Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #1

So what do you get when an immense, quasi-intelligent tyrannosaur travels through time and meets a schoolgirl with a genius intellect and limited social skills? You get a great big bucket of glory, that’s what you get.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Oh, come on, you didn’t even need that much plot outline, did you? Brandon Mongclare and Amy Reeder write the story, and Natacha Bustos provides the art. We get a wonderful heroine in intelligent, awkward, arrogant Lunella Lafayette — and in the original Moon Boy’s brief appearance, he winds up being more interesting and appealing than he’s been in most of the other times we’ve seen him. Devil Dinosaur himself is still a bit of a cypher, but I’m sure that’ll change in future issues.

Itty Bitty Hellboy: The Search for the Were-Jaguar! #1

Art Baltazar and Franco bring Mike Mignola’s pulp horror heroes back in kid-friendly form. Hellboy and Liz are on the way to the Island of Rogers, where all the Rogers the Homunculi live. They only have one pair of underwear, and the one who wears that single pair is the leader of the whole island. So this mission of mercy is to bring all of them underwear. Because, good grief, those homunculi need undies! Meanwhile, Rasputin and Karl are on their way to the island to photograph the mysterious were-jaguar, but they’re soon captured by the Rogers. Hellboy and Liz meet up with Kate from the BPRD, and Lobster Johnson and Smitty go after the bad guys, with limited success. Will the Rogers ever get their undies? Will the were-jaguar make his appearance?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s always wonderful to see Baltazar and Franco making great all-ages comics, and they really out-do themselves when it comes to these normally-dark characters.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #2

Some dire villain has used a convenient Time Platform to erase Squirrel Girl and Tippy-Toe from the current timeline while also sending them back in time to the 1960s! And the only person who can remember her at all is her roommate Nancy! Can Doreen and Tippy get accustomed to life in the ’60s? Can they make contact with other time travelers? Can they figure out how to get back to the present? Will Nancy find out who’s responsible for this villainy? Maybe someone who owns a Time Platform and hates Squirrel Girl and is on the cover of this comic anyway?

Verdict: Thumbs up. All the stuff we love about Squirrel Girl, just transported back to the ’60s. There are lots of little moments to appreciate here — Doreen’s newspaper ad trying to get in touch with other time travelers is really excellent, for example.

Well, here we are again. It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and we’re being told by advertisers and the media — and way too many people who should know better — that the very best post-Thanksgiving activity is getting up in the middle of the night to run around shopping malls like good credit-card-wielding psychotics, abusing exhausted retail clerks and breaking the bank on “doorbuster bargains” that aren’t actually very cheap. There is, thank goodness, a slowly growing backlash over the idea that we all have to go crazy for Black Friday — but on the other hand, there’s not really much to do after Thanksgiving, and it’s not like shopping is some sort of crime.

But you can shop better and smarter. You don’t have to deal with the gibbering lunatics at the department stores. There are lots of stores out there that don’t attract hordes of zombie shoppers — and one of them is your Friendly Neighborhood Comic Book Store, which tends to be much more sedate on Black Friday and which still has great gifts you can buy for the comics fan on your shopping list.

So let’s begin our annual review of some of the best comics gifts out there. Today, we’ll start with a comic series called Princeless.

Careful readers should take note of the “L” right in the middle of the title — this is a story about a princess, but she’s certainly not defined any attempt to get herself a Prince Charming.

The story, written by Jeremy Whitley and illustrated by M. Goodwin, focuses on Princess Adrienne, who has been imprisoned at the top of a tower by her cruel father. The similarities to any other stories you may have read end there — she thinks the idiots trying to rescue her are, well, idiots. She teams up with the dragon assigned to guard her. She rescues herself. And then she decides to go rescue her sisters, who have all been similarly imprisoned in towers by their tyrannical father.

And when she realizes she needs decent armor, she goes to a cool half-dwarf armorer (she got her mother’s height) named Bedelia — and then she teams up with Bedelia, too, so they can go on fightin’ evil and rescuing her sisters!

Do Adrienne, Bedelia, and the dragon Sparks have a chance to rescue everyone? Will her fairly awful father come after her? Will her poetry-loving brother be able to aid her? And will Adrienne finally find some armor that’s built for action and not for cheesecake?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The story is pretty dang fantastic, the art is pretty dang fantastic, the whole thing is pretty dang fantastic.

