I just wanted to share some very cool Christmas gifts from a co-worker:

I was reading SPIDER-MAN: KIZUNA Vol. 2 and paused when I hit the panel on the right below. That can't be a coincidence, can it? Setta Kobayashi and Hachi Mizuno totally did the meme, didn't they?

During the time in which it was published, I was visiting a comic book shop every Wednesday and reading comics news sites and blogs daily, and yet I have absolutely no memory of this series ever existing. It ran for 17 issues.

A few things had me thinking about how I first got into comics recently, like reading through Palladium Books, crowd-funded new editions of their TMNT role-playing game books. That thinking lead to this post:

Good book to read in December if you enjoy reading about monsters, folklore and the occult:

Hey, remember when Grant Morrison wrote and drew that run of X-Men comics all by themself, with no help of any kind from anyone else...?

This week's bookshelf? Archie and Superman.

Is this true…?

I still regret not buying the SHOWCASE PRESENTS: STRANGE ADVENTURES collection with this on the cover when I had the chance.

That previous post was my 1-out-of-10 posts about politics. Now back to comics: I think IDW should reprint all of Dark Horse's Godzilla comics, because, from what I've seen in the one 1998 collection I've read, those are some very good Godzilla comics.

I've read (or at least seen the headlines of) a lot of stories about this book, so I'm a little surprised by its early sales versus its coverage. On the other hand, I think the subject—Olivia Nuzzi—is really only of interest to other national political writers, of which there can't be that many.

Today on the blog I discuss LOBO/DEADMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BALD, which turns out to the first Lobo team-up book...or at least the first in which he shares the title with another character. It was the work of the talented Alan Grant and Martin Emond, both of whom are sadly no longer with us.

At Good Comics for Kids, @jcaleb.bsky.social reviews Star Wars: Path of the LIghtsaber by @kennyruiz.bsky.social and finds that its "style, humor, and specific subject matter" sets it apart from the other graphic novels in this crowded category: goodcomicsforkids.slj.com/2025/12/11/s...

Recently ran across this Brian Bolland variant cover while looking for something else. I don't really remember the events of the main CONVERGENCE series well, but I don't recall Swamp Thing and Plastic Man meeting there...or anywhere else. But that sure would be an interesting team-up to read..!

Here’s The Spectre on a motorcycle:

This week's bookshelf, presented on a Wednesday rather than a Sunday. With this particular shelf, you can probably guess the organizing principle at a glance.

I love NPR. Tonight I learned Ozempic was inspired by Gila monster venom.

Based on how many times I've seen those panels of Absolute Batman breaking the arm of the guy doing the Nazi/Roman/Elon Musk salute on here, I assume people really like when Batman beats up Nazis. So, here's an instance from 1998's BATMAN #551, by Doug Moench, Kelley Jones and John Beatty:

This month's review column includes Matt Wagner and Kelley Jones' DRACULA BOOK TWO: THE BRIDES, THE SPECTRE BY JOHN OSTRANDER AND TOM MANDRAKE OMNIBUS Vol. 1, JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE ATOM PROJECT, WE ARE YESTERDAY, LET THIS ONE BE A DEVIL and more:

This week's Thursday blog post is NOT about comics, but it IS about a book with lots of pictures, so still may be of interest (Plus, they are very good pictures of cool subjects, including cryptids like Mothman and Momo). My monthly comics review post will go up this Saturday, just FYI.

Today at Good Comics for Kids, @jcaleb.bsky.social reviews Scott Campbell's Cabin Head and Tree Head, a delightfully silly graphic novel for early readers that looks like it would be fun for everyone. goodcomicsforkids.slj.com/2025/12/04/c...

Kind of a shame DC used this title for a Lobo/Deadman one-shot, rather than saving it for a Lex Luthor team-up series.

While I agree that, as a class, billionaires shouldn't exist, I think there are arguments to be made for both Bruce Wayne and Taylor Swift.

Guys, if Donald Trump is uncontrollably falling asleep during a cabinet meeting ON CAMERA, how energetic, engaged, productive and in command can the guy be when not in front of cameras...?

Speaking of Godzilla, between the comics of the Dark Horse years and IDW's prolific use of the license, we've seen a lot of really great artists draw the monster over the years. But does Arthur Adams draw the very BEST Godzilla...? I think he might...

