Werther Dell'Edera

An affecting and well-written one-shot story in which Spider-Man goes up against the Kingpin, teamed up with a federal agent who introduces herself as Teresa Parker -- the sister that Peter Parker never knew he had. Generally a taut and well-plotted story, with one or two plot holes. The strength of this story is in the questions and emotions Peter has regarding his dead parents, who were themselves federal agents. A particularly poignant moment comes when the Parkers' mentor in the agency show more is reminiscing to Peter about his parents, especially Richard Parker's habit of making jokes and wisecracks when danger was at its peak. "Can you imagine?", he says to a reflective Peter, who can indeed imagine. The artwork here is also quite nice, and fits the tone of the book. show less

Like Under New Management, this book actually has its own discernible plot, which is a definite plus. I didn't always understand Fig's actions, and I think the return of the princess from "Familiar" in Room & Boredom is pretty random, but on the other hand, Tursig the gay goblin, who's pretty much just been a background bar patron up until this point, really comes into his own in this volume, and I also enjoyed the second look at Poet's origins, this time taking us to the Crimean War. I do show more think Cain is kind of squandered here-- why did Sturges bring him back if he's going to have so little to do with anything?

Overall, it's one of the better volumes. Things I loved: the explanation for why time travel in the DC universe is always a spiral with calendar pages going by, as seen in so many Legion of Super-Heroes tales; the short story "Long Strange Trip" by Matthew Sturges and Brendan McCarthy, where a Vietnam soldier becomes a sorcerer while tripping on LSD (best line: "I'm not enlightened-- I'm just tripping my ass off!" or "I learned the true names of stones and flowers and soybeans and hamsters and copper wires and jeeps and cups of coffee. It was a lot of fucking names." or the last one, which I won't spoil); Tursig's rendition of the classic goblin folk tale, "The Story about a Goblin Who Loved Babies and Also There Is a Hunter in It"; and the short story "Lotus Blossom's Theory of Names" by Matthew Sturges and Carrie Brancowitz, which is three pages of handwriting, but perfectly readable and has a foreseeable but still effective "twist."

The Houses of Mystery and Secrets: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence » show less

Nothing can ever be as simple as John Constantine tackling a wayward haunted house, can it? Rankin's mystery-heavy graphic novel has Constantine enter into an unwilling bargain with a faction of Hell-denizons (which is a tried and true theme of almost every Hellblazer storyarc), but he gives it a decidedly tongue-in-cheek twist when he makes these demons obsessed with the human passtime of gameshows. Of course, demons can't simply tune into the Jersey Shore, so they steal souls trapped in show more Limbo to serve as the contestants - and drag Constantine along for the ride since he is a pop culture character among demonkind. This doesn't work out too well for the demons, since John figures out the ruse pretty quickly and helps the souls escape back to Limbo. It's a bit light as far as the supernatural dilemmas go for the Constantine series, since John plays the good guy the entire time, but it's still an entertaining episode. show less

Finishing off the story that was started in the last collection, I wasn't expecting a lot, to be honest. Blah blah, they'd figure out how to kill the thing that's killing the children, blah blah, they'd kill it.

Boy, was I wrong.

This was utterly fantastic, probably the best arc of the series so far.