Seven Ways Through the Woods

Title: Seven Ways Through the Woods
Date: 2025
Publisher: Greenwillow Books (HarperCollins)
Writer: Jenn Reese
Artist: Devin Elle Kurtz

Not a comic. This is a children's picture book.

Jenn Reese presents a series of adventurous kids looking for a way through the dark and mysterious woods. They each find their own way to cross, complete with Devin Elle Kurtz's absolutely gorgeous illustrations and a bit of helpful advice for each method of crossing. Don't try the crystal serpents if unless you enjoy their singing! The story ends with a bit of insight on the nature of the obstacles in our paths, and a very different seventh approach.

This was charming and delightful.

Rating: 9/10

Tactics Volume 1

From the shelf of unread books.

Title: Tactics
Issue: Volume 1
Date: 2007
Publisher: Tokyopop
Writer: Sakura Kinoshita, Kazuko Higashiyama, Lianne Sentar
Artist: Sakura Kinoshita, Kazuko Higashiyama
Letterer: Star Print Brokers
Editor: Lillian Diaz-Przybyl

Kantarou is a folklore scholar who's not exactly making the big money off of his publications. Fortunately, he moonlights as an exorcist of sorts who deals with problems caused by youkai. These beings are usually invisible, but Kantarou has the ability to see them. To really get ahead in his business, though, he's been searching for Haruka, the legendary demon-eating tengu.

But once he finally gets Haruka on his side, it only adds lots more complications to Kantarou's life.

This series is episodic with something of a mystery-solving vibe. Each situation that Kantarou and Haruka encounter seems to break the rules of the supernatural as they understand them at first, and it's up to them to figure out what is really happening.

The dialogue flits all over the place, especially in the midst of the action, and the stories tend to rely on an epilogue-like bit toward the end to help the reader make sense of it all. The world does have good internal consistency and enough variety of supernatural beings and effects to keep things interesting, and the banter between the characters is fun in places.

Rating: 5.5/10

Flash Gordon #34

I picked this up at the Brimfield Antiques Show in September of 2025.

Title: Flash Gordon
Issue: 34
Date: 1981
Publisher: Whitman (Western Publishing)
Writer: John Warner
Artist: Gene Fawcette

Flash Gordon, Dale Arden, and Doctor Zarkov travel to a remote area to loot one of Emperor Ming's observation posts for spare parts. The station appears to be unguarded, but it's actually defended by a type of gas that Ming devised that knocks out its victims and causes potentially fatal hallucinations. This is one of those classic unnecessarily slow deathtraps, and it's really just an excuse to give us a peak into each character's worst nightmare and watch them deal with these dream scenarios.

Zarkov faces off against the most frightening thing he can imagine: Literally his own brain! In a jar! Except it's evil. 

Dale, is a scenario very much playing to stereotypes, finds Flash falling in love with a strong and beautiful (and blonde!) warrior woman who is more than ready to handle any of Dale's objections with fist and sword, all while Flash stands by, dazzled by his newfound love.

Flash himself gets the least interesting nightmare: Getting crushed by Ming himself, grown to giant-size.

It takes Zarkov's wit and Flash's strength of will to overcome the effects of the nightmare-gas. I was a little bit disappointed that the writers weren't able to make things a bit more parallel and have a clearly defined strength of Dale's that lets her overcome her own scenario. That would have made the story a lot more satisfying. Instead, she gets rescued by Flash, as per normal.

The story was still fairly interesting in spite of how contrived it all was.

There's also a backup story in which Flash is searching for Charn, a leader in the rebellion against Ming. Charn was captured by a tribe who enslave their captives, and his will has been just about broken in captivity. Flash is captured as well, and needs to find a way to instill hope in Charn so that they can attempt to escape. This story was a good concept but suffered a bit from page-count limitations, as it could have used some more time to develop. 

The worldbuilding and character interactions in both stories were good.

Rating: 5/10

Sugarholic Volume 2

From the unread book shelf.