Characterization is a big thing in this book, because Adrienne is a wonderful character. She’s peeved at all the nonsense around her — her father locking her in a tower, a bunch of idiots trying to rescue her and then getting eaten by a dragon, sexist guards who think they’re allowed to mack on every girl in the area. And she’s not just peeved — she also does something to deal with the things that peeve her. She’s no passive nobody — she gets up, she kicks ass, she learns how to kick more ass.

There’s a lot of great humor, too. This is designed to be an all-ages comic, and kids love a heroine who can crack jokes — and who can lose her dignity without losing her awesomeness.

If you’ve got a kid — or an adult, for that matter — who loves clever fantasy, they’ll love this. If they love kick-ass female heroes, they’ll love this. If they love kick-ass female heroes of color (because yeah, Adrienne’s dark skin isn’t a tan, and her straightened hair came out of a bottle – and it gets curly fast once the adventuring begins), then they’ll definitely love this.

You know what? You should go pick this one up.

Astro City #29

Meet Zozat, a young Zirr from a distant planet. The Zirr are an insectoid race, loyal servants of their Empire and their Emperor, and frequent foes of Astro City’s heroic First Family. But this isn’t your typical superhero story, where the evil bug aliens invade Earth and are beaten back by noble heroes. This is a story about a mostly peaceful race of people who are definitely alien in form and thought — but more human than they (or we) would probably be comfortable acknowledging. Zozat is the school prodigy on his last day of school, excited to see his older sister back home from the military academy. But the Zirr military have captured an unpowered member of the First Family, and that means there’s about to be an invasion of hostile aliens from across the galaxy! Will this be the battle that finally allows the Zirr Empire to destroy the Earthlings once and for all?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s hard to say that the story really humanizes the Zirr — it’s more accurate to say that it alienizes them. The Zirr are really weird, and their language is bizarre, and their customs and mindset are inhuman. But they’re still a lot like us. They love their families, they play, they fight, they dream, they get propagandized by their media and government, they question, and they’re certain they must be the greatest species the universe has ever seen. They’re emphatically not like us; they’re also emphatically a lot like us after all — and this makes for a really wonderful comic book.

The New Avengers #3

The Skrulls are a dying race, but they see hope if they can summon their true king, a Kree/Skrull hybrid, from Earth. Oh, wait, they’re talking about Hulkling, aren’t they? And speaking of Earth, the New Avengers are getting settled into their new digs on Avengers Island. Power Man is questioning whether Wiccan’s name is really appropriate when he’s not a practitioner of Wicca; Pod is being made to confront its/her uncomfortable dual nature; Songbird and Roberto Da Costa have just discovered there’s a mole other than Hawkeye on the team. And then the giant Skrull warship decloaks and attacks everyone.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Fun art, decent story, cthulhoid monsters, surprisingly apt discussions of cultural co-option in the superhero community, and some wonderful and fun bits of dialogue.

The Mighty Thor #1

I didn’t pick up the previous series with this character — I was assuming I’d be able to buy the collected editions later. Turns out Marvel added an extra five dollars to the price tag of the trades — the bad news for me is I haven’t been able to read the previous issues yet. The bad news for Marvel is that I’ll wait ’til I can buy them used instead.

But of course, Marvel wouldn’t be price-gouging everyone if the character weren’t incredibly popular. At this point, the rest of y’all probably know the backstory — the new female Thor is actually Dr. Jane Foster, the old Thor’s former girlfriend. While she holds Mjolnir, she’s Thor, the Goddess of Thunder, ridiculously powerful, a righteous ass-kicker for the forces of good. When she’s just plain Jane Foster… well, she has cancer, and she’s dying. Every time she becomes Thor, in fact, the transformation burns out the chemotherapy drugs that could save her mortal body’s life.

So the trouble here starts when Roxxon Oil’s news satellite (which, because they’re a supervillain megacorp, is actually a TV news station located on a satellite) is suddenly hit by a bunch of dead, dismembered elves. The satellite is knocked out of orbit, but Thor manages to save it before it crashes in Washington, DC. After that, it’s off to Asgard — but not as Thor. Apparently, Odin has gone nuts, declared Thor a criminal, and imprisoned. Jane’s cover story is that she’s a senator in the Congress of Worlds, representing Midgard. The congress is currently debating — and not doing anything but debate — about whether the dark elves are responsible for the murder of all the light elves in space. The dark elves and their allies are plotting against all the other realms — but who’s their secret agent behind the scenes?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Not sure I’ll care much for this probably endless “War of the Realms” storyarc, but Jane/Thor really is a wonderfully fun character. It’s great to finally be able to climb onto this bandwagon.

