Naomi #1

A few weeks ago I was in my local comic shop and noticed a copy of Naomi on the wall going for an eye-widening price. I asked the owner why it was so expensive, and he replied that the title was extremely popular. He then said he liked it himself, so when a reprint of #1 came out, I picked it up.

After reading it, though, all I felt was annoyance.

Now, I understand that Naomi is part of DC Comics' Wonder Comics imprint, aimed at a teen audience. I am at least three decades from being a teenager. Still, Brian Michael Bendis is shepherding this endeavour, a writer that I have often enjoyed, so what could go wrong?

Well, a few things. Let's put them in order.

1. This book cost me over $5 Canadian, taking into account the glories of the current American exchange. For five dollars I received very little in the way of story.

2. The selling point of this new series is 'the biggest new mystery' of the DC Universe. But we are given no reasons to care what this mystery may be, other than Naomi's own interest, which isn't about the DC Universe at all but only her own teenage, self absorbed interest.

3.Naomi herself. In any mystery, the reader should have some interest or connection with the investigator (the lead character). But we learn nothing really about Naomi.  Well, we did learn that she's 17, she spends time on her phone (even when she's supposed to be working), she has a Superman obsession, she's in therapy because of issues and oh, yes, she feels special in some undefined, but probably awesome, way.

4. Her friends are equally annoying and undefined. One friend dresses like a goth but totally really thinks Superman is cool. Another friend is just constantly giddy. She dances around for no reason, and likes to hug Naomi.She also has pink hair.  When Naomi is upset, she suggests they eat, undoubtedly before she bursts into laughter again and spins a pirouette. Character work at its best.

5. The mystery itself is--shocking!--related to Naomi. And the only person who has any knowledge about it is someone who looks weird. Everyone else in this town is either giddy or clearly hiding something, but will still talk to a teenager about aforementioned mystery because adults don't have anything else to do.

6. The art by Jamal Campbell is beautiful. But he clearly uses cut and paste on one page, moving one image to another panel while using the same background over and over. It's a small thing, but I don't pay for comics for artists to take shortcuts. If an artist is taking shortcuts, then reduce the cover price.

7. Naomi reads like a checklist designed to attract younger readers, but for all the wrong reasons.  There isn't a focus to create characters as much as there is a need to have readers see themselves on the page. The idea that a teen reader would care about a mystery about the DC Universe is ludicrous. I don't see any teenagers buying comics in my store, only sad men in their thirties and forties. They care about stuff like the DC Universe, and characters, and good stories. You know, the audience Marvel and DC forgot about years ago. Oh, sorry, like, my cynicism totally slipped out.


While trying to attract teen readers is a good idea on paper--and probably sounds great in board meetings--the one thing DC and Marvel fail to acknowledge is that teenagers may be interested in books like Naomi, but they won't pay for it. They will download it off a pirate site, even if they think to look for the next issue, which is in itself a big ask.  They'll torrent manga and anime all day, but ask them to lay cash on a counter--virtual or otherwise--and they'll roll their eyes.

In the end, Naomi wasn't for me, and was never intended to be. If Bendis and co-writer David F Walker had spent more time building characters everyone could relate to, maybe I would have picked up a second issue. But as it is, this just brought the day I stop buying all American super hero books that much closer.

We Never Learn Volume One

In a futile attempt to broaden my diminishing horizons, I thought I'd read something I've never read before: a romance manga. Leave the classics to another day.

Written and drawn by Taishi Tsutsui, We Never Learn tells the story of high schooler Nariyuki Yuiga who is working desperately to win a scholarship because his family is poor, courtesy of a dead yet still inspirational parent. His principal agrees to give the desperate Yuiga the nomination for this salvational scholarship on the condition that he tutor first two, then three, other students.  Of course it isn't that easy, because these students are all superstars in their own fields but have terrible blind spots that Yuiga must overcome with his power of super-tutoring.

His charges include Fumino Furahashi, a wistful ace in humanities and creative writing who wants to study the sciences but freaks out over anything math related; Rizu Ogata, who is compared to a calculator because of her speed in finishing math problems, but of course wants a future in the arts field because she is perplexed by the one problem she can't solve: human emotions; and finally, Uruka Takemoto, who is maybe the best swimmer in the universe but has the attention span of a gnat.

This volume introduces each character and shows Yuiga's attempts to find a way to help them. We learn about their little quirks and peculiarities, from Fumino's belief that her dead mother is perhaps a star in the sky, Rizu's sad habit of playing games by herself, and Uruka having a crush on Yuiga,and her selfish desire to be liked by Yuiga more than he likes the others.

