Tag Archives: comics

Comics: Legends!

The “New 52″ company-wide conceptual reboot that DC Comics pulled off recently has been such a success (both financially and, I grudgingly admit, increasingly creatively as well)(some of the new titles launched back in 2011 are really starting to find their footing, much though I’ll always miss the old standbys they replaced) that transformed the [...]

Comics: Dark Knight Returns!

Our book today is that megalith of all comic book graphic novels, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, which ran as a four-issue mini-series in 1986 and was collected into a single volume shortly thereafter. I recently re-read it on the occasion of giving it as a gift to a friend who’ll never read it [...]

Comics: Hellboy in Hell!

Although it’s a typically fraught comics week (new X-Men mania! a new team of Avengers!), the brightest nugget is pure gold: Mike Mignola returning to write and draw a mini-series starring his great creation, Hellboy. The series is called “Hellboy in Hell,” and its first issue kicks off this week with a synopsis page guaranteed [...]

Comics! Thanos: The Final Threat!

One quick comics side-note that I just couldn’t resist making: buried in this week’s issues was something called “Thanos: The Final Threat” – a full-color reprint of the two-part story Jim Starlin did for Marvel back in 1977 (back then, the first part appeared in “Avengers” Annual #7 and the second part in “Marvel Two-in-One” [...]

Comics: The Women of the New 52!

As I’ve made pretty clear by now, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of DC Comics’ company-wide reboot “The New 52.” When it launched a year ago, I thought many of the titles – including some of the most iconic characters in the world (Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, the Justice League, etc.) – were too [...]

Comics: Wonder Woman!

One of the only major DC characters to get an honest-to-gosh head-to-toe makeover in the company’s “New 52″ revamp was one of its most famous and (formerly) recognizable properties, Wonder Woman. The makeover has been an almost entirely bad one: the character has been re-conceived as less original, less interesting, and, needless to say, less [...]

The Tower of the Elephant!

Our story today is the best thing “Conan” creator Robert E. Howard ever did, his 1933 short story “The Tower of the Elephant,” which features a barbarian who’s little more than a boy – an entire lifetime younger than the grizzled old king readers first met in the debut Conan story “The Phoenix on the [...]

Comics: Flagship Teams!

Among this week’s new four-color superhero comics are two flagship team-books, one that I’ve liked intermittently over the decades, and one that I rather inordinately love. The first, Justice League, is set in the present-day and features – in this latest incarnation – a core roster of some of the most famous super-heroes ever created, [...]

The People of the Black Circle!

Our story today is Robert E. Howard’s arch 1934 Weird Tales masterpiece, “The People of the Black Circle” – not the story so much as its most stellar adaptation, beginning back in 1976, in issue #16 of that epic old Marvel Comics fantasy magazine, The Savage Sword of Conan. Marvel’s ordinary-sized four-color comic starring Conan, [...]

Comics: Avengers Assemble!

This new ongoing Marvel title Avengers Assemble has a lot working against it. It’s written by Brian Michael Bendis, who’s stretching himself just a bit thin across 18 Avengers titles. It’s drawn by Mark Bagley, who even fans of YUltimate Spider-Man suspect of being a hack (the Don Heck of the 21st century, as it were). [...]

Welcome!

I intend Stevereads to be the ongoing autobiography of my reading - but I still love interaction! Readers are welcome to email me on any bookish subject under the sun, and if you want me to send you a copy of anything I discuss here, just say the word!    

st.donoghue[at]comcast.net
The Open Letters Blogs
Like Fire
Novel Readings
stevereads
Hammer & Thump
The Four Color Opera

Archives

Stevereads Staples!

I have a weakness for regular features - and I've indulged that weakness here at Stevereads! Here are the most popular:

Under the Covers with Paul Marron!
Penguins on Parade!
In the Penny Press!
Comics!

Best of the Year!
Worst of the Year!

Subscribe to Stevereads!