The Man who Never was

Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Batman - Knightfall #1 by Kyle Higgins My rating: 3 of 5 stars The Dark Multiverse, expanded upon after the mind-bending Dark Nights: Metal saga from Scott Snyder was an interesting concept, adding to the already expansive Batman Mythos. Harkening back to the Infinite Crisis and more specifically to JLA: Earth 2 by Grant Morrison, as well as its much underrated by narratively brilliant Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths animated movie, the dark multiverse as its name implies, explores chaos theory. For every major event which happened in the main DC continuity that we know, ones where the heroes were able to overcome great odds, and triumph over evil, there could be other alternate infinite realities, where the villains won, where evil triumphs, where the heroes fell. Where the paragons of everything good, just and compassionate strayed from their moral compass and ended up consuming the very world and reali...

Batman Vampire by Doug Moench My rating: 4 of 5 stars *** Content warning: Mature themes, graphic violence, nudity. *** When your favorite comic character dresses like a bat, works during the dark hours, stays in the shadows and instills the ever-living fear of death onto criminal scum, it's only a while before you begin to draw parallels between them and another of pop culture's iconic characters, who share many of the traits, but inhabit moreover of a neutral evil compared to the Lawful Good (maybe Lawful Neutral) of your favorite muse. So many jokes are being made about Count Batman, or the Bat Vampire, it would not be a surprise if there are stories featuring both of them facing off; or him being an actual f***ing Vampire. What surprised me was that it took me this long to come across the story. I had previously encountered a similar character in the DC animated movie 'Justice League: Gods and Monsters' but seeing as how that char...

Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky My rating: 5 of 5 stars Detailed review pending. View all my reviews A whole lot of things are crammed in Dmitry Glukhovsky’s post apocalyptic, claustrophobic, introspective, yet engrossing underground tunnel opera. From the very first chapter, the author had me hooked, with the detailed dives into the history and lore of how exactly, the remnants of humanity came to live in such existential squalor. How the populace had devolved into tribalistic colonies centered around the metro stations, where only a thin veneer of law and order held sway, just enough that humans don’t devolve into utter barbarity and cannibalism; well, mostly. How, lack of basic necessities we today take for granted, such as clean running water, medicines, and lights, are slowly but surely pushing them ever closer to the edge of annihilation. How, a simple errant spark, a mutated strain, some contaminated water is all that would t...

Lovesickness by Junji Ito My rating: 4 of 5 stars Viewer discretion advised: Warning for graphic violence, acts, and body horror. The master of Japanese Horror, nay, graphic horror worldwide. As usual he has the unique ability to take day to day, mundane aspects of life, and turn them into graphic, disturbing, macabre displays of terror. The premise of these series of interconnected short stories involves our protagonist, who has returned to his childhood home, a childhood which I might add, has some seriously disturbing repressed memories attached to it. Right after his arrival, mysterious incidents begin taking place, ending in a serious of disturbing suicides and deaths. As the body count rises, and bit by bit the townspeople turn to rabid, maniacal, insanity, it's upon him to solve this phenomenon and stop the violence. It seems as if, in every other of his stories, things go bad, and everyone goes mad. But despite a predictable pattern, we s...

Fragments of Horror by Junji Ito My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews Junji Ito is to Graphical body Horror, what Lovecraft was to cosmic existential horror.  His stories are anthologies, often set in the Japanese countryside, where mysterious things are afoot, and just around the corner one might encounter the paranormal, that can, for no particular reason latch on to you, ruin your life, and oftentimes end up taking it as well.  They often feature a coterie of everyday people, who are afflicted with, or experience the horrors on the other side of the veil. Where malicious, whimsical and mostly evil incarnate entities toy with you for their own perverted amusement. And there is little you can do to combat them.  The characters of Junji Ito rarely try to fight against their oppressors; you won't find wooden stake wielding, silver bullet shooting monster hunters. Just what one would expect if you were to encounter the monster that goes bump in the night. You...

