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chuckro) wrote2025-07-18 09:20 pm
chuckro) wrote2025-07-18 09:20 pm
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Humble Comics Bundle: IDW 25th Anniversary
I wasn’t super worked-up about this bundle, but it had a bunch of things my dad was interested in, so we picked it up.
Arca - A fun (if mildly formulaic) sci-fi tale of a generation ship that fled a dying Earth, where the workers serve the “citizens” until they turn 18 and then supposedly get promoted. But like all good sci-fi, all is not as it seems. This is a Plato’s Cave allegory and a critique of what rich people will do to maintain their status (which works), though the big reveal at the end—while reasonably telegraphed—is a bit overdone.
Bermuda – A wealthy brother and sister are in a plane crash in the Bermuda Triangle, which strands them in an alternate-dimensional island full of monsters, pirates, and a wild action girl named “Bermuda.” This is a pretty standard bright-n-shiny adventure story that feels like the writer asked the artist, “What splash panels do you feel like drawing?” and then pants’d a story around that.
Brynmore - A recovering alcoholic moves back to the island he grew up on where everyone hates his family because one of his ancestors laid a curse on the place. It’s a horror movie done as a comic and it could have used a better editing pass on the script, because a lot of the details don’t actually make sense. (“Brynmore” is the name of the monster made by a different ancestor to deal with the curse from the first ancestor but somehow buried with the original curse attached and…yeah.) But hey, the guy reconciles with his estranged daughter and they can live happily together on the island where zombies killed almost everyone else.
Dark Spaces Wildfire - A heist comic starring an all-female crew of convicts working as firefighters and fighting wildfires. One of their number had been a CEO who took the fall for a ponzi scheme, and knows about a secret safehouse full of art and a crypto server that’s in the way of the fires. This tries to make some statements about how the systems screws people over and kinda bungles its message in the ending, but it’s a neat idea.
Earthdivers (Volume 1) - In 2112, Earth is a wasteland and many people have fled to space, but a small group of American Indians finds a cave that lets you travel through time, and send one of their number back to kill Columbus and send history in a different direction. (It goes poorly, especially since there are smaller badly-explained time loops happening at the same time.) The second volume (of three, irritatingly) is in the bundle, but I’m more interested in just finding a synopsis of the ending.
Essex County – Oh, Jeff Lemire. Though this thankfully is a series of stories about people who lived on family farms in Essex County (Ontario, Canada) and not about people with other organisms growing out of them. In the first book, Lester is obsessed with superheroes and lives with his uncle Ken after his mom dies of cancer; and has a Calvin-and-Hobbes-esque adventure with the former hockey player who works at the gas station (some of which might be imaginary). The second book revolves around an old man reminiscing about playing semipro hockey with his brother and how his life turned out. The third book follows the old man’s nurse and ties the stories together by revealing various family relations between the characters. This is a moderately poignant slice-of-life series that holds together decently by the end, but Lemire’s work continues to not be my favorite.
Underwater Welder – Meanwhile, also by Lemire is this story about Jack, whose wife is expecting their first child and who has a weird encounter while working underwater at an oil rig, which leads him on a psychedelic journey to make peace with his father’s disappearance years before. Might be a real supernatural occurrence; might just be in his head while he’s oxygen-deprived. Comes out as an interesting take on generational trauma, though.
From Hell – A massive collection of the 10-part Alan Moore graphic novel exploring his (semi-historically accurate) theories about the Jack the Ripper murders. (The prince had a baby with a low-class shopgirl and the whores learned about it, so the queen gave orders to have them all killed.) I gave it a try, but it somehow manages to skip around but also drag at the same time; and it’s insanely long.
Joe Hill’s Thumbprint - An adaptation of the novella by Joe Hill (which is reproduced in the same file—the graphic novel is only 75 pages) about a former Abu Ghirab interrogator attempting to readjust to civilian life and terrorized by someone leaving her thumbprints. It’s an interesting vignette but it feels unfinished—the backstory provides the twist, but the characters don’t develop or resolve at all.
