the cause, but also the audiences they could be expected to bring. 

The thing is, Captain Marvel/Shazam/"The Captain" has been around for 85 years now, and though DC has been struggling for the last the few decades to produce really good comics featuring him for a longer than a one-shot or miniseries or so, I'm pretty sure the modern comics market knows the character and his whole deal by now, so it's unlikely that fans of Waid's and/or Mora's were going to be learning about him for the first time with this series, getting hooked and then sticking around monthly indefinitely.

While it's easy to understand that Waid and Mora had bigger, more important (and likely more profitable) books on their to-do lists, it doesn't inspire much confidence in the reader that the creator turnover is quite as quick as this. I mean, if the people being paid to make the comics aren't that interested in them, why should readers be? 

The creative churn certainly does take a toll on the book. 

Not only is there no consistent style, but the designs are a more fluid than they should be (Luppacchino, for example, draws The Captain's cape differently than everybody else). 

More surprisingly, there's at least one part of the script that I couldn't make any sense out of.

Waid's half of the book is, obviously, solidly written. The Sudzuka-drawn two-parter "The Captain Vs. Black Adam" opens with the hero battling a counterfeit "Bizarro Captain" and an old Justice League villain, before he and Adam come to blows over the presence of the paperwork-obsessed alien dinosaurs from the previous volume. The story finally resolves that particular conflict and ends with a detente between the two big guys with lightning bolts on their chests. Important to what follows, their fight ends up destroying the house that Billy lives in with his foster parents and siblings, but Zeus magically restores it and all its contents.

Far more interesting is "Creeped Out!", which pairs Captain Marvel with The Creeper, a typically weird Steve Ditko creation from the late '60s who I don't think has been seen or heard from in quite some time now (I guess there was a New 52 version in some comic or other, but that one would have been over-written in later continuity reboots and refreshes). In fact, I'm pretty sure I've seen and heard more of his secret identity Jack Ryder over the last decade or so than I've seen of The Creeper.

Despite some attempts to use the character in more magical or supernatural settings (and a drastic Vertigo re-creation), Waid reverts to the classic version, the one most likely to be known to readers, who might have seen his appearances in The New Batman Adventures or Justice League Unlimited. 

Abrasive a-hole newscaster Jack Ryder has podcaster Billy Batson on his show to discuss superheroes—I guess there's the connection between the characters; their secret identities are both traditionally involved in broadcasting—and, when they are alone afterwards, Jack tricks Billy into transforming into The Captain, reveals that he is The Creepr, and then enlists his help in tackling old Hawkman villain The Shadow Thief. (The issue also namedrops Daphne Dean, who is so obscure a character I had to look her up online, and there's also a couple of panels of Metamorpho, the last of which is really, really weird). 

That probably feels like a real mishmash of DC IP right there, but then, that is what's fun about such superhero universe comics, and Waid is obviously enjoying being able to play with DC's seemingly endless toybox of characters again. 

I was pretty impressed with Lupacchino's work on this issue (despite the cape looking wrong). There are some really great facial expressions throughout, mostly involving Ryder and The Creeper, although there's at least a panel or two where The Captain looks very Fred MacMurray-y.  Also, Lupacchino does a fine job of giving Ryder and Creeper the same face, so it's clear they are actually the same person, despite how incredibly different they look otherwise. 

When we get to Campbell's half of the book, the three-part story "Moving Day," there's a lot more turbulence than there should be in an ongoing comic series. The title refers to the fact that Billy's family is moving...not to the new house they were looking at just a few issues previous in Waid's half of the book, but back into their own house, the one that Black Adam and The Captain destroyed but Zeus brought back with his magic.

"Freddy, we're all excited to move our stuff back--" Mr. Vasquez says to Freddy Freeman in one panel, but, um, they never moved their stuff out...? Zeus rebuilt their home almost immediately after it was destroyed, restoring all of their destroyed possessions in the process. I couldn't make any sense out of what Mr. Vasquez was talking about, or Billy narrating about earlier; how could they move back in if they never moved out? 