Rat Queens #13

The Rat Queens managed to avoid dying in the blizzard and wake up at Mage University. Violet visits the bars, Dee hits the library, Betty goes off to buy drugs, and Hannah goes to see her old professor — who sends her off to meet someone behind the mirrors. Meanwhile, Betty buys a rocketsled, and Violet, against her better judgment, joins her as they ride down a terribly steep mountain.

Verdict: Thumbs up. A little drama for Hannah and Dee, and a little comedy for Betty and Violet. Plenty of wonderful single-panel gags, too — I’m particularly fond of the terribly snooty King Bear.

I Hate Fairyland #2

Gertrude has slaughtered the assassin who’d been sent after her last issue and is now enjoying an evening boozing it up in a local tavern. Unfortunately, she’s been drinking magical wish beer, and when she wishes she could look normal for a day, instead of like a little girl, she ends up looking like a 40-year-old woman who eats nothing but sugar all day. The results are in no way pretty. Meanwhile, Queen Cloudia realizes that barbarian warriors are not the right opponents to send after the kill-crazy Gertrude, so she contracts a witch to come up with a magical plan. How is Gertrude going to handle an army of brain-eating zombie fauns?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Tons of great cartoon grossout humor. Not sure if there’s much more depth to the story than that, but maybe that’s enough…

Jughead #2

Riverdale High’s dastardly new principal is Mr. Stanger, and he wants everyone at Riverdale to be dull, boring cogs in the machine. Jughead already angered him last issue by finding the loophole in Stanger’s new anti-hamburgers policy. Now Stanger plans to send everyone in school to detention, but Jughead is really good at skating just on the right side of good behavior. However, Stanger’s new gym teacher, a humorless hardass named Coach Eng, institutes a rule that the worst athletes in his classes go to detention — and so Jughead goes to detention. Is there a way to stop Stenger and Coach Eng? It may require assistance from… the Time Police!

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a wonderfully clever comic by some top-notch pros, and a fun spin on the old “Jughead’s Time Police” comics. Plus there’s an excellent cliffhanger, too!

Ms. Marvel #1

Another number-one! MARRRRVELLL! (shakes fist at sky)

It’s a new day for Ms. Marvel! She’s in the Avengers! Holy cow! There’s nothing non-cool about this! Oh, and Bruno has a new girlfriend. Whoa, whoa, wait — what the heck happened?! Didn’t he just say he loved Kamala? Didn’t she have to turn him down for the sake of being a superhero? Um, well, yes, and that’s why Bruno has a girlfriend now. She calls herself Mike, and she seems perfectly cool, but Kamala can’t get over the fact that he’s dating now. And even worse — a lowlife developer is trying to gentrify Jersey City, and he’s using Ms. Marvel’s image to do it! And when she learns that the developer plans to pave over the entire city, and he’s willing to use high-tech weapons against normal citizens, Ms. Marvel is going to have some housecleaning to do in her hometown.

Verdict: Thumbs up. An excellent story, full of great human details and cool new supporting cast members. And it’s got awesome art by both of the series’ regular artists, Takeshi Miyazawa and Adrian Alphona. I’m assuming y’all all loved Ms. Marvel before, right? There’s no reason not to keep loving her now.

Lumberjanes #20

Well, April has pretty much ruined the Mermaid Battle of the Bands. Now everyone is fighting, and sea serpents are attacking, and absolutely no one is rocking. And April has screwed up her friends’ plans for the Bandicoot Bacchanal, too. Can the Lumberjanes use the Power of Friendship to save the concert, get Harlow’s band back together, and make sure everyone has a great Bandicoot Bacchanal?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I still never got into the rock-and-roll mermaids — seemed just a little weird, even for this series — but it wraps up well, with a lot of clever plotting, great character work, and fun moments.

