Fantastic stuff. A wide assortment of contributors talk about what their diagnosis means for them, as well as demystifying certain things in the public consciousness. Fantastic project, well executed. Very glad to see it in the list of Eisners this year.

It’s nice to be back in the Sandman universe, whenever I get the chance. This foray is more successful than not, but also pretty disjointed and plodding. A young artist is being hunted by weird killers who look like they’re out of an S&M shop (which feels a bit needlessly edgy and purposeless), and she stands out as a target because she paints the Corinthian and doesn’t dream. Simultaneously, said Corinthian is interested in her, and their paths collide.

This was very breadcrumb storytelling. In all these issues not much actually happened and the last issue was a complete aside after a new arc was initiated. The artwork also varies greatly, with many different people sliding into issues. It’s interesting but I’m not hot and heavy to pick up the next set, whenever that should release.

I can see why this made the Eisner noms. A story of a young girl who draws manga entering a time in her life when doing so is considered childish, meets a truant girl with a similar passion, and where their lives take them. It’s post modern in the meta sense, but it’s also not very clear when it alters the expectations the story has set already. Time jumps and other alterations come out of left field. So, while it’s interesting, the actual execution feels really to be desired, for me.

This is in contention for one of the best comics I’ve ever read. It’s up there with Sandman, for me. More than just being a really great super hero comic, that understand the character of Supergirl fundamentally, this is also a fantastic piece of SFF writing, coupled with impeccable visual craft. There are many incredible panels throughout, and the story matches the caliber of talent on display here.

It also is not narrated by Supergirl, but as a retrospective by a young girl on an alien planet that crosses path with her, after her father is murdered, and she sets off on a path to kill the person who did it. What follows is a truly epic, galaxy spanning tale. At once weird SFF and a story about empathy itself and that being the heart of what is attacked in “super” stories. It talks about murder and genocide and ties them to Supergirl’s much different past than the main man—as well as the forging of a friendship between different, but similar women.

It is refreshing and emotional, completely different than most stories of the genre and adjacent associations. It is one of those books that becomes a litmus test for which other stories are measured against, for me. An all-time favourite, hands down.

This is very informative and the information design is great. I can’t say I ever cared to know about pinball, but this was an Eisner book, so I checked it out anyway. To be honest, even when I was a kid, enamoured with arcades, pinball never once drew me in. The history of the game was interesting and I had no idea there was such a sub culture around it, but it makes sense. There is one around basically everything and we live in globalized times, so to each their own.

I do think that even though this is a teaching text, and in them reiteration is good, but there was facts repeated many times over only pages apart, and those stick out to me as annoying because they were also making the same points with the same information. How it’s presented is exceptional, though.

A thief is betrayed and thought dead, only he comes back to get even. The visuals are fantastic, the story itself is wildly predictable and the exposition very clumsy. I really don’t get the hype around it. No character was complex enough to be interesting, none of them were likeable, and they have antiquated, wind-up toy motivations that just put them on the most cookie-cutter paths. Never a moment to pass up either showing women beat up or used for sex, usually half naked, and all drawn so much the same I couldn’t say for sure which woman was whom if their pictures were in a line-up right now, after just reading it in one sitting.

One of the weaker efforts from King, that I’ve read so far. There is a dual timeline thing happening with an Ancient Greek play, as well as a few super villains teaming up to steal an item of some importance to Batman. A new villain is introduced, the execution was fine—but it’s definitely too convoluted and has little pay off, despite the constant drawing out of the mystery and its parallels, making it feel underwhelming and a bit forgettable.

Another Eisner contender. Very glad to see this included, as the more information like this in a consumable format, the better. This chronicles the author’s relationship with a narcissist and the subsequent information she learned about what happened to her and why she still felt like a train wreck, even after being free of it.

The one flaw in this is the transition to just an absolute inundation of information on what was done to her, when she seeks help at a psychiatrist. But we already know, from the very start, when there’s fourth wall break and she talks about how this isn’t a love story and it’s actually about her being manipulated. I think it would have been a lot better of a structure to have put the information as to what Marcus did as it occurs, and not have the infographics the last quarter of the entire book.

A slow burn, methodically paced and plotted story about a former police officer who goes overseas to the war, only to get embroiled in a complex murder. With the recruit of a native police officer, they try to dig into it, only to bite off more than they can chew. There’s a lot about the politics and cultural differences between the countries. It shows that there is no simple solution to anything, and the religious undertones thematically suggest a tragedy of all aspects of the story, due to the ignorance of the complexities.

As always with Ito, this is wild, wild stuff. And disturbing, of course; we can’t forget about that. It begins with a small group who met online to form a suicide pact, shortly thereafter descending in a wild ride. Doppelgängers and robots show up in the first few pages.

Thematically, I think this actually was successful. All the other works I’ve tried from Ito start off interesting, especially thematically, but are then severely undermined as the stakes always rise to bombastic levels. This did that as well, to be sure, but it actually remains coherent throughout.