Kristine Chester (309)
Favorite Comic Book Series: Atomic Robo
Favorite D&D Class: Wizard
Favorite Ice Cream Flavor: Cookies N' Cream
Road to Redemption
The Leaf is Canada's greatest hero. The title has been passed down through several generations, and now the mantle has fallen on Michael McSorly to become the new Leaf and continue to protect all of Canada. The Leaf is the sort of Silver Age legacy comic that, as I've admitted on several occasions, is not my cup of tea, but for fans of over-the-top action, silly costumes, and bad one-liners, this comic has something to offer.
Pirates, ninjas, robots, and spies! When time and space start to fold in on themselves, these four different factions are found in a struggle to get to safety when they're sucked into another dimension, the monster zone! Mighty Heroes and the Monster Zone! is an upcoming game created by Mighty Heroes Games which incorporates a mix of deck building, traditional board games, tabletop miniatures, and RPG elements to create a unique feel. Players have a set goal of escaping with their lives and can choose to work together or make one another's lives difficult. Each faction handles differently, providing unique abilities such as the pirate's ability to steal cards from other players while the ninja can sneak by would-be attackers. All of these heroes level up during the course of play, gaining access to new special abilities. Over time, the company intends to expand upon the available factions, but stretch goals can lead to unlocking the Knights and Aliens factions, as well as additional monster mini sets. Each faction comes with a board that explains the rules and provides unique faction abilities, a deck of cards for the faction, and a beautiful miniature created by Reaper.
It's not safe to sleep. When you enter the dream world, that's when they find you. For his entire life, Winslow has had the same recurring dream, and the funny thing is it starts to feel like when he wakes up and returns to reality that he's just going to sleep. When his inability to distinguish between reality and his dreams becomes more pronounced, Winslow finds himself in a psychiatric institute where he has to work through his issues, but what if there is someone else in his dreams and what if they can harm him?
When a massive solar flare hits the Earth, wiping away whole continents and oceans, only a select few groups are able to survive the catastrophe, including the team aboard the International Space Station. What's left behind? Can society start anew with so little? These are questions the few survivors are going to have to ask if they plan on living in a post-Doomsday world.
The Chang family has long had a connection to dragons. Finding proof of their existence has been the goal of Jesse and Jack's father his entire career, but when he unearths the legendary blue dragon, Qing Long, and recovers some of its DNA, he and his children are about to change the world forever. The real story begins when Jack creates a serum able to alter the genetic code of a human and introduce animal traits in an effort to regain his ability to walk. When Curt Connors—I mean Jack's project attracts the attention of the U.S. Military, everything goes downhill from there as they start to combine the DNA from animals with soldiers to create more powerful soldiers.
If you're a fan of Adult Swim or similar American cartoon humor, then Regular Show was designed with you in mind. Basically, some animals, a sentient gumball machine, a ghost, and a deformed, green person hang out together in a park and get themselves into trouble time and time again. This time, it's at a benefit concert that Muscle Man decides could do with some spicing up . . .
Although Valentine's Day is long past, I couldn't not share more Sparrow & Crowe stories with you. Weird Romance is more timely than the other holiday-themed entries thus far, being all about different wacky romance situations our plucky occult detectives have found themselves in over the years and simply put, some of my favorite Sparrow & Crowe stories to date are in this anthology.
It's been a long day and though it's bed time, these kids don't want to go to sleep, because sleeping is boring and they want to have fun, so the moon politely explains all the ways sleeping can be just as much fun through the children's dreams.
Let's touch on another of those fantastic Free Comic Book Day issues. The folks at Archaia packed a lot of content from their different properties into this single issue. If I had to review the product as a whole, I'd say they nailed it on introducing their characters and properties and providing everything a reader needs to know about the premise; however, they do so at the cost of cramming too many different comics into a single issue, which leaves many of these stories feeling too short and cut off before a comic is able to become a must read.
SPOILERS BELOW
I didn't like Lara Croft. The busty, dual-wielding explorer wasn't the bada--, Indiana Jones type I wanted her to be; she was a two-dimensional character intended to sell video games with her cleavage. So, imagine my surprise when the reboot of Tomb Raider washed all of that away, started from scratch, and built a strong, female character I grew to admire and adore.