Uruka takes up most of the active romance angle here, since the others seem too wrapped up in themselves to even notice Yuiga as something other than yet another tutor. There are brief glimpses of  romantic insight as both Fumino and Rizu notice how kind Yuiga is, but their dedication to school soon eclipses that. In fact, other than Uruka, the only one who seems generally interested in Yuiga is his own sister, who freaks out at these new girls in her brother's life. Maybe it's a cultural thing.

In lieu of romance, though, we get quite a few jokes, most of which either centre around misunderstandings, (Yuiga tackles Uruka because of reasons,  which the others see as a rather forceful make out session)  mistakes that are interpreted as inappropriate (Uruka mistakenly sends Yuiga one of her swimsuits as a gift , which could be interpreted as a possible fantasy aid, since she is forever waltzing around in her Speedo,)  and/or boobs. To this end, there is helpful gradation of cup sizes for comedic purposes, with Fumino being the smallest, Uruka being larger and Rizu being so large that Yuiga's siblings take note and shout out how large her breasts are when they first meet her. Maybe it's a cultural thing.

(Or it's just an attempt to win over shonen readers who find this romance manga in their beloved Jump. A little from column A, a little from column B.)

We Never Learn is oddly enjoyable, with each chapter either highlighting a character insight with Deep Emotion or climaxing in yet another blushworthy inappropriate comment or unexpected physical entanglement. There are also actual study aids thrown into the mix, so a reader might actually learn something, when they aren't waiting for another full panel of Uruka's backside as she dives into yet another pool, or Rizu putting on a tight bathing suit, or Fumino taking a bath, or....

The Doorbell Rang

I have never read a Rex Stout mystery before. This isn't what I expected.

I had thought this would be a bit of a cosy: a polite murder would have occurred, a mystery would ensue, and Nero Wolfe would solve it, then the story would end as he sipped cognac beside a fire. Nothing too challenging.

What I found instead was a story about misuse of power by the FBI, with a very dismissive attitude towards the then head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover.  Published in 1963, I can't imagine how this would have gone over. It would be like a mystery being written now today with Trump being the one under suspicion. There is no clever misdirection or you know who I'm talking about here sleight of narrative hand: Stout is very clear who and what he is talking about.

If you have never read a Nero Wolfe mystery before, here's a quick primer:

Nero Wolfe is an overweight detective who apparently dislikes to leave his home in New York. He has a main operative, Archie Goodwin, who does all the running about New York to gather clues and run investigations while Wolfe luxuriates with his orchids and reads his many books.

Wolfe seems to take work begrudgingly, and so is intrigued when he's offered a job with enough of a payday that he could take the rest of the year off. The job, though, is to stop the FBI from harassing a client. A wealthy client who may have very well pissed off the FBI herself by sending out piles of books to people, a book that points out what a shitshow the FBI is. No wonder they might be applying the screws.

The Doorbell Rang is a strange mystery, in that the enemy--in this case, the FBI--is very nebulous. Maybe the FBI is watching them, or maybe they aren't. Maybe their client isn't being harassed. Or maybe she is, and maybe--just maybe-- the FBI is misusing their power to such a degree that Wolfe and Goodwin are taking on of the most powerful organizations in the world, with all the danger and threat that entails.

With the fog of mystery surrounding the actions of both Wolfe and Goodwin,, Stout wisely introduces a more standard crime as a sub-plot, grounding the story with at least one murder they can physically interact with. As the story concludes, both mysteries are resolved well, with the title of the book suddenly making sense.

Set in early Sixties New York, I enjoyed all the references to a time long gone: a time when detectives used pay phones, asked cabbies to lose tails, and would ruminate about a case while having a corn beef on rye in a diner. Goodwin is a pleasant guy to hang out with for a few hours, with his overriding sarcasm and offbeat humour, and readiness to lay the boots to anyone who has it coming.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this.

East of West Volume One

I'm currently playing Red Dead Redemption 2 so I'm all about Westerns at the moment. Which is fortuitous, since Jonathon Hickman's East of West is a Western. Well, it has horses. Well, kinda. It does have guns, though, and they tend to get fired a lot, so Western!

East of West is set in an alternate Earth where the American Civil War took a decidedly different turn and the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are not only alive, but are complete assholes.

Death is one of these assholes, and is even more angry than his siblings. He is stalking these badlands in order to reclaim something precious that was taken from him, accompanied by two Native American shamans with totemic powers.  He also has a mechanical horse and two guns, both of which he uses with great familiarity.

East of West promises to be a large story, both in themes and exhaustive world building. As a result, this initial volume feels like a prologue for the undoubtedly complicated and deep storytelling to come. Characters are introduced, the world is briefly explained, and we're left with a lot of blank spaces to fill in. This is Jonathon Hickman, after all. I don't suspect we'll have a lot of car chases.

