I'm honestly a little confused about what happened here.
I know this is a western, and people who die go to The Other Place, and sometimes come back to life, but we learnt so little about the main character that I'm entirely unsure of her plot and arc for the series.

I wasn't invested so I didn't take in any of the names of the characters, but I know the other main is desperate to get his wife's soul back, and will go to extreme and unconventional lengths in order to make that happen.

The art is a little simplistic and lacking for me, as is the story, but seeing as this is only a four issue series, I'll stick around for #2.

I love and adore anything that even speaks to a noir settings with mobsters and old glamour, so I love whenever a new issue of Angel City comes out.
This is the second to last issue, and our protagonist Delores is sure in a lot of trouble.

She's constantly being shot at and putting her life on the line in this issue and the stakes were very high and very present. I'm glad she's got multiple people looking out for her, and even though she's been slightly diverted off course, I really believe someone as strong as her can take down the bad guys.

I love that Angel City draws inspiration from real life people and real life events because it just adds that bit extra to the drama.

I'm gonna miss this comic when it ends, but we sure are better for having it.

We've still applied the standard network reality casting percentages: fifty percent male, fifty percent female; sixty percent white, thirty percent ethnic, ten percent undetermined; balanced dispersal of ages from fourteen to eighteen; plus the four Golden Tokens: gay, foreigner, disabled, and orphan.

Gosh, I'm honestly a little bit at a loss on how exactly to review this book.
It tries to be many things at once; a satire on society and reality television, a survival story involving adolescents, a study in excess and greed and disparity between social classes, and then some science-fiction thrown in.

Boilded down, Waste of Space is a teen Big Brother that supposedly takes places in space (spoiler alert: it doesn't actually).

Waste of Space follows Chazz Young, a hotshot producer at a cable network called DV8 that shows trashy but enjoyable reality TV (so something like Bravo essentially), who gets the idea to create a show about sending kids into space and filming it. But he's not actually going to send them into space obviously, just make them and anyone watching the show think that he is. Oh, and he's pretty much doing everything on the fly and just going with the flow. It's all very blasé in the writers room for this show.

He holds auditions in malls across America and manipulates kids into signing contracts. There's very minimal time between developing the show and it being on air. And once it's on air it's a huge, astronomical hit, but of course something is bound to go wrong, and it does, completely.
It's all fast paced, and it's actually fun to read. I enjoyed the introduction to the characters and the absolute mania of development more than the actual show and plot, which took up most of the book naturally.

The book is written as a report, with an intern at DV8 compiling evidence in order to determine what actually happened during the duration of Waste Of Space's development, from the initial idea to the last aired episode. Waste Of Space is styled as a collection of audio and video transcripts, so if that's not your thing then you probably won't enjoy 500+ pages of it.
The story is split into four parts; Part One - Preproduction, Part Two - Production, Part Three - The Last Day, and Part Four - Post-Production. Again in all of these we have interviews, transcripts of live and recorded segments for the aired episodes, and transcripts of the live feeds.

At it's core, this is a story about exploration and exploitation. Everyone is exploited, and everyone learns something new about themselves and those around them. Characters who we think are one thing turn out to be another. It's a game, just like reality shows are. Chazz is toying with the audience, all of the teens are toying with each other, and the scientists are doing a little bit of playing themselves.

There were some surprises, some twists and turns, and this book definitely went places that I wasn't expecting. You go into this expecting the antagonist to be one person but it turns out to be someone completely different. There isn't one singular completely good guy, and no one singular completely good guy. Everyone in this book is flawed, even the slightly two-dimensional and underdeveloped characters.

This is a long book, with too many characters trying to do and be too many different things, but it's definitely a fun ride (pun intended).

The way the book ends is kind of hopeful in a completely terrifying way. The whole concept of this book is utterly terrifying, but the fact that one of the contestants is god knows where

Spoiler

after casually walking into a black hole

and we don't really see the aftermath of it is worrying.
No way would a show like this be on the air now, no way, but even with the slight fantasy/sci-fi setting, it does raise a lot of relatable issues.

If you want to read a book about a ton of teens being trapped together, then this is for you.
If you are looking for a book about space exploration then this probably isn't it (although some of the teens do genuinely believe they're in space right until the very end).
If you're just looking for a fun read, then this might be it.

I have been waiting not so patiently for almost an entire year for a new issue of Sex Criminals.
There's not another comic like it, nothing as sexual or raw but equally as funny and dramatic and thoughtful. It's truly one of a kind and I have truly missed it.

The (really supersized bumper) issue starts with a recap (which honestly, you kind of need after ten months) and Matt Fraction is as conversational and meta as always, and funny, never forget how funny this comic is.

So after a ten page recap we finally get into the issue, which is essentially all about Jon and Suze's relationship and them trying to figure out what they want in the future and how they're going to fit into each other's lives and their goals. Jon is kinda reluctant, but Suze isn't pushing it, and the kind of have some sort of plan written down in between all the sex they're having.
It's nice and sweet in a way. These guys are slightly directionless, but they're trying to make it work, and that's something really relatable.

We didn't get a ton of development with the sex cops or any character who isn't Jon or Suze but it was just nice to be back in this world.

Man I've missed Matt and Chip.