Alethia Chapter 1

I bought this from the artist at the Shanghai Comic Con in 2017.

Title: Alethia
Issue: Chapter 1
Date: 2016
Publisher: Kristina Stipetic
Writer: Kristina Stipetic
Artist: Kristina Stipetic

Full-color squarebound minicomic. On a world of robots who live in a society modeled after the social insects, the populace awaits the laying of a new queen egg, as the aging and exhausted Queen produces only more workers.|

When a strange robot falls from the sky, some of the workers see her as a possible replacement for the Queen. But the stranger's arrival has inspired the Queen to an act of rebellion of her own.

The design and worldbuilding were excellent here, and the story, while just getting started, was intriguing. This is a great beginning, and I hope to check out more of this series.

Rating: 8.5/10

True Believers: Daredevil: Practice To Deceive #1

I'll be doing a recap of 2017 soon. In the meantime, here is my first comic review of 2018! This is one of the comics I bought at the Shanghai Comic Con in October.

Title: True Believers: Daredevil: Practice To Deceive
Issue: 1
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Date: September 2016
Writer: Charles Soule
Artist: Matteo Buffagni
Colorist: Matt Milla
Letterer: VC's Clayton Cowles
Cover: Bill Sienkiewicz
Editor: Charles Beacham, Sana Amanat

Bringing back the classic Daredevil & Elektra vibe... No matter how many hoops need to be jumped through to do it.

So the backstory here is that Matt Murdock somehow managed to do some sort of mass memory wipe that conveniently rebooted his continuity so that he's back to having a secret identity. Apparently he wasn't all that good at keeping secrets the previous time around. So we've got the classic Matt Murdock, struggling attorney (prosecuting attorney this time!) by day, and Daredevil, masked vigilante by night.

Elektra shows up, oblivious as everyone else that Matt and Daredevil are the same dude (really, if she can't figure this out in the first three seconds of hand-to-hand combat with him, she should turn in her assassin card... or should I say... HAND it over). She asks Murdock to arrange a meeting with Daredevil, who shows up expecting to talk, and Elektra commences with the beatdown.

Oh, and Daredevil has a sidekick! His name is Blindspot. No, really. He basically appears to have all of the annoying qualities of Jason Todd, with none of the good qualities of Tim Drake or Dick Grayson.

He lasts all of a couple of panels with Elektra while Daredevil just kinda cringes.

Finally, Elektra reveals a big dramatic plot development to end it all, none of which required all of the fighting. Apprarently she was just annoyed and had decided she needed to waste some time hurting Daredevil before getting to the point.

And I'm not really sure what the point of all of this was. But I will add half a point for the always-awesome cover work by Bill Sienkiewicz.

Rating: 3.5/10

True Believers: Star Wars: Lando #1

I can now say that I've been to comic conventions in three countries! This past Friday, I attended the Shanghai Comic Con with the Kiddo. We had lots of fun, and I brought back a small haul (working on a somewhat limited budget):

Those two Thor comics are promos for the con, and they're in Chinese, so I won't be reviewing them here. I found a vendor selling recent American comics and picked up three Marvel books. I also bought comics from two small-press creators. Those were also both English-language (actually one is bilingual, with all of the dialogue in English and Chinese).

You may have noticed that I have not been reviewing much in the way of standard-format comics since we headed back overseas. This has mostly been an organizational issue. I brought a stack of over 100 comics with me from the US to read and review. Some of those were new purchases over the summer, while most are from my supply of unread comics in storage.

I've added these items from the Shanghai Comic Con to that stack, and I'll be starting to review them on a regular basis, beginning right now.

Title: True Believers: Star Wars: Lando
Issue: 1
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Date: July 2016
Writer: Charles Soule
Artist: Alex Maleev
Colorist: Paul Mounts
Letterer: VC's Joe Caramagna
Cover: Alex Maleev, Edgar Delgado
Editor: Jordan D. White, Heather Antos

What a fun book! This is a Lando Calrissian solo story (without Solo! Ha!), and it really nails Lando's personality as he charms his way into not even having to perform the heist he's originally set out to do.

Unfortunately, debts in the underworld of the Star Wars Galaxy tend to add up, and Lando sets his sights on one more job to get himself free and clear. Not surprisingly, he finds that easy money is never really easy, as the ship he steals is going to cause him a lot more grief than he had ever planned for.

This had some good character development that never felt like it got away from the Lando we know and love. It also heavily featured Lobot, who gets some good screen time as Lando's partner-in-crime. The setup of the new heist flows smoothly, and the final complications at the end set up when should be plenty of fun in the issues ahead.

Rating: 8.5/10