Well, thanks to getting a ton of comics last week and being just plain bored with blogging lately, I’ve gotten way, way behind on my reviews. So let’s see how fast I can do a bunch of reviews…

Starfire #6

An alien bounty hunter pursues Starfire and isn’t shy about killing humans. Can Kory stop him, or is her head going on a pike?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good humor and action, very pretty art, and that cover is a solid winner.

Spider-Gwen #2

While tracking down the Lizards, Spider-Woman meets up with a much different Captain America than we know. Can Gwen handle the Lizards and Cap — while handcuffed?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Fun story. Loved the new version of Cap — complete with a full backstory! Now I want to read more about her adventures, too…

All-New Hawkeye #1

Another new number-one issue! MARRRRVEL! (shakes fist at sky) Most of our story is set in the future. Clint Barton is a washed-up old coot, and Kate Bishop is rich and bitter and pretty damn good at her job. They’re trying to make up for the mistakes of the past — and that means they’ll run afoul of the Mandarin.

Verdict: Ehh, good enough for a thumbs up. Artwork and personality conflict are what sell this story the best.

All-New Wolverine #1

Laura Kinney, better known as X-23 and Logan’s gender-switched clone, has taken over the mantle of Wolverine. She’s trying to stop a sniper atop the Eiffel Tower — but she doesn’t have an adamantium skeleton to bounce bullets…

Verdict: Thumbs up. I wasn’t expecting to like this one so much. The art is cool, the action is excellent, and the dialogue and characterization are fun. I reckon I’ll be picking up a few more issues of this one.

All-New All-Different Avengers #1

Man, they’re gonna run out of Avengers titles before long. The members of this team include Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Vision, Ms. Marvel, Nova, and Spider-Man. Ahem, that’s the Sam Wilson Captain America, the Jane Foster Thor, and the Miles Morales Spider-Man. Not all the characters have even met yet, but the stories around them are plenty fun.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Yeah, I’m really looking forward to seeing Mark Waid writing these characters. This is probably one of the new Marvel titles I’ve been looking forward to the most.

Illuminati #1

Titania has been released from jail and plans to give up the criminal life. She’s doing her best, but it’s hard for ex-supervillains to get jobs anywhere. She-Hulk is willing to help her, but they’ve been rivals too long, and Skeeter rejects her aid. She manages to get a crap job as security at a pawn shop, but a robbery attempt ends with Luke Cage and Iron Fist assuming she’s the villain. And then she gets “rescued” by the Hood, who’s putting together a new gang of under-the-radar super-crooks.

Verdict: Ehh, it’s not bad, but I’m not sure I’ll be picking it up. We barely meet any of the characters aside from Titania and the Hood, and though Titania is a fun character, I don’t think there’s enough here to make me feel like I need to keep reading.

The Vision #1

In an attempt to be more human, the Vision has created his own family — his wife, Virginia, and their twins Viv and Vin. The entire family is deeply weird, terribly ominous, and they’re all utterly, utterly unhuman.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Wow, this one was amazing — an astonishingly creepy comic about robots pretending to be normal human suburbanites while actually being skin-crawlingly weird. It is so, so good.

The Ultimates #1

Yet another branch of quasi-Avengers, this team consists of the Blue Marvel, the Black Panther, Captain Marvel, America Chavez, and Monica Rambeau. They’ve got an extremely ambitious and wide-ranging plan to neutralize Galactus — and it’s not what anyone expects.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Another comic where I love all the characters — and at this point, I’m willing to read almost anything Al Ewing writes. And lookit, a comic book without any white male characters — and with that many serious powerhouses on the team, they may be Marvel’s toughest badasses…

While the Black Stars Burn by Lucy A. Snyder

Y’all know by now that I’m a fan of Lucy Snyder’s books, and she’s got this new collection of short stories that just came out. As expected for a horror specialist like Snyder, there’s plenty of scary stuff. There’s also a number of stories from other genres, particularly science fiction and medieval fantasy, and there’s even a story about a time-traveling alien doctor who runs around in a police call box…

Some of the stories we find inside are:

• “Spinwebs” – a weird little fantasy tale about a family encountering prejudice because of the giant telepathic spiders that live in their home.
• “The Still-Life Drama of Passing Cars” – a quiet tale of a woman and her children driving in the car — but something isn’t right about any of them…
• “Through Thy Bounty” – an old favorite — the aliens invade, and a captive is ordered to cook for the invaders. Their favorite dishes? Let’s just say they prefer all kinds of human meals.
• “Cthylla” – the untalented daughter of a computer genius and a celebrated actress befriends an artist marked for death by a doomsday cult.
• “While the Black Stars Burn” – a talented but tortured violinist is used to open the way for the terrible King in Yellow.
• “Jessie Shimmer Goes to Hell” – in which the lead character of Snyder’s Jessie Shimmer novels goes to Hell, faces a monstrous demon, and must claw her way back home.
• “Fable Fusion” – a story originally written for a Doctor Who fiction anthology, this features the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace investigating creatures of myth running around Prague.

