Sam Humphries

It's been a while since I read any, but I love me some X-Folx. I loved the Astonishing X-Men series that started with Whedon (fuck that guy) and all the Schism stuff, so I understand Wolverine and the new school, but the situation with everyone else was new to me, which seemed to significantly affect how flummoxed and struggling to engage.

Logan is a headmaster, so he can't be mutant back ops, but he can be their Professor X, sending Psylocke and Storm to join Puck in investigating mind control ecstacy. There's a multi-armed space ninja, a little girl in a safe, Bishop doing timey wimey stuff as he is does, there's bad(?) Stands that infect people, dream stuff, and Fantomex and Control are also in here for some reason.

X-Folx has always been a whole lotta WTF and go with it, but this is a lot and absolutely does not feel like a volume 1 of a new series that barely gives any context to anything or anyone, but then a few issues in starts telling the story through huge and boring infodumps. The script seemed like a scattershot mess mess to me that was supposed to be conveying big emotional and significant stuff, but never did I feel able to connect, and I'm someone who has become way too attached, engaged, and bawled more time than I would like to admit at comics in general, but a lot of X-Folx stuff.

Like so many comics, I imagine this must have been running alongside other series because there are jumps and so much unexplained stuff. It just feels like whole scenes are missing and for a TPB it just makes for an incredibly jarring experience.

The art has some moments, but it feels very Marvel house style without much flare. Some of the dream stuff is cool, but from noth a script and art style the dream stuff seems wasted. I found the whole thing extremely dull.

I know I swore off random Marvel stuff without recommendation, but I am addicted to getting stuff from the library and thought I could trust X-Folx to at least be interesting.

(Increasingly feeling like in getting old, grumpy, and my tastes changing, so your mileage may vary)… (más)

Blackbird is about Nina, a woman who swears she saw a beast when she was younger. Her whole life, her family made fun of her and called her crazy. As an adult, she learns that she was right all along. Things she thought she knew, turn out to be lies.

This was a really cool concept. Essentially there are paragons. They are basically magicians/wizards with lots of money. They are in secretive cabals which seem a little cult like but unfortunately cabals were not explored as deeply as I would have liked. The magic system is connected to beautiful gems that each have a different spell inside. It seemed like the gems were hard to get but this was also not explained very deeply.

Things I loved: the art, the colors were incredible, magical atmosphere, the settings, Nina is beautiful, the gem magic system, this surprised me

Things I didn’t love: not enough development (yes, this is a comic so it makes sense to keep things brief, however, there were so many panels that felt unnecessary when I really just wanted to learn more about the world (mainly the cabals and magic)

While this isn’t a new favorite, I can see promise. I’m hoping that another volume will be released so I can learn more about this version of Hollywood.… (más)

The story is probably deserving of 4 stars, but it gets less because I despise it when Marvel puts out multiple trades with overlapping issues forcing readers to buy some issues twice if they are reading all of the crossover titles. In this case, this book shares 4 issues (of 7, over 1/2 the book!) with [b:Cable and X-Force, Vol. 4: Vendetta|18360007|Cable and X-Force, Vol. 4 Vendetta|Dennis Hopeless|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1409503777s/18360007.jpg|25959488]. It's simple exploitation of their readers and fans and I hate it.… (más)