Superman #223

Bought at Has Been Collectible Toys and Comics, Wilbraham MA USA.

Title: Superman
Issue: 223
Date: January, 1970
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Cary Bates, Henry Boltinoff
Artist: Curt Swan, Henry Boltinoff
Editor: Mort Weisinger

Clark Kent encounters three women who know that he's Superman. They soon reveal themselves to be part of an extraterrestrial team of superheroes who are considering recruiting him for their team. But a test of his powers goes badly wrong, Superman soon finds himself facing a new threat to Earth.

So, this is one of those stories where everything would have been solved much more easily if people had just talked to each other. It's got a bunch of plot twists, a surprise guest appearance, and the general silly vibe typical of Silver Age DC.

The story is a fairly entertaining ride, but the grim situations that come up don't mesh with the overall goofy flavor of the story. The superheroine team, the Galactons, turn out to be not what they seemed, which is too bad, because their introduction was pretty intriguing, and they might have made interesting longer-term characters.

Rating: 5.5/10

Assassin's Creed: The Fall (Deluxe Edition)

 

Bought at Goodwill, Davis Square, Somerville MA USA.

Title: Assassin's Creed: The Fall (Delux Edition)
Date: 2011
Publisher: Ubisoft
Writer: Karl Kerschl, Cameron Stewart
Artist: Karl Kerschl, Cameron Stewart
Colorist: Nadine Thomas
Letterer: Studio Lounak's Serge LaPointe

Around the end of the 20th Century, a man suffers from hallucinations of the fall of the last Czar of Russia and the battles between the Assassins and Templars in the years leading to the Russian Revolution. When the modern-day Assassins make contact with him, Daniel Cross gains their trust and embarks on a pilgrimage to seek out the elusive leader of the Order of Assassins, the Mentor. As he does, Cross sets off a chain of events leading to a modern purge of the Assassins by their ancient enemies, the Templars.

I bought this with the upcoming Assassin's Creed/Magic: The Gathering crossover in mind, having never played any of the Assassin's Creed games. For a newcomer to the lore, this did a pretty good job of getting me up to speed. I enjoyed the integration of history into the storyline, including the connections to the Tunguska Event and Nikola Tesla.

The story itself does a reasonable job of building suspense at the beginning, although it telegraphs its plot twist a bit, and the Order of Assassins come of as complete chumps by the time all is said and done, which is possibly not the desired impression to make on someone new to the franchise.

Still, it provides a decent setup for Assassin's Creed: The Chain, which will continue the story.

This was the Deluxe Edition, so it contains an extra ten-page epilogue, which really felt like an important part of the story, so it was good to have it here. There is also some "making-of" material, some notes on the relevant historical details, and a selection from the Assassin's Creed Encyclopedia. This last bit had some good background, but also spent a lot of time summarizing the story I had just read.

Rating: 6/10

Attack on Titan Volume 5

Bought at Barnes & Noble, Enfield CT USA.

Title: Attack on Titan
Issue: Volume 5
Date: 2013
Publisher: Kodansha
Creator: Hajime Isayama
Letterer: Steve Wands

In spite of having won the day in humanity's first major victory against the titans, Eren finds himself imprisoned and put on trial for his life. There are many among the powers that be who feel that Eren would be most useful to humanity if her were killed and dissected. Fortunately, Erwin Smith, Commander of the Survey Corps has a different idea.

Eren finds himself on a major expedition outside the walls in the hope of recovering vital information about the Titans, information that my be found in the ruins of Eren's own home.

In addition to some key plot developments for Eren, we also get to see Eren's training comrades make their final choice of whether to join the Survey Corps or the Military Police. This issue also deepened the mystery of the Titans, kicking things off with an encounter with a titan who could speak, and ending in a battle with a dangerously intelligent abnormal titan. In between, the character of Squad Leader Hange, who is driven to learn all she can about the titans, to the point of conducting gruesome experiments on captured titans.

Although Mikasa and Armin continued to be mostly in the background, this volume did a great job of adding complexity to the titan concept, and ended with some excellent action sequences.

Rating: 7.5/10

Magic Item Mini #1

Bought at the Flywheel Zine Fest a few weeks ago in Holyoke MA USA.

Title: Magic Item Mini
Issue: 1
Publisher: Alec Adams Art
Writer: Alec Adams
Artist: Alec Adams

Micro-mini zine collecting six magic items for use with fantasy roleplaying games. These aren't given specific stat blocks, but there's enough information with each one, along with the very nice illustrations, for a gm to adapt these items to their game without much difficulty. They range from the combat-practical Owl's Shield and Weaver's Bow to the useful warding item, the Ghost Bane Lantern. On the more ridiculous side is the Staff if Immediate Livestock, and yes, it does pretty much exactly what it sounds like it does.

As with several of the other small gaming zines I picked up recently, this gives a good amount of value for its size/cost, and I expect I'll use an item or two from this in a game at some point.

Rating: 7/10

Angel Sanctuary Volume 1

From my books retrieved from storage.

