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Sonic The Hedgehog #56-67 ★★★★☆
A year bookended by the defeat and return of Surge. Love her encouraging Whisper to blow her head off. I like it when these comics are a bit edgy. Also had the end of Scrapnik Island at the start of the year which was just a gorgeous little miniseries and some lovely once off specials.
Sonic the Hedgehog collection 1 (#1-12) ★★★★☆
I also took the first collected volume out of the library which was my first time reading any of these in print. It game me an extra appreciation for how gorgeous these books can be. There is a huge difference between reading on a screen and seeing it on paper.
The Computer Wore Pigtails ★★★★☆
Due to @sapphicfettucine’s scans I got to read a few extra issues of this. God I love transy, and seeing her just headbutting a guy in the chest is great, though I was a bit less fond of some of the writing from Mandy #46.
Dragon Ball #1-#24 ★★★☆☆
On my post about about shows I said “Fun enough when it’s not being pervy and do I really like how Toriyama drew vehicles” and those things look even better in his raw art before it got animated. Something is definitely lost in the translition. Something about that contrast between the page and the strong blacks of the inks and just the minor details in shape. I don’t know. It’s often very visually pleasing. The show did a lot to clean up the plot and make it seem less made up as it goes than it was, though.
Dragon Boy ★★☆☆☆
I read Dragon Ball for my podcast about Journey to the West to compare it to its inspiration, however tenious and quickly dropped that ended up being, so I decided to also read the prototype version of Dragon Ball and see if there was any more links back to the Ming novel in that. There wasn’t. There really wasn’t. I don’t think there was any point in reading this.
Fullmetal Alchemist #1→37 ★★★★☆
Before I started reading this the understanding I had of FMA was that the original show closely adapted the comic up until it started to diverge after the fifth laboratory and Greed’s introduction, while Brotherhood rushed through that material and then was faithful from there. I was wrong. Brotherhood skips a lot less than I expected and the original show embellishes from the start. There were times reading this where I thought I might as well just be rewatching Brotherhood.
But now having read (some of) the books I have complicated feelings about it skipping Youswell. On one hand it did result in my favourite joke in the series, where when Yoki finally meets Edward he goes on a huge rant about how Edward ruined his life but Edward is pretty sure they’ve never met and doesn’t remember any of it. And of course he didn’t. That didn’t even happen in this show, that was in the other one. Yoki’s from the wrong version of the series.
But it also skips over establishing how much people in Amestris hate the military. Edward does get some shit in the show from Pinako and Izumi, but I don’t think the show ever does a good job of establishing how corrupt the military is and how the general public relates to them. Like the top brass is obviously evil as shit but most of military characters are fundamentally sympathetic and trying their best within the system. I think removing Edward get thrown out on his ass by people being fucked over by the state is a mistake.
Lumberjanes #10→28 + some side stuff ★★☆☆☆
Pretty fun series that I do mean to get back to but it has not really grabbed me (BTW my rating scale scews very positively if you haven’t realised that yet in these posts, two is “I liked it” and everything else is degrees of how much I liked it. I don’t see much point devoting too much of the scale to stuff I think is genuinely bad so I save one star for that and zero is for if it is just completely repulsive).
2000 A.D. Progs 2330 & 2339 ★★★☆☆
I had never read any 2000 A.D. before and I picked these up because they both feature stories by Elizabeth Sandifer, whose writing on Doctor Who (not for Doctor Who, just to be clear) I like a lot. So several stories in these are part of an ongoing series that I have no context for, though even of those I still quite liked the Rogue Trooper ones and El’s ones were really fun.
Cork City Libraries Teen Graphic Novel 2023 ★★☆☆☆
Cute little local library project.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula ★★★☆☆
The fourth version of Dracula I read last year. A gorgeous little adaptation of the movie.
The Bikini Bottom Horror ★★★☆☆
Dumb as fuck in a fun way.