Then there's a barrage of new plot points. Freddy got his driver's license and a new van he calls the Shaz-Van between issues. Zeus and the other patrons apparently attached their own, extra-dimensional "rooms" to the rebuilt house via magical portals. A swarm of three-eyed snake-like horrors attack. The Vasquez's say they want to adopt all five kids, and a Child Protective Services representative comes to interview them. A flock of humanoid bats attacks (These are apparently the race that old Monster Society of Evil bat man Jeepers used to be the last of; they refer to themselves in the plural as "Jeepers"). We learn that The Captain has been "taking over" Billy periodically, to burn the letters that his birth mom keeps sending him. Billy birth mom shows up and wants custody of him again now that she's turned her life around. There's a "leak" in the magic of The Rock of Eternity. 

It's a lot. 

During the pair of monster attacks, Campbell has Billy and Mary both transform into their heroic counterparts, and Luppacchino's Captain Marvel looks really...off. He looks much younger and slimmer than the other artists had drawn him earlier in the book, and even somewhat smaller than Luppacchino drew him in the Creeper story. 

I wasn't sure if this was because Billy was sharing the magic with Mary, or...wait, that couldn't be it, as she gets her powers from her own patron goddesses and thus doesn't really share power with Billy. Huh. I don't even have a guess as to why Luppacchino draws Billy like this in the last few issues of the collection, then. (Norton's Captain, who only appears on two pages, seems to be his regular size, and to have his regular cape on.)

There are perhaps some fun and interesting ideas in what Campbell's doing, but the issues seem a bit random, over-stuffed and disorganized, and it was hard to get into them after that weird speedbump about moving day at the beginning. The last pages seem to signal a sizable status quo change, and I confess to some curiosity about what happens next, but from what I've seen here, I'm disinclined to stick with the book for another volume.

 If I do read the next one, it will be a copy I borrow from the library, rather than one I buy. 

BORROWED: 

Kagurabachi Vol. 2 (Viz Media) Significant progress seems to be made on the quest structure driving the narrative of Takeru Hokazono's Kagurabachi, as vengeful young swordsman Chihiro Rokuhira battles the villainous weapons dealer Sojo and manages to recover the first of the six enchanted blades his swordsmith father made. 

Sojo wields Cloud Gouger, a sword that has various weather-related powers. The fact that he has one of Chihiro's father's magic swords isn't the only thing he has in common with Chihiro, though. He says he's studied his father, and has reached an understanding—or, perhaps, a belief—about his father and the purpose of the blades. And that is that they were made specifically to kill and cause destruction.

This rankles the usually affectless Chihiro, who, of course, knew his dad better than anyone (And, of course, readers got to know his dad pretty well too, in the opening scenes of the first volume). Terribly wounded after absorbing a devastating lightning attack meant to kill bystanders, our young hero seems barely able to stand when he must take up his sword and mount a rescue mission, one that ends with a battle-to-the death with Sojo. 

Hokazono engages in a bit more world-building of his familiar but still strange alternate version of modern Japan, a seemingly gun-less world where, in addition to magic swords, there are sorcerers; bad ones who work with the yakuza (and who killed Chichiro's dad and stole his swords), and good ones who seem to make up some sort of weird police force. 

Also, we learn a little more about the little girl Char Kyongi, her powers and her past, as well as a bit about the source of the metal used in the swords.

It's essentially an action-packed fight manga, and this volume seems much lighter on humor than the first, and more devoted to the fighting, as, in addition to the Chihiro and Sojo fights, there's a long-ish sequence in which the sorcerer police go after Sojo with their various powers. 

I'm not entirely sure how long I'll stick with it. Maybe until I miss a volume, and it gets away from me, and the new volumes pile up so high catching up seems hopeless? That seems to be what happens with so many of the new manga series I start. 

Now That We Draw Vol. 1 (Seven Seas Entertainment) Can you judge a book by its cover? If so, this new manga series by writer Kyu Takahata and artist Yuwji Kaba appears to be about...boobs...? 

And it is. At least sort of. There is definitely an awful lot of what was traditionally referred to as cheesecake in American comics and would be referred to as fan service in manga and anime. 

This all comes in the form of revealing imagery of female lead Miyamoto Niina, whose school uniform skirt is so short it barely conceals the curves of her butt and quite frequently reveals her panties. She's often drawn spilling out of her unbuttoned blouse, as she is on the cover, and the creators find excuses to draw her in more revealing situations, like soaking wet from a plunge into the school pool or, near the climax, undressing to take a bath at a love hotel. (I suppose it's worth mentioning that Seven Seas suggests the book for older teens, 15 and over.)

