Man, it is such a jarring change to go from Mikel Janín's beautiful rendition of Dick Grayson to the, uh, more utilitarian version by Stephen Mooney at the end. Janín does justice to Dick's much vaunted physique in addition to creating layouts to emphasize his acrobatics. It's lovely and dynamic and is one of the few times a comic book seems to be catering to the (het) female gaze.



I am absolutely enamored.

To be honest, most of this four star rating is for the art. Otherwise, Grayson, Vol.1 is a pretty standard spy story. Dick's morals are too inflexible to be a truly successful infiltration agent - a conflict between his ingrained beliefs and Spyral's mission parameters has already arisen, endangering his cover. Any one of the other Birb Family™ would have been a better fit (if you take away the extenuating circumstances of his unmasking and/or fake death).

Reread this today and realized I never catalogued it on Goodreads, an unfathomable event for one as twitchy as I am about online organization.

What can I say, really, to encapsulate how I feel about Kate Beaton? Words fail me. Have some of my favorite moments from this book instead.









You feel it too, right? Yeah, you get it.

"A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves."

With this opening line, we are thrown into the start of Doughty's career in the death industry. The candid tone of this memoir was so immediately engrossing, I found myself actively slowing down my reading speed so that I could savor the combination of hilarity and horror in her work. Caitlin Doughty has my sense of humor - I want to be her friend, I want to listen to her talk about this for hours. For now, I'll settle for another book like this.

Through carefully crafted anecdotes in her career that were effortlessly interspersed with history of the death industry, I learned enough to be curious enough to look through the want ads in my own area. Death is endlessly fascinating and all the fiddly bits surrounding it in our society just make it more so. For example, I never once thought about who it was that picks up the body of someone who has died (naturally) in their own home - turns out, you can call a mortician for that.

I would read an entire book about Doughty and her colleague Chris and their improbable body removals.

We continued into a bedroom to find Mom. As we pulled out the sheet to shroud her, the woman hurled her body over her mother, wailing dramatically. “No, Mother, no, no! I need you, Mother, don’t leave me!”


This is what raw human emotion should look like. It had all the signs: death, loss, gut-wrenching wailing. I wanted to be moved, but I wasn’t. “Guilt,” Chris mumbled under his breath.


“What?” I whispered back.


“Guilt. I’ve seen this so many times. She hasn’t visited her for years. Now she’s here acting like she can’t live without her mother. It’s bullshit, Cat,” he said. And I knew he was right.

I adore this passage. It says quite a lot about those in the industry and their ability to cold read the living people they're forced to deal with - people who are in the throes of what may be the worst days of their lives. For better (compassion, empathy, understanding) or worse (upselling a gold-plated casket).

Doughty is firm on the idea that modern culture thrives on the concept of death denial and with endless examples (from the multimillion dollar anti-aging beauty industry to the extensive embalming processes), I'm convinced. Throw me in a ditch with a handful of seeds when I’m done for in this world, I’m uninterested in being preserved like some sort of doll.

Accepting death doesn’t mean that you won’t be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief, unburdened by bigger existential questions like “Why do people die?” and “Why is this happening to me?” Death isn’t happening to you. Death is happening to us all.

If you have the least amount of curiosity about what happens in a crematory and a relatively liberal sense of humor regarding dead bodies, pick this up. It is absorbing, funny and informative. I cannot say enough excellent things about it.

I am a life-long Archie fan and I was pretty excited to hear of a reboot with Mark Waid at the helm and even more so when Fiona Staples was added as the artist to start the series off. Archie may hold a lot of nostalgic value, but seeing them move forward into the modern world is like having my cake and eating it too.

Outside the vibrancy of the updated designs, the character complexity Waid has created is exactly what this franchise needed. Riverdale has been reborn into the 21st century, but Waid has managed to keep with the roots of the main cast- Jughead's deadpan snark is overwhelmingly present, Betty is everyone's sweetheart and Reggie is still kind of a fuckboy. The best thing to come out of this is that Archie is no longer just the indecisive dick who is leading Betty on; in this issue it's clear their relationship was ended mutually with the mysterious Lipstick Incident.



While we're being reintroduced to the cast, we also see that there's some scheming going on in the background. A handful of classmates who are (perhaps unhealthily) invested in Betty and Archie as a couple want to "help" get them back together and Jughead plays all sides in order to do what he thinks is best for his BFF. It all ends just as he planned. (Is it obvious yet who my favorite character is?)

Overall, a really promising start for the reboot.

Introducing Veronica!



She and Jughead are never going to be buds - I think Jughead sees too much of who he could have been in her behavior.

Archie becomes her pack mule almost immediately, due to a combination of "horndoggedness" and the implication of blackmail. This is just another new dimension added to the relationship thanks to the reboot!

The Lipstick Incident is revealed! The impetus for the break-up of Riverdale's It Couple is actually kind of wonderful - realism in a coming-of-age story without making anyone the villain.