My four favorite parts of Faith Erin Hicks' new Inbetweens

Faith Erin Hicks' latest graphic novel Inbetweens stars twin sisters Ash and Sloane, both of whom are gifted young artists who have shared the dream of working in animation since they were little girls. As the book opens, they are about to attend a summer-long animation program for high school students at the prestigious Ormidale College, and, better yet, one of their heroes will actually be one of their instructors!

They make new friends, like Cameron, a boy who excels at drawing backgrounds and animals but is quickly bored by drawing the same things over and over, and Nisha, perhaps the most naturally talented person at camp, although at least one of her instructors is quite dismissive of her (Whether this is because she is one of the few young women in the program, or because of her darker skin, Hicks never makes it explicit).

The twins also meet a variety of mentors, one quite good and one quite bad, they are exposed to new kinds of animation beyond the Disney and Disney-like feature films they know inside and out (particular anime, and particular Studio Ghibli anime) and they discover different ways of learning and thinking about art.

They also, for the very first time, find reason to question their dream, as they learn exactly how difficult the work (and the people) can be, and both of them start to wonder if animation is really for them or not, although for very different reasons.

Hicks sets the book in the summer of 1999 (according to a calendar we see in the girls' bedroom), which I imagine is because she herself is, as her bio on the back cover says, a "former animation industry professional", and is basing the graphic novel at least in part on her own experiences. That's natural, of course, and I have to imagine that the field of, say, the 2020s is quite different than that of the late '90s, as the increasingly popular use of computers has so completely changed the way so much animation looks these days and, I assume, how it is made (I can't say for certain, but computers must make things like drawing the "inbetweens" far, far easier, right...?). 

While it does feel weird to think of a graphic novel set during my young adulthood as a "period piece", I was rather glad of it, as it meant I got all the references! (Well, being an American, I wasn't familiar with The Sweater, a 1980 National Film Board of Canada short that is one of the five films Hicks recommends at the end of the book, but I recognized all the others.). 

Plenty of real films are discussed or play a part in the story, including Disney's The Great Mouse Detective and One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Hayao Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky and Kiki's Delivery Service (Both of which would later become, retroactively, Disney movies, I guess). 

Additionally, the backgrounds are full of posters for recognizable movies, many with slightly off titles. For example, there's a poster in the halls at Orindale for a movie called All Good Boys, the sketchy image of which is colored in a way to suggest All Dogs Go to Heaven.

One fictional movie plays a pretty big part in the book, and that's a film directed by Ash's animation hero Douglas Frye entitled Monstrous, which looks and sounds a bit like The Iron Giant (Confession: I've never actually watched The Iron Giant).  As to why Hicks needed to make up a movie to attribute to Frye, well, a) he's fictional and b) he turns out to maybe not be the best of mentors and he is gradually painted in a rather poor light.

I picked the book up both because I am a longtime fan of Hicks' work and because I was planning on reviewing it for Good Comics for Kids, but a colleague of mine beat me to it. So instead of writing a formal review for it, I wanted to call attention to some of what I think were the most fun and interesting elements of the book here. 

1.) It's fun to see Hicks' version of various anime characters. Early in the story, we sit in on the program's film class, taught by Lisa Sato, the only female instructor there (I'm not sure how the animation industry looks today, but Hicks' book certainly seems to suggest that it was quite male dominated in the '90s). Her job is to expose the kids to animation made outside of America, and this of course leads to anime...and thus seeing Hick's drawings of famous characters you probably know from animation.

In this panel, for example, we see Hicks' "covers" of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy, Nadia from Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water and Rei Ayanami and the Evangelion Unit 01 from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Nadia is an interesting choice, I thought, because I assumed it wasn't a terribly well-known anime (I had only watched it in the early '00s after I learned that it was created by Hideaki Anno and Gainax, the creators of Evangelion), but then, it's quite illustrative of the teacher's point, that two anime shows from the same folks could be so different. 

In the very next panel, the teacher slides a VHS tape labeled "Laputa" into the VCR to show the kids Castle in the Sky (Laputa is the name of the castle and is sometimes part of the title of the film). Later, Nisha shares Kiki's Delivery Service with Sloane and Cameron (in addition to inspiring them, its plot rather directly informs the way the kids see their own conflicts). At another point, Nisha mentions Princess Mononoke. In each case, Hicks draws characters and scenes from those films into the action of her story, as the kids enter into the worlds of the films. In the case of Princess Mononoke, it's just a panel, but the sequences are a bit bigger and longer for the other two films. 

Hicks mostly has the Miyazaki characters looking away from the readers, though, so while readers will clearly recognize Kiki during passages of the book, they won't really see Hicks' version of her as clearly as they saw Hicks' Astro Boy, Nadia and Rei.

2.) Hicks does a great job of illustrating the act of animation in the medium of comics. Animation usually means doing a lot of drawing and drawing the same things over and over. So how does a cartoonist manage to dramatize the action of a character sitting at a table and drawing, say, a ball, over and over and over again? And how do they do it in a way that is compelling to read?

I liked Hicks' solution to the problem of "drawing about drawing" quite a bit. In fact, I think this is the most interesting aspect of the book, from a storytelling perspective, and I'm only addressing it second as I was writing about the parts that struck me in the order in which they appear in the comic.

Now, in the very first scene of the book, Hicks draws Ash drawing, a two-and-a-half page sequence that starts with a splash of her hands, one of which holds a pencil, over a notebook; the image is overlapped on the splash by a similar image, in which the sketch of a tree has now appeared. One inset panel shows a close-up of Ash's eyes and another of her tongue sticking out.

On the next page and a half, we see multiple images of her hands and the pencil as she's obviously moving them around quickly, and hand-drawn sound effects like "SHF" and "SKRATCH" appear around her.

So that's Hicks drawing drawing. But drawing animation? 

Well, on this two-page splash above we see Ash and Sloane literally drawing in the foreground, while, in the background, Hicks adopts a more symbolic approach, showing us what they are drawing, while multiple images of of the girls hover around the action they are drawing. 

What they are working on here is their first animation assignment, the bouncing ball. They have been tasked with drawing a bouncing ball, which necessitates drawing that ball over and over again on different sheets of paper, the ball seemingly moving a little on each page, so that, when the pages are flipped, the ball appears to move on its own. (On the end pages at the beginning of the book, Hicks draws another version of Ash and Sloane standing next to sketches of bouncing balls, too).

On the next pages, we see Cameron and Nisha similarly animating their bouncing balls, their full-color figures standing alongside the full-size sketches of the balls with their pencils pointed at them (Interestingly, Cameron gets bored, and, after a deep sigh, he ends up giving the balls faces and accessories and draws a background for the "characters".)

Later still, the kids all get the more advanced task of animating a flour sack as if it is alive, and Hicks uses this same technique to show the characters in the act of animation. Ash's bag seems to move clumsily in one panel, and then she sits down next to it to talk to it. Meanwhile, we see Nisha dancing alongside her flour sack, using her pencil a little like a conductor uses a baton to move it along. And, again, Cameron is bored; in the few panels featuring him during this sequence, we see a barely sketched flour sack laying on its side, while he's busy drawing an extremely detailed house and trees in the background.

