Smith's Shorter Sagas

Date Completed: 3 June 2025 Grade: B+ This was a treat. I was a little worried after the last volume of Thor that this would be more excessively 90s in tone. A frankly it is in a way, but in a fresh new way. The volume begins with a four-part story by Warren Ellis that keeps Thor grounded on Earth, but still maintains elements of Norse mythology in the background (a threat to the world tree Yggdrasil). The art by Mike Deodato Jr. is showing that bridge that occurred in the 90s between classic comics and the more modern age we are in now, with bigger, unusual panels, and a greater detail (without the oddities of proportion that were the trademarks of Liefeld and McFarlane in the 90s). Sure, Thor has a chest the size of Manhattan and hair reminiscent of Medusa (both the mythological character and the Marvel Inhuman...), but it was over the top in a fun way. I think seeing the "Computer Color" credit given to Malibu (the once-publisher was bought my Marvel in 1994) also provide...

Date Completed: 1 June, 2025 Grade: A- I was very worried this was going to be another Black Widow volume 1 situation. Hawkeye as a character started as a villain for Iron Man, and eventually joined the Avengers, which is where most of his character development occurred. But a volume about Hawkeye surely couldn't be just a bunch of Avengers reprints, and yet these issues couldn't be ignored either. I was very pleased to see that rather than the short mish-mosh of parts of books (like in Black Widow), this volume contained whole stories, and for those early Avengers issues, kept only issues which led to major character developments. There are the occasional weird one-shot issues (like Marvel Tales #100) which are necessary for completing Hawkeye's non-Avengers appearances, but those are fine. It does seem that the goal was to include stories necessary for the Hawkeye mini-series of 1983, and to this point, the volume also contains stories which are specific to the character...

Date Completed: 26 May, 2025 Grade: C+ Taking a break after the first half of this Omnibus then returning was the right call. The stories to start the second half were fun and interesting again, but as I posted in the first half of the volume, it just started to get a little boring. It was interesting to see a little change up in art with John Buscema and his brother Sal coming on to the book for a short time. Something still seems off about the colors, and while I appreciate having the cover gallery at the end, I would much rather have had the covers at the start of each issue. I’m not sure I can add anything else, as this was more of the same. Maybe just slightly more enjoyable.

I guess this is the first instance of posting my thoughts on a game I have gave up on. A few years ago, I decided that there are too many games I am interested in playing to force myself through a game I was no longer enjoying, or no longer interested in. For Blue Prince, it received a lot of good publicity, and it sounded like a fun game. And it is. As the player, you explore a mansion drawing different room types and laying them down in the house connecting the rooms together. There are puzzles to solve, a mysterious story, and a lot of background info. The goal is to reach a mysterious 46th room, which somehow earns the player the right to inherit the mansion. It was fun matching up rooms and solving some of the puzzles, but I eventually just got tired of hoping I would get the right combination of rooms to put down correctly to reach the end. I don't mind a bit of randomization, but even a good run could be ruined by poor luck, and that can become frustrating. I intended to con...

Date Completed: 17 May, 2025 Grade: C- Whoof. This is it: the 90s. This volume had so many of the hallmarks: drawn out, convoluted story lines, overblown and disproportionate artwork, and ridiculous costume changes. I guess it's missing the big guns and pouches, but otherwise it sure felt like a book from the mid 90s. I never read Thor in the 90s (by 1994-95 which this volume covers, I think I was on my comics hiatus initiated by the Clone Saga). And while I appreciated Roy Thomas trying to keep these stories rooted in Thor's past, the High Evolutionary story-line seemed the least interesting thing to pull from. Not only that, trying to wedge in the God Pack (The High Evolutionary's newest human creation) as a replacement for Asgard just kept feeling forced. It was almost a reprieve to have the final issue of the volume be a DeFalco and Frenz story wrapping up Thunderstrike's storyline, even though Thunderstrike was not really involved in this volume (but hopefully he w...

Completed: 28 Apr. 2025 Grade: A Boy was I excited to play this again. I only just figured out how to emulate MAME/arcade games, and my first choice was to play this game. I have fond memories of playing the X-Men arcade game on a local cabinet in the 90s, and it was defiantly one of the better games available. It still holds up. The music is great, the action is great, the special moves are fun, the dialogue is cheesy in broken English, and it just filled me with nostalgia. My only complaint is that the emulation isn't perfect, with some sound breaks occasionally, but I can live with that. There were a few unfairly tough sections, but that's the norm for these games where they are trying to get players to spend quarters. While I'm excited to try emulating other arcade games, I'm sure I will be playing through this one a couple more times just to defamiliarize myself with the different characters and their abilities. (And speaking of characters, these were the X-Men cha...

 Date Completed: 27 Apr., 2025 Grade: B- Daredevil is probably the last Marvel Superhero who originated in the Silver Age whose early books I haven't yet read (Captain America kinda fit this mold too until I started this chronological reading of the Epic Collections). I had read Daredevil comics before, and even the occasional silver age book (I bought a few when I was young), but Daredevil was always one of those comics that I wanted to read, and just never got around to it. It was interesting to see how he was treated in the volume: the early issues referencing Spider-Man seemed like Stan Lee really wanted to duplicate the same success he had with Spidey for Daredevil. However, Daredevil lacked a wide supporting cast and his own villains. Besides Foggy Nelson and Karen Page, there really wasn't any other characters in Daredevil's private life (outside his father who dies in the first issue). Stan seemed to recycle a lot of Spider-Man's supervillains to fight Daredevil...