While this is all presented for the prurient interest of the reader, it is also all played for laughs, as it is all extremely distressing to the book's male lead, and a source of extreme frustration to him. Not that he's immune to Miyamoto's sex appeal; it's just that he's completely inexperienced with the opposite sex, and Miyamoto doesn't at all comport with his idea of the ideal woman.

This is Uehara Yuuki, a still very short—he's exactly cleavage-high when facing Miyamoto, one scene reveals—high school geek and aspiring manga artist. When we first meet him, he has taken his 45-page romance manga, starring his ideal woman—who is quiet, shy, modest and chaste—to a professional manga editor for review. The editor pretty thoroughly, savagely tears Uehara's manga apart, though he does so matter-of-factly, concluding that the teenage artist doesn't seem to have any real, firsthand experience with romance, and it shows through in his work.

Just as he's considering giving up completely on his dreams and deciding how to properly dispose of his manga pages so that no one will discover them, he has a chance meeting with the gorgeous and outgoing Miyamoto, the most popular girl in his class. She discovers his manga, reads it against his will (while running through the halls of the school, with him giving chase to stop her), and becomes enamored with it.

She reveals that she too has dreams of being a manga artist and she shows her work to Uehara. It turns out she's a really good artist—far better than Uehara, to his chagrin—but her editor told her something similar to what Uehara was told. She doesn't seem to have any firsthand experience with romance either and it shows in her work.

Seeing that they have similar dreams and a similar impediment to achieving them, Miyamoto comes to the obvious conclusion: She and Uehara should date one another, thus gaining the romantic experience they both so sorely lack!

One might think Uehara would be delighted that the most popular girl in school is asking him out, but it flusters him to no end, not just because the thought of doing anything at all with a girl, even holding hands, freaks him out, but because he is apparently all too aware of a social hierarchy at school...and that no one would accept the two of them as a real couple. 

So he insists that their relationship is a fake one, even as he goes along with Miyamoto's plans. These are mostly obviously wrongheaded, as she tries to get Uehara to join her in acting out the various tropes they've seen in other manga, rather than, you know, just talking to one another a lot, getting to know each other and actually going out on dates. 

They do seem to grow closer almost by accident, however, between Miyamoto's plans to live out a romance manga. In fact, it does seem to be working...if only slowly. When Uehara next takes a manga to review with the same editor, with Miyamoto now cheering him on, the editor notes that it's improved somewhat. When talking with a colleague, the editor tells him Uehara's new manga was also terrible...but there was still clearly...something different (and better) about it than his first.

This being sold as a romantic comedy, it would seem pretty obvious that the pair will end up developing real feelings for one another and will end up together...eventually. At present, it seems like they have a long way (that is, many more volumes) to go, and it is frankly hard to imagine the pair together at this point, given how Kaba has designed them to look so visually opposite of one another. 

I'm pretty curious to see what happens next, although Seven Seas doesn't exactly make it an easy book to read. I mean, I certainly wouldn't want to be seen in public reading a comic with that particular cover. Luckily, the cover of the second volume looks much less...well, less, I guess. 

Titans Vol. 2: The Dark-Winged Queen (DC Comics) The back cover copy for the latest Titans collection refers to this as "the electrifying conclusion of visionary writer Tom Taylor's...truly epic run". Putting aside "electrifying" and "visionary", words different readers will have different definitions of, referring to Taylor's time on the book as a "run" seems like a bit of a stretch, really, even allowing for the hyperbole and salesmanship expected from back cover copy.

I mean, Taylor wrote just 15 issues, plus the six issues of the tie-in series Titans: Beast World, which adds up to all of three trade paperback collections. That sounds like a maxi-series almost as much as it does a run on a title or franchise. For comparison's sake, Taylor spent close to a decade off and on scripting various series inspired by the cut scenes from a fighting game. Now that's an epic run!

