I’ll say one thing for the proverbial “third act” (actually, it might be more like the fourth or fifth) of Peter Bagge’s cartooning career — he picks some interesting subjects for his “graphic biographies.” From Margaret Sanger to Zora Neale Hurston to, now, Rose Wilder Lane, the women whose stories he relates have led full lives full of adventure, controversy, and accomplishment. Whether or not Bagge himself is the best person to be recounting their exploits is an open question — particularly in Hurston’s case — but it’s clear that he views all his de facto protagonists with a tremendous amount of respect, while fastidiously avoiding the easy trap that is dull, hero-worship hagiography.

So, yeah, that’s the good. Or part of it — the other big part being, of course, Bagge’s always-agreeable, “rubbery,” intrinsically eye-catching cartooning which, fair enough, hasn’t really changed or evolved since his Neat Stuff/

Killer stuff from Revival House Press is our focus this week! None of it “brand new,” but so what? All of it is still readily available from http://revivalhousepress.com/books/

The entire breadth and scope of existence is traversed by means of the shortest distance possible — that being from a “greasy spoon” diner to a mini-golf and video game “emporium” — in the pages of Chris Cilla’s 2014 flip-book Labyrinthectomy/Luncheonette, a kind of throwback to the days of Doug Allen and Gary Leib’s Idiotland in terms of tone, temperament, and style, but with some sort of hidden-in-plain-sight philosophical intent tying both halves together until they meet/mash up in the middle. Characters talk at, rather than to, each other in amusingly impenetrable non-sequitors, seemingly-incongruous actions flow one into the next with no regard to reason or even time, and robots, people, mutants, and anthropomorphic animals all happily (I guess)…

If there was anything tethering Will Cardini to the dull, consensus version of “reality” — and that’s a mighty big “if” — it’s gone now, as his imagination completely and utterly flies the coop with the release of his new self-published B&W full-sized comic (he calls it a “mini,” but it’s not) Urscape #1. The cosmic clashes of absolutes that were his stock in trade in earlier pubs such as Tales From The Hyperverse and Sphere Fear are here not so much jettisoned as naturally transitioned into those selfsame absolutes — in this case represented by his recurring protagonist Miizzzard — just being absolute and doing absolute sorts of things.

To that end, I think it’s safe to tell you that what you should expect here is a series of 20 full “splash” pages that don’t so much tell a story as simply become one.

Narrative was always a threadbare…

Say one thing for the DC Universe original streaming series Doom Patrol : its own internal tug-of-war, no doubt the design of “showrunner” Jeremy Carver, is working. Last week, we were pulled back into the ongoing psychodrama between Timothy Dalton’s “Chief” Niles Caulder and Alan Tudyk’s wonderfully depraved Mr. Nobody, and in the newest episode, “Frances Patrol,” we’re drawn back out in a major way, our focus shifted squarely back onto the makeshift “team” of super-misfits, who find themselves either “flying solo” or in hitherto-unseen pairings.

On the going it alone front, Matt Bomer/Matthew Zuk’s Larry Trainor (is he ever really “alone,” though, given the “Negative Spirit” he shares a body with?) has made the gutsy decision to meet, like it or not, with former flame John Bowers (played in the present day by Tom Fitzpatrick, in flashback by, as always, Kyle Clements), while the makeshift duos in April…

On the face of it, I’ve set myself a fool’s errand here : to review Avengers : Endgame on its own merits, completely divorced from its cultural context and all which came before it, may not even be possible. But once we get a few particulars out of the way, that’s precisely what I intend to do, those particulars being : This. Is. The. Biggest. Thing. Ever.

