Tom Taylor (1) (1978–)

I've ignored Nightwing's solo book for more than a decade now, so I missed all the agent of Spyral and Ric Grayson stuff, but I thought I'd give the new Vol. 1 a try since it is written by Tom Taylor, whose DCeased work I mostly enjoyed. Unfortunately, Taylor resets Nightwing's status quo all the way back to 1996, with Dick Grayson taking a new swing at rehabilitating Gotham's even worse neighboring city, Blüdhaven, by wrenching it from the hands of crime lord Blockbuster. Even if you give show more Grayson a big ol' inheritance, I've already read that book.

And then Taylor went and did the old lazy trope of giving a major character a previously unknown sibling, and well, I just hate that crap.

Maybe I'll try Nightwing another ten years down the road instead. show less

Peter Parker's Aunt May is going through a lot -- she has a cancer diagnosis and her new shelter to help unhoused people is burgled on its opening day. Can Spider-Man discover the culprit and right this wrong before it's too late?

So, I didn't realize this was a volume 2 (collecting issues #7-#14) until I was already reading it. It definitely assumes you know some back story already, but I felt I was fine enough forging ahead without having all the full details. Like with so much of Marvel show more properties these days, there's a smattering of characters and plotlines from all over the place anyway.

The first few issues deal with the same storyline arc. Hobie Brown's Prowler has donned the costume again, but this time for noble reasons -- to find out how a crowdfunding charity is somehow not benefiting any of its supposed recipients. After this, we have a story of Mary Jane's day protecting Peter by standing up to a troll, a couple of issues about Peter needing to fight off the dictator of a literal underworld beneath the surface of the Earth, and a final issue in which Spider-Man's pals help save the city so he can spend the night at the hospital with Aunt May.

As mentioned above, this slim volume is chock full of various friends and foes of Spider-Man, whether a passing reference is made during dialogue or the character plays a big role in the story. This includes, but is not limited to, Captain America, The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Jessica Jones, Kingpin, Luke Cage, and Miles Morales. For folks who love crossovers, this is the stuff of dreams. For readers like me who prefer more self-contained stories, it's more so-so.

However, I did love the usual quips and humor found in a Spider-Man story. It did hit some heavy topics (exorbitant medical costs, homelessness, etc.) so that there's some meat behind the levity, but not so much that it becomes depressing. Overall, it's a fast, fun, and entertaining read -- perfect for when you're looking for something quick and satisfying. show less

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 show more 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. show less

The title of Revelations definitely doesn't lie, as we learn a lot about the various members of the Galfridian family. While Finn trains with an ancient, crazy Jedi Master and tries to prevent an assassination, Kaye and her mother continue their amassing of power on the Outer Rim. It's a shame that this is the last volume of Invasion, as its end definitely sets us up for big events to come, which now never will. But it's a good volume on its own: Finn's escapades on Coruscant are good show more old-fashioned Star Wars fun (with a twist), while the Galfridian women continue their development into something different, something we've never seen before. I really like the use of the reporter character, too, as well as the development of the "Outer Rim Alliance."

The timeline placement of this series is actually a complete mess: volumes 1 and 2 can't come any sooner than after the events of Dark Tide: Onslaught, because there's no known Yuuzhan Vong activity between Vector Prime and Onslaught. But volume 3 both claims two months have passed since volume 1 and opens with Finn watching a news report from the Battle of Dantooine, which happens in Onslaught. Furthermore, the whole tone of the government response during Invasion is far more like that of Onslaught than what comes later: by the end of Onslaught, Chief Fey'lya is no longer in a state of denial about the invasion, but he is still claiming nothing is wrong in Revelations. I wish I had a good answer to all this, but I do not think there is one!

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