While the first half is pretty fun, with the remixing of the world and characters feeling pretty organic and fresh—the second half descends into a very uninteresting direction as well as an illustration change-up that is far worse than the original. Plot wise, the major issue is the writer having a thing for melodrama that is even unsuited for high schoolers, because they’ve a penchant for skipping ahead to unearned points of interest, leaving these moments completely devoid of emotional windup. So much happens offscreen in an effort to always have something wild occurring, that it actually just makes no sense at all most of the time. There are a few interesting plot developments, but again, culminations of them fire off before any connective tissue is formed. And then at the end, for some reason, there’s a bunch of random one-off issues. It’s very strange. The cover gallery at the end is great.

As a side note: the build quality of this is particularly terrible. Even with my stretching the spine carefully, which you ought to do with any of these omnibuses imo, it still became almost completely unseated to the spine just from turning the pages normally. Read it digitally or in trade paperbacks, the glue is probably defective on these.

What I like about King is his meta intentions in his works. There seems to usually be a direct conversation with the reader without a prescriptive answer, and a rumination on the form of comics itself usually included in the bundle.

In this case, an investigator is put on a case where an attempted assassination led to the deaths of two costume wearing seemingly nobodies. One of them presenting as the titular “hero”. The plot is mainly about ideas themselves, and how they can colonize individuals. Conspiracy theories are seductive because of their appeal to creating a specific out-group, but also because a very good story can radicalize and galvanize individuals. The themes, coupled to a pretty fun plot thread and back story to these people believing they’re doing some good, attempting to assassinate the president elect, prompt interesting questions. That’s what puts it miles ahead of most books that are far less ambitious but probably also more successful.

But the success of the ending of the plot isn’t the point. Think of King like a lobbyist. The story is a way of conveying both sides of an argument, and he’s after the reader themselves - in the meta context I mentioned - and so, even the plot can have a derivative ending, and still succeed at doing what the point of the piece actually is, divorced from simply be a super hero detective story.

Can people, completely apathetic and disaffected by real damage, be changed by stories on a page? Despite consuming and loving stories about absolute morality and good and evil, much of society doesn’t show its ideals. Even in the world of this comic, where super heroes actually existed and fought, rampant corruption and the rise of a “conservative revolution” is heralded with the coming of a new president, wanting, outright, to be the president forever, against the constitution. And is still elected, with sociopathic morals and goals in mind. What would force an individual to act? How far would they go? What is too far, in such a case?

In a typical story like this you learn motive, means, opportunity, possibly, and that’s about it. This is not that story; I can see why it’s polarizing. At the very least, it’s more compelling because it is different.

Also: the hardcover book’s binding is terrible, so I’d warn people away from that format. It digs into the gutter and makes a few pages harder to read. The art style isn’t my favourite either; hence the 4 stars instead of 5. Good paneling and forgettable colours. I think this could have really been more elevated with a pairing of graphic content to the script, which would have sold the dialogue far more, as it is plentiful.

I can see why this run is so popular. While the artwork isn’t something I super keen on, looking like 90s Spawn to me, kind of, the plot is a lot less run-and-gun, which is what I expect and avoid from venom runs. Instead, a new villain surfaced, Knull (which, funnily enough I’m playing that Marvel Snap game and saw that card and had no idea who they were!), and they actually add a whole heck of a lot to the backstory of the symbiotic creatures. It’s a very fun tie-in to the God Bomb Thor run too, which I loved, so there’s a lot going for it.

As it goes on, I will say my interest weaned somewhat, and this doesn’t cover the full arc, instead taking a circuitous path to get back to Knull, and I can see why… the B plot was just not as interesting, especially for that many issues. Maybe half the book? Something like that. I’d probably read the next volume if it was put in front of me but won’t go looking for it. But it’s far and away the most engaging and compelling Venom run I’ve ever encountered.

This is one of the most engaging epic fantasy books I’ve ever read. Which is the opposite tac most authors take in this genre. Most of the time, epic means slow to build and come together, but here, because there are multiple, shifting perspectives and a truly wondrous world that feels completely new, rather than derivatives, again, expected in this genre, it is almost impossible to soak up everything that is happening. I felt similarly with The Vanished Birds; a re read would be almost required, but also exciting because so much happens and is happening during any given page. Large chunks of time can go by in a page or two, whole stories from people never before or seen or seen again are told. It’s honestly a staggering amount of information, and that’s why I felt like it was the kind of book you first have to let wash over you, and then process again.

You are an audience member to a play unfurling, telling the history of a spear, a dynasty, and two individuals crossing a nation at and after a crossroads. Sometimes the perspective goes inside these individuals, sometimes it encapsulates everyone; other times a narrator is basically giving stage directions and giving you meta knowledge about what’s happening on the stage. It’s a truly novel approach and completely captivating.

Even at a surface level, having consumed it on audio only, and felt inundated with the story, I think this will be one of my favourite fantasy books, possibly of all time. There is a conversation with morality, complex characters, queerness, nuanced and layered storytelling, and worldbuilding that felt completely new to me. I cannot wait to re read it at some point, on the page, preferably.

