The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 2: Fandemonium by Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Waste of paper. No, that’s not right. That’s offensive to the artists as the illustrations were brilliant, but there may as well have been no words. Seriously. Very little happens. At least very little that makes sense or contributes to plot progression. Only the last few pages have any real meaning with a humdinger of a cliffhanger that leaves you with multiple questions and countless theories.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

Good Milk (Pregnant and Paranormal #1) by Arla Coopa

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Paranormal erotica with lactation fetish. Yeah, how could I say no, right? It was free after all. Curiosity got the better of me, for better or worse.

Better Days (Serenity #2.1) by Joss Whedon & Brett Matthews

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

I don’t know why I bothered. The illustrations may be a little better but the disjointed and confusing short story and its implications definitely weren’t for me.

Serenity’s crew suddenly become filthy rich. For a while, anyway. And their ‘what I’d do if I were rich’ dreams were the only good thing about Better Days.

The Fade Out, Vol. 1 by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips

Rating:

Offensive racist stereotyping, rampant sexism, an abundance of rape, clichéd and disjointed storytelling and an unwieldy cast of homogenous characters of which to keep track – what’s not to love about this 1940s noir in graphic novel form?

A Tale of Jerusalem by Edgar Allan Poe

Rating: 

Like with Le Duc de L’Omelette, I needed a translation, and not from French this time. Once again the Examiner saved my bacon.

Le Duc de L’Omelette by Edgar Allan Poe

Rating: 

Do you read French? No? Google Translate to the rescue! But even then this short story is confusing. I read it twice in hardcopy format and online. To fully understand what happens I had to resort to Google where I found the clearest explanation from the Examiner.

TV Pilot: The Last Ship

Did anyone watch The Last Ship [ IMDB | Wikipedia ]? I’ve heard nothing about it, yet it aired in June in the States. It’s based on the book of the same name.

Plot summary: A US naval warship is secretly being tested for deployment which is actually a ruse to prevent the crew from finding out about the true nature of their mission. They’re carrying two secretive Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists who are working on a cure for an airborne virus that had only affected a handful of African villages, but after four months at sea it’s wiped out 80% of the world’s population including the United States government. It has a 0% survival rate and is highly contagious. All governments have ceased to be and the crew of the warship are on their own.

Kinda makes you think of the Ebola crisis, doesn’t it?

And World War Z.

The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who by Paul Cornell

Rating:

Unless you’re a huge fan of Matt Smith as Doctor Who you won’t enjoy The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who, but then even if you are a fan I doubt this would be a guaranteed 5-star wonder. And although Matt Smith looks like Matt Smith I didn’t particularly like the illustrations.

Meathouse Man by George R.R. Martin

Rating:

This is some fucked up shit. Misogynistic and necrophilic fucked up shit. With illustrations. My inner feminist is vibrating with rage and is drawing disturbing comparisons with serial killer Elliot Rodger.

The meathouse is a whorehouse whose ‘whores’ are dead women, most of whom are former criminals and debtors although some have been kidnapped and killed precisely to be commodified by transforming them into brainless undead prostitutes. Outside of the meathouses, corpses are used as workers directed by handlers (read: puppeteers), similar to what The People do with vampires in Ilona Andrews’s Kate Daniels series. The entertainment industry is dominated by corpse fights like the gladiators of old, their handlers manipulating them like 3-D real world video game characters.

Through the Looking Glass (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland #2) by Lewis Carroll

Rating:

Okay, so I didn’t enjoy Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland but I had a free audio of Through the Looking Glass voiced by Miriam Margolyes, and I thought, why not?