Preacher, Volume 1: Gone to Texas by Garth Ennis   My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews Well, in case you had any doubt; it's official. Garth Ennis absolutely despises what others hold dear. He has already shat on heaps upon Superhero genre, through his disturbing interpretation of truth, justice and the American way in  The Boys . Now, let us turn our attention to his earlier classic, shitting upon everything religion, specifically Christianity. Nothing is holy, nothing is sacred, everything is depraved. So why would one go about reading Garth's interpretation of the Father, the Son and the Holy spirit, where everything caters to the lowest denomination, and the worst stuff of nightmares you could think is put on screen? Well, the characters are mighty likeable, as well as the rapport the primary trio have with each other. Plus, there is a whole lot of gratuitous violence and fetichism for those who're into all that. Only thing I know is that, de...

I Am Legend by Steve Niles My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews I Am Legend  by Richard Matheson was one of my earliest forays into Sci-fi. The book, the 1964 & 1971 adaptations as well. (Not the 2008 will smith version which was forgettable). I suppose every dude has, at one point or another, pondered the hypothetical scenario when the world has ended, and they have to survive the fall of civilization much the Ron Swanson way. By building a bunker fortress, stacked with food and other necessities, armed to the teeth, ready to face the unknown from outside, Robinson Crusoe style. That, and which animal they think they can take in a fight. The original 1954 version doesn't hold up when it comes to the origins of the vampiric pandemic, or the science surrounding their hemophilic traits. But the reason it has continued to endure in popular imagination, is not because of the surface level premise, which is shared by most works about the zombie apocalypse. Rather, it's t...

DCeased by Tom Taylor My rating: 5 of 5 stars Rating 5 out of 5 |Grade: A+; Don’t you get it? We ARE The Walking Dead! Premise Darkseid, in his latest bid to invade earth, is once again thwarted by the Justice League and driven back to apokolips. Undeterred, he kidnaps Victor Stone a.k.a Cyborg, whom he believes to be one part of the vaunted Anti Life equation. The other is the essence from the Black Racer, the embodiment of death itself. But in combining cyborg’s life essence with the Black racer's deathly one, Darkseid gives rise to a catastrophe beyond his calculations, which then promptly kills the New God, and destroys Apokolips. Unfortunately while this was happening, Cyborg was teleported back to earth, and carried with him the corrupted plague that the Anti Life equation had become. It jumps from cyborg, to the world network, enslaving and corrupting anyone who were staring at a screen. The people who were exposed to the equatio...

Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia by Greg Rucka My rating: 4 of 5 stars Rating 4 out of 5 | Grade : A; "By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes." Warning; Gratuitous content, graphic violence, nudity Diana, living in Man’s world as the ambassador of Themyscira, as well as a vital member of the Justice league is feeling the Blues. Perhaps due to being away from her home, mother and sisters for long, or perhaps because of the spectral present of the Erinyes, the three sisters of vengeance. The reason for their presence becomes apparent, when, one night, a young woman named Danielle Wellys, comes to Diana’s doorstep, and invokes the ancient Greek ritual of Hiketeia. She submits herself, her life and entire being to Diana; in exchange, she begs for protection and sanctuary. Being the kind & honorable Amazon that she is, Diana accepts, without asking the girl’s circumstances, taking her under the Amazon’s protection. Little did s...

Zombies Vs. Robots by Chris Ryall My rating: 4 of 5 stars Rating 4 out of 5 |B+; Life? Don't talk to me about life. Premise: Humans discovered a technology which made time displacement possible. But, in an inverse case to the Terminator, organic matter gets annihilated during the trip. So, they created robots of various classes, to travel as proxies and collect necessary scientific information. Something went wrong, it was postulated that one of the robots might’ve accidentally brought back a virus, either from the past or future. But this resulted in the spread of a zombie virus in the human world. A portion of the human population succumbed to the virus. Another portion got turned into the undead, and preyed on those who remained uninfected. Perhaps in a bid to augment their fast dwindling fighting force, the humans commissioned various military class robots, to serve as a bulwark against the spread of the Zombies. This proved to be a stop ...