3.) I just thought this was funny. At one point, the kids take a field trip to an agricultural fair, where they are to do life drawing of real animals (I can't remember which making-of-documentary I saw this on, probably one for the Lion King or Jungle Book or something with wild animals, but I remember seeing a scene in which Disney animators are shown sitting around with sketchbooks at the zoo to study how the animals look and move in real life). 

First, I just love Sloane's response to Ash, "We both know horses are impossible to draw." Not just hard or difficult—impossible! This is, of course, all the funnier because they are characters in a drawn comic book, and they are standing right there next to a horse, a horse that Hicks has obviously drawn, and thus they can't be all that impossible to draw (It's a good horse, too! Although, I guess Hicks got lots of practice while working on 2022's Ride On).

(Speaking of drawing horses, when I was still in grade-school, I used to borrow those how-to-draw books from the library, those guides that broke drawing whatever subject was into a few simple shapes to build upon, and the one I remember the best was the one on horses, and how you would start with two big circles and later connect them, forming the horses' body. I remember quite clearly showing my work to my grandfather who was visiting us that evening, and him saying, "Hey Mugget," his name for my grandmother Margaret, "Look at this horse! It's a little husky, isn't it?" I'm not sure if I remember that because he was making fun of my art, or because it was the first time I heard the word "husky", but it embedded itself in my memory. I think the last such book I ever read was one I had bought from Books Galore in Erie, Pennsylvania, a big, 1998 paperback entitled How To Draw DC Comics Super Heroes illustrated by John Delaney and Ron Boyd that I purchased because I wanted to be able to draw in that Bruce Timm-inspired animated style of the time. It did not, in fact, teach me to draw like Bruce Timm...or John Delaney...or Ron Boyd, but it's fun to look at some deeper-cut DC heroes drawn in that style, as this was well before the Justice League cartoon. I tried to post a thread of images from it on Bluesky the other day, but I don't think they threaded quite right.). 

The talk of the difficulty of drawing horses also reminded me of Kelley Jones' various scary horses, seen in his 2000 Vertigo adaptation of Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow and the 2001-2002 series The Crusades with Steven T. Seagle (I wonder, was that series a pitch for a dark, gritty Vertigo take on The Shining Knight, or am I just making that up?). When I had to draw scary horses for one of my own terrible minicomics, I looked to Jones' horses for inspiration, rather than real horses. 

Finally, the exchange also reminded me of one of the funnier bits of Brian Michael Bendis' memoir Fortune & Glory: The Musical, in which Bendis shares an anecdote regarding the legendary Gil Kane's reaction to Frank Miller's then hot comic Ronin (Spoiler: It involves the drawing of horses).

The scene continues, though, as we learn Cameron also likes drawing cars. I can't even remember the last time I attempted to draw a car for any reason...

4.) Guess the anime. When Nisha wants to share her favorite movie with her new friends, she takes them to a video store to show them the "Japanese Animation" section, where she will select Kiki's Delivery Service (Poor kids today, never knowing the pleasure of renting a movie from a video store...)

I always enjoy seeing fake movies in comic (the posters on the outside windows of the store are for Monster, Kiss Me Stupid, Alien Hunter and the apparently Child's Play-esque Killer Doll 5). This bottom panel shows us the covers of a bunch of anime, little rectangles upon which Hicks has room for a tiny picture, a splash of color and a word or two or three worth of title.

Still, that's enough that you can recognize Neon Genesis Evangelion ("Neon Angel"), Hamtaro ("I Am Hammy"), Trigun ("Twogun"), Sailor Moon ("Moon"), Cowboy Bebop ("Cowboy Jazz") and Dragon Ball Z ("Z"). 

The rest, I'm not sure about, but I enjoyed puzzling over them as I went back to linger on this panel. I think "Doll" may be referring to Chobits, but that's just a guess. Similarly, "War of the Elves" on the bottom shelf may be Record of Lodoss War...? Or maybe Those That Hunt Elves...? I'm just guessing; I've never seen the former and saw only a few episodes of the latter.

Similarly, I got nothing "Road Rage", "Knight" or "Sweet", but I would be curious to hear your guesses (Given the red hair on the cover of "Knight", I wonder, could it be Magic Knight Rayearth...?)  

And in the lower righthand corner, the image on that one DVD suggests Akira, but I'll be damned if I can read that little red writing over black with my now old man eyes...

On 1989's Secret Origins #44

As you're probably already well aware, one of the next movies based on a DC Comics character is going to be Clayface, currently scheduled for an October release. It doesn't strike me as a very good idea, as a solo film starring a C-list villain of an A-list superhero suggests 2022's Morbius to me. But then, no one asked me...and I think it's safe to assume that James Gunn knows more about making movies than I do. 

Now, movies based on Big Two comics characters tend to influence the publishers in two ways. First, it generally gooses them to collect comics starring that character to release in trade to potential new readers inspired to seek out said characters' comics origins. Second, it can lead to the publisher commissioning new comics starring that character. 

I was thinking the other day about the former in regards to Clayface, a character—well, a whole group of characters who share the same name—who doesn't really have all that many classic storylines for DC mine for trade paperback fodder. 

In fact, they've already published two comics for the mainstream, beyond-the-comics-shop market, 2017's Batman Arkham: Clayface, a collection of 14 stories published between 1940 and 2013 starring at least a half-dozen different Clayfaces, and 2023's Batman—One Bad Day: Clayface, a Killing Joke-inspired original graphic novel starring what has become the most popular and default version of the character, actor Basil Karlo-with-Matt Hagen's-powers. (In what I think is probably telling regarding the Clayface character/s status in Batman's rogues galleries, these books aren't unique to him; a whole bunch of Batman villains have their own Batman Arkham anthology collections and Batman—One Bad Day OGNs.)

When thinking of Clayface comics DC could collect in the hopes of the existence of Clayface-curious demand this fall, the one story arc that came to mind was 1989's "The Mud Pack", a four-part Detective Comics epic by the creative team of Alan Grant, Norm Breyfogle and Steve Mitchell (One of the best creative teams to ever tackle the Dark Knight).

Here, let's look at the covers:

This is basically the ultimate Clayface story, starring all four of the Batman villains to bear that name up until that point kinda sorta teaming up: Clayface Basil Karlo, a horror actor turned murderer who wore a clay mask; Clayface II Matt Hagen, a thief who discovered a radioactive pool in a pool that gave him the ability to change shape; Clayface III Preston Payne, a madman whose body would melt away like candle wax if not encased in a special suit and whose deadly, burning touch can reduce his victims to formless protoplasm; and Lady Clayface Sondra Fuller, who was given shape-changing powers similar to Hagen by Kobra in an issue of The Outsiders. (I say "kinda sorta" only because Hagen is, at that point, dead, and didn't have much choice over whether Karlo propped his remains up at the meeting table or not). 

