Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists

From the book sale shelf at the East Longmeadow Public Library, East Longmeadow MA USA.

Title: Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists: A Graphic History of Women's Fight For Their Rights
Date: 2019
Publisher: Ten Speed Press (Penguin Random House)
Writer: Mikki Kendall
Artist: A. D'Amico

Gorgeously illustrated overview of this history of women's rights and activism. The format and scope of this means it's going for breadth rather than depth, but it works well in terms of highlighting plenty of history that readers can look into further. 

The framing story, a group of students in a future AI-powered classroom guided by a holographic narrator is a bit clunky at first, and a little bit cringe in terms of the concept of education being handed over to AI, but that aspect of the story quickly fades into the background in favor of the actual history being presented, and the student characters end up serving an important role as critics pointing out when some of this historical figures presented had their problematic aspects. 

The book does a good job of supporting its intersectional approach, and presents a diverse range of historical figures, including many I wasn't familiar with. It achieves its purpose as a jumping-off point for further research and reflection.

Rating: 8/10

Batman: Gates of Gotham #1

 

Bought at Dollar Tree in Enfield CT USA.

Title: Batman: Gates of Gotham
Issue: 1
Date: June 2026 (reprint from 2011)
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Scott Snyder, Kyle Higgins
Artist: Trevor McCarthy
Colorist: Guy Major
Letterer: Jared K. Fletcher
Editor: Mike Marts, Janelle Asselin. Katie Kubert
Cover: Trevor McCarthy

Opening with a flashback to 1881, and then moving foward to an attack on three of Gotham's original bridges, this story focuses on deep connections between prominent families of Gotham. With the Batman in a race against time to find the person responsible for bombing the bridges, the first clues lead to the Penguin.

This is a good classic-feeling Batman story that's in the regular continuity, and rooted in the past history of Gotham City. It's nice to see multiple members of the Bat-Family involved, and Penguin has a nice scene.

Not all of the art was as effective as it could have been, but a lot was good, especially in the flashback to the 19th Century. This was a fun start to what looks to be a satisfying story.

Rating: 7/10

Shogun Warriors #12

I picked this up at the Spring 2026 Brimfield Antiques Shows in Brimfield MA USA.

Title: Shogun Warriors
Issue: 12 
Date: 1979
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Doug Moench 
Artist: Herb Trimpe, Mike Esposito
Colorist: George Bell
Letterer: Jim Novak
Editor: Allen Milgrom

The Shogun Warrior pilots are summoned to prevent a worldwide disaster as a meteor hurtles toward Earth. So, this was a total blast of nostalgia for me, as Shogun Warriors was one of the first Marvel series I was into as a kid. The other series I loved at that time was Marvel's Godzilla, so I was very excited to find a bit of a crossover happening here.

The meteor proved to be not that much of a challenge for the team of giant robots and their pilots, but that was all just a setup to reveal the return of a major villain from the early issues of Marvel's Godzilla. Reading it now, I felt like the human elements of the story were handled well, especially the easy comradery of the three pilots. There's an early scene where Genji shows up looking for crash space at Richard Carson's house in Los Angeles, resulting in a bit of a jealous tiff from Carson's girlfriend, Deena, but even that gets tempered down a bit in a follow-up scene that has Deena acting a bit more real.

The battle with the  meteor is rather anticlimactic, and it's necessary to suspend disbelief a bit around the idea that this is all actually taking place in the regular Marvel Universe continuity, but that was typical for a lot of toy-licensed books in this era. This was a great reveal when I read it as a kid and it still holds up reasonably well.

Rating: 6/10

Icelandic Hot Dog 101

From this year's Flywheel Zine Fest in Holyoke MA USA.

Title: Icelandic Hot Dog 101
Publisher: My Monster Hat
Date: March, 2026
Writer: Anne Thalheimer
Artist: Anne Thalheimer

Everything you need to know about hot dogs in Iceland, courtesy of the author's recent travels. This hit several topics I love: Travel, food in general, and hot dogs, particularly regional hot dog variations! There's even a bit of Icelandic language in here to help you order one with everything (fried and raw onions, apple ketchup, sweet brown mustard, and remoulade). Fun bit of regional food lore in micro-minicomic form!