We’re talking the cinematic equivalent of your wedding day or the birth of your first kid — or so the Disney/Marvel marketing machine would have you believe, not that they’re necessarily wrong, depending on your own circumstances. The so-called “MCU” came into being when I was in my 30s, but I can only imagine what this must mean to people who literally grew up on this stuff. Ten years of big-budget spectacle after big-budget spectacle, all leading up to this — the

Believe it or not, we’ve only got two first issue this time out, so we’ll start with those, and then delve into the other stuff —

Mary Shelley : Monster Hunter #1 hit LCS shelves this past Wednesday courtesy of the writing team of Adam Glass and Olivia Briggs and line artist/colorist Hayden Sherman. I suppose the conceptual and artistic triumph that was Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows’ Providence was impetus enough for other creators to give the “famous writer who knew what they were talking about all too well” premise a whirl, and while I won’t pretend for a second this is anywhere close to being in that class, it was a fun and well-paced introduction to a world where — well, the title proves to be literally true. The story didn’t blow me away or anything, but the esteemed Mrs. Shelley comes off as being strong, likable, and

With “Hair Patrol.” the tenth episode of the DC Universe original streaming series Doom Patrol, “showrunner” Jeremy Carver and co. have decided to go back and fill in some of the blanks — not only in terms of what everyone else got up to while Brendan Fraser/Riley Shanahan’s Cliff Steele and Diane Guerrero’s “Crazy” Jane were struggling to find their way out of the tormented and fragmented subconscious of one Kay Challis, but in a larger sense. As in — what, exactly, is the deal with Timothy Dalton’s “Chief” Niles Caulder?

Not that Eric Dietel’s script gives away all the answers, of course — not even close — but in the wilds of the Yukon Territory way back in 1913, Caulder had a life-changing experience. One that ties him in with an earlier version of the Bureau Of Normalcy, sees him match wits with a colleague-turned-enemy named Alistair (played…

Confession time right at the outset : I actively despise what’s generally known as “foodie culture.” Mind you, I absolutely appreciate the fact that there is a real artistry to good cooking and that restaurants which practice things like the so-called “farm to table” philosophy are certainly going about their business more ethically than, say, McDonald’s is, but let’s be honest : every goddamn chef thinks he or she (and it’s far too frequently a “he” — a major problem with the restaurant industry is the male domination of, and the resultant culture of misogyny inherent in, most kitchens) is at the very least a local, if not a national, celebrity; menus have become pretentious, ego-driven, and hideously expensive; wait staff act like they’re the stage performers a good chunk of them wish they were — the whole experience of eating out has become a nauseatingly garish production.

As a matter of course, I’ve found the now-annual works of non-fiction cartooning from Box Brown published under the auspices of his deal with First Second to be enjoyable, if not exactly groundbreaking, and I’m highly (pun only slightly intended) grateful for the stability they no doubt bring Brown, therefore giving him enough financial “breathing room” to continue his ongoing Retrofit publishing program — so please keep all that in mind if it sounds like I’m damning his latest graphic novel, Cannabis : The Illegalization Of Weed In America, with faint praise.

Such, I assure you, is far from my intent. As with his “graphic biographies” of Andre The Giant and Andy Kaufman, and his historical overview of the Tetris video game phenomenon, this is a highly readable, often-times engrossing work, sensibly laid-out, agreeably illustrated, and convincingly argued in terms of advancing its point of view. But — and…

I can’t decide if episode nine of DC Universe’s original streaming series Doom Patrol is so good it hurts — or if it just fucking hurts.

Playing it pretty close and tight with its Grant Morrison/Richard Case-created “source material,” this is “Crazy” Jane’s story all the way — they don’t call it “Jane Patrol” for nothing — and Diane Guerrero puts on an acting clinic manifesting personalities seen and hitherto-unseen (hello Driver 8!) when Brendan Fraser’s Cliff Steele (with an assist from the “Negative Spirit” inside Matt Bomer/Matthew Zuk’s Larry Trainor) enters “the underground” of her subconscious to retrieve the Jane we know and love, who just last week collapsed within herself right at the moment her Karen persona was about to tie the knot. You thought this show was weird before? You really ain’t seen nothing yet.

Now, we’re used to Timothy Dalton’s “Chief” Niles Caluder and Alan…