Posted October 23, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Fence: Redemption
Genres: Graphic Novels,
Romance Pages: 112
Series: Fence #6 Rating: 
Synopsis: A mysterious new fencer arrives at Halverton in the newest chapter of the GLAAD Media Award-nominated sports comic, perfect for fans of Heartstopper.
THE COMPETITION HAS BEEN RESET… EN GARDE!
Return to the thrilling world of high-stakes, competitive fencing, with a brand new story featuring the beloved cast of characters from the original hit series. Are Seiji and Jesse really through? The rumors around Halverton, the prestigious fencing training camp, have spread like wildfire, but it’s not long before a mystery fencer arrives–one who may finally pose a threat to the #1 spot. Will Seiji’s unquenchable quest for rivalry take Nicholas’ place? Where will his loyalty lie? And, when Seiji gets an up close and personal look into Nicholas’ past and determination against adversity while preparing for the difficult road ahead and the State Championships, he’ll have to confront a tempting thought… are they on… a date? New York Times and USA Today best-selling author C. S. Pacat (Dark Rise, Nightwing) and acclaimed cartoonist Johanna the Mad (Wynd) continue their winning streak with this on-point entry in the GLAAD Media Award-nominated series! Collects Fence: Redemption #1-4.
The sixth volume of C.S. Pacat and Johanna the Mad’s Fence is a self-contained arc in which they visit another fencing school to practice intensively, and several people have dates (but Aiden doesn’t). There’s a lot of great stuff, like Bobby and Dante (though Dante’s absent for most of the book), Harvard learning to assert himself a bit more, and Seiji and Nicholas getting closer.
It does however emphasise that Nicholas has got this good at fencing in little over three months, which… I take back what I said about the fact that he doesn’t magically improve overnight. This is nuts. Fencing isn’t heritable.
Anyway, it’s a cute volume, and I would really like a lot more of it, please and thank you.
Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)
Tags: book reviews, books, C.S. Pacat, comics, graphic novels, Joanna LaFuente, Johanna the Mad, romance
Posted October 6, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
Fence: Rise
Genres: Graphic Novels Pages: 110
Series: Fence #5 Rating: Synopsis: En Garde! Excitement is in the air as Nicholas and his friends celebrate their prestigious invitation to the Halverton Training Camp. But they soon find themselves pushed to their limits as they come face-to-face with the best teams in the country. Will a new addition to the opposing team help Nicholas awaken the fighting spirit he needs to prevail? And what will it mean for his friendship with Seiji?
So much to love about the fifth volume of C.S. Pacat and Johanna the Mad’s Fence! Bobby is adorable, and I love that he gets to be the team manager, and I especially love the relationship between him and Dante. The fact that Dante would clearly get into anything Bobby wants to do is just… gaah, so cute.
Nicholas and Seiji’s relationship continues to develop, as well, and I like that though Nicholas has some flashes of brilliance and speed, the story never pretends he’s going to easily skill-up to beat Seiji. He has a long way to go, for all his enthusiasm and bluster, and we see that repeatedly, even where it might be tempting to give him a quick glow-up to match Seiji.
I do also enjoy Harvard and Aiden’s closeness; please just date, you idiots.
Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)
Tags: book reviews, books, C.S. Pacat, comics, graphic novels, Jim Campbell, Joanna LaFuente, Johanna the Mad
Posted October 1, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments
Mooncop
Genres: Graphic Novels,
Science Fiction Pages: 96
Rating: Synopsis: "Living on the moon . . . Whatever were we thinking? . . . It seems so silly now."
The lunar colony is slowly winding down, like a small town circumvented by a new super highway. As our hero, the Mooncop, makes his daily rounds, his beat grows ever smaller, the population dwindles. A young girl runs away, a dog breaks off his leash, an automaton wanders off from the Museum of the Moon.
Mooncop is equal parts funny and melancholy. capturing essential truths about humanity and making this a story of the past, present, and future, all in one. Like his Guardian and New Scientist strips, as well as his previous graphic novel, Goliath, Mooncop is told with Tom Gauld's distinctive, matter-of-fact storytelling and dry humor -- an approach that has earned him fans around the world.