Verdict: Thumbs up. If this collection has a theme, it’s the disintegration of families — and Lovecraftian monsters.

Lovecraftian horror tends toward the nihilistic — but in this case, what really carries that nihilism banner is the rampant destruction of family units. Sometimes, the ends of these families are deeply sad — the families, no matter how small or poor, were loving and caring, and the survivors will be left without their loved ones and the people who they turned to for support. And in other cases, the destructing families should’ve been put to the torch years ago. Sadistic fathers, cultist parents, two-faced spouses, and more. And the end of those families still leave the survivors in bad places — and the non-survivors in much, much worse places, too.

But there are plenty of great monsters in here, too. And while not all of them are Lovecraftian, quite a few are. And actually, more than you’d expect have deep connections to Robert W. Chambers’s “King in Yellow” mythology. Chambers’s turn-of-the-century surreal horror has been a big thing for the last few years, and it’s great to see that Snyder is able to make lost Carcosa’s favored son work so well. I’ve been a huge fan of Chambers for years, and it’s always a thrill to see well-done stories about the King in Yellow, the Yellow Sign, and all the associated figures.

On top of all that, I’d just like to say that, as a non-Doctor Who fan, I really enjoyed the Whovian “Fable Fusion” story.

So you like grim nihilist horror? You like the King in Yellow? You like Jessie Shimmer and Doctor Who? Go pick this up.

The Wicked + the Divine #16

Our main focal character in this issue is the Morrigan, with Baphomet as the secondary focus. Morrigan is imprisoned inside Valhalla, and she remembers her previous life as a mortal. She used to be Marian, and Baphomet was Cameron, a couple of goth kids dating each other and playing live-action “Vampire: The Masquerade.” When Ananke chooses Marian as the Morrigan, Cameron is lost — until Ananke is persuaded to promote him to godhood, too.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Loved getting to learn more about Morrigan and Baphomet, thought the LARPing segments were wonderful, and I really enjoyed Leila Del Duca’s artwork.

Harrow County #7

Country-girl witch Emmy just recently met her big-city twin Kammi, who is a lot more evil than Emmy is. She’s roaming the county, meeting the various monsters and haints, and working to recruit them to her side. Emmy suspects Kammi is up to no good, but is she going to find any allies of her own before it’s too late?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Kammi is an entirely horrible person. She goes out and finds the most awful critters in the forest, knows exactly what they want, and is probably a great deal scarier than most of them. Her picnic lunch in the woods, consisting entirely of rotting meat, is really something else. Yeah, this is the most fun, spookiest, creepiest horror comic on the stands today.

Klaus #1

Revisionist, dark and gritty origins of Santa Claus seem like they’d be a dime a dozen — but when it’s an independent comic written by Grant Morrison, I’m a bit more likely to give it a shot.

The good news is — it’s not that dark and gritty. Yeah, it’s set in a distant past when a half-civilized hunter named Klaus hauls in a load of slaughtered deer to the walled city of Grimsvig. His memories of a happier town are much different from the current situation here — it’s a joyless place, with most of the men slaving away in the mines, guards abusing citizens, and children banned from playing or owning any sort of toy, even improvised ones like rocks. The tyrannical leader, Lord Magnus, exults in his power, while his spoiled son Jonas is the only child allowed to have toys — and he despises all of them.