Regardless, his time on the Titans ongoing ends here, with the eight-part title story. I remain somewhat disappointed, even frustrated with his work on the book, as I feel he left unexplored what to me (and hey, maybe it's just me) seemed like the single most interesting aspect of the team being active at this particular point in DC history: With no Justice League currently in existence, the Titans have essentially "graduated" to finally (if, this being comics, only temporarily) replace their one-time mentors, becoming Earth's primary defenders and the superhero community's de facto leaders.

I mentioned this in my review of the first volume, Out of the Shadows (reviewed here) too, but aside from some of the major moments in Beast World, like Beast Boy stepping up to save the day or Nightwing taking the Boss of All Superheroes role usually occupied in such stories by Superman or Batman, Taylor hasn't really engaged with the idea of the Titans as the new Justice League, giving them League-level threats or stepping up to fight the sorts of villains the League usually handles (Although, to be fair, they do encounter an old Justice League villain in this trade paperback; I'll get to him in a bit). 

Instead, Taylor has mostly had the team dealing with their perennial adversaries, even if he has new spins on them. In the first volume, that meant a re-branded Brother Blood. In this volume, it's Trigon. One imagines that if Taylor had another arc in him, it would feature Deathstroke the Terminator. 

Aside from Taylor not doing what I had hoped, and maybe even expected, he would do with the book, I think the only real criticism one can level at his writing here is that it feels somewhat superficial, prioritizing plotting over characterization, to the extent that, after the 15-21 issues of his I've read now, I don't really get a sense of any of the characters, other than Beast Boy and Raven, who seem to been the focus of the series. 

To an extent, this makes sense. Certainly Nightwing and The Flash have their own books in which they have the spotlight and in which their inner lives can be explored, and even Cyborg has had ongoings in the rather recent past (not to mention a new-ish miniseries), but the other characters seem present mostly as sets of powers. Starfire doesn't even seem to get a big moment in this book like Donna or Tempest and, in fact, I think you could cut her from the team completely and it wouldn't really have much in the way of an effect on the series up to this point (Her major contribution so far was to offer background on the Necrostar in Beast World). 

With all that said, this is still a pretty good superhero team book, and one that makes for an enjoyable enough read. I'm sure there is someone on social media somewhere who would disagree, but I don't think there's much in the way of an argument that Tom Taylor isn't a very talented writer who can produce fun and exciting superhero comics on a regular basis. And so even if a book of his doesn't meet one's expectations, even if some aspects are wanting, he has never really produced any comics that aren't at least somewhat worthwhile.

The overarching story of The Dark-Winged Queen deals with something teased in Beast World, something that apparently (and somewhat oddly), happened in a Nightwing story rather than an issue of Titans: Raven has secretly imprisoned her "good" self in the little crystal she wears on her forehead, and the character hanging out with the Titans since then has been the "bad" Raven. She's been following the path laid out for her by her evil father Trigon, which will eventually lead to her ascension to her role as the...well, it's the title of the story. This final form is essentially a Trigon-esque, world-threatening being, one significant enough to warrant the attention of The Quintessence and, eventually, the intervention of The Spectre.

While readers are privy to this plotline and Raven's various, secret actions, the Titans are all in the dark and kept there by Raven regularly manipulating their minds whenever they begin to suspect anything. 

Meanwhile, the hero team keeps doing hero team stuff: Evacuating people trapped in the path of a devastating hurricane, fighting a powered-up version of one of Raven's demonic siblings, investigating a supervillain's assassination attempt on the president of a fictional country and fighting a cyborg android programmed to destroy them (This last, by the way, is essentially a Titans version of Amazo, created by T.O. Morrow—although he does mention repurposing "a lot of Ivo's tech", so it's not like Taylor doesn't know which villainous mad scientist is responsible for which android—sicced on them by Amanda Waller. As in Out of the Shadows and Beast World, Waller remains the ongoing villain facing the Titans. How villainous has she become? Well, she makes a deal with Trigon, who comes into her office for a meeting. So she's rather literally making deals with devils now). 

Raven eventually turns into the Queen, taking on a gigantic stature like that of Trigon and a creepy redesign, but the team is able to get through to her (mostly via Beast Boy's efforts), convincing her that even the "bad" Raven isn't really all that bad, and then powering her up enough that she's able to best her father in giant hand-to-hand combat. 

