Rick Remender

After rather serious vol 1 (weird outfits a la Clockwork Orange aside) this volume starts as weird as nightmare caused by overeating at night - Led Dent, now back as Constable high on Juice as always, engages the terrorists from Humpty Dumpty and Alice [from Wonderland, although Cinderella seems to be there too :)] and, while showing Flak's determination not to negotiate with terrorists, basically kills off all the hostages together with terrorists in an epic conflagration.

Flak, with d**k show more swinging right and left decides to leave for Tokyo, where he built the safe haven for rich with clean water and food, and he brings with him murderous maniac Davey and Led in case muscle and firepower is required [and of course all the rich selected by IQ meter at the entry into the ship - this made me laugh I almost choke myself :)]. But what he did not expect is return of Debbie, new protector of Tokyo - she is on the warpath seeking revenge for destruction caused to Tokyo at the end of vol 1 (and if you wondered - she is the ghost from the title).

Art as always is great, panoramas - Flak's residence but also sea beaches of Tokyo - are just wonderful. As I said lots of d**ks and boobs swinging around and we see in general nudity and complete debauchery of the ruling elite (hentai octopus was weeeeeiiiiiiirrrrddd) , but I guess idea is to show how consumerism basically eats and consumes itself. That aside action scenes are just great.

For me this book went a little bit sideways toward cuckoo land, half of it is happening in minds of lunatics like Davey. But the end is good, balances a lot of things (epilogue was buhahahaha moment), we leave Debbie with a loss she needs to come to terms with, and she decides to cope with it through helping others after the events of this book.

Very good SF dystopian book, with accent on how technology is a good slave but terrible master.

Highly recommended. show less

There may be some ableist tropes that don’t hold up well, but overall the dynamic story of Flash Thompson’s turn as a militaristic Venom is a stroke of genius.

Graphic Novel Book Club January 2016

This was one of the books I was given in the GN Christmas BookSwap and everyone was so interested in it at that meeting (as none of us had heard of it, but the back writing sounded so compelling) that we assigned it as part of the next meetings books.

I have to admit I wasn't expecting to get out from this series what it gave me. I love the number of layers in it and that the hero is definitely, insanely, massively an anti-hero who is not looking to turn show more it around and become a hero by any scope of the imagination. I love that you are aware from issue 1-2 that no one you love and learn about is safe from dying suddenly, which makes each word and scene with them more precious, more important, more focusable on.

I was not by even infinitesimal stretch of the imagination expecting what happened at the end of this volume and I can't wait to see what that means for volume 2. show less

This lead up to the AXIS crossover event does a fair enough job of laying the groundwork for the subsequent story, but there are still things about the overall story that bug me: Why does the Red Skull hate mutants so much (other than needing him to in order for the AXIS storyline to work...)? If he hates mutants so much, why fuse the brain of a mutant to his own? Why have mutants as part of his S-Men if he hates them so much? Why does it take "killing" him to release Red Onslaught? There is show more quite a bit of suspension of disbelief and just accepting things as they are written required for this storyline to work, and I feel that's a bit of sloppy writing and planning, right there.

The other thing that really bugged me about this collection is if you are going to have parts of the story branch off into other series (part of the overall story plays out in Magneto, make sure that everybody is on the same page with how the characters look and how the story is working in the other issues. When the story transitions from Magneto back to Uncanny Avengers, and the story picks up right from one issue to the next, it's incredibly tacky that the characters are not wearing the same costumes, nor to the stories line up with the action that takes place from the last pages of Magneto to the first pages of Uncanny Avengers. Continuity may not seem that important, but it is.

Overall, I'm hoping that the AXIS storyline is actually handled a little better than the setup was. show less