Author Archives: Justin McGuire

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sports is hell Reviews
“Sports is Hell”

By | Feb 8, 2021 | Reviews

In honor of yesterday’s Super Bowl, we revisit Ben Passmore’s powerful graphic novel.  Early on in “Sports is Hell,” one of our protagonists says, “it’s not the sports game fam, it’s the sports riot that i’m hyped about.” That sets the stage for this comic. It’s a fight between the rioting forces and the police, […]

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angel sanctuary 11 feature Reviews
“Angel Sanctuary 11 & 12”

By | Oct 18, 2020 | Reviews

At just over the half-way mark, we’ve finished our journey through Hell and leave Lucifer to begin the Book of Heaven. The half-way mark of a manga marathon is difficult to review. The basic structure is set, the characters introduced and defined, but the exciting conclusion to the tangled web of plots is still a […]

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Angel Sanctuary Vol 9 Feature Reviews
“Angel Sanctuary 9 & 10”

By | Oct 4, 2020 | Reviews

Somewhere in these two books I learned that the humans of this manga world learn all about this world’s particular mythology in school. Like how the angel Raphael is a doctor. I like the idea of a world that has a religious education that gets things canonically right, no matter how weird “right” is. By […]

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angel sanctuary 8 close up Reviews
“Angel Sanctuary 7 & 8”

By | Sep 27, 2020 | Reviews

Angel Sanctuary is like a soap opera. Characters like to make sudden pronouncements of betrayals, and then monologue for pages and pages about what it meant. In any normal comic, this would the finale. In “Angel Sanctuary”, it’s a Tuesday. By Kaori Yuki Setsuna, in the form of Alexiel, must return to Earth to protect […]

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Reviews
“Angel Sanctuary Vol 5 & 6”

By | Sep 20, 2020 | Reviews

Kaori Yuki is writing a story of manipulation and control at the highest orders of the universe, with levels of misdirection and false fronts as complicated as you would expect from a parliament of ageless angels. At the bottom of it all is Setsuna, a boy inhabited by an Angel at the top of it […]

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Reviews
“Angel Sanctuary Vol 3 & 4”

By | Sep 14, 2020 | Reviews

With biblical and mythological stories, some writers research deeply into the original sources to create a cerebral and carefully footnoted piece of art. The best example of this style is Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, which came from his own internal concordances across dozens, or maybe hundreds, of mythologies. Kaori Yuki is on the other side of […]

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be gay do comics feature Reviews
“Be Gay, Do Comics”

By | Sep 10, 2020 | Reviews

“Be Gay, Do Comics” opens with a comic by Joey Alison Sayers about the ultimate “gender reveal party gone wrong,” which is my favorite genre of videos on YouTube. It’s followed by Kendra Wells giving a few less-fatal, but not wholly nonfatal, options for a gender reveal party. The point is, in a world where […]

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angel sanctuary feature Reviews
“Angel Sanctuary Vol 1 & 2”

By | Sep 6, 2020 | Reviews

Angel Sanctuary by Kaori Yuki is a biblically-inspired fantasy manga from the 90s. It’s the story of Alexiel, a Luciferian angel hidden in a human’s body, being hounded by Rosiel, her twin arch-nemesis seeking to finally destroy her. It’s also a shōjo manga built around incestous love of that human and his little sister. By […]

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cloven Reviews
“The Cloven: Book One”

By | Aug 11, 2020 | Reviews

Cloven is a book of genetically engineered satyrs set loose on the world. And it begins with a lie: the first two pages tell the sad story of the conception and birth of Tuck, a goat-boy. None of it is true. But it’s a confusion that sets up the story nicely. This is the first […]

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Reviews
“One Story”

By | Jul 9, 2020 | Reviews

In One Story, Italian cartoonist Gipi uses tragedies of war and of family to tell a single, unified story of the sorrow. Written by Gipi Translated by Jamie Richards Dual narratives by the acclaimed Italian cartoonist poetically describe how choices our ancestors made dramatically affect generations to come. One Story is actually made up of […]

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Siberian Haiku feature image Reviews
“Siberian Haiku”

By | May 1, 2020 | Reviews

Lithuania spent the 20th century in a series of occupations and movements for independence. “Siberian Haiku” takes place in the exact middle, starting in June 14, 1941, when the occupying Soviet Union quickly deported some ten thousand people to Siberia. Families were broken up, and sent to different labor camps and collective farms. Then, years […]

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