As relatively strong as the writing is, the art, quite unfortunately, is inconsistent. Which is no surprise, as three different artists contribute to this arc (Notably, none of them are the great Nicola Scott, who was originally announced as Taylor's partner on the series but only drew its first five issues).

The primary artist is top-billed Lucas Meyer, who draws six of the eight issues in the collection. I wasn't a big fan of the style. It's very photo-reference-y. Not only does his Peacemaker look exactly like John Cena, but buildings and backgrounds look like repurposed photos, many of the figures have an uncanny realism to them, and they tend to stand out on the page, as if they aren't really part of the environments they are drawn into it.

The storytelling is fine, and it's not really bad art, but it's not a style I particularly, personally care for. I much preferred the looser, more expressive, more drawn looking art provided by Stephen Segovia, who draws the first issue in the collection, and Daniele Di Nicuolo, who draws the sixth.  

The book seems to have done well enough that DC is going to continue it after Taylor's departure. It looks like John Layman takes over writing duties, while Pete Woods is the next artist. Oh, and Arsenal Roy Harper finally joins the team. 

 

Wesley Dodds: The Sandman (DC) I do not envy writer Robert Venditti the task of crafting a new story starring the Golden Age Sandman Wesley Dodds. 

It must be daunting to tackle a character who has previously starred in a series as good, as long and as unique as to be definitive, as Sandman Mystery Theatre, the 1993-1999 Vertigo crime series written by Matt Wagner and Steven T. Seagle, was for Wesley Dodds (Newer readers got the opportunity to experience that series in 2023, when DC released a collection of the first 26 issues in The Sandman Mystery Theatre Compendium...I'm still waiting for a second compendium, by the way, DC...!).

Luckily, Venditti is working with artist Riley Rossmo, whose highly distinct, somewhat cartoony style (which here seems to have the occasional accent of Tim Sales-ishness), could not be more different than the style employed by Mystery Theatre's primary artist Guy Davis...or, in fact, that of any other artist one might find on the current comics rack.

In that respect, and the more mainstream DC Comics presentation of the book, Wesley Dodds seems to rather effectively separate itself from the earlier mature readers series, while still acknowledging it (a first-issue montage of Dodds' dreams includes reference to The Tarantula, a villain from that earlier book) and seemingly fitting into its continuity quite nicely. 

So if you enjoyed Mystery Theatre, chances are you'll enjoy this book too. While a little more superhero-y, including a brief instance of the evil opposite trope, some nods to DCU continuity and a few fun cameos by the JSoA, Wesley Dodds is still a crime comic, and one with something of a mystery narrative to it (Even if that mystery is pretty easy for a reader to solve).

It's 1940, and Dodds is fighting street crime in New York City as the vigilante The Sandman, terrorizing the underworld with his striking gas-masked appearance, creepy voice and devastatingly effective sleep gas. He has greater ambitions though, including a way to stop the sort of mass slaughter that haunted his late World War I veteran father, and seems to be in danger of repeating itself, as another world war brews in Europe. 

And so with an introduction from his father's industrialist friend to an army colonel, Dodds pitches a sleep gas as a humane, non-lethal weapon of war to the U.S. military, a way to knock out and capture enemy combatants without having to kill them.

The colonel flatly, immediately shoots down the idea as extremely impractical in a matter of a single page of the book, dressing down Dodds in the process. ("Mr. Dodds, what do you think we do here?...Maiming and killing is simpler. Cheaper. Lethal is what we do.")

While the army might not be interested in Dodds' sleep gas, someone is interested his work, as is evidenced by the fact that his safe is emptied, his house burned down, and a known burglar's charred remains are found in the ruins. Only Dodds realizes other things are missing, though, including some of his gas masks and, more alarmingly, the notebook in which he recorded his many, many experiments to perfect a non-lethal sleeping gas...experiments which inadvertently lead to formulas for a variety of deadly poison gases.

Working with his girlfriend/crime-fighting partner Dian Belmont, Dodds desperately searches for the mastermind behind the break-in and robbery, hoping to recover the book before it can fall into the wrong hands, and his accidental discoveries can be employed to commit the very sorts of mass murder he was hoping his sleep gas could prevent. Meanwhile, he encounters a sort of evil Sandman wearing a black coat and hat, both in his dreams and in reality.