Klaus, meanwhile, takes offense when a guard beats a child, but he’s quickly outnumbered, beaten, and forced from the city, while the guards stalk him to kill him. He’s saved by his pet wolf, Lilli, but he’s still on the outside of the city, eating a mushroom-stocked broth to heal from his wounds, and wondering how he can make life better for the children in Grimsvig. Can one of Klaus’ psychedelic visions hold the answer?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Really, it’s not dark and gritty, and that means it’s a lot better than I’d feared. Yeah, Klaus kills deer, attacks guards, get furious about injustice — which is really just fine with me. There’s a core of Klaus’ character that feels true to the familiar Santa Claus myths — he loves kids, he doesn’t like people who abuse kids, he’s willing to do hard work with his hands — and there’s toys involved at the end, too. This looks like it’ll be good fun.

Sensation Comics #16

In our first story, Diana visits Gotham City and encounters the mythical monster Echidna, who’s trying to track some kidnappers of children — monster children, actually. Diana offers to help — partly because Echidna is not good at investigation and tends to just kill people she should be interrogating. She ends up meeting Batgirl, Harley Quinn, and Professor Pyg — but is she just getting the runaround? Will she be able to save the children before it’s too late? In our second story, Wonder Woman and Superman hang out and perform a few feats. Wondy officiates over a gay wedding and implies that, if she’s not a lesbian, she’s at least not straight either, which has gotten this issue a certain amount of notoriety.

Verdict: Thumbs down, which is too bad, ’cause I wanted to like this one. It’s got guest stars — it’s actually fun to see Wonder Woman interact with Bat-foes like Harley and Pyg — it’s got excellent fights and action, it works hard to come up with some good character moments. But no, the art is weird, the dialogue is stilted, the character moments are ham-fisted, and I just didn’t get that much joy out of the comic.

Today’s Cool Links:

• The Oatmeal’s new comic about a crashing plane is amazing and touching and must be read.
• Holy bananas, the impossibly amazing Mallory Ortberg is going to be taking over the Dear Prudence advice column. This is going to be fantastic.
• And here’s a nicely done, fairly silly video about a serious topic — what if bears ate one out of every five people?

Howard the Duck #1

Yet another new #1 issue of a series that debuted less than a year ago. Get a grip on yourself, Marvel.

Howard is back in the detective biz, with his shapeshifting friend Tara Tam, with Aunt May Parker as his office manager. But he’s got a bad case of existential blues, and he’s decided he’d like to return to his home — his original home, the world full of ducks. Dr. Strange reveals that the previously discovered Abundant Glove has the power to transport him back to his home. So Howard takes Tara on a trip to the Florida swamps, looking for the Nexus of All Realities. Unfortunately, it’s not being guarded by the Man-Thing, which has given the Wizard and Titania the opportunity to turn it into a weapon. Can Howard and Tara stop a couple of supervillains all by themselves? And what happens when Howard passes through the Nexus? On top of that, we get a short segment at the end introducing a character called Gwenpool. She’s like a cross between Deadpool and some other recently popular character…

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s very much like the Howard the Duck of the previous series — funny and clever and sarcastic. There are lots of fun details to enjoy here, from Tara’s shapeshifted hat to the glimpse we get of alternate realities inside the Nexus. I really don’t know what to think of Gwenpool. Let’s hope the character doesn’t end up being terrible.

Harley Quinn and Power Girl #5

Our heroes have defeated the evil Oreth Odeox — but not before he summoned the fantastically immense Harvester of Sorrow! He’s a giant floating head who specializes in creating sorrow and hate everywhere he goes and then sucking away all the psychic energies left behind — and he’s far too powerful for anyone to stop. Harley manages to get inside his massive brain, planning on blowing it up, but she gets captured instead, and the Harvester prepares to drain her brain dry of all negative emotions. Unfortunately, accessing her memories of the Joker ends up infecting the Harvester with a virus and transforms the entire head into a giant Joker — which is probably worse than the regular Harvester of Sorrow. And Harley’s now gone full-on crazy. Can anyone survive? Even more importantly, can Vartox’s mustache survive?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a whole lot of crazy, and a decent amount of low-class funny. Always a nice bonus to go along with the action.

Today’s Cool Links:

• The iTunes Terms and Conditions graphic novel is just amazing, especially if you love comics and cartooning.
• “Unbreakable” always was a fantastic movie, no matter what the haters say.
• Why are some Christians so angry about the Starbucks holiday cups? Because — spoiler alert — Christianity in America is a dead religion. It’s been taken over almost completely by people who worship their own sense of rage, outrage, and hatred and think empathy and compassion are for chumps and losers. Sorry you missed it. No, it probably won’t be coming back either.