In the end, Karlo manages to turn himself into the ultimate Clayface, assuming the powers of all of the other Clayfaces for his own, while the other living Clayfaces are kinda sorta written off.

I don't recall seeing a whole lot of any of the Clayfaces between this story's publication and the 2011 New 52 relaunch, an issue or two appearance aside. In the new New 52 continuity, thatwhole history and legacy of the Clayfaces was done away with, and DC basically just smooshed Karlo and Hagen into a single character, following the lead of Batman: The Animated Series, in which the sole Clayface had Hagen's comic book powers, but was, like Karlo, an actor. (That episode, by the way, aired in 1992, and I suppose therefore owes something to Grant's "Mud Pack", which first blended the actor Clayface with the shape-shifting Clayface). 

Batman: The Animated Series is probably the most influential Clayface story; for most comic book appearances of a Clayface to follow, he resembled the design seen in the cartoon. 

Anyway, if DC Comics wanted to publish a trade featuring a big Clayface story, "The Mud Pack" is pretty much all they've got, if you ask me (Do correct me if you have other suggestions, though!). Of course, they have published "The Mud Pack" in collected form before, in 2015's Legends of The Dark Knight: Norm Breyfogle Vol. 1 and 2021's Batman: The Dark Knight Detective Vol. 4, but not as a standalone story, one that would be visibly a Clayface story rather than a Batman one, you know?

Of course, "The Mud Pack" is only 88-pages along...is that maybe not enough for a trade? Well, luckily, there is a tie-in that could help fill out some trade paperback pages, 1989's Secret Origins #44, a special, all-Clayface issue published in conjunction with Detective's "Mud Pack" storyline. (Other candidates? In 1994, Grant checked back in with Clayface III and Lady Clayface in a Bret Blevins-drawn two-parter in Shadow of the Bat #26 and #27, and then in 1998 Grant and pencil artist Mark Buckingham had "Ultimate" Clayface Basil Karlo return for the first time since "The Mud Pack" in Shadow of The Bat #75).

I didn't expect to be able to find Secret Origins #44. I've been fairly fascinated with that series lately (as you may have noticed from my posts on stories from it featuring Detective Chimp and company, Rex the Wonder Dog and the Justice League of America), and have found myself increasingly wishing DC would collect (I think a couple of DC Finest collections would be perfect, DC). 

But to my surprise, DC did actually already collect issue #44 though, in the pages of the aforementioned Batman Arkham: Clayface. "Mud Pack" proper isn't in there—I assumed due to its length, as the Arkham collections obviously favor shorter stories, although they do include the four-part "The Shape of Things to Come" from Batman: Gotham Knights circa 2005, starring Clayface V—but the Secret Origins issue is.

I was particularly surprised to see this was the case, as it retold the origins of Clayfaces I-III...and the original origins are also collected in the Arkham trade. Still, I'm not complaining! Not only did it finally allow me to read a tie-in to "The Mud Pack" (although it's tangential at best, and totally unnecessary to understanding and enjoying the arc), but it features some extremely interesting artwork, from Keith Giffen and Bernie Mireault (!!!), plus Tom Grummet, who's not exactly a slouch.

So, after like 14 paragraphs of preface, let's take a look at the actual issue, shall we...?

The first fourteen pages are devoted to the origin of Basil Karlo, as retold by writer Mike Barr, pencil artist Giffen and inker Al Gordon.

The shape-changing Lady Clayface uses her powers to infiltrate Arkham Asylum, where the now elderly Karlo is in a hospital style bed with IVs and other medical apparatus all around him. 

"You're the one they call 'Clayface'--the first one, aren't you!"  she demands. "Why do you care?" he replies, and she responds, "I'll tell you--if you first tell me why they call you 'Clayface.'"

He then launches into his story, a 12-page retelling of 1940's "The Murders of Clayface" by Bill Finger, Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson, which, as I said, is also included in this Arkham collection (At least, that's what the credits in the table of contents say! I can't personally vouch for how much Kane actually drew of it!).

Barr and Giffen stick fairly close to the original, although it's quite a bit of fun to flip back and forth, and to compare and contrast various aspects of a Batman story in 1940 vs. 1989, where the plot is so similar, and you can see things like, say, how Kane/Robinson might have drawn Robin leaping feet-first at the murderer, or how Golden Age Batman varies from late-eighties Batman or just how different Julie Madison looks between the two eras:

Aside from the one-page prologue and epilogue set in the present and the opening splash, the entire story is broken into strict, six-panel grids, and it's quite fun to see Giffen's post-Dark Knight Returns take on Batman here. He's a big, boxy, perpetually shadowed shape of a man, the only details emerging from the blackness that seems to always fall across him are his furrowed brows, narrow white eyes and a bright yellow bat-symbol (Even when he's out of costume and presenting as Bruce Wayne, he's huge and boxy, sort of like a Dick Sprang Batman/Bruce Wayne as filtered through Frank Miller's style). 

(Among my favorite images are a long-shot of the Dynamic Duo swinging on their bat-ropes in front of a big, full moon, where they look more like talking capes than human beings.)

On the final page, Karlo raves a bit about his intention to avenge himself against Batman, and his visitor reveals herself: "My real name doesn't matter! You can call me the new Clayface!" She spends two panels relaying her origins, an asterisk telling us she is referring to Outsiders #22. Karlo asks her to free him, she refuses and departs, and, left alone in the dark again, Karlo tells himself, "The Batman has not seen the last of me...nor have you."

I guess it's the exchange here that most directly ties into "The Mud Pack"...although I guess knowing the origins of all the players would have been helpful going into Grant's story arc.

A turn of the page takes us to "The Tragic Though Amusing History of Clayface II", written by Dan Raspler, penciled by "BEM 89" and inked by Dennis Roider. 

It was this story that most interested me in checking this issue of Secret Origins out, as I was eager to see Mireault playing in the DC Universe again (Mireault is the creator of The Jam, collaborated with Mike Allred on Madman comics and Matt Wagner on Grendel comics, and also illustrated the "When Is a Door?' story in Secret Origins Special #1; written by Neil Gaiman*, it was a great last, ultimate Riddler story, and though obviously the character has been in fairly constant circulation since, I think it would have been a fine story to retire him after). 

Raspler and Mireault's story is played as a comedy, something helped tremendously by Mirelaut's cartooning, which gives this technically-still-a-superhero story the look and feel of an underground comic.

"Lucky" Matt Hagen seeks out sunken treasure, and finds a chest full of little pots of "oily, mucus-like stuff". When he departs for the surface, he accidentally swims into a rocky out-cropping, only to discover, with a "SPURB!!" sound effect, that he has been irrevocably changed!

It takes him about three pages and a failed suicide attempt, but he soon realizes he can regenerate his own head, he is now bullet-proof, and he can change shape. 