Rating: 7.5/10 

Moomin Adventures Book 1

Bought from the used book shelf at the Wilbraham Public Library, Wilbraham MA USA.

Title: Moomin Adventures
Issue: Book 1
Date: 2024
Company: Drawn & Quarterly
Writer: Tove Jansson, Lars Jansson
Artist: Tove Jansson, Lars Jansson

This volume collects the Moomin newspaper strip, which was primarily published in the London Evening News. The comics presented in this volume are mostly from the mid-1950s.

The Moomins are a family of trolls, resembling cartoon hippos, created by Finnish author Tove Jansson. Her brother, Lars Jansson, eventually joined the team to assist with the comic strip and took over the work on it in the 1970s.

Most of the stories here are of the "fish-out-of-water" variety, with the Moomins serving to parody various aspects of society from the high-society culture of the French Riviera to classic literature to art and psychology. The humor ranges from very snarky satire to the completely absurdist.

The opening story was my favorite of this collection, with the whole Moomin family blundering through a vacation on the Riviera and going rapidly back and forth between rags and riches while being mostly oblivious to the expectations of society around them.

The Moomin parody of the classic desert island stories of Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss Family Robinson were also very entertaining. In the second half of this volume the comic strips begin to rely on characters outside of the core Moomin family, and I found these stories to be less approachable, although there was still plenty of sharp humor to be had. 

Rating: 6/10

Still Rage Monsters

From this year's Flywheel Zine Fest in Holyoke MA USA.

Title: Still Rage Monsters
Publisher: My Monster Hat
Date: March, 2024
Writer: Anne Thalheimer
Artist: Anne Thalheimer

This is a sequel to the artist's Rage Monsters minicomic (me review is here), and it is more of the same. More monsters, and more rage. Monsters in this book are cranky, seriously upset, and irked, which actually seems on the mild side when one considers everything there is for these monsters to be angry about. This was a fun bit of venting.

Rating: 6.5/10 

Trans Sexual Geographies

From the 2025 Flywheel Zine Fest in Holyoke, MA USA).

Title: Trans Sexual Geographies
Writer: Niamh Timmons

Personal (mostly) prose zine focused on body and relationship changes during transition, with some discussion of geographic relocation as well. This was pretty raw in terms of its head-on grappling with mental health, body image, and unhealthy relationships. It's a deeply personal narrative that is picked up in the midst of change and ends with a relationship finished but much still unresolved. Includes poetry, a couple of photos, and some small hand-drawn illustrations. This was personal and moving.

Rating: 7/10

Star Wars Young Jedi Adventures Free Comic Book Day 2025

This is a 2025 FCBD book that I picked up at Most Excellent Comics and Gaming in Enfield CT USA at Free Comic Book Day 2026.

Title: Star Wars Young Jedi Adventures Free Comic Book Day 2025
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Date: May, 2025
Writer: Dave Scheidt, Brandon Hoang
Artist: Andy Duggan, Bellbessa
Colorist: Dan Jackson, C. E. Chant
Letterer: Comicraft's Tyler Smith and Jim Betancourt
Cover: Andy Duggan

Jedi younglings Lys, Kai, and Nubs are on a training mission, dropped into a swampy wilderness by Master Yoda and tasked with a scavenger hunt. The younglings encounter a series of ever-more-fantastical monsters and come up with creative (and nonviolent) solutions to each encounter. This was a reasonable introduction to this all-ages series, although much like Marvel's old Ewoks series, the creatures felt more like generic fantasy monsters than something with the flavor of Star Wars. Still, this was fun and easy to get into and follow.

The backup story is an Avatar: The Last Airbender story featuring some interesting variations on existing characters. Their battle against Fire Nation soldiers in a ramen shop is fun, but the ending is (intentionally) a bit of a cop-out.

Rating: 5.5

Conan: Tides of the Tyrant King Free Comic Book Day 2026

From Free Comic Book Day/Comics Giveaway Day 2026 at Most Excellent Comics and Gaming, Enfield CT USA.

