Iolanda Zanfardino

The uphill climb of The Tenth Doctor continues—so help me, I actually enjoyed this! Every time the action flashed to what "Noob" was doing, my interest plummeted, but aside from that, this was a solid tenth Doctor comic. Unlike previous stories in this series, it keeps the focus on the characters and their emotions, following up on the emotional fall-out from the pretty intense things that the tenth Doctor, Gabby, and Cindy have gone through; the appearance of Sarah Jane Smith could be show more gratuitous, but is a perfect grace note here, too. There's a strong sense of increasing desperation as events escalate (some Titan storylines are pretty badly paced but not this one), and the way the imagery of the Jon Pertwee title sequence is used is pretty damn clever. I am excited to see where this series wraps up in the next volume.

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An LGBTQIA+ romantic comedy that wants to be wild, crossing fairy tales with BDSM say, but stays too safe and predictable to really catch fire. With that title, I was expecting it to be erotica, but it's fairly tame and limited when it comes to sex scenes. The story-within-a-story is a corny distraction at best.

Four almost interesting short stories about young adults facing difficult moments in their lives are told in an intermingled, asynchronous manner, but all share a common moment as a brief radio broadcast encourages the stumbling and mumbling characters to be true to themselves and listen to their gut.

I'm assuming the structure of the narrative was made complicated to cover up the simplicity of the actual stories being told -- a corporate sell-out working for an evil empire, a traumatized show more survivor of gun violence, a criminal being leveraged by law enforcement to become an informant, and a social media influencer who has elected to become mute -- but it actually works against them, diluting the power of any single one and distracting me as I searched for some bigger connection that never appears.

A swing and a miss, in the end, but not without some merit. show less

I liked the art, but the story...yeesh. Melodramatic much? I can't help but feel the real point of these characters' experiences was completely missed in the effort to amp up the drama in them. As if there isn't enough poignancy and pain and urgency in just the experiences, themselves. They only matter if they're epic! If it's them against the world! If it's the choice between Moral Right and Moral Wrong!

Right. Because finding your way, especially as a millennial or Gen Z adult coming into show more your own, can't possibly be nuanced and compelling on its own merits. I guess only Russians in classic literature deserve that sort of treatment. Or poets. Or diarists caught up in holocausts. show less