Naturally, he turns to a life crime in Gotham City and thus begins his career as a Batman villain. The World's Greatest Detective often catches him, but Hagen's powers and ability to survive pretty much anything keeps him coming back again and again.

Then comes Crisis on Infinite Earths, which Mireault draws like this—

—where Hagen finally meets his end, when a Shadow Demon flies through him, killing him with a "BLOOOSH!". (This story has some pretty great sound effects). 

And that's pretty much the end of Hagen...although, in the final panels, we see Karlo collecting Hagen's remains, which will be integral to the plot of "The Mud Pack".

Finally, we get to "His Name is Clayface III", by writer Len Wein (who had created this Clayface in a 1978 issue of Detective Comics) and artists Tom Grummett and Gary Martin.  While I never read Wein's original story starring Preston Payne (although it is collected in this Arkham book), I was fairly familiar with this particular Clayface's powers, look and particular brand of madness (talking to a mannequin, with which he seems to have a romantic relationship), as he was a fairly frequent cameo in Batman comics that featured scenes in Arkham Asylum in the 1980s.

Here, he sits in an Arkham cell in an easy chair with his mannequin, holding a copy of TV Guide and watching the television in front of him. They watch an episode of the show The Notorious, hosted by Jack Ryder, which is apparently a documentary series featuring criminals. 

This episode features him, but, unimpressed with the five-panels detailing his criminal career, he then tells his mannequin mate his origin in his own words. A genius scientist who suffers from acromegaly, he seeks a cure via Matt Hagen's blood. It works, allowing him to reform his deformed face into that of a very handsome man...but its efficacy is short-lived.

Soon his face starts to melt, and when he grabs his screaming date, she too melts away. Going forward, a burning pain will build up in his body, and the only way to temporarily relieve it is by touching and thus melting a victim. While Batman doesn't appear beyond a single-panel cameo, the serial-killing obviously made him an enemy of Batman's, and the whole experience seemed to drive him mad.

Aside from constantly ranting to a mannequin, the last panel reveals that there's not actually anything playing on his TV set, just static, and everything else seems to be in his head.

I really like Grummett's art, and his is like a Platonic ideal of superhero comic art, although in the context of this particular issue, it seems a little plain and even bland, given how distinct Giffen and Mireault's contributions are.

***************************

Ironically, the Clayfaces relatively minor position in the hierarchy of Batman villains make them well-suited to a collection like Batman Arkham: Clayface, which featured a cover by artist Guillem March (Which originally appeared on 2013's Batman: The Dark Knight #23.3; though it features The New 52 Basil Karlo Clayface, note that the design is clearly inspired by that of Batman: The Animated Series' Matt Hagen). 

I didn't read the whole collection, just the new stories that interested me (a few of the stories within are ones that I had read elsewhere before). As I said before, it features the first appearances of most of the Clayfaces, and there's a handful of really great artists whose work appears here. 

What then will you find, beyond Secret Origins #40...? 

•The first Clayface story from 1940, which I mentioned above.

•1961's "The Challenge of Clay-Face" by Bill Finger, Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris, introducing Matt Hagen (and, through him, the concept of the shape-changing Clayfaces).

•1978's Detective Comics #478 and #479 by Len Wein, Marshall Rogers and Dick Giordano, introducing Clayface III.

•1987's Outsiders #21 by Mike Barr and Jim Aparo, introducing Lady Clayface and some even goofier villains, sicced on Batman, Metamorpho, Black Lightning and the goofballs that filled out the ranks of the Outsiders by the supervillain Kobra.

•1998's Batman #550 by writer Doug Moench, with pencil art divided between then regular Batman artist Kelley Jones and J.H. Williams III. This issue's Clayface was Clayface IV, Cassisus, the son of Clayface III and Lady Clayface. Jones was obviously well-suited to the body horror aspects of a Clayface (in the scene above, this Clayface uses the people-melting power inherited from his father to melt a policeman) and as for Williams' presence, well, he was drawing the upcoming Chase ongoing series, which this issue was a lead-in for. In fact, this issue is the first appearance of Cameron Chase and the Department of Extranormal Operations.

•2002's Catwoman #4 by Ed Brubaker, Darwyn Cooke and Mike Allred, pitting the Feline Fatale against an all-new Clayface, this one created in a military experiment. I think this would be Clayface V...unless you count Lady Clayface as Clayface IV, in which case he's Clayface VI...? At this point, I think it's safe to say there are officially too many Clayfaces.

•"If a Man be Clay!", a story by Steve Purcell, Mike Mignola and Kevin Nowlan, that was originally published in 2005's Batman Villains Secret Files and Origins #1 and featured Batman and the original Robin taking on Matt Hagen for the first time. From what I understand, this one was sitting in a drawer for a while, but was rescued to be published here...and why wouldn't DC rescue it...? It was Mignola drawing the shape-changing Hagen! Though it follows the plot of "The Challenge of Clay-Face" closely, and contains much of the same imagery, it's great fun to see those scenes drawn in Mignola's moody style, particularly with Nowlan's evocative inking.

•The aforementioned "The Shape of Things to Come" from Gotham Knights, by A.J. Lieberman, Al Barrionuevo and Bit. I didn't read this one, either when it was originally published (I had dropped Gotham Knights by that point) nor in this collection, but it apparently features the Johnny Williams Clayface, the one previously seen in Catwoman.  Also, Hush is in this one. 

•2013's "Not Just Another Pretty Face" by John Layman and Cliff Richards, from Batman: The Dark Knight #23.3, the previously mentioned comic from which the collection's cover is taken. It seems to star the New 52 Basil Karlo.

So, to review, this collection features art by Bernie Mireault, Kelly Jones, Darwyn Cooke and Mike Mignola, plus Sheldon Moldoff, Marshall Rogers, Jim Aparo, Keith Giffen and Tom Grummett. That's not bad company to spend time in...!

*Yeah, him again. This then is another comic now more or less ruined by the presence of Gaiman's credit, his recently revealed actions tainting all of the quality work he helped produce over the decades of his comics career. 

Bookshelf #29

The organizing principle of most of my bookshelves has been the publisher, but with this particular shelving unit, it has actually been what books will fit on its very small shelves.

That said, the two best-represented publishers here are Oni Press and Tokyopop. 

From Oni, we have a quartet of books by Western creators that are all extremely manga-inspired, so much so that Oni published them in tankobon-like digests so that they could easily be shelved in the manga sections of bookstores. These are Corey S. Lewis' incredible Sharknife, the story of a busboy/Japanese-style superhero, James Stokoe's Wonton Soup, a crazy sci-fi story about a chef, Ray Fawkes and Cameron Stewart's Apocalipstix, about an all-girl rock band in a post-apocalyptic world (Josie and The Pussycats meets Mad Max!), and Rick Spears and Chuck BB's Black Metal, an all-ages mélange of heavy metal and dark fantasy with a Cartoon Network aesthetic. 

