This was so simple and focused and gutting and good! It is what it is really, not much to say about it. I think it captures relationships in your youth and memories that don’t go away. They’re even giants in their own right on the page, but don’t know it. So much about this just works.

Walden does such a great job of conveying meaning in short, abstract ways. I feel like I instantly know the protagonist in most of her comics almost immediately. This huge swath of time in such a short time and it’s theme was done really well, I think. Queer longing is dripping off the page, and as always, the conflict and resolution come without judgment, but still feel gutting.

Helpful for continuity but pretty uneven, varying in interest. I pretty much just wasn’t sure how to read the now lauded New Mutants, and quickly catch-up, and I guess I could do it this way, selectively reading those from each of these at the library, but it’d be pretty courteous.

I can see why people like this run so much. There’s quite a few great issues and minimal disruption from the X of swords event, a nice bookending arc too, with the forge stuff I had forgotten about after reading that huge omnibus. Near the end it suddenly does feel pretty disjointed, being at a ball and a kind of random previous issue. Unfortunate, as it was really great until the very rocky finale. Why you’d end it like that, I don’t know. I guess it’s supposed to whet your appetite for the hellfire gala but instead I just wondered what the heck was going on and why is there basically a cliffhanger something random and a setup to a completely different event…?

Like all events, did this NEED to be 720 pages? No, of course not. I really liked the ending, though. It does a lot of worldbuilding related to Apocalypse and has the mutants face their first real crisis since the last event, which I also thought worked well. Had it not been so bloated, it’d have been fantastic. I didn’t know much about Apocalypse backstory but this seems like it expands a lot on what was hugely contrived before. Though, the inception of the event was also wildly contrived. A strange contest where people had to find swords and then do weird feats generally not involving swords but it was all machinations. I think if you don’t like the end this would be a massive, massive struggle.

Great run. To bad it ended after just three volumes. This one is how Magik loses her groove and gets it back again, more-or-less. I’m not wild about limbo but did like the focus on character development, since I don’t know that character well at all. Prefer the Krakoa stuff, but this was still better than average in every respect.

I can see why this made so many top lists in 2021! By far the most interesting utilization of Krakoa era rejiggering. An actual culture emerging, through the young mutants there. An emphasis on being different than humanity in every respect and on restorative Justice. It’s just really excellent on all fronts. The only (slightly) annoying thing was the artist change up in the last issue. I hate when that happens, especially when the artist(s) are excellent. I really didn’t care for that last one, but the stand by for the series so far has been so great, the reader is spoiled rotten.

By far utilizing the Krakoa era in an interesting direction, compared to the other series I read, including the mainline X-men from Hickman who conceived of it—this is far more down to earth and interrogates the younger mutants coming to terms with this entirely new existence, as well as who gets to be reborn and who doesn’t, and why. This naturally segues into queer themes about othering and colonization and the rift between parent and child.

It’s very excellent. It’s also very YA I would say, in a way the other X titles I read are not. The entire arc is fairly slow and intentional. It does set up a big bad, but in a way that makes sense for the teenagers and in a thought provoking way. It’s so different and really excellent.

The story of an old man, trying to make the monthly rent writing pulps using his own checkered past as inspiration. Only, he’s got a bum ticker, as they say, and things are getting more desperate—sending him careening into the path of an unlikely compatriot with an unusual job that just might do some good.

What a phenomenal feat this is. In just 80 some odd pages, Brubaker manages to tell an entire life story and an action filled, tragic past concept, along with a heist plot. It is perfection. Anyone into a Wild West meets real American Dream should check it out. And to boot, it is anti-fascist in another surprising way. Stunning stuff.

Pretty wild. Told from a narrator in our own time, and almost all exposition / world building, we learn that in the far future magic returned and left, and in a desperate bid to have it return so that a future kingdom isn’t wiped out (I think?)—the son of a queen is sent back to the past to change some stuff. It’s very gothic and the illustrations are great. The dialogue is what I would call not great. Very conversational and sometimes annoying. But it’s gorgeous and has a cool concept, so I’m in. Apparently a deluxe edition will collect all these in April, so I’ll wait for that. Because “deluxe” with Image usually means oversized. And I like oversized comic presentations a lot.