Title: Conan: Tides of the Tyrant King Free Comic Book Day 2026
Issue: 1
Date: May, 2026
Publisher: Titan Comics
Writer: Jim Zub
Artist: Jesus Merino
Colorist: Jao Canola
Letterer: Richard Starkings, Comicraft's Tyler Smith
Editor: Chris Butera

This was a really interesting introduction with parallel stories of Conan fighting as a mercenary along the border of Zingara and Argos back in the Hyborian Age, and 20th century soldier fighting in World War I, and surviving as a veteran of that conflict. American soldier Stephen Costigan isn't the mythic hero that Conan is, but he survives horrors just as brutal as those of Conan's time, and eventually in the aftermath of the war, he steps into his own encounter with the dark magic of the Hyborian Age. The parallel stories are fun, and they're very nicely presented in the artwork. To make this more intriguing, the 20th century plotline is actually adapted from Robert E. Howard's pulp story "Skull-Face", which had its own references to Howard's own mythos.

The story is just an introduction, but it does a good job of setting up both timelines, and an essay at the end explains the connection to Howard's pulp writings.

Conan isn't a title that I pick up expecting to find something new and innovative, so this was a pleasant surprise, both because of the innovation and because it was honoring Robert E. Howard's legacy in doing so.

Rating: 7.5/10

Amazing Spider-Man 1000 / Queen In Black CGD 2026 #1

From Free Comic Book Day/Comics Giveaway Day 2026 at Most Excellent Comics and Gaming, Enfield CT USA.

Title: Amazing Spider-Man 1000 / Queen In Black CGD 2026
Issue: 1 
Date: June 2026
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Joe Kelly, Al Ewing, Phillip Kennedy Johnson
Artist: John Romita Jr., Scott Hanna, Nic Klein, Iban Coello
Colorist:  Matthew Wilson, Guru-eFX, Marcio Menyz
Letterer: VC's Joe Caramagna, VC's Clayton Cowles, VC's Cory Petit
Editor: Nick Lowe, Tom Groneman, Kaitlyn Lindtvedt

Due to the reshuffling of the assets of Diamond Distributors, we have two overlapping events involving free comics this year. Marvel is participating in Comics Giveaway Day, while other publishers use the familiar Free Comic Book Day logo. The day worked pretty much the same otherwise, and what we have here is a fairly standard Marvel preview book focusing on three upcoming events: The Amazingv Spider-Man #1000, Queen in Black, and The Infernal Hulk.

The Amazing Spider-Man story was the best of the three, a well-told self-contained story where the Answer has attacked the recording session for J. Jonah Jameson's latest podcast. I'm not familiar with the Answer, but the narration does a good job of explaining what he's all about, and more importantly, why this isn't the typical state of affairs for him. What follows is a pretty good dialogue-based confrontation with a satisfying resolution, and then a final page teasing Peter Parker's latest bit of family drama. This reminded me a little bit of the confrontation between the Question and the Riddler back in the Question comic in the 80s, although not quite as intense. It also felt a bit like some of Superman's stories where he's able to handle a situation without resorting to full-on violence, but still keeping Spidey's persona at the forefront. Good stuff.

In the second story, Hel (Thor's sister) has usurped Knull (king of the Symbionts) and now commands his armies. And she is invading Earth, attacking six locations at once with venomized versions of well-known Marvel Universe extraterrestrial species like Kree, Skrull, Chitauri, and so on.

This all looks scary at first, but when Spider-Man and a crew of "Spider-Friends" show up to oppose the New York landing, it ends up looking like Hel's army consists of like six dudes, and the whole invasion looks less threatening. This felt an awful lot like DC's (awful) Invasion crossover and I have a feeling it will have a similar lack of impact. That being said, the visuals in this were pretty nice, and we barely got into the story, so there is room to turn this around.

The last story was a preview of Hulk War: Infernal War, which was mostly just a rambling discussion of monsters with some grimdark visuals leading up to a full-page shot of this version of Hulk with a crew of monsters including a giant spider Shelob knockoff. There's also a dead Captain America and some other characters that I am probably supposed to recognize but didn't. Very little actually happens, so again, there's some room for this to get better, but it's not off to a good start.

Rating: 5.5/10