I also like the first book and I should have said that I don’t mean skip it entirely. But I know a couple people who bounced off it and wrote the series off.
Deadhouse Gates (book 2) is shorter, focused, and just a better story in my opinion. And there really wouldn’t be any timeline confusion if someone were to switch their order.
Maybe the better advice would be to try book 2 if you find yourself wanting to abandon book 1.
90s
I’ve been reading “Crimes By Women”. It was published in 1948 by Fox Comics, the same ones who published Fletcher Hanks’ crazy Stardust and Fantomah series.
It’s good. It demonstrates a great affection for hot violent gangster women murdering dudes left and right while saying things like “Die, you yellow rat!”. They might have a male partner who bobs along behind going “Aw jeez, Gertie, we got the cash, do we really hafta kill 'im??” “Shaddup, you $&%*#!!” The code in this comic is “crime never pays”, so they always suffer a mandatory horrible death at the end.
Another series from Fox, “Western Thrillers”, starting in the same year, looks similar and its stories are also about hot violent women murdering dudes. It’s a batch of the same formula but in a cowboy setting, with place names like “Bloody Greens” and “Gore City”.
Two-Gun Sal is really violent. The only page that doesn’t show someone getting maimed or killed is followed by a page with two maimings, as if in apology. Eventually, the women roles dry up drier’n a steer skull in Texas sun, so I tapered off, but even in the male-focused stories a girl might swing out of nowhere at the end to obliterate someone.
This art style is sooo good.
Finished reading the third big Ultimate Spider-Man (2000) omnibus, covering the period after Gwen Stacy’s death to the end of Mark Bagley’s run as artist. I’d already been fairly enamored by the latter Miles Morales stuff, and had enjoyed the first big omnibus, but with some exceptions like the “Deadpool” arc, I remain enchanted by how well the series is doing what it’s doing, and how the ongoing story evolves. “The Clone Saga” in particular is amazing in just how relentlessly it escalates. I wouldn’t call it a favorite, but its still masterful as an adaptation of the original.
Still my favorite comic of 2025
i’ve been having fun reading The Adventures Of Alan Ladd. now an important thing i should clarify: you may expect as i did that alan ladd would be “playing” different fictional characters in this book. this is untrue. in fact most of the stories are presented as untold tales of the hollywood movie actor alan ladd, as he repeatedly gets drawn into investigating voodoo cults, becoming a middleweight boxer as part of an fbi sting operation, getting drafted as sherriff to take down a gang of desperadoes etc. words cannot express the delight i felt at story after story where he goes “now look here, there must be some mistake! i’m movie actor alan ladd!” to thugs threatening him for location of various diamonds. it would also probably be a little less funny to me if i didn’t associate ladd mostly with his downbeat noir roles; it feels like finding out there was a “sensational tales of john garfield” comic where he takes time out from his movie career to investigate rumours of a haunted mine. sign me up for a stiff prescription today!
i think the only similar comic i’ve read was Gabby Hayes Western, which is a little more traditional bc the actor gabby hayes mostly played cowboys also called gabby hayes or gabby something and so i guess the comic is about those rather than the actor… however there were 59 issues of this somehow so it’s a lot to verify. i hope there are stories that start with gabby waking up in a hollywood mansion and somehow commuting to a job as fieldhand in the old west.
i also enjoyed the sam spade hair oil ad. hair oil does not particularly help spade solve the case of the mysterious wallpaper, but it lets him smarten up afterwards, i guess.
I read Safe Area Goražde recently and learned a lot from it. Although I’d heard vague things about this conflict while it was going on I was young and not paying close attention at the time.
I also started reading this collection of G.I. Joe comics that’s as big as a phone book. And it’s only volume 1 of 3. (It’s printed on basically the same type of paper as the original comics so it’s not extremely heavy but also the pages are not too thin, which is nice.)
I’d heard that the comic was quite different from and more serious than the old cartoon, but I was surprised at the number of deaths right there in issue 1.
when you get to issue 25-30 (especially 27) i wanna hear about it. i love the ninja shit in early GI joe and their war vet trauma stuff
reading american splendor as i get back to work, laughed out loud at this from someone’s story about impersonating a member of the press corps for the sake of free croissants
what the fuck DID she have in that purse. i got curious enough that i looked it up
For the same reason, her handbag usually contains reading glasses, mint lozenges and a fountain pen, although rarely cash, except for a precisely folded £5 or £10 note on Sundays for the church collection plate.
stingy.. i think this is basically the whole of uk culture in a single sentence
Isn’t the Queen head of the church? So she’s even stingier than she appears. She’s only paying herself
Jesus is the head of the church, Lizzie was the supreme governor, not even ordained
collection money is subject to PCC (Powers) Measure 1956, para 7 (iv) says parish council can allocate it as agreed & subject to the bishop’s adjudication if no consensus
i reread the first batman 89 series. it’s still really good!
i love the way they built a world around the billy dee williams harvey dent to make it more impactful when he becomes two face (who is never called two face in the story). in retrospect they even set up harley quinn’s eventual appearance in the sequel series. the “movie” version of robin is really cool, too.
was this whole thing written in the 2020s, or is it based on some kind of unused script or pitch from the 90s? it did make me think i should rewatch the movies, but maybe instead i should seek out the official comic adaptations from the time they were released 
also, reading a whole miniseries/story arc in one sitting is very satisfying and i should do it more often.
edit: there’s dirt cheap copies of both adaptations on ebay, so that’s an easy decision.
sam hamm wrote a draft of batman 2 but i don’t think anything from it is in the comic series apart from his version of robin. it was still about catwoman and penguin, who team up for the delightfully survival horror esque macguffin of “collecting five raven statues”. i don’t remember dent in it at all. i keep meaning to read batman ‘89 because i’ve always been interested in what billy dee williams’ take on two-face would have been.
Based on this, I also reached out to Bryce and picked up Issue Zero. What a cool series.
Very very unique and appealing mix of Jim Henson and like, Rumen Petkov. Can’t wait for the next issue.
man even american splendor had a weird poser3d comic in the early 00s… the artist can draw as well, i guess it must’ve been something in the water.
only one year after the chuck austen war machine