While the various story beats and plot points will be familiar from crime fiction, the 1940s setting gives the book a more unusual feel, and Venditti's focus on Dodds' creations allows him to get at key aspects of the character, like the fact that he is an obviously talented fighter who is nevertheless a pacifist, the fears that drive him, his essential optimism retained despite how much time he spends wallowing in the darkness of human nature and, somewhat unusually, the fact that he's not necessarily a paragon of virtue (There's a scene where Dodds is exposed to a dose of his own gas, and he finally experiences its effects firsthand; not only does it knock people out, but it instills a weird and desperate fear, one borne of empathy, as its victims experience every wrong they've ever committed. For Dodds, this is a variety of little sins, most committed when he was younger, but it's an unusual sequence; it's difficult to imagine, say, the similarly two-fisted vigilante hero Bruce Wayne being depicted in such a manner).

In both Venditti's plotting and scripting, and in Rossmo's idiosyncratic designs and rendering, it's a satisfying story, and one that serves as something of a bridge between the darker, dirtier Mystery Theater adventures and the simpler, brighter Justice Society adventures, both tonally and quite literally.

In the very last pages of the book, Dodds—who Rossmo draws bigger and more square-jawed than the more owlish, regular-looking guy that Davis used to draw—meets Dian's very young nephew, Sandy, and is then called to the back door, where a splash page reveals the assembled Justice Society of America*, a shirtless, hairy, smiling Hawkman extending his hand and saying "We're admirers of your work...we'd like you to join a new group we're forming."

It's a strong enough story that I hope it's not the last time we'll see Venditti and Rosmo's Wesley Dodds...nor the last time DC revisits its original Sandman, be it in solo stories or alongside the Golden Age Justice Society (The adventures of which sound like a much more appealing prospect than...whatever Geoff Johns is doing with the modern JSA, which seems to involve a lot of time-travel and retcons and to focus on old Earth-2 inspired characters.

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead Vol. 16 (Viz) With Akira and Shizuka now officially a couple, the majority of this volume features just Takemina and Izzy. When the gang's vehicle comes to an abrupt stop in the mountains when they run out of gas and they all set to arguing over what to do, Takemina, who has spied a light in the distance, and Izzy set off on their own, hoping to find some gas there.

There is gas there, but to get it, they will have to survive the three-chapter story entitled "Horror Mansion of the Dead." It turns out that the house is home to a hulking, horror movie-like serial killer in the style of Jason or Leatherface, both of whom are name-dropped and drawn by artist Kotaro Takata earlier in the story as foreshadowing. 

The killer, who wears a creepy mask and wields an old-fashioned mochi hammer (the purpose of which rather grossly extends beyond simply killing victims) proves a far more formidable foe than the hordes of zombies that our heroes are used to. It is somewhat strange to see Takata and writer Haro Aso engage in a scary, gory, horror narrative that isn't really related to the zombie survival premise of the book, but they are amazingly effective at it, as Takemina and Izzy seem to have wandered from one kind of horror story into that of another genre (There is a zombie element to "Horror Mansion of the Dead," but it's rather tangential, the story owing more to, say, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre than to Night of the Living Dead). 

When Izzy reveals that it's actually impossible for even the most skilled gamer to survive a horror videogame on the first playthrough, it's up to Takemina's skills as a gambler to save the day, and get the pair safely back to the rest of their traveling companions (A trio of new characters who are introduced seemingly just to be killed off a few pages later, aren't so lucky).

The book ends with a standalone story, "Happiness of the Dead," in which Akira learns an important lesson about finding true happiness. It's an evergreen lesson that would seem to apply to everyone in any circumstances, not just characters trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. Although a break in the book's ongoing action—and in sharp contrast to the story that preceded it—"Happiness" is a pretty perfect encapsulation of Zom 100, the most life-affirming of zombie stories. 

REVIEWED:

MegaGhost Vol. 1 (Dark Horse Books) Gabe Soria and Gideon Kendall's comic about a kid occultist who finds a magic ring that allows him to summon three ghosts, combine them into a single, giant ghost robot and then coach it in battles against giant monsters is just as weird and awesome as it sounds. Even weirder? Kendall's art style, which is cartoony in the way of older, twentieth century cartoonists (I saw a lot of Jack Davis in it, personally, and maybe some Mike Ploog), rather than cartoony in the way of animated television...although the latter proves to be a pretty big inspiration for the whole book. Do check it out. While a good comic for kids, it's also a pretty great all-ages comic, meaning you'll probably like it too. More here. 

