(courtesy BOOM! STUDIOS) SNAPSHOT18-year-old Trini will do anything to compete in her favorite sport, Screaming Pain Ball, aspiring to the heights of her longtime hero Skull-Crusher! But she can’t do it alone, and a gaggle of misfits is just what she needs to cross the American wastes and battle in Continue Reading
Graphic novel
Graphic novel review: Ember and the Island of Lost Creatures by Jason Pamment
(courtesy Allen & Unwin Book Publishers) I can still remember how incredibly isolating and alone it felt to be bullied continuously and mercilessly during 13 long years of school. Like anyone under constant attack by bullies, I alternated between crushing despair, near-palpable loneliness and a sense that no one would Continue Reading
Graphic novel review: Snapdragon by Kat Leyh
(courtesy Macmillan Publishers) It’s a sad fact of life that far too many people only seem comfortable in themselves when they’re adhering to a rigid set of social values in which there are two possibilities – you satisfy the often cruel requirements laid down by god-knows-who and are accepted, or Continue Reading
Graphic novel review: Geiger by Geoff Johns | Gary Frank | Brad Anderson
(courtesy Image Comics) We are more than a little focused on the end of the world at the moment. Not that anyone actually wants it – far from it; a world of chocolate, great friends and wonderful animated films is something I love and would very much like to continue Continue Reading
Merry pop culture Christmas to all … and to all a good streaming-reading-listening night! (Bonus The Penguins of Madagascar Christmas Special)
(courtesy Pinterest (c) Peanuts) Merry pop culture Christmas everyone! Another year has somehow zoomed right through, around and past us, offering up far too many books and movies and TV/streaming show and songs and graphic novels to consume in one lifetime, but reminding us as we gobbled what we could Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #118: Five songs I love from Heartstopper S3 by beabadoobee, Baby Queen, Tom Odell, Griff + Angie McMahon
(courtesy Netflix) For anyone who’s ever struggled to make their authentic way into the world as a young adult because they didn’t match the world’s very restrictively narrow idea of what a person should be sexually, Heartstopper has been a liberating revelation. Warmly inclusive and funny and heartfelt to a Continue Reading
Halloween graphic novel review: The Stuff of Legend – Book 2: The Jungle by Mike Raight and Brian Smith with illustrations by Charles Paul Wilson III
Being afraid of the dark is one of those thing childish things we re supposed to put aside as we grow older. After all, the idea that evil and terrible things lurk in the places where there is no light, where our view is limited or outright obscured, is surely Continue Reading
Graphic novel review: Peculiar Woods (Vol. 2) – The Mystery of the Intelligents by Andrés J. Colmenares
(courtesy Simon & Schuster) It’s wonderful when a creator can make a cliffhanger moment pay off. If you recall, the first Peculiar Woods story, The Ancient Underwater City, ended definitively, yes, but a tantalising cliffhanger moment woven in, and in its sequel, The Mystery of the Intelligents, Andrés J. Colmenares Continue Reading
Fall hard, love harder: Thoughts on Heartstopper season 3
(courtesy IMP Awards) Watching a new season of Heartstopper, just like reading the graphic novels upon which they are based, feels like coming home. That may sound like an extravagantly sentimental thing to say, but Alice Oseman’s wondrously inclusive creation feels, even at its darkest and most seriously contemplative (and Continue Reading
Graphic novel review: Alice Ever After by Dan Panosian (writer) and Giorgio Spalletta (artist)
(courtesy BOOM! Studios) SNAPSHOTAlice first visited Wonderland as a child. Now grown up, it’s become her only escape from a cold, harsh world that feels even less real—a distant family, a tormented lover, and a father with secrets he’ll do anything to protect. But in order to return to her Continue Reading