Joe Hill’s The Cape - This one is apparently adapted from a short story by Joe Hill. It stars a man who has by all accounts fucked up his own life and discovers his childhood costume cape actually allows him to fly. Unfortunately, this doesn’t change the fact that he’s a giant asshole who blames everyone else for his problems and he goes all serial-killer. Toxic masculinity with a body count and you cheer when he dies; but frankly it has the same problem of not examining anything. The magic cape is the only thing that makes this a story at all, rather than an everyday news item about guy with a gun.
Sleeping Beauties (Volume 1) – A graphic adaptation of the novel by Steven King, this is a horror story about a “sleeping sickness” that only affects women, who then become crazed killers if forced awake. (Credit that it’s a magical sleeping sickness that is fully trans-inclusive, I guess?) A mysterious woman named Eve Black is soon the only woman left awake, while the others all meet in a psychedelic alternate dimension. It’s annoying that this volume is only half the novel, but fortunately Wikipedia was able to take me to the other half of the story. And it’s fine if you like Steven King’s style, but I wasn’t super into it anyway.
The October Faction (Volumes 1-5) - Tales of a dysfunctional family of monster hunters. If I had been reading these as pamphlets, I suspect I would have been really annoyed at how little happens in each chapter; basically each trade is about enough plot for a single episode of a TV series. Which means you have the juxtaposition of a few weeks worth of plot and character advancement and several years worth of power-creep of the team (particularly the kids and their magic). It’s not brilliant but it’s entertaining.
Locke and Key (Volume 1) - When a family is terrorized and the father killed by a serial killer, the survivors move back to the “Keyhouse” in Lovecraft, MA. It turns out this was the wrong move and a monster trapped in the house is working an elaborate plan to collect a series of magical keys. There were 5 more volumes in the bundle (the entire series), but despite the interesting worldbuilding this moved too slowly and spent too much time on splatter-horror elements to really win me.
They Called Us Enemy - George Takai’s memoir about his childhood in the Japanese internment camps during World War Two. This is an upsetting reminder of how much we’re living in a repeat of history because no one learned from it.
This bundle also included Cosmoknights, which I read a few years back (it’s a fun queer anti-princess sci-fantasy story) and lots of volumes of 30 Days of Night, which didn’t interest me.
Overall: Takai’s book was good; a bunch of the others were entertaining but didn’t stand out. It was kind of a forgettable lot, unfortunately.
Arca - A fun (if mildly formulaic) sci-fi tale of a generation ship that fled a dying Earth, where the workers serve the “citizens” until they turn 18 and then supposedly get promoted. But like all good sci-fi, all is not as it seems. This is a Plato’s Cave allegory and a critique of what rich people will do to maintain their status (which works), though the big reveal at the end—while reasonably telegraphed—is a bit overdone.
Bermuda – A wealthy brother and sister are in a plane crash in the Bermuda Triangle, which strands them in an alternate-dimensional island full of monsters, pirates, and a wild action girl named “Bermuda.” This is a pretty standard bright-n-shiny adventure story that feels like the writer asked the artist, “What splash panels do you feel like drawing?” and then pants’d a story around that.
Brynmore - A recovering alcoholic moves back to the island he grew up on where everyone hates his family because one of his ancestors laid a curse on the place. It’s a horror movie done as a comic and it could have used a better editing pass on the script, because a lot of the details don’t actually make sense. (“Brynmore” is the name of the monster made by a different ancestor to deal with the curse from the first ancestor but somehow buried with the original curse attached and…yeah.) But hey, the guy reconciles with his estranged daughter and they can live happily together on the island where zombies killed almost everyone else.
Dark Spaces Wildfire - A heist comic starring an all-female crew of convicts working as firefighters and fighting wildfires. One of their number had been a CEO who took the fall for a ponzi scheme, and knows about a secret safehouse full of art and a crypto server that’s in the way of the fires. This tries to make some statements about how the systems screws people over and kinda bungles its message in the ending, but it’s a neat idea.
Earthdivers (Volume 1) - In 2112, Earth is a wasteland and many people have fled to space, but a small group of American Indians finds a cave that lets you travel through time, and send one of their number back to kill Columbus and send history in a different direction. (It goes poorly, especially since there are smaller badly-explained time loops happening at the same time.) The second volume (of three, irritatingly) is in the bundle, but I’m more interested in just finding a synopsis of the ending.