I enjoyed reading this review.

Godzilla being a petty jerk, stepping on a guy...and then really rubbing it in the survivors' faces by stomping on him a few extra times for good measure. I mean, surely the first stomp got him, right? Those extra three THOOM-ing stomps were purely for show.

Currently reading a very smart-sounding essay about a JLA arc by a writer who is MUCH smarter than me, with lots of footnotes to various heady texts, and then I hit a page where Lex Luthor’s surname is spelled “Luther”…TWICE!

I feel like MOUSE GUARD's David Petersen and this guy would have a lot to talk about...

It's 1997, and John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake welcome Batman and The Joker into the pages of THE SPECTRE:

This week's bookshelf:

Oh my God! They’re finally here! And they’re…beautiful…!

I assume—and hope!—that you are all spending time with your loved ones today and not looking for blog posts about 30-year-old comics to read, but I like to keep to a schedule, so I'm posting my Thursday post today, holiday or no. It will be there whenever you're ready to read it.

This is one of my all-time favorite series.

I was excited to see find this book at the library. It's not quite the book I hoped it would be based on the title—it's a collection of scholarly essays on various DC-related stories—nor the book I would have written on the subject, but some of the chapters within sure look interesting.

I was just writing about the 1997 Batman/Spectre story from BATMAN #540 and 541 for Thursday's blog post, and I couldn't find a logical place to use this panel by Kelley Jones and John Beatty, so I'll just post it here. Isn't it awesome...?

I love the 1995-1998 Doug Moench/Kelley Jones/John Beatty BATMAN run so much. Like, any random panel of it. This one, for example, features a great Moench sound effect lettered by Todd Klein, while Jones draws Batman leaping through a window with a batarang in his clenched teeth for some reason.

Let's journey back to the distant year 2011, for the final Justice League comics before the New 52 reboot, collected in the trade paperback JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA: RISE OF ECLIPSO:

Reposting as a public service announcement:

This week's bookshelf: Some DC manga and kids' comics, and some DRAGON BALL and EVANGELION-related manga:

(Just deleted a couple of posts, as I realized I didn’t actually want to post a whole thread pointing out all the poor art from a 15-year-old comic book, as I had started to do. I will review it in my blog later this week or so, though.)

It’s weird to run across scenes like this, in which Alan Scott expresses discomfort with talking about gay stuff with his son, now that Alan has been retconned into being a gay man himself. (This is a panel from 2010’s JSoA #43, written by James Robinson, of all people.)

One of the characters in Kenny Ruiz’s STAR WARS: PATH OF THE LIGHTSABER is apparently an Endor truther, insisting Luke Skywalker beat the Empire, not the Ewoks. Note a) how cute Ruiz’s Ewoks are and b) the face on the AT-ST:

This is a good comic.

I finished THE SPECTRE OMNIBUS BY JOHN OSTRANDER AND TOM MANDRAKE last night/this morning at, um, 3 AM. Based on the talent of those two gentlemen and the handful of issues I had previously read, I was expecting it to be pretty great. I was still surprised at how great it was, though...

Today at Good Comics for Kids, @jcaleb.bsky.social reviewed Go-Man, a new, Japanese-inspired but very American, graphic novel for kids by @hamishsteele.bsky.social goodcomicsforkids.slj.com/2025/11/20/g...

Which artist has the best take on Jack Kirby’s Demon? My favorites have always been Norm Breyfogle, John McCrea and Stephen Bissette, but reading these issues of THE SPECTRE from the ‘90s, I think Tom Mandrake’s Etrigan is definitely a contender. Behold his version of The Demon:

Look what came in the mail today! Between that huge SWAMP THING BY LEN WEIN AND KELLEY JONES collection, the unexpected Jones inking of Jim Aparo in THE SPECTRE OMNIBUS (plus a Jones cover) and now DRACULA BOOK TWO: THE BRIDES, this has been a hell of a month to be a Kelley Jones fan...!

These two lines from near the climax of Mark Waid, Christopher Cantwell and company's WE ARE YESTERDAY are a perfect encapsulation of the precise balance between awesome and dumb that I so enjoy in mainstream super-comics:

I read this a few weeks ago, and just finished writing about it. It’s really great. As a comics reader who is also interested in cryptids and American monster folklore, I found it damn near perfect.