Mahmud Asrar

Volume #2 concludes the story arc of Conan's life and death. We finally see the origins of the Crimson Witch and how she gave birth to her insidious twins. We also follow Conan on his adventures and witness how Crimson Witch and her cohorts were never too far away from him waiting for the right moment to use Conan to raise the monster from the deep.

I truly enjoyed the story and especially liked the portrayal of proud, stubborn Conan having his version of encounter-on-the-top-of-the-world. He is truly only one who could find his way back from anywhere through sheer will alone.

Art is great. Covers are again done by Esad Ribic and each story is drawn by a different artists. Styles are definitely different but complementary - for example first story (Conan leading the group of for all and purposes Amazons) is done in a style similar to Ribic's but then there is exquisitely drawn story of Conan's return to Cimmeria. Pure joy for the eyes.

Recommended to all fans of heroic fantasy.… (more)

My feelings on this book are complicated, and discussing them is gonna be hella spoilery so, if you don't want the spoilers, the tl;dr is: I love Jean, always have, always will. This arc has a strong story, VERY rooted in 2017 and, unfortunately, VERY naïve and centrist in its moral outlook.

Ok, now the meat So we basically have a ton of very thinly veiled (like, not veiled AT ALL, just straight up panels of photos we all saw, and moments that actually happened) references to everything that happened in 2016 through 2017, but make it Mutants.

Casandra Nova is straight up Cambridge Analytica (the consulting firm, partially owned by Steve Bannon, that harvested a ton of data from Facebook through loopholes and questionable means, and then was paid by the furthest fringes of Right Wing politics to use that data for micro-targeted advertising to (provably, like, this 100% happened) sway the 2016 UK Brexit vote and the 2016 US Presidential Election. They did this. In the UK, they did this literally illegally as the Leave campaign was found guilty of funnelling money to CA through subsidiaries to try to get around Campaign Finance Laws. They got caught, but it didn't matter, they'd already won and a re-vote was never called.

And in this comic, that actual company who was paid to manipulate people towards hate and intolerance, is replaced with a telepath using nano sentinels and implanted thoughts to force people into hate and rage against mutants. Fine right? It's a superhero comic, there needs to be something to fight! You can't punch the abstract concept of radicalisation. Well, I mean, you kind of can? And that Nazi fuckwad deserved that punch and 100000 more. But the problem with this, is by making it nano sentinels forcing people into these actions, you're taking away culpability for what they did. You're implying that the people radicalised by CA, by the alt-right, by gamergate and every other radicalisation pipeline that now exists and is recruiting all over social media... you're implying that those people aren't responsible for the things they do and say once they've drunk the Nazi kool-aid.

And that's bullshit. Total, complete horseshit. It's even worse when the arc ends with Jean being all "fight hate with love". It's centrist crap like that that opened the door for January 6th and has left the politicians who incited that insurrection in office with no consequences.

But the worst part? Issue #3. Gambit is in Louisiana at an anti-mutant protest. Except it's not just an anti-mutant protest. It's 100% the Charlottesville tiki Nazi demonstration, just moved to Louisiana and now about Mutants instead of Jews and other minorities. Like, there's no question that's what they're referencing. There's a bunch of white people in polo shirts and khakis carrying tiki torches! And one of them, in a car, murders a mutant in cold blood. Yeah, sure, he shoots her instead of running her over, but this is so obviously a direct allegory for the murder of Heather Heyer that making it so the man who murdered her was being controlled by a machine embedded in his brain against his will? Yeah, that's some grade A centrist nonsense right there.

And it sucks! I LOVED Jean in this until the very end. I LOVE Honey Badger always and forever, and she's great in this! And calls Namor ABS-LANTIS! Taylor clearly loves these characters and has their voices and characterisations down cold. If only the world hadn't gotten so much worse because of the same "don't punch Nazis" style rhetoric that this book ends up promoting, maybe I could just love it how the little girl in me who always wanted to be Jean Grey desperately wants to love it.

And yeah, comics are supposed to be aspirational and idealistic and show us heroes who can solve the problems that feel too big for us. But when Marvel had just that same year turned Captain America - a Jewish power fantasy created by two Jews to push the US into WWII that they were happy to profit from and stay out of - into a Nazi in Secret Empire, it just feels hollow for the book pushing that's ostensibly pushing back against that hate and aggression to have the moral of "well, can't we all just get along?" "just hug it out!" "when they go low, we go high!" etc. It's just... yeah

This got long and ranty. I wish I could love this book. I WANT to love this book. It has the heart of a book I'd love to read, but the message at the end just isn't the correct response to these situations.… (more)