These were all great books by great creators, and I think my first exposure to each of them. They are all also from the same "class" of books that gave birth to Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim, although none of them obviously got as big. I'd recommend all of 'em if you can find them at this point...although Apocalipstix is obviously problematic at this point, given that it's drawn by Stewart. (Speaking of the now problematic, Sharknife has a blurb from Warren Ellis on the back, in which the writer says, "Did you ever wish you'd been at a great band's first gig? This is exactly the same thing." Which, true, but still...)

From Tokyopop, we have Bandon Graham's King City, another inspired American manga, this one involving a pet cat that can turn into anything. I was a big fan of this when I first read it, and it put Graham on my radar as one of a handful of great, emergent creators to watch...although he has since also had troubling allegations made against him regarding his treatment of trans women. (God, it's dismaying how often one has to stop and flag particular creators when discussing older comics...)

There's also the first four volumes of Kenji Sonishi's manga series Neko Ramen, a four-panel comic strip about a cat who runs a ramen shop and whose food is terrible...which probably shouldn't be a surprise given that he is, you know, a cat (Despite this, the same young Japanese businessman seems to stop by for lunch, like, every day, and plays the straight man). As with most manga, I didn't keep up with, but, looking it up now, I guess there were only five volumes of it total, so I didn't do so bad with this one.

I think it's interesting to note here how similar the packaging of Oni's Western manga-like comics (and Tokyopop's King City) is to that of Neko Ramen, an actual manga series.

As for the rest of the shelf? Well, there's Lewis' Seedless, and Image Comics original graphic novel about warrior grapes that is heavily inspired by toy franchises like Playmate's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles*. (I'm pretty sure I stuck this on this shelf so it would be next to Lewis' Sharknife.) There's a pair of Debbie Huey's charming Bumperboy books from AdHouse, a comic I think was probably ahead of its time, given that kids' comics weren't yet as big a presence in the market as they are now. There are some quality graphic novels from more literature/art-focused publishers, Jordan Crane's The Clouds Above from Fantagraphics (This is still one of my all-time favorite book designs; I just love looking at this book as an object), Renee French's H Day from PictureBox and Adrian Tomine's Scenes from an Impending Marriage and Pablo Holmberg's Eden, both from Drawn & Quarterly. 

The final book on the shelf is that little black one in the middle, the oddlyshaped, longer-than-it-is-tall Process Recess, an AdHouse published art book devoted to the work of James Jean, who comics readers probably know best from his striking cover work on Vertigo series Fables (He also did about a year and a half's worth of Batgirl covers circa 2003-2004, and a half-dozen Green Arrow covers in 2005; of those, this is might the best one, but this one featuring Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle's Anarky is my favorite).

*Though Seedless reads a bit like a tie-in comic for a toy line akin to TMNT and those of the 1980s like Masters of the Universe, G.I. Joe, Transformers and the like, the fact that it involves sentient food reminded me of Mattel's short-lived Food Fighters line, of which my little brother had a figure or two when we were growing up. I remember the doughnut guy being around the house, anyway. 

A Month of Wednesdays: April 2026

BOUGHT:

Supergirl Vol. 1: Misadventures in Midvale (DC Comics) I was genuinely worried about this one. 

As long-time readers likely know, Sophie Campbell is one of my favorite artists—and, increasingly, comics storytellers—and she has been since I first came upon her work about 20 years ago now. Since then, I've read and enjoyed (almost) everything she's done, from her personal stuff like Wet Moon and Shadoweyes to her work on various franchises and extant characters, some of which were already favorites of mine (Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Toho's Mothra), others of which I was completely ambivalent about (Rob Liefeld's Glory). So obviously I'm going to read anything she works on...especially if she's writing and drawing it. 

But there are few DC characters I am less interested in than Supergirl (Probably just the Legion of Super-Heroes. Or the WildStorm characters, if any of those guys count as DC characters now; they seem to come and go from DCU continuity). 

I attribute this to what the publisher was doing with the character around the time I started reading comics. At that point, John Byrne had (understandably, I suppose) wanted to streamline the Superman family for his post-Crisis reboot, so that Superman was the only surviving Kryptonian and, as a workaround, the post-Crisis Supergirl was actually...shape-shifting sentient protoplasm in the form of Supergirl...? And then in the late '90s that "Matrix" Supergirl merged with a human girl? And became some kind of angel, with flame vision and fire wings...? Not sure how any of this actually simplified anything, as "Superman's cousin from Krypton" is pretty damn simple in comparison.

Subsequent reboots, like Jeph Loeb simply reintroducing Supergirl in 2004  as if the "Matrix" version/versions had never existed*, only repelled me further, as reboots usually do, and I basically just steered clear of Supergirl as much as possible, although I've obviously read plenty of comics in which she appeared (Probably less than I could count on one hand that actually had the name "Supergirl" in the title, though). Similarly, The New 52 reboot didn't interest me at all. This avoidance of the character extended backwards in time, too, so I've never even read her original Silver Age adventures, despite my fondness for that era of Superman comics in general. 

(I did watch the first season and a half or so of the live-action TV show starring Melissa Benoist, so I know there's potential in the character; I also liked the later version from the DC Super Hero Girls franchise, the one with big arms and short hair).

Why am I saying all of this? I mean, aside from the fact that that I tend to go on and on when fewer words would do, and I have no editor or word limits here? Well, the basic point is this: I love Sophie Campbell's comics, and have no interest at all in Supergirl comics, so Sophie Campbell doing a Supergirl comic is sort of...fraught for me. 

I mean, I want to support Campbell in all she does, obviously. But what if I hated it? I've never written a bad review of a Campbell comic before!

Well, as it tuns out, I need not have worried. Campbell's Supergirl, which is colored by Tamra Bonvillain, is a triumph. 

Not only is this the first time I ever cared the least bit about the character, it's one of the best superhero comics I've read in recent memory and, importantly I think, it is both new-reader friendly and all-ages. I think you could give this trade to pretty much any reader, regardless of age or background with the character or the DC universe in general, and they would be able to understand it easily, and, more importantly, enjoy it. (Reading it reminded me quite a bit of Marvel's The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl and the earliest Ms. Marvel comics, although I think the latter required a bit more foreknowledge of that universe's characters and history, what with the Inhuman origin and Carol Danvers being Kamala's hero.)

I think it helps that Supergirl's post-Crisis continuity is so convoluted and crazy, and that DC has rebooted their own damn continuity so many times since Infinite Crisis, that, at this point, there is essentially no continuity, and so Campbell seems rather free to proceed almost as if she's working on a brand-new character, only nodding to the characters status quo previous to this book (She apparently lived in Metropolis?) and picking and choosing what she wants to reference or include from the character's past. 

Perhaps surprisingly, a lot of this seems to be from the Silver Age and Bronze Age (at least as far as I can tell). Several characters that I thought were new here, I later found by googling them, are actually older, more obscure pre-Crisis ones, reinvented rather than taken out of mothballs, so that they feel new and thus, I imagine, read like Easter eggs to long-time Supergirl fans.

