Myths and Monsters: Unicorns

New 52 Rankings

So, I reviewed 18 of the New 52. So, to cap off my reviews, I am going to do a countdown of the books I reviewed from worst to best. Enjoy.

Myths and Monsters - Werewolves

The first episode of my new series, Myths and Monsters.

Remaining New 52 Reviews

Since I allowed myself to fall waaaay behind, I'll just do a bunch of quick reviews of the rest of the trades I read. Got it? Good.

Review: Suicide Squad, volume 1: Kicked in the Teeth

Oh dear Lord. I've been putting this one off. Well fine. Here's my review of Adam Glass' first volume of Suicide Squad: It sucks. Happy?

101 Things I Learned From Fantasy Stories

I was bored. Didn't feel like reviewing Suicide Squad (because that would involve having to reread parts of it-- not something any sane person would subject themselves to), so here's a list:

Review: Swamp Thing, volume 1: Raise Them Bones

A "swamp thing", I assume, would be a thing found in a swamp. Alternatively, it would be a thing with swamp-like qualities. Like, it's really wet. And there are trees coming out of the water. And it lets you cast black spells. Something like that. Well, as Scott Snyder's Swamp Thing proves, I'm sort of right, but swamp things are so much more than that. Swamp things deserve our respect! Because without them, we'd all be backwards-headed zombies (let it never be said that comics aren't educational).

Review: Aquaman, volume 1: The Trench

Aquaman. Haha, I know right? What a lame superhero. He just swims around and talks to fish. He is so useless! Everyone knows this-- it's why Aquaman is a joke. It's why you probably shouldn't envy anyone who gets stuck with writing duties for the character. Like, take this Geoff Johns guy. He's writing the New 52 Aquaman. I wonder how he's doing?

Review: Birds of Prey, volume 1: Trouble in Mind

As a straight twenty-year-old male, you would naturally assume that a team of sexy crime-fighting ladies would appeal to me, on a base level at the very least. Conventional wisdom would say that a tale starring such a team would be something I'd eat up and love. With this mind, I must congratulate Duane Swierczynski on what her has accomplished with Birds of Prey-- I did not think it was possible for a comic to be this aggressively dull.

Review: Demon Knights, volume 1: Seven Against the Dark

What do you get when you take Arthurian Legend, The Seven Samurai, and Berserk and haphazardly mix them all together? Well, you'd probably get something very much like Paul Cornell's Demon Knights, one of the original titles to come out of the New 52. So how does it hold up? Let's take a look.

Review: Wonder Woman, volume 1: Blood

We kick off my New 52 reviews with the first volume of Brian Azzarello's run on Wonder Woman. And boy howdy, is this book polarizing. Check the message boards online-- either Azzarello is an evil monstrous being who has irrevocably ruined Wonder Woman and the Amazons, or he is a visionary who has finally made Wonder Woman relevant. Let's take a look, shall we?

New 52 Reviews Forthcoming

Remember my Fables volume 16 review? When I said that I prefer reading the trade collections of comics? Well, guess what? DC's New 52 are finally being released as trades, and Barnes and Noble has been having a special Buy 2 Get 1 Free sale on all DC graphic novels as a result. The sale doesn't end until November 15th!

Anyway, when I heard about the New 52, I was excited. I've never been that into superhero comics, due to the mass Continuity Lockout they suffer, so DC rebooting its universe was like a Godsend to me. Now that the trades are being published, I can finally sit down and read these stories which everyone else read last year!

As I read each graphic novel, I will post a review here. Expect reviews throughout the rest of September and most of October. Most of these will be from a newcomer's perspective, with a few exceptions which I will note when I get to them. For those, like me, who want to get into DC's new universe, hopefully these reviews will help you decide which books to get.

Who knows, maybe they'll even be helpful to older fans as well. Like if they dropped a book after issue 1, but the book got really good at issue 3 without them knowing or something. Or maybe they'll just be interested to know how a newcomer to DC's world takes these comics. After all, wasn't DC's goal with the reboot to attract new readers? Time to see how well they did with that.

Review: The Wolf Gift

A video review of Anne Rice's newest novel:

Harry Potter Retrospective

This is a video, so... yeah. Enjoy.