If you like Tom Gauld’s art, Mooncop isn’t exactly a great departure for him in style. It’s pretty much exactly the style he uses in his strips for New Scientist and the Guardian, but this time it’s a continuous story. Not a very plotty story, it must be admitted, but nonetheless there’s a narrative here.
It’s a surprisingly melancholy one, and that feeling comes through perfectly despite an art style that I’d more usually associate with funny science or reading-based humour. There are very few characters, and quite a bit of repetition, showing us the life of the “Mooncop” as people leave the moon and head back to Earth.
It ends on an open note, preserving the melancholy feel. Will Mooncop stay on the moon much longer? Will the last other remaining person go back to Earth, too? That’s left for you to imagine.
I rather enjoyed it — it’s simple, but effective.
Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)
Tags: book reviews, books, comics, graphic novels, SF/F, Tom Gauld
Posted September 20, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf
Genres: Graphic Novels Pages: 128
Rating: 
Synopsis: It's no secret, but we are judged by our bookshelves. We learn to read at an early age, and as we grow older we shed our beloved books for new ones. But some of us surround ourselves with books. We collect them, decorate with them, are inspired by them, and treat our books as sacred objects. In this lighthearted collection of one- and two-page comics, writer-artist Grant Snider explores bookishness in all its forms, and the love of writing and reading, building on the beloved literary comics featured on his website, Incidental Comics.
Grant Snider’s I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf is a fun bookish set of comics, though I wouldn’t recommend it as one to sit down and read in one go, because it gets a little repetitive. I like the style, and it did provoke a few smiles, don’t get me wrong! But when it feels so samey, the joke kind of palls, and worse, it reminded me a lot of other reader-focused humour (and personally amongst all of that, Tom Gauld’s strips are usually my favourites).
It might be a fun one to have around and dip in and out of, or read a couple of pages a day, or something like that, and I’m sure there’s something in here that every reader will recognise themselves in.
If you have Kobo Plus, it’s included in that, so you could take a peek there if you’d like to check it out rather than buy a physical copy right away!
Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)
Tags: book reviews, books, comics, Grant Snider, graphic novels
Posted September 8, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Fence: Rivals
Genres: Graphic Novels Pages: 113
Series: Fence #4 Rating: Synopsis: The GLAAD Award nominated series Fence returns as a graphic novel series as best-selling novelist C.S. Pacat (Captive Prince) and popular online sensation Johanna The Mad present the next all-new thrilling chapter of the Kings Row fencing team! Just as Nicholas, Seiji and the fencing team at the prodigious Kings Row private school seem to be coming together, a deadly rival from their past stands in their way once more. MacRobertson is the school that knocked Kings Row out of the State Championships last year - but unless Nicholas and Seiji can learn to work together as a team, their school is doomed once again! And maybe those two can learn to be something more than teammates too...
The fourth volume of C.S. Pacat and Johanna the Mad’s Fence is still pretty predictable: having fenced as individuals so far, it’s time for them to fence as a team — which means they run smack into Seiji’s insistence on individual achievement. The event concludes satisfyingly all the same, of course.
What did surprise me, even though I kinda saw it coming, was Seiji coming to help Nicholas improve. I knew they were going to get close, but the scene kind of surprised me all the same, because it was intense and stood out as a quietly very emotional moment.
I wasn’t sure how this would move anywhere like a relationship between Seiji and Nicholas, but this volume managed a shift in their relationship that made it make sense.
Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)
Tags: book reviews, books, C.S. Pacat, comics, graphic novels, Joanna LaFuente, Johanna the Mad
Posted August 24, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Immortal Red Sonja
Genres: Arthuriana,
Fantasy,
Graphic Novels Pages: 136
Series: Immortal Red Sonja #2 Rating: 
Synopsis: The journey has been long, and the dangers grave - but now, armed with a fuller understanding of the burden she carries, Sonja the Red and her cursed chainmail set off on the final leg of their magical journey through the Dead Lands. What she finds in the endless fog, and the truths that Merlyn reveals, will change her forever - and set the whole world in a new direction!Acclaimed author DAN ABNETT and renowned artist ALESSANDRO MIRACOLO bring their unique new vision of the She-Devil With a Sword to a stunning conclusion in this second volume of Immortal Red Sonja! Collects issues #6-10.