Essex County – Oh, Jeff Lemire. Though this thankfully is a series of stories about people who lived on family farms in Essex County (Ontario, Canada) and not about people with other organisms growing out of them. In the first book, Lester is obsessed with superheroes and lives with his uncle Ken after his mom dies of cancer; and has a Calvin-and-Hobbes-esque adventure with the former hockey player who works at the gas station (some of which might be imaginary). The second book revolves around an old man reminiscing about playing semipro hockey with his brother and how his life turned out. The third book follows the old man’s nurse and ties the stories together by revealing various family relations between the characters. This is a moderately poignant slice-of-life series that holds together decently by the end, but Lemire’s work continues to not be my favorite.
Underwater Welder – Meanwhile, also by Lemire is this story about Jack, whose wife is expecting their first child and who has a weird encounter while working underwater at an oil rig, which leads him on a psychedelic journey to make peace with his father’s disappearance years before. Might be a real supernatural occurrence; might just be in his head while he’s oxygen-deprived. Comes out as an interesting take on generational trauma, though.
From Hell – A massive collection of the 10-part Alan Moore graphic novel exploring his (semi-historically accurate) theories about the Jack the Ripper murders. (The prince had a baby with a low-class shopgirl and the whores learned about it, so the queen gave orders to have them all killed.) I gave it a try, but it somehow manages to skip around but also drag at the same time; and it’s insanely long.
Joe Hill’s Thumbprint - An adaptation of the novella by Joe Hill (which is reproduced in the same file—the graphic novel is only 75 pages) about a former Abu Ghirab interrogator attempting to readjust to civilian life and terrorized by someone leaving her thumbprints. It’s an interesting vignette but it feels unfinished—the backstory provides the twist, but the characters don’t develop or resolve at all.
Joe Hill’s The Cape - This one is apparently adapted from a short story by Joe Hill. It stars a man who has by all accounts fucked up his own life and discovers his childhood costume cape actually allows him to fly. Unfortunately, this doesn’t change the fact that he’s a giant asshole who blames everyone else for his problems and he goes all serial-killer. Toxic masculinity with a body count and you cheer when he dies; but frankly it has the same problem of not examining anything. The magic cape is the only thing that makes this a story at all, rather than an everyday news item about guy with a gun.
Sleeping Beauties (Volume 1) – A graphic adaptation of the novel by Steven King, this is a horror story about a “sleeping sickness” that only affects women, who then become crazed killers if forced awake. (Credit that it’s a magical sleeping sickness that is fully trans-inclusive, I guess?) A mysterious woman named Eve Black is soon the only woman left awake, while the others all meet in a psychedelic alternate dimension. It’s annoying that this volume is only half the novel, but fortunately Wikipedia was able to take me to the other half of the story. And it’s fine if you like Steven King’s style, but I wasn’t super into it anyway.
The October Faction (Volumes 1-5) - Tales of a dysfunctional family of monster hunters. If I had been reading these as pamphlets, I suspect I would have been really annoyed at how little happens in each chapter; basically each trade is about enough plot for a single episode of a TV series. Which means you have the juxtaposition of a few weeks worth of plot and character advancement and several years worth of power-creep of the team (particularly the kids and their magic). It’s not brilliant but it’s entertaining.
Locke and Key (Volume 1) - When a family is terrorized and the father killed by a serial killer, the survivors move back to the “Keyhouse” in Lovecraft, MA. It turns out this was the wrong move and a monster trapped in the house is working an elaborate plan to collect a series of magical keys. There were 5 more volumes in the bundle (the entire series), but despite the interesting worldbuilding this moved too slowly and spent too much time on splatter-horror elements to really win me.
They Called Us Enemy - George Takai’s memoir about his childhood in the Japanese internment camps during World War Two. This is an upsetting reminder of how much we’re living in a repeat of history because no one learned from it.
This bundle also included Cosmoknights, which I read a few years back (it’s a fun queer anti-princess sci-fantasy story) and lots of volumes of 30 Days of Night, which didn’t interest me.
Overall: Takai’s book was good; a bunch of the others were entertaining but didn’t stand out. It was kind of a forgettable lot, unfortunately.