It also helps that Campbell couches the book in Superman lore rather than Superman continuity. That is, most of the Super-stuff included is of the sort that is 1) among the most fun and 2) the sort of stuff most people would probably already know from pop culture or can at least easily intuit. Stuff like Kandor, Krypto, Streaky and Titano, or that Luthors are usually bad guys or that kryptonite is the weakness of Kryptonians and so on.

Misadventures in Midvale collects the first six issues of the series, about four and a half of which are drawn by Campbell, while the two guest artists are deployed rather strategically (Supergirl is barely in the fifth issue, which features a pair of adventures by two teams of Super Pets; Paulina Ganucheau and Rosi Kampe each draw one of those adventures. The action of the sixth issue is split between the real world and Supergirl's dreams/mind; Campbell draws the IRL stuff, while Kampe handles the stuff in the character's head). 

The first issue opens with a sort of day-in-the-life of Supergirl—defending Metropolis from an original villain named Princess Shark, shrinking down to patrol Kandor—before her parents ask her to visit them in Midvale, Supergirl's old hometown. 

When she arrives there, though, she finds something's quite wrong: Midvale has a new Supergirl that they've adopted as their hometown hero, and there's already a girl named Linda Danvers, her old secret identity, living in her old house with her parents. What's going on? 

Well, that's the question that the first three-issue story arc addresses. Our Supergirl is branded "Phonygirl" as she tries to get to the bottom of the new, not-her Supergirl/Linda Danvers. She's aided by Krypto, Streaky and Lena Luthor, who has quite conveniently just moved into a "secret lair" on the edge of Midvale (And who, I am guessing, is mainly in this book due to the character's role and popularity in the live-action TV show, where she was played by Katie McGrath; I haven't read most of the character's comics adventures, but I don't think she's been seen in quite a while, nor all that tightly tied to Supergirl). 

During the course of the adventure, we'll meet a new Super Pet—the faux Supergirl's apparently Kryptonian rabbit, Kandy—Titano will attack and get a radical makeover and new name, and a blast from a gun powered by black kryptonite will transform Supergirl into the evil (and not very smart) Satan Girl...and similarly affect Krypto (although he doesn't seem to change his name). 

Oh, and there's also a montage where Supergirl tries on various old and potential costumes, a scene evocative of one from one of the earliest episodes of the TV show. Thanks to Lena, she will eventually gain a new way of suiting up into her current costume, which involves a magical girl-esque transformation sequence.

In the fourth issue, Supergirl, Lena and their new friend, who all seem to be roommates now, go to a goth club (a sequence of which reminded me quite a bit of that from Campbell's TMNT where Jennika takes the guys to a rock club in Mutant Town). There they end up fighting a new version of an obscure Supergirl villain, who I only know previously existed because the very specific name given to him—Howard Pendergast—led me to google it on a hunch. 

The fifth issue, as mentioned, features the Super Pets (I think Ganucheau, whose work I'm familiar with from her story in TMNT: Black, White and Green, her cute original graphic novel Lemon Bird Can Help and illustrating Magdalene Visaggio's Girlmode, is more compatible with Campbell's than Kampe's, which looks off compared to everything that preceded it). 

And finally, the sixth issue has the girls—who have now added another new friend—trying to celebrate Halloween, while Supergirl's dreams are haunted by the villain Nightflame. This is the first issue that really seems to reference past Supergirl continuity in a way that might be construed as alienating. Essentially, Nightflame presents Supergirl with a series of her worst memories, and Kampe draws panels referencing particular points in Supergirl history, only a few of which I recognized (Interestingly, this sequence reinforces the conception that the current Supergirl is the original Silver Age one reborn, as her memories include being abandoned to an orphanage by Superman and being killed in COIE, as well as later stuff involving that weird skimpy costume she wore in Superman/Batman, the Red Lanterns and stuff I wasn't familiar with...like Krypto bleeding profusely from arrow wounds, which Bluesky told me was from a Tom King story?). (In Campbell's defense here, one really only need know that these images refer to specific bad or traumatic events Supergirl's past, and not exactly what is going on or what issue they came from).

As fun and as new reader friendly as the book is, one of the things I particularly appreciated was Campbell's portrayal of a superhero as, like, a genuinely good person. Supergirl is obviously involved in some fights, but she shows a great deal of sympathy for her enemies and is quite gentle with them (this we're shown on the very first page, as she deals with Princess Shark), and empathizes with their plights and, in the case of the first arc's main villain, what it is that drove her to her bad acts.

This is best illustrated in a three-page sequence in Supergirl #3, where Campbell draws Supergirl triumphantly grabbing the villain by the collar with one hand, while her other is hauled back into a fist, as if she's about to deliver a knock-out blow. The villain certainly expects one and looks concerned and scared as she reflexively flinches. But then you turn the page and see that Supergirl has pulled her foe into a hug.

The other refreshing aspect is just seeing Campbell's art applied to DC super-comics. If you've read many of Campbell's comics—um, at least those featuring human casts rather than mutant animals—she has always demonstrated a great and compelling range of character designs in her comics that are all too rare in the superhero genre.

I mean, most superhero comic artists—even many of the greats—tend to draw character "types" rather than specific characters. Like "big, buff man" and "attractive young woman" and so on. All too often, the women in superhero comics tend to look identical to one another and are really only distinguishable by their hair color or style and the clothes (often costumes) that they are wearing.

Not so in a Campbell comic. Here, all of the young women characters look distinct from one another. Even Kara/Supergirl, who is probably the most default superheroic/conventionally attractive character has a particular face and a particular body, and it's nothing like that of the other characters.

Kandorian Lesla-Lar, for example, has a thin, upturned nose and a slightly pointed chin. In Kandor, she's tall and slim, but under the sun's yellow rays, not only does she gain muscle, but she also gains Power Girl-esque curves, becoming statuesque and busty, with notably curvy thighs that distinguish her from the shorter, slimmer Kara.

This is the case with the other principal women as well, like Lena and new character Luna Lustrum, who Campbell gives a slim build, a prominent nose, big eyes and a notably sloping forehead. (Luna is a strikingly beautiful and original character too, probably the one that stands out the most in the series so far).

I can only wish that more mainstream supercomics took this much care to draw female characters that seem so distinct and so real—even though I don't think "realistic" is likely a word that many would apply to Campbell's style, in terms of her rendering. 

It's for this reason that I hope Campbell is able to stick with both writing and drawing the title for as long as possible (and hopefully longer than she managed to do both on her TMNT run). In fact, if being able to do both makes making deadlines impossible (and or means she has to start keeping an unhealthy, punishing work schedule), well, I would rather the book become a bimonthly or quarterly than see Campbell retreat to just writing and drawing the covers while another pencil artist takes over, but hey, that's just me.

At any rate, Campbell's Supergirl? It's a really great comic. Check this trade out if you haven't already. 

**********************

By the way, do you remember the apparently now-defunct site Project: Rooftop website, where artists would share their redesigns of superhero costumes? After reading Campbell's Supergirl book, where she seems to have settled on the costume you see on the cover above for the character, one that evokes elements of several different incarnations of the character, I was curious to revisit Campbell's rather more radical redesign from 2009 or so.