Title: Sugarholic
Issue: Volume 2
Date: 2009
Publisher: Yen Press
Writer: Gong GooGoo
Artist: Gong GooGoo
Letterer: Terri Delgado

Jae-Gyu has agreed to pose as Whie-Hwan's girlfriend for a month. She's struggling to deal with his strict rules and life in the big city in general. And the fact that she's caught the eye of a star musician is not making things any easier. This is a slow-burn romance that has the potential to go in a lot of different directions. The characters all tend to be a bit flighty and high-strung, which makes everything they try to do more complicated. This issue was still mostly setup as the main characters take their places in the scenario. Everyone in the story is very pretty, but no one is all that likeable at this point. I did like some of the intrigue that is happening with Whie-Hwan's very powerful family, which provides a bit of a mafia vibe to put an edge on the romance.

Rating: 4.5/10

Why Don't You Write My Eulogy Now So I Can Correct It?

My wife and my mother-in-law borrowed this from the Wilbraham Public Library in Wilbraham MA USA.

Title: Why Don't You Write My Eulogy Now So I Can Correct It?
Publisher: Celadon Books
Date: April, 2019
Writer: Patricia Marx
Artist: Roz Chast

Collection of single-panel cartoons, featuring wisdom and fashion sense from the author's mother. Part snarky mother-daughter interactions and part (also snarky) etiquette guide. The author writes for the New Yorker, and the illustrator (also a New Yorker staffer) is working in the magazine's classic cartoon style. I found the cartoons to be a bit hit-or-miss, but there were some funny ones, and the mother's personality shines through in some really unique and unexpected ways.

Rating: 5.5/10

Pathfinder: Wake the Dead #1

This was a bargain-bin purchase from Most Excellent Comics and Games in Enfield CT USA on Free Comic Book Day 2025.

Title: Pathfinder: Wake the Dead
Issue: 1 
Publisher: Dynamite
Date: 2023
Writer: Fred Van Lente
Artist: Eman Casallos
Colorist: Jorge Sutil
Letterer: Tom Napolitano
Editor: Joe Rybandt
Cover: Steve Ellis

This is an adaptation of the Pathfinder tabletop roleplaying system. The story here is essentially meant to assemble the team of heroes as a bunch of characters on converging missions meet in a horrific city district of living flesh known as the Awful. There's a lot of posturing the eventually becomes fighting, and everyone gets to show off their moveset before some badder enemies arrive and we go to cliffhanger.

This was fine, but it had a lot of characters involved and none of their powers or skills was anything we haven't seen before. After the comic action is finished, there's a section detailing the game stats of some of the spells, items, and characters in the book, including the most memorable thing in this issue: the tragic backstory of the champion character Seelah. That would make a good comic adaptation, and I think I would have preferred Seelah in a solo book, or at least to start with her and build the team a bit more slowly.

Rating: 4.5/10

Artemis Fowl: The Graphic Novel

From a Little Free Library.

Title: Artemis Fowl: The Graphic Novel
Date: 2007
Publisher: Hyperion (Disney Books)
Writer: Eoin Colfer, Andrew Donkin
Artist: Giovanni Rigano
Colorist: Paolo Lamanna

Adapted from the middle-grade prose series. Artemis Fowl, twelve-year-old professional evil genius is one of the few people who is fully aware of the existence of the underground fairy realm, and he's determined to pull off the greatest crime of all time by robbing the fairies of a stash of fairy gold. A series of elaborate and ruthless ploys lead to the abduction of a fairy cop named Holly Short, who's low on magic and pretty much out of luck.

The rest of the story turns into a hostage negotiation standoff with a decent amount of plot twists. Think Die Hard with fairies and you get the idea. Holly is likeable. Artemis, who is meant to be vaguely likeable in an anti-hero sort of way, really isn't. The worldbuilding, especially the technology-based fairy society is interesting. The resolution left me questioning the internal logic of a few of the final plot developments, but there was some good action and drama.

