Whoa, OMNIVORE edition! Have I bitten off more Chew than I can chew? NO! This is the awesome epic climax of the Vampire storyline as the FDA moves against the Lithuanian cibopath resulting in a bloodbath that includes Tony's daughter Olive. Tony reacts as you might expect, but in order to defeat them Vampire there's one thing he must do, one terrible, awful, no-good thing and he doesn't want to do it It all gets really, really bad-ass.

Every panel in this series is epic: big baroque, far-out space-opera. Old John Prophet, who only turned up at the end of volume one, sets out to build an alliance against the reviving Earth Empire, collecting a motley crew of comrades including old team-members Diehard and Jaxson. Crowded with ideas and settings and alien life-forms and humans long transformed into the alien, just as this comic has transformed Prophet into something exotic and strange and magnificent.

In a residential high-rise block, a string of mysterious deaths attracts the attention of the local police, but they are utterly baffled by the lack of connection, motive or even means, to the extent they begin to think about supernatural causes - but the truth is, a powerful psychic, an old man sunk into the second childhood of senility, is killing people on avaricious whims. The arrival of a young girl with powers to rival his own prompts him to attack a perceived threat with devastating consequences. The girl is more powerful, but the old man is wily and ruthless. The psychic war that breaks out across the apartment block is dizzying, dynamic, with stunning shifts in perspective across the modern architecture and tearing through the lives of the modern community.

Though Otomo expanded on themes from Domu in the science fictional Akira, Domu is very much a horror comic, with haunting, unsettling moments, ugly violence, strange visions, psychological manipulation and after the shattering pyrotechnocs of the central confrontation, an amazing climax of quieter, slowly building tension.

Tetsuooooo is with the military but his new playmates don't like him, Kanedaaaaa is in hiding and out for revenge, Kei is walking through walls, the Colonel is gruff and ruthless, scientists are way too willing to do horrible things in the name of of science, the resistance resists, the military militarises, A-KI-RA is an enigma that is going to kill us all. Tesuooooo wants to meet A-KI-RA and not all the military might in Neo-Tokyo will stop him. Stuff E*X*P*L*O*D*E*S. Amazingly.

Akira is awake and what a cute bundle of untapped psychic force of creation strong eough to shatter the world he turns out to be! On the run and hiding with the awesome Chiyoko, Kei and Kaneda reach out to the resistance, but there is treachery afoot! With the Colonel and the military and two factions of the resistance after them, and after Akira the actions rolls furiously through the city until everything builds to the biggest E*X*P*L*O*S*I*O*N of them all, a sequence up there with Moore's Miracleman for sheer destructive power unleashed on the pages of a comic book. It is off the charts. And this is where the film ended. The comic is only getting started.

What Akira did for E*X*P*L*O*S*I*O*N*S, The Chuckling Whatsit does for murders. Hardly a page goes by without some character getting murdered horribly, usually by a man in a hideous mask with a grotesque knife. Murder, murder, murder. But why? Who is killing all the astrologers? Is it the Gull Street Ghoul back again? What is the secret society called GASH really all about? And why are they in fear of Ixnay? Will poor Mr Broom find his way through the grotesque and intricate murder labyrinth to the truth and survive? Horror and noir and German expressionism and surrealism and murder all mix it up in a ghastly and delightful entertainment of murder and psychosis and dark shadows and evil deeds. Bloody briliant.

Another cynical space opera that ties in with his Twilight mini-series, Ironwolf is an aristocrat on an isolated planetary system who renounces his title to overthrow the ruling monarchy. On the eve of a hollow victory, he is betrayed and wakes up after a long convalescence to find that history has left him behind. With the help of a few outworlders looking for a stolen immortality drug, he sets out to seek revenge and justice and more equitable political system.

It's all wonderfully baroque with fantastically moody Mike Mignola art.

New friends, new dangers, new keys. The kids are aware now that someone evil is after the keys for some reason, and though they don't yet know who, they're starting to fight back. I'm sorry, i'm not writing very good or long reviews today - this series continues brilliant.

The Earth Empire continues to rise and the John Prophet who opposes it tries to gather allies and there's a glimpse of a more terrible threat to everything. Bizarre, baroque space opera constantly going strange and wonderful and horrifying places.

It's impossible not to hear Bond as a British Archer in this, though whether that's because it's impossible to dissociate certain types of debonair asshole secret agent from Archer or whether Ellis wrote him that way is hard to be sure. However, this makes the book even more fun, as Bond is sent on the trail of a new and dangerous drug and ends up tangling with a demented biotech genius resulting in a ridiculously violent climax where Bond kills everybody. Sorry if that sounds like a spoiler. It's great. High-tech low-life spy bastardry.