While I couldn't find Project: Rooftop proper anymore, Campbell's design survived in posts about the post in which artists redesigned Supergirl:

I love the short cape, and there are obviously elements of this costume that are unique to this design, like the color scheme, the off-the-shoulder top, and, I think, the little yellow five-sided diamond-shapes all over, which I imagine are meant to be Super-symbols.

**********************************

BORROWED:

Batman/Superman: World's Finest Vol. 8: 20,000 Leagues (DC Comics) I'm afraid I wasn't terribly enamored with the latest collection of Mark Waid's Batman/Superman team-up title, which I attribute in part to the somewhat muddy art of Adrian Gutierrez, who draws most of these seven issues**, although I don't think Waid is entirely blameless here. Although he writes all of the characters involved well (and includes lots of bit of DC Comics mythology that I like), and though he has some interesting, insightful thoughts within the stories here collected, overall, none of them are particularly compelling as stories. 

There are three separate stories total here, two three-issue arcs broken up by a done-in-one. Let's take them each in turn.

The first is the title story arc "20,000 Leagues," which finds Superman, Batman and Robin joining Aquaman (who was quite conveniently hanging out on the surface world with them at the start of the story) in Atlantis, where the heroes must deal with a strange plague turning the people of Tritonis (these are the Atlanteans who resemble traditional merpeople, being human from the waist up and fish from the waist down) into rampaging, red-eyed zombies. That, and the plague's fallout: The King of Tritonis blames the people of Poseidonis (Aquaman's hometown) for spreading the plague and he is about to initiate a civil war over the matter.

As it turns out, Superman has something of a personal stake in these events, as his ex, Lori Lemaris, hails from Tritonis, and is currently married to its king Ronal (Complicating things is the fact that their marriage isn't going great, so Lori finds herself drawn towards the more attentive Superman during the proceedings).

The plague and civil war both turn out to be part of the machinations of a supervillain, of course. 

In a pretty clumsy cliffhanger for Waid, that villain is revealed on the last page of the first issue of the arc. In the last panel, Batman narrows his eyes at him, while Robin says, "Batman.. ...Who the hell is that?"

The comic doesn't tell us, and I didn't recognize him due to what I am assuming is a rather radical redesign here. Did readers have to wait a whole month to find out who this weird-looking plant creature is? (I see his name is on the cover of the next issue and is the first line of dialogue in that issue). 

It's The Floronic Man. 

He created the fungal plague and sowed suspicions between the two cities to incite a war as part of his plan to take over the world's oceans, which host an abundance of plant life, some of which seems to be imbued with magic, thanks to its proximity to Atlantis, I guess.

Swamp Thing is also involved but doesn't get a whole lot to do.

The most interesting bit of the story is Ronal talking about his feelings of inadequacy, being Lori's husband and knowing that her first love was pretty literally the most perfect man on Earth. 

Well, there's that, and the idea that Aquaman is a baseball fan, something that comes up briefly at the beginning of the end of the story; between, Waid has the Atlanteans and Aquaman himself addressing the issue of the King of Atlantis spending so much time away from home with the surface heroes, which Waid seems to resolve by having Aquaman argue that by saving the world with the Justice League, he is also saving his subjects in Atlantis. 

There are a couple of points where I had a hard time seeing in Gutierrez's art what the script seemed to be saying, but the bigger problem is the plethora of what look like digital effects (I'm not sure if these are drawn into the art by Gutierrez or by color artists Tamra Bonvillain and Matt Herms). Because most of the action is underwater, it's somewhat dimly lit, and the panels are all filled with bubble effects. There are also some bright, lightning-like effects to suggest magic, and these additional layers of visual information, on top of the art, sound effects and dialogue bubbles and narration boxes, seems to overload and overwhelm the pages to me.

Also, Gutierrez gives Ronal and Aquaman similar haircuts, which are only a shade different in color (Ronal's hair is slightly redder), and I wish they didn't look so much like one another throughout.

The done-in-one is one of the occasional mixing-and-matching of the Batman and Superman supporting casts that Waid offers in this series, this time with the old guy co-workers of the two heroes, as Perry White and Jim Gordon are both guests on a Metropolis podcast with a new character who Lois Lane says "ranks number one among the dude-bro demo."

They're not arguing long before a giant monster attacks, and Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, both of whom are there to support their respective friends, go into action in their heroic identities. Batman is in a giant robot battle suit, which he introduces to Superman as a little something he's been working on ("You have the coolest hobbies," Superman says when he sees it).

You know, at this point I think I've lost track of how many giant robots Batman has piloted over the years (But the one Kelley Jones drew for him in Gotham After Midnight, which was essentially a giant punching machine he rolls out in order to fight a giant-sized Clayface, is still my favorite).

This issue is fine. While I don't love the art here, especially the use of what look like manipulated photos to stand in for Metropolis in the backgrounds, it's short and stuffed with action. 

There's a fun three-panel sequence where Bruce Wayne flirts with Lois just to needle his friend Clark/Superman, and it is of course satisfying to see a hero of dude-bros in handcuffs being led into a police van at the end (Gutierrez gives this character muscular arms, a clean-shaven bald head and a dark beard, so that he has a passing resemblance to Andrew Tate). 

The final story here is the three-issue "Bizarro World Tour." Superman, Batman and Robin are teleported to Bizarro World, which is in the throes of a mysterious plague (Yes, that's two plagues in one collection!). The disease turns the usually backwards Bizarro's normal, and crowds of the unaffected chase and attack those that are infected (Because the "backwards" response to an infectious disease is, of course, to get as close to those who have it as possible, rather than to keep a safe distance, right?).

After Robin, who seems to have little to no experience with Bizarros here, navigates the chaos in scenes evocative of horror movies, the three heroes of our world eventually meet Bizarro World's Bizarro #1 and Batzarro, both of whom have been infected, and are now totally normal, rational-thinking players (Although they still look like grotesque fun house mirrors of the genuine articles).

Again, Waid has some interesting riffs on the premise of his story. The way in which the heroes come up with a cure for the plague is genuinely inspired, the revelation of where it came from and how the person responsible finds himself slowly succumbing to his own Bizarro-ification and keeping a diary of it is fun, and there's an oddly touching bit where Batzarro explains to Robin that the plague isn't the "cure" he thinks it is, that, to them, it is a sort of mental illness, and that "whatever this disease is, it's twisting the perspective of thousands of innocent beings against their will." 

That said, the impetus for the plague's creation, and the ultimate problem both worlds' World's Finest teams must address comes from Waid thinking about Bizarro World in realistic terms and applying physics to the idea of a cube-shaped planet. It's smart, but makes me uncomfortable, as this is superhero comics—and superhero comics based on silly ideas from the crazy Silver Age—and there's only so much logic that one can comfortably apply. I mean, why wrestle with how a cube-shaped planet might exist in the real world instead of just shrug and think "Who cares? It's comics." I mean, it's not like the title has yet to address how Superman flies, for example. 

