mercedes's Reviews (299)

I saw this on the shelf and couldn’t not buy it. Paranormal romances! Purple and pink art in gorgeous monochrome and duochrome colours, which is a favourite style of mine. I didn’t know anything about it, I’d never heard of EX.Mag before, but the concept of an anthology with a vampire on the front cover intrigued me immensely. 
 
It starts out with story 1, the office fairy, which is about a production worker who is taken advantage of by her job, and an um… office fairy. The art was super cute but I just didn’t buy the romance aspect of this, it didn’t feel romantic at all. Not bad by any means but I wasn’t too invested. 

 

Next is ex girlfriend, a fairly short story of a woman being haunted by her ex. This was a lot more morbid than I thought it was going to be and I found it a little upsetting, but the art! Simple in the best way and so fun at times. 

 

A really strong story called return to sender came next, about a post-girl who finds a letter with no address. The romance in this was the best so far, really cute story about two people who love each other very much, separated by unfortunate circumstances. Really good art, really good story. 

 

The fourth was a story called karate police written by 7 year old Yuna, and honestly I really appreciated it being in the middle here. I was big on writing as a kid and I love the ways kids write, so it was nice to have something amusing and simple that got straight down to business with the plot interspersed in this book. 

 

Eros/Agape was a chapter of solely art, and it was gorgeous! Stunning to look at, I honestly can’t decide which page is my favourite. I wish more comics adopted the monochrome colouring style because it just looks fabulous. 

 

Man in passing made me want to cry. It was so touching… it pulled on my heartstrings. It had such a unique art style and was a great combination of being cute and also kind of heartbreaking. 

 

Lord. Occupational Hazard was an amazing story. I’m in awe. And also, I want more of it. Despite it being the longest story in the anthology, I am now addicted and need more. Kind of like our protagonist! Really interesting dynamics, cool monster designs and of course, gorgeous art being that it’s by Leslie Hung. 

 

The penultimate story, our house, is by far the scariest. A house with a foot fetish doesn’t sound like something necessarily nightmare worthy but it definitely is. The art is funky and the story absolutely brings something new to the table where horror stories are concerned. 

 

The last comic was a little 5 page story with no dialogue. Nice art though!
 
All in all I really enjoyed this. Occupational hazard was probably my favourite with return to sender coming in next. The art was really lovely in each and every story and now I want to get the other volumes!!!! That said. Very disappointed there were no vampire stories when there was a vampire on the cover :( vampires are top tier monsters. 

I really did not like this volume, oof. It starts out with issue #16, which is basically unreadable. It has the worst comic format I've ever seen in my life, I like comics for their traditional format and not for a double page spread of a small diary on a table that I have to zoom in on to even have a slight chance of making out the words on the page. I really do not like when comics use cursive for diary entries, but is one of the worst examples I've seen. Moving on...

I just found the issues in this volume to be really lacklustre. I don't think Red and Michael's stories work when they're separate, without family, and the plot points also just really bored me. I don't care about tactical war stuff at all, and a lot of this volume was just reading about soldiers discussing what their next move is and yeah... it's not for me.

I have very differing opinions about this volume... issues #11-13 were mediocre and boring, if not downright bad. The character of Xolani was a total creep and put a bad taste in my mouth, and it was disappointing because part of why I had liked Forever as a character was because she wasn't sexualised. Also, the font used for Mister Li was almost unreadable to me and I had to really concentrate to make out some of the words.

That said, issues #14 and #15 were the best so far and definitely the most exciting, by a mile. Forever and Sonja's friendship is so sweet (not to mention Joacquim), I really liked seeing how the Lazari stick up for each other when their families aren't around. The action scenes between Forever and Sonja really were a glory to behold.

Took me a bit to get into this, but I ended up really loving it! The art was gorgeous—seriously some of the best art I've ever seen. Some panels I just had to sit there and admire every detail, it was that level of amazing. I love the character design and the outfits, I'm really intrigued to see where this goes. Really appreciate how unique the magic is, too. 

 Just as strong (and occasionally weak) as the first volume, but I can't help but be slightly agitated with the direction of the story.

The new focus on a family of "waste" was fairly enjoyable—I found their story touching and the characters themselves likeable. In fact I'd say they're the most interesting part about the story so far, I'm certainly (in this volume at least) more invested in them than in Forever, or any of the Carlyle family for that matter.

However, I wish the concept of Lazarus' had been explained first. Yes, we got some Forever flashbacks but there has been really no further explanation of what she even is, other than that she's genetically engineered/modified.