Becky Cloonan

The two books I had on the go were a bit deep and heavy, and as I was feeling sick (thanks COVID) wanted something lighter to process so pulled this at random from the stack of unread graphic novels.

And what a delightful surprise it turned out to be. I’m clearly not the target audience, but this Harry Potter / Scooby Gang / Nancy Drew style tale set in a Gotham private school was a fun read.

The characters are delightful, engaging, and relatable. The mystery had me hooked early on, and the show more reveal brought a smile to my face as it was both a surprise, yet logical.

And if you know your Batman mythos and a bit of Gotham history there’s enough references to enjoy, but they don’t get in the way of what was at its heart a well told highly accessible, and entertaining story.

I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for the second volume. show less

The book opens with a group of hipsters sitting around in a New York apartment explaining to each other how nuclear war will never happen. London is wiped from the map later that night.

I found this book almost painful to read not because of the depictions of life after, but because the book follows the same group of unbearable hipsters as they're still in complete denial as the world is literally ending around them.

The only positive things I have to say about this are about the art and show more lettering. Becky Cloonan's illustrations, Tamra Bonvillain's colors, and Pat Brosseau's letters are stellar and worthy of a far better book.

Received via NetGalley. show less

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Edelweiss. Content warning for violent and grotesque imagery, including cannibalism.)

The opening scene of THE WAR is as cozy as the rest of the book is disquieting. Picture: a small but well-loved NYC apartment; eight friends crammed around a coffee table for drinks and hors d'oeuvres; debating politics and collectively rolling their eyes at that one know-it-all, the mansplainer who is forever so impossibly and infuriatingly show more rational. The topic du joir is the Russian invasion of Ukraine, now (then) in its third year, and whether the conflict might escalate to full-on nuclear war. David, the mansplainer, keeps insisting that humans are too reasonable to ever let things get that far.

The next morning, he awakens to the news that London is gone: wiped off the map, along with the 9+ million people who call it home. Including his pregnant partner Nikki's entire family.

THE WAR follows each of the four couples as they navigate the threat of global nuclear war. The result is a visceral, horrifying story that's all the more affecting for its timeliness. I write this on January 25th, a day after DHS and ICE executed Dabiel Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the VA, after he tried to help two women being assaulted by federal agents. With federal agents invading our cities, it feels like the US is on the brink of a civil war. Trump is threatening or engaging in war with everyone, including our allies: Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, and (apparently) Iceland, all while feeding intel to Putin.

I guess the last thing I needed to read today was a book about nuclear war. But also maybe it's something we should all read, before the world really goes to shit.

There are some scenes that will stay with me forever: a very pregnant Nikki destroying their apartment in grief and anger; Spencer, trying to figure out what's wrong with Maggie's legs in the darkness of the collapsed subway; Luke attempting the euthanize Stefan with a brick to the head, only to injure a body already ravaged by radiation; and, of course, that last panel. show less

Becky Cloonan goes space noir, giving her protagonist a sci fi tough guy bluntness as she investigates weird occurrences on the spaceship taking her to the moon Titan to pick up her dead sister's remains. It aims for atmospheric and mysterious, but I found myself drifting off into space (and sleep) instead of engaging thrusters.

I already have the next volume checked out, and I was on the fence about plowing ahead despite my misgivings, but a little research turns up that it is not the show more conclusion of the story, and instead the series went on hiatus years ago somewhere in the middle of what would have been the third volume. Time to cut losses and abort mission. show less