Title: Angel Sanctuary
Issue: Volume 1
Date: 1994
Publisher Viz Media
Writer: Kaori Yuki
Artist: Kaori Yuki

Setsuna's life is a mess, and that's before we even get into the details of his incestuous feelings for his sister. In the background of all of this there is an ongoing war between angels and demons and their various earthly reincarnations.

The artwork had some pretty spots, and there were a few moments where this story's horror elements really stood out nicely, but overall, I found it to be on the confusing side. This was a very nihilistic take on angels and demons, but it didn't leave me with much in the way of likeable characters.

The worldbuilding and the backstory are there, and there is definitely potential to get a decent story out of this, but this failed to hook me as an opening chapter.

Rating: 4/10

One-Page Dungeon: Quest for the Weird Stone

Bought at the Flywheel Zine Fest a few weeks ago in Holyoke MA USA.

Title: One-Page Dungeon: Quest for the Weird Stone
Publisher: Alec Adams Art
Writer: Alec Adams
Artist: Alec Adams

Another rpg adventure in zine form, this time, more of a micro-zine.This is a quick dungeon crawl with a couple of unique magic items and a monster/npc adversary. The descriptions are simple, but the GM can easily add the necessary details to work this with any D&D style rules set, and it's easy to adjust the challenge level as well.

This is a linear dungeon with interesting challenges, but no real plot and not much given in terms of backstory. Still, it definitely delivers value for its size/cost, and a group with get a fun side quest out of this at the least. Since the "Weird Stone" has vaguely-described healing properties, this would be a good quest to remove a curse placed on a PC or NPC. It's easily adaptable to just about any D&D setting.

Rating: 7/10

Just Another Goblin Cave

Bought at the Flywheel Zine Fest a few weeks ago in Holyoke MA USA.

Title: Just Another Goblin Cave
Publisher: YCBN Games
Writer: Eon Fontes-May
Artist: Eon Fontes-May
Cover: Dan Dawson

Not a comic. This is a rpg adventure in zine form. The basic idea is that the PCs are sent on a mission to a gnomish forge only to find it completely taken over by hostile goblins. This low-level adventure is designed to be run with OSR-style systems, but it's pretty workable with any D&D type set of rules. I ran it with 5E for my middle school gaming club and it worked fine. It's nonstop action, essentially one running battle from start to finish, so the roleplaying elements are a bit limited, but there is some good backstory and potential to expand on what's here, and it's adaptable fairly easily to most fantasy settings.

This provided some good entertainment for such a small, inexpensive product.

Rating: 7.5/10

Lady Bugs

Well, it's been 10 months since we moved back to the US, and I finally made it to a convention: The Flywheel Zine Fest in Holyoke MA USA was a really fun event, and I'll be posting items from my haul in the coming weeks, starting with this.

Title: Lady Bugs

This is an uncredited mini-zine, worless except for the title. It features illustrations of insects with mask-like human faces, either as their faces, abdomens, or wings.

The drawings are lovely, with a tiny bit of an uncanny valley vibe going on.

Seriously quirky fun.

Rating: 6.5/10

Once Upon A Time In The North

From my school library.

Title: Once Upon A Time In The North
Publisher: Random House Kids
Date: 2023
Writer: Philip Pullman
Artist: Chris Wormell

Not a comic, but beautifully illustrated, this novella (novelette? fairly long short story?) is a prequel to Pullman's His Dark Materials series. This is a classic western tale (well, northern, technically) featuring a stranger coming to town, a corrupt politician, an evil mining company, a good-hearted librarian, gunslingers, and, of course, a talking bear.

This is the story of the first meeting of Lee Scoresby and Iorek Byrnison. Lee arrives in a sleepy northern oil town, and gets introduced to the local political scene, where an offer is made to pay him to be hired muscle in the unfair treatment of a merchant captain. Instead, Lee decided to side with the captain, and earns the support of the armored bear Iorek Byrnison.

This was really fun because the pacing of most of His Dark Materials makes it difficult to give center stage to secondary characters like Scoresby and Byrnison, and even more difficult to spotlight a character like Scoresby's daemon, Hester, who is absolutely awesome here.

This features an intense gunfight with an extremely nasty villain, a good bit of worldbuilding, and some fun subplots. Really enjoyable as a fan of Pullman's other works, but stands on its own pretty well as long as you have an idea of the daemon concept.

Rating: 8.5/10

Heartstopper Volume 2

From my school library.

Title: Heartstopper
Issue: Volume 2
Publisher: Scholastic / Graphix
Date: 2020
Writer: Alice Oseman
Artist: Alice Oseman

The second volume of Alice Oseman's high school romance focuses first on the fallout of the end of the first issue, and then to Nick's growing understanding of his identity and the beginning of his coming out. As with the first volume, the dialogue is great, and the whole story just has a warm and comfortable vibe to it. There is some conflict involving Nick's friends, but the romance continues to be front and center.

The second volume continues the great use of art and layout, and the excellent pacing of the first volume.

Rating: 8.5/10