The world itself is teetering on apocalypse, an event a few people actively welcome. It's a world with vast deserts populated by Mad Max-style outposts set against giant, impersonal technoplexes straight out of Blade Runner. Accompanying the very Western narrative theme of vengeance is a stylistic homage, with many people favouring cowboy style clothing: duster jackets, cowboy hats, long Colonel Sanders beards, to name a few.  Even the Chinese dress in the same late nineteenth century Asian styles. Which we see, since China seems to now occupy most of what we know as California.

I've enjoyed Hickman's work since I discovered his excellent runs on Marvel Comics' Avengers and Fantastic Four. I learned to be patient with his stories, since he always rewards the time and effort you afford him. Both his runs on Avengers and FF were deep science fiction epics, with concepts that pushed at my rather limited ability to understand just what was going on. This first volume of East of West seems to promise the same, as Hickman begins his stretching exercises for the looming epic tale of vengeance and a'reckonin' ahead.

I Am A Hero Volume 3

There is a definite shift in this volume--not in quality, but in narrative intent. As the two previous volumes have shown, I Am A Hero takes the common tropes of the zombie genre and subverts them, from having a hero who is very mentally unstable to having zombies that still retain a degree of individuality.

This volume takes that last subversion even deeper, by showing just what the zombies may be thinking. Which succeeds in making the horror of their existence even moreso. Why they see things the way they do is not explained--is this how they survive the trauma? Or is this part of whatever chemical change is occurring? We don't know. We can only feel pity for monsters that in most zombie fiction heroes are wired to just kill.

It's not surprising, then, that parts of this volume feel like an exploration of dealing with a terminally ill relative. The unease of dealing with someone else's personal hygiene, of feeding them, all set against an environment that makes such caring a threat to one's own existence. It's as well done as it is heartbreaking.

By the volume's end, new characters have been introduced, tying themselves to perhaps finding an answer to the zombie infestation destroying the world. I wasn't thrilled with this turn of narrative, because elements of it reminded me quite a bit of The Last Of Us. But if reading this series has shown me anything, it's not to think I'm going to get what I expect.

A brilliant, heartbreaking horror story.

The Talon of Horus

I don't know a lot about 40K. I mean, I've read Eisenhorn, the first Gaunt's Ghost novel, and two Horus Heresy novels, so held up against the staggering number of Black Library books, I've barely read a thing.

So this book takes place (courtesy of a glance at the official timeline page) somewhere towards the end of the 40K story. Horus has been dead for quite awhile, and a few Chaos Space Marines are looking for his old ship. And that's what sets off events in this novel.

Aaron Dembski-Bowden is a very good writer of this sort of story, giving everything that doom metal feel mixed with guitar riffs from 2000 AD. Everything is dark and horrible, but the bonds of brotherhood still exist among the broken and mutated warriors stumbling around the Eye of Chaos. ADB also knows how to deliver the sorts of action scenes that create small utterances of Holy fuck as you turn a page. He also can create characters that you care about, despite how horrible they are. Be they eldar murderesses or demons inhabiting the dead souls of wolves, I grew to be fond of these monsters.

If you've read a small forest's worth of Black Library books, I'm sure this book would be mindblowing. But even as a casual reader, I was still taken aback by some of the revelations. It was a very fun read, even if I didn't get probably half of the references. Primarchs? What are those? Just how long has it been since Horus bought the farm? Why don't these guys age? Why isn't everyone more insane than they are?

Yui Kamio Lets Loose: Chapter Two

Well, things don't calm down in this second chapter of Shonen Jump's new Girl Gone Wild.

Apparently, Yui can't walk out her front door if her hair is black because there's a horde waiting to pursue her to exact unholy vengeance. This leads to said horde pursuing her to school. (One guy is actually holding a pipe, so we know it's a real horde.) This leads to Dark Yui- struck Kiito to be shaken out of his Hamlet like gloom over our heroine to help her escape from the howling mob--not once, but twice. Of course both involve somewhat inappropriate situations, with the last rescue involving a leap off a building, Yui's breasts in Kiito's face, and Yui landing on top of the eternally tormented Kiito. And of course Yui gets her hair bound just in time for Blonde Yui to have a panic attack on finding herself in such an embarrassing situation like omigod what sort of life is she leading?

So many questions in this one chapter.

Where is the school's security? How can a howling horde just overrun a school? Why does Yui sleep with her hair unbound? What if she wakes up at night to use the bathroom and decides to murder half the city? How does Dark Yui seemingly have knowledge of what Blonde Yui does (her blackmailing of Kiito) but Blonde Yui seems to have knowledge of anything her alter ego does?  Does Blonde Yui live in a constant state of disassociation and denial? And how does a passing bicycle rip out Yui's hairband and not half her scalp with it?

We do learn that this hair curse has lasted for five years, and that Nao has not missed binding her friend's hair in all that time. Good old Nao.

I think this series is going to be nuts.