Review: The Soldier Son Trilogy

The conflict between nature and the progression of mankind is one that is often explored in fiction. Usually, this is done in the form of children's stories wherein we are told repeatedly to protect the environment and that anyone who pollutes the environment does it purely out of maliciousness (thank you, Captain Planet!). Obviously, that's such an oversimplification that it's pretty much false. However, for someone with a more subtle approach, the conflict provides fodder for a much more intriguing kind of story, one full of moral shades of gray. The beauty of nature, which has sheltered us for so long, which provides the ecosystem and resources we need, versus the technology of man, which consumes so much and is constantly progressing as our population grows and grows. Which should we choose? Which can we choose? And can there not be compromise? In The Soldier Son, Robin Hobb explores this very issue, along with a few others.

Analysis: The Scarecrow

I'll admit, I'm not really a "music person." Music just isn't a very big part of my life. I can't just sit around and listen to it-- that gets boring fast. I need to actually be visually doing something to keep myself from getting bored, so music tends to end up as background music for me. Though that's probably because I don't listen to dance music. Or pop music. Pop music is a scourge that must be purged from this world. But I digress. My point is that I'm not a music person, but that doesn't mean that there isn't music I like. In fact, there is music I love. I am a metal fan. To be more specific, I enjoy power and symphonic metal (for those of you unfamiliar with metal, there are many subgenres, and the fans of each subgenre can be downright vicious toward each other). One album in particular strikes a chord with me. It's a rock opera. Or a metal opera I guess. In fact, it's the first part of a trilogy. I just love the whole thing. I love how it sounds, and I love the story it tells. It's a very personal and very relatable story. It's a story that I can really sympathize with, and no matter how many times I listen to the album, it always manages to get me emotionally. That album is The Scarecrow by Avantasia.

Review: Hamlet's Father

Sometimes you hear about a work of fiction so outrageously insane, so utterly stupid, that you know that you would never forgive yourself if you passed up the chance to experience it. Call this phenomenon what you like: bile fascination, a simple love of so-bad-it's-good-cheesiness, The Room Syndrome... For some unfathomable reason, psychologists don't seem to have gotten around to assigning it an actual term. But I'm beating around the bush. You see, some months ago, I read a review of a novella, written by respected Sci-Fi author Orson Scott Card. It was a re-imagining of Hamlet and was printed in a collection of four stories called The Ghost Quartet. Well, I have finally gotten around to reading this... fascinating... piece of literature. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: "Hamlet's Father.

A Journey into Madness: Diving into My Little Pony

"Bronies." It is a term that describes one of the strangest examples of cross-demographic appeal in recent memory. Males from the teenage years to adulthood who have fallen in love with the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, a cartoon series aimed at little girls. Now, this isn't the first time these two demographics have overlapped, but since, as far I could tell, My Little Pony is not a Magical Girl anime featuring miniskirts and naked transformation sequences, there seemed to be no obvious reason for it. And yet, the Brony phenomenon has taken the internet by storm, with bronies flooding message boards, creating pictures, music videos, and... whatever this is. I figured that there must be secret I was no privy to, and so I decided to take a dive into the extremely colorful world of My Little Pony. Below are my discoveries, and my conclusions.

Review: Fables, vol 16: Super Team

The princess of Oz, Pinocchio, the Big Bad Wolf, the Frog Prince, an ogre, and Thumbelina all team up to form a superhero team. Go back and read that sentence again.

Why I Love Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes is, in my opinion, the most perfect comic strip ever created. If you are sitting there wondering what in the world Calvin and Hobbes is, then I pity you. I truly, deeply pity you. For you see, dear reader, Calvin and Hobbs was a comic strip written and illustrated by a man named Bill Watterson. It centered around a young boy named Calvin, and his stuffed tiger Hobbes. The comic was one deeply entrenched in the imagination and wonder of youth and, as I have already said, it was perfection in comic form. I would write out a whole essay about why, but I already did that as part of a school assignment last semester. So I'll just copy and paste it and maybe make a few minor adjustments.

Review: The Doomsday Vault

Saw this book sitting in the new releases shelf of Barnes and Noble's scifi/fantasy section a few weeks ago, and bought it on impulse. This is something I very rarely do when it comes to books. So here: enjoy a review of a lovely little steampunk novel by some guy named Steven Harper.

So Hi

OK.... um... hi. My name's Seann. I read. I also watch stuff and play stuff. I think I'll use this blog to post reviews and hopefully be entertaining and whatnot.