If I had read this when I was still 8 this would have been the most exciting comic I'd ever read and a not-insignificant part of me still feels this way.

YUP, STILL A PERFECT TEN.

Am I still enthralled by this? Yup.

I picked this up because She-Hulk was in it, and I enjoyed her and Daredevil lawyering at one another. I knew this book was funny from the Squirrel Girl crossover, & this issue confirmed for me that Howard the Duck deserves its place on rec lists everywhere. Sadly for me, bank accounts. But I'm glad I had the exra cash this month!

"Mole Ma'am" haha. Had to deduct .5 stars because the bubble depicting the "Brotastic Brad" has a coloring error in my copy and also the next issue didn't immediately appear in my hands when I finished this one, which was a serious disappointment.

Some funny banter at the start, but overall this issue didn't congeal for me. tThe mini-stories felt like cheap lipgloss tastes; yeah, the strawberry flavor is unequivocally strawberry-flavored, but that's not the same taste as real strawberries. They felt generic and not particularly adroit at revealing elements of Dick Grayson's character that weren't made overt in earlier issues.

I'd be happy just to see Annie Wu's art (especially w/Vicente's colors), but now I'm sold on picking up anything else Detective Alice Gulliver appears in.

Dead Wife plot, uninterrupted by anything of interest. Sauvage gets 2 stars for having a style I enjoy, even when nothing that happens here is particularly memorable. 1 star to Robinson for at least creating a story which is easy to follow-- even if the subject matter is hopelessly cliche and predictable.

Finally, we get to see more of what Arcanic society looks like, PLUS more monster. As an aside, I'm loving the way even background characters in this book tend to just coincidentally be female. Finally, a fantasy world where women seem to actually take up 50% or more of the population!

I have little to say about the main story beyond "yes, good, more", but adding the Professor Tam Tam section at the end was a good idea. It helps flesh out the world without bogging down the main story. Plus it's nice to see Tam Tam's adorable kitten students after many pages of horrific monster murders. But these pages aren't cute for cute's sake either: Knowing that there are beings in Maika's world who are not as involved in brutal violence as a way of life gives the reader a better understanding of Maika as well. more

Relentlessly interesting.

Liu is a master at creating stories with real depth to them & Takeda's art has never been better. The first issue greatly benefits from getting 66 pages to hook you, since there are a lot of characters to introduce, mysteries to hint at, and expository details necessary to follow along. But it's worth it.

Good art, lots of interesting stuff packed into the first issue, but it's still a little awkward. There's a lot of exposition; and even though it isn't delivered in a dry & lifeless fashion, there is enough of it that this particular issue doesn't work as a satisfying stand-alone. Although I have high hopes, I'm inclined to wait and see how Coates handles an issue with less set-up and more action before giving this series a higher grade. OTOH, Coates certainly picked the right cliffhanger to bring me back for issue 2, as I am a total sucker for stories about siblings (when they don't get all Borgias about it, anyway). more

Goofy, gory, surprisingly charming. Better than actually watching Sharknado, anyway.

The switch to more conventional comic book art is a little jarring, but it's frankly a relief to get sensible page layouts again. That doesn't mean I'm thrilled to see a few panels of unrealistically low cleavage after two issues which didn't need boring shorthand for "sexy pretty lady" in order to signal that Wanda is stylish and charismatic. But it's not egregiously salacious or disproportionate, so YMMV. The less emotional art and colors set off a good contrast between mundane Ireland and magical happenings, especially when compared to the final two pages depicting the Witches' Road (Chris Visions' work).

On the writing side, it's a little goofy to see dialect written down like this, especially since the Emerald Warlock can't possibly have retained his accent through the years. (Also because people don't normally transcribe accents to this extent anymore!) Still, I found the Warlock much more effectively chilling here than I did when he showed up at the end of last issue to kill a character who'd just spent the issue being very boring and not justifying her appearance therein. He may not be the world's biggest threat (or look like much of a threat at all) but dude will murder babies over a centuries-long grudge & that's still pretty damn evil IMO. more

Rudy's art is beautiful, but his layouts do not seem to be designed with readability in mind. Rudy's pages feel very fluid, but the path the eye is lead on rarely seemed related to the order in which things should be read. This was a big problem for me during the long, banal conversation between Wanda and Hekate.

Rudy's reluctance to use gutters led to a number of places where elements from one page nearly aligned with elements on the opposite page, which meant my eye kept being drawn onto the next page prematurely. Or worse, abruptly dead-ending in the fold, because something looked as if it should carry over onto the facing page, but clearly didn't. I spent way too long trying to figure out I was missing half of a double page spread or not. I understand the intention might have been to invoke a labyrinthine feel, but none of this effectively did that, nor did it serve the (pretty straightforward) story.

As for the story, time would have been better spent on the Minotaur/Man-Bull instead of listening to Hekate say she doesn't really do witchcraft any more for the third time in as many pages. That was boring, and her state at the end of the episode simply shows how pointless it all was. The mostly one-sided conversation during the fight scene and the absence of small, fiddly reaction panels meant Man-Bull featured in the least confusing page layouts in the issue. more

Although it's an understandable comparison to make, I don't feel as if Robinson's Scarlet Witch and Jason Aaron's Dr Strange are covering exactly the same ground. Del Rey's moody art style and the obvious regrets hinted at in Wanda's dialogue combined for a much more noir vibe than Dr Strange. Wanda, unlike Stephen Strange, begins her series struggling to moor herself after a long period of detachment from the world's concerns. Her quest to cure witchcraft is part of her attempt to reconnect with the world, and something that continues to distance her from the mundane.

Her banter with Agatha appealled to me, even though pretty much all of the references to previous adventures flew over my head (as I have not read a title with either character before this). The mystery of What Ails Witchcraft feels a little nebulous to me, but connecting it to a totally gross and tragic series of murders provides a good motivation for Wanda to get to the bottom of it.

Del Rey's art was a major reason I picked up the next issue, but sadly that appears to be a temporary state, as it issue 2 is drawn by Marco Rudy & subsequent issues drawn by yet more artists. I really liked the illustration of sound effects during the exorcism/demon fight. Bellaire's coloring in this scene is especially vivid, compared to the grayness present in scenes of mundane life. more