This story is split between a father with chronic depression, trying to figure out who he is after at the impetus of a bad situation he cultivated with a co worker, the other half being that man’s daughter, who similarly finds herself at a crossroads. Both are indigenous and that feeling of not belonging playing a roll, but both are grounded in teenage problems and something like mid-life crisis conjoined with mental health.

Overall, I felt the writing was indicative of YA, which this author has written most of. The marketing of it as adult fiction might not have been the best choice, though one of the characters is an adult. There’s no content I’d label as strictly adult fiction, either. The plot is fairly basic, the interiority is very tell and not show, sometimes reiterating the same points. The dialogue is more concerned with feeling natural than being very effective. It is very simplistic and communicates a prescriptive message. It just feels like a YA book, and I had much higher expectations.

Strayed is really exceptional at communicating effectively with empathy and speaking from a place of honesty, and you learn a lot about why that is through this. This is great at illustrating what differentiates her as a writer from essentially anyone else. I can’t think of another author who can organize her thoughts like this and communicate them as succinctly. She speaks a lot about radical empathy and this is one of the rare times I’d actually apply it. Because she doesn’t simply set out to make feel better, she applies critical thinking with a delivery that is genuinely kind.

I really liked how many queer aspects came up to this too. Sage must have had a very wide range of letters to be able to cherry pick these out. Like most fantastic pieces of writing, this is able to touch on a deeply human, universal experience. I can’t imagine anyone finding something to connect with.

I will say that the introduction and other pieces about this probably don’t need to be there and were more padding than anything else. The letters and responses speak for themselves, there’s really no reason to add so much added context from multiple people (in the audiobook version).

Some of these are really, really funny and on point, others, probably more so, feel reiterative when you read them back-to-back, so as to become completely forgettable. It’s worth a look; some, as I say, are really stand-out, but there’s a lot of classic book titles reimagined, or classic plots slightly tweaked, type stuff. Went from “heh”, to “I get it, buddy.”

3.5 rounded up, because I think the meat of the content here is good: A woman speaking up about her experience at two different camps over the course of two years. And Fort Mac, though I’ve only worked in the city itself, is exactly like that, and I’ve hired and interacted with plenty of men who worked those jobs for a number of years, and yeah, all the ones I’ve hired were like that, so there’s that.

My main issues with this are simply structural. There’s no sense of time whatsoever, as most of it is 1-4 page vignettes of scenes she remembers while there. Interspersed are some exposition heavy dialogue conversations where the only interiority she has is voiced, as there’s no other means of delivering it used—a fad in comics I am baffled with (by all means, get rid of thought bubbles, but what about just any interiority with captioning at the top? Why is that out? I don’t get it)—it makes the dialogue feel incredibly stilted and jarring, because everything else is slice-of-life, verisimilitude interactions and memories.

There is a linear progression of the story because it’s two years at the job with a break in between. Yet, when she’s actually on the job there’s just these completely random scenes with no transitioning. There isn’t even really time to process a heavy conversation or interaction, before there’s a new completely different thing occurring on the next page, and you’re resetting time and place and characters.

Maybe it’s the actual style, as I haven’t read many graphic memories or comics like these, in particular? But it just felt like it lacked a lot of cohesion and a lot of interiority you’d expect from any other kind of memoir. It’s just: This Happened. And another this happened. Perhaps it’s so revelatory for others because they don’t know about the oil sands or hyper masculine dominated spaces, or assume Canada is amazing and none of these things take place, still on a daily occurrence, because we refuse to hold oil, but really all big Corp to any accountability here, but to someone familiar with these things, I was left wanting more. Perhaps the high acclaim gave me higher expectations as well?

This was much better than I had expected. Basically, a girl blows into town when a town has a myriad of child murders and nothing much to go on, until one kid survives after seeing his friends murdered. He’s lying to the police about what actually happened.

The entire volume is centered around this one monster, so it’s not a monster of the week situation, which I’d expected. There’s nothing completely new here either, but it does execute its story well, pacing out quite a long arc. I really like the main mysterious girl character. The creatures themselves, again, nothing new, but it is more innovative than stories like these. Though this trend of literalizing beliefs is interesting. If you want the best, more literary version of this, you’d probably pick up something like Unwritten, or even Sandman, peripherally, has some things in common with how the creatures work.

This is a lot more grounded in horror, but in a cerebral, atmospheric way, so I dug it. I’ll be looking out for more volumes. Love the artwork and colouring. The paneling is a mixed bag: digitally it would be perfect; on the page, even with good gutter, it can be confusing to follow if it’s a double page spread moving left to right as one piece, or else flowing on one page normally. It is eclectic and engaging anyway, which is a step above most.

This was fine. It should have been something I liked more, with two badass queer characters put in a ghost fighting conflict. It’s fast-paced and very plotty. Not wildly into the art or colouring. It’s fun, but that’s about all it was, for me.