Malazan Empire: polishgenius - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

My bi-anual comic run into London was a bit smaller this year, but I did get a few:

Jenny Sparks, by Tom King and Jeff Spokes. This one was a bit disappointing, to be honest- in that it's a perfectly fine story, but a rubbish Jenny Sparks showcase. Like, in these Black Label books King does quite often fuck with the personality or whatever of one hero or another, but it's usually either to in some way subvert that character to use them to say something, or to bring out something in another hero.

Here, there's almost nothing about the story that in any way needed Jenny. It's not that she's out of character, her behaviour is fine, but very little about her powerset or mythos/background makes her a sensible fit for this story, and in fact King has to do some awkward squeezing to even have her there. Captain Atom meanwhile is out of character in both personality and powers. It's a lot more forgiveable coz he's a lot closer to a mad Doctor Manhattan and those characters are obviously linked conceptually in any case, but since Jenny is already out of whack and Jenny and Captain Atom have no connection either, it makes for an odd feel to the story.


Still, taken for what it is outside of that context it's a fun story (basically something like 24 Hours in a Diner if it was, well, Doctor Manhattan demanding to be acknowledged as God). And the art is incredible, I hope to see more from Spokes because on this basis he should be a comic superstar. Given the nature of the story he has to do a lot with low-key scenes and it would not have worked at all with a lesser artist. Honestly recommend giving it a look on that basis alone, despite my annoyance with it.



The latest trade volume of Tom King's Wonder Woman run. Continues to be very interesting, and King really nails Diana and what makes her special. Does have a tendency to overcomplicate that might end up biting this run in the bum, but so far it's just the right side of that line.



The final trade of that Nightwing run by Taylor and Redondo. Good, solid, satisfying run. My only real gripe is that across both this and his Superman Taylor isn't amazing at writing villains, but, you know, they're fine, just not special. The rest- superhero action, fun dialogue, character dynamics, great art- are top notch. Good run.


And also a blind pickup of a little indie cyberpunk space opera western, Deathslinger by Shane Berryhill and Ben Perkins. It's fun. Not a secret classic or anything, but a good bite of very, very pulpy space shooty action. The art is a lot, it's very loud, ut it works.

We don't know the worldwide ratings but I don't think they ever factored hugely into the BBC's thinking. It'll matter to whether Disney renew and the subsequent potential budget boost, obviously, but the BBC will be looking at their own. The actual domestic BBC ratings aren't that great. It's harder to judge than it used to be because, ya know, streaming, iplayer, most episodes are online before they air on telly, so they've got to factor all that and the dropoff isn't as big as the raw numbers make it look. But it's definitely not the dominant show it was during RTD1 anymore and they definitely had hoped it would be.

From what I understand

That... wasn't a good play.

(but the effects were good!)

Tsundoku, on 25 May 2025 - 08:46 PM, said:

It's not a prequel, no. It's set in another world in the same 'verse but there's no particular indication about where the relative timelines are.