I've seen better urban-fantasy fairy stories, but this was one of the more unique takes, so credit for that. Having a character unexpectedly revealed to be a pro wrestling fan out of nowhere was a cute surprise.

This was entertaining, but didn't particularly sell me on the novel series it was adapted from.

Rating: 5.5/10

Things Not To Do Part 3

From the 2025 Flywheel Zine Fest.

Title: Things Not To Do
Issue: 3
Publisher: My Monster Hat
Date: June, 2020
Writer: Anne Thalheimer
Artist: Anne Thalheimer

From the pack of cat-related minicomics I bought from the artist at the Flywheel Zine Fair. 

Collection of things not to do with your cat. Most are whimsical, one is a bit practical, and a few are clearly there just because they make for fun drawings. This is the third issue of the series, and apparently the only all-cat edition. Charming and fun.

Rating:6/10

Superman's Good Guy Gang 2025 FCBD Special Edition

From Most Excellent Comics and Gaming in Enfield CT USA for Free Comic Book Day 2025.

Title: Superman's Good Guy Gang 2025 FCBD Special Edition
Issue: 1
Date: 2025
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Rob Justus, Ben Clanton
Artist: Rob Justus, Cassandra Federman
Letterer: Lucas Gattoni

This Free Comic Book Day giveaway previews two upcoming DC graphic novels for young readers. 

The title story, clearly influenced by the current Superman film, has Superman and Green Lantern (Guy Gardner) meeting Hawkgirl for the first time. Hawkgirl is wielding a sort of studded soccer ball instead of her usual morningstar here. We get the standard sequence of misunderstanding, fight, and team-up, but the team-up part gets cut to a cliffhanger just as the giant-robot villain shows up.

The second story is the more surreal Aquamanatee, who makes several sea cow puns while failing to address the issue that all manatees are, by definition "aqua" (though not the color aqua, but then, Aquaman isn't the color aqua either). The jokes were okay, as cow puns go, but it was hard to see where this was going. Is there a story, or do Aquamanatee and his fish sidekick just tell jokes?

I understand the need to market, but this book might have been better off devoting its full page count to previewing one of these books.

Rating: 4.5/10

Yu-Gi-Oh GX Volume 4

From a Little Free Library in Rindge NH USA.

Title: Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Issue: Volume 4
Publisher: Viz Media / Shonen Jump
Date: 2010
Writer: Kazuki Takahashi, Naoyuki Kageyama
Artist: Naoyuki Kageyama
Editor: Mike Montesa, Jason Thompson

I picked this up from a Little Free Library, and might not have given it a try were it not for the fact that I just read the Yu-Gi-Oh Official Handbook (also from a Little Free Library, and reviewed here), which gave me some idea of the backstory.

Yu-Gi-Oh GX takes place years after the original series and features a next-generation scenario with a group of aspring duelists attending a Duel Academy, one of several such schools around the world dedicated to the Duel Monsters game.

This is the fourth volume, so we're in the middle of things, in this case, a tournament for the honor of dueling legendary champion Zane "Kaiser" Truesdale. The semifinals have come down to Jaden Yuki against Bastion, and Chazz versus David Rabb.

Jaden has to deal with an opponent who has constructed his deck specifically to beat Jaden's strategy, while Chazz finds himself up against dark magical forces as David engages him in a shadow duel where damage causes real pain.

A flashback to ancient Egypt gives a bit more background on the long-term storyline as the stage is set for the finals. Meanwhile, Duel Academy teacher Ms. Hibiki suspects something unusual is happening involving David, but David's sister, Reggie, is aware of her suspicions.

This exceeded my expectations by a lot. First of all, I was impressed with how interesting the book managed to make the card duel sequences that were at the heart of this issue. Even with my (extremely) limit knowledge of the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG, I was able to follow the action and ended up really enjoying these scenes. 

The flashback sequence did a nice job of building up some of the lore. This had, admittedly, a lot of characters to keep track of, but I found it surprisingly accessible considering I was jumping in at Volume 4. 

Rating: 7/10