This arc isn't underwater, of course, so there aren't a bunch of bubbles in every panel, but I still found the art a bit too murky-looking—Is it so dark-looking on Bizarro World because darkness is the opposite of light, perhaps?

All in all, despite its many bright spots, I didn't find this particular volume as fun or as engaging as some of the previous seven. 

Komi Can't Communicate Vol. 37 (Viz Media) I've been expecting, even dreading this moment for quite a while now—ever since protagonists Komi and Tadano confessed their feelings for one another and started dating actually, which seems like forever ago—and it's finally here, the very last volume of Tomohito Oda's Komi Can't Communicate. 

Obviously, I'm a fan. I've read 37 volumes after all, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of—oh jeez—10,00 pages. So, I'll definitely be sorry to see it go, and will miss my occasional visits to a Japanese high school (I've been filling the Komi-shaped hole in my reading list with the oddly-named Skip and Loafer, which is cute, dramatic and funny, but with a much more...normal student body than that of Komi's school). On the other hand, though, the narrative definitely seems like it was ready to end. 

As I suspected off and on, the series ends with Komi, Tadano and company graduating from high school...and Komi making her 100th friend, one of the big drivers of the series' action. In that respect, Oda probably couldn't have kept it going too much longer anyway. There's a final, eight-page 500th chapter, in which we check in on Komi and Tadano in college, and I suppose it's possible we could have gotten at least a few more volumes detailing the pair and other characters as college kids (not unlike the last few volumes of Haikyu!!, where Haruichi Furudate gave readers a "flash forward" to Hinata and company's post-high school years, a weird but fun way of showing us how the characters all end up), but, as I said, the series seemed like it was starting to wind down many volumes ago, when the central will they/won't they question was resolved (the did, obviously).

Indeed, even in this last volume, Oda seems to be marking time, with several side stories that aren't directly involved with the Komi/Tadano relationship, Komi's quest for 100 friends, or the end of high school...or even wrapping up the stories of various supporting characters. 

And so, in this volume, Komi and Manbagi attempt to get their driver's licenses, with mixed results (their instructor is the leather and spike-clad older sister of one of the weirder-looking kids in their class). 

There's a whole chapter devoted to ranking the various penis sizes of the boys who visit a public bath (The word "penis" is never mentioned, but Son Totoi, the perverted student who looks like the Buddha for some reason, suggests, "Every situation involves a hierarchy. Even amongst friends. How about we... ...rank ourselves by size." If you're curious, Tadano is in the middle of the pack, number five of the nine in attendance.)

And he masked group, identified to one another only by letter, although readers know who each of them are, gather once again to share their various romantic, but remarkably chaste, fantasies one last time.

And there's a surprisingly touching chapter devoted to Komi's friendship with Ren Yamai, the rabidly perverted girl with an over-the-top sexual attraction to Komi. Here, they meet in Komi's room, and Komi haltingly asks Yamai why she likes her as much as she does, to which Yamai replies completely honestly, after first telling her something she thought Komi might want to hear: 

No, that's all lies. 

It's because you're beautiful. 

That's the only reason.

I don't care about your personality. I just want to lick your face and body all over...and nestle between your beautiful hair and neck... ...and squeeze your divine calves and get scratched by your pretty fingernails.

The exchanges that follow, in which Komi thanks her for her compliments and honesty and tells her what she admires about her, and Yamai thinks about the positive impact Komi and her friendship has had on her, is actually quite touching, and actually rather redeems one of the weirder, more off-putting characters in the series, who has thus far been a mostly one-note character whose often perverse sexual interest in Komi has always been played for laughs. 

Speaking of sexual, the very last page suggests strongly that Komi and Tadano are, as first-year college students, going to take that big step. The sequence, which follows the pair on a date, ends with a deeply blushing Komi suggesting, "Maybe I don't... ...need to go hom tonight. We don't... ...need to wait any longer, right?"

A long way from being so shy and socially anxious she couldn't speak to Tadano but had to write what she wanted to say to him on a school chalk board. 

If you haven't been reading, I'd definitely recommend trying the series out. In my experience, the best way to read a good manga series is once it's over, so that if you get really into it, you get the instant gratification of being able to read the next volume as soon as you finish one, and don't have to wait months between installments. 

REVIEWED:

Feo The Chupacabra (Abrams Fanfare) As someone who has read and written extensively about cryptozoology and cryptids (more on that at some point in the future, I hope), I was planning on using this paragraph to explain that the Chupacabra, contrary to this book's story, a relatively recent invention, appearing in 1995 (and almost certainly inspired by the movie Species). But when I actually sat down to write the review, I ended up mentioning it there; the graphic novel, by contrast, is set in the 1950s, and a blurb from Sergio Aragones mentions him having grown up in Mexico hearing about the monster. As I also write in the review, though, the protagonist, in telling a story about the Chupacabra, mentions artistic license, which I guess is a way the creators asking for it themselves.

Anyway, if you like quality cartooning, old-school monster movies (and/or Abbott and Costello) and cryptids, then this is pretty much your ideal graphic novel. More here. 

The Greenies (Henry Holt and Company) Despite the title, the catchier name that one of the characters' comes up with for their school's Enviro-Club, this book's environmental content is more or less incidental to the plot. That plot? New girl Violet knows next-to-no one at her new school, save for her very different Kris, and due to a series of unlikely circumstances including first day detention and a club no one wants to join, ends up finding a circle of friends. It's pretty fun, and rather well made, but probably more for young readers than it is for an all-ages audience. More here. 

My Journey to Japan: Escape to Yokai Mountain (Tuttle Publishing) I had a great deal of fun with this one, which is full of useful information about various aspects of Japan, while also an easy enough read that you could handle it in a single sitting. Cartoonist Matthew Loux embeds a sort of guidebook to Japan inside a comic book narrative about a pair of Western kids and an exiled Kappa with teleportation powers journey to the top of the titular mountain. There, they regularly meet different yokai, and end up taking little side quest field trips, during which the yokai in question will teach them about some aspect of Japan: Its castles, its temples, its food, its trains and so on. I actually recommended this book to a couple of "civilian" coworkers, one of whom has been to Japan in the last few years and one of whom is going there next month. More here. 

*According to Mark Waid and company's New History of the DC Universe, the Supergirl introduced in Superman/Batman is actually the reincarnation of the original Supergirl who died in Crisis on Infinite Earths, which I found...odd, as, if you go back and read any comic featuring her from the last 22 years, I don't think anyone's ever so much as suggested that before, did they? Certainly not in her earliest appearances in the mid-00's.

**The fine print on the title page mistakenly says that the book collects eight issues, #35-38 and #40-43. In fact, #38 is not collected here. It and #39 are both part of the "We Are Yesterday" story arc and were thus collected in the previously released Justice League Unlimited/World's Finest: We Are Yesterday.