Speechless (Graphix/Scholastic) There's a scene in Aron Nels Steinke's new original graphic novel where the protagonist Mira, who can't talk at school at all, has to convey some information to her extremely understanding friend Alex, and she opts to write what she has to say down on a piece of paper and show it to him. It reminded me a bit of one of my favorite current manga series, Komi Can't Communicate (Other than the school setting and the lead character's difficulty speaking at school, the comics have almost nothing else in common). Still, I was surprised to see that in Steinke's author's note at the back of the book—in which he draws himself speaking directly to readers in 50 tiny panels—he suggests Komi as a comic to read for those who were interested in Speechless and Mira's troubles. I'm not sure the reverse is true—that is, if you like Komi you will like Speechless—but then, I guess, I like Komi and I liked Speechless. But, like I said, they're very different. Anyway, I reviewed Speechless here. 

Swing (Feiwel and Friends) Audrey Meeker's debut graphic novel is a lot of fun (It actually came out way back in October; sorry it took me so long to get to it!). She basically takes the format and formula of a romantic comedy and applies it to a couple of middle-schoolers, who have no real concept of romance, and thus the will-they, won't-they element is applied to their burgeoning friendship...and their collaboration on a swing dance performance at the school talent show that they are more or less forced into doing. Add in bullying, the pressure of parental expectations and learning to be yourself, and it's a really charming, even inspirational book. Meeker's art is of an entirely different aesthetic school than the Raina Telgemeier-esque one that seems to predominate among original graphic novels for kids these days, being even simpler, a bit rougher and a little more cartoony. I kind of loved it. More here. 

Very Bad at Math (HarperAlley) Cartoonist Hope Larson's latest book, which she both writes and draws, stars a middle-schooler named Very, who is popular at school, class president and seemingly effortlessly good at every subject—except for one (It's in the title). The book, which sees Larson working in a somewhat different style than usual, follows Very's attempts to address her problem with math, as student council has grade requirements, and if she doesn't get her grade up, her whole world and sense of self will seemingly crumble. Doing so will lead to a discovery about herself, and Very will set a good example for young readers who may find themselves in similar circumstances. More here. 

Weirdo (First Second) Here's another fall release it took me a little too long to get to; I blame my local library for adding it to the collection a few months after its initial release. It's a fictionalized memoir by writer Tony Weaver Jr. and the sibling art team of Jes and Cin Wibowo Is it just me, or have we been seeing a lot of fictionalized memoires for younger readers recently?). 

Weaver is apparently a social media influencer, making his comics-writing debut here, and he does a rather fine job; it helps that he has such a powerful story to tell. That story is about his troubles at a new school, which involved severe bullying, both online and in real life, bullying that got so bad he eventually tried to take his own life. Not your average kids comic, then. Weaver handles the intense subject matter in a way that seems appropriate for young readers, and once his comics avatar transfers to a new school and finds a new group of similarly "weird" friends he fits in with, he gets what appears to be a happy ending. 

What I think many kids will find striking are that the very things that marked the real young Tony Weaver Jr. as an outsider at the time—a love of comics and manga, anime and cartoons, video games, fan-fiction—are thing they themselves probably grew up liking and still like, and, in fact, are things that have more or less conquered mainstream pop culture. As an aficionado of some of those things myself, I took a special pleasure in hearing Tony dropping comics trivia in conversation (like referring to Animal Man without naming him while trying to talk to a girl) and, especially, in seeing the Wibowos' various attempts to draw familiar characters like those of, say, Inuyasha or Haikyu! in their own style, and just off-model enough that one imagines their respective owners wouldn't raise any legal objections to their appearances here. My formal (and far more focused) review is here.

*This JSA includes Doctor Fate, Green Lantern, The Spectre, The Flash, Hourman, Hawkman and, streaking past in the background, Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt (sans Johnny), although readers of the publisher's recently released DC Finest: Justice Society of America—For America and Democracy (reviewed here) will know that Johnny doesn't join the group until after The Sandman does.