Volume two of Dan Abnett’s Immortal Red Sonja wraps up on the story of the cursed mail shirt, supposedly containing the spirit of King Arthur. I find it a bit disorientating as a fan (and sometime scholar, dissertation and all) of Arthuriana: the cherrypicking and twisting of names and stories is a bit bewildering, and yet there’s clearly knowledge behind it (linking Gawain with the Green Knight, though of course the Green Knight should be Bertilak, not Gawain). Sometimes it was hard to tell if it was deliberate distortion or just random scraps cobbled together without research.
Story-wise, it was fairly unsurprising, and I have some kind of feeling about the idea of Red Sonja, of all people, being a successor to King Arthur. What in the heck. She should be underestimated at your peril, but she’s not High King material, and it’s especially weird to have her be the heir to a Welsh king (prince, in the original, but okay).
In the end, I think my ambiguous feelings about the first volume resolve to oh hell no, not so much because it adapts stories of King Arthur and twists them far out of true, but because it just doesn’t come together.
I’m not a great lover of the art in this particular run, though some of the cover variants are great.
Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)
Tags: Alessandro Miracolo, Arthurian, book reviews, books, comics, Dan Abnett, graphic novels, SF/F
Posted August 10, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
Fence
Genres: Graphic Novels Pages: 112
Series: Fence #3 Rating: Synopsis: From the superstar team of C.S. Pacat (The Captive Prince) and fan-favorite artist Johanna the Mad comes the third volume of this acclaimed, dynamic series.
C.S. Pacat’s Fence series continues to be fun in volume three, still illustrated beautifully by Johanna the Mad and Joana LaFuente. The stakes are high in this volume, with Nicholas’ scholarship hanging in the balance — and that cliffhanger at the end, of course!
I love the character interactions and insights in this volume (ah, Eugene, wow, you’re lovely), even if the beats are still pretty predictable. As I’ve said before, it’s a good kind of predictable, at least to me.
Also, let’s just enjoy Bobby, who just happens to dress in femme clothing, but nobody ever says a word about it. I do love all the character designs a lot, and Bobby’s adorable.
Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)
Tags: book reviews, books, C.S. Pacat, comics, graphic novels, Joanna LaFuente, Johanna the Mad
Posted August 5, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
The All-Nighter
Genres: Fantasy,
Graphic Novels Pages: 114
Series: The All-Nighter #3 Rating: 
Synopsis: In this final arc, the staff at The All-Nighter are trying to piece their lives back together in the wake of Alex’s disappearance. They know that Alex would stop at nothing to get any of them back, so they have no choice: it's time to bring this fight to The Takers.
With unexpected new allies, the crew will have to live up to Alex’s dreams of super heroes. If they want to rescue their friend and uncover the mystery of The Takers, they’ll have to do it as a team—or as a family.
The third volume of Chip Zdarsky’s The All-Nighter certainly goes places. Alex’s been kidnapped by the Takers, and everyone else is trying to figure out what the new rules are. The found family splinters for a bit, each trying to figure out a way forward, and God shows up.
Yeah, God. Or at least, the (Christian) God humans tell stories about, in the same way they tell stories about vampires, werewolves, etc. It’s a reasonable development from what we know about how stories work in this world, giving birth to monsters and heroes, but I’m going to guess it’ll make some readers profoundly uncomfortable. However, it doesn’t preclude God really existing, if you read carefully. The “God” we meet as a character is a made creature, but that doesn’t mean there’s no real God in the world of The All-Nighter. It’s pretty wild to speculate about, but Zdarsky didn’t go there.
Anyway! It goes kind of predictably from there, because of course Lucifer shows up, amongst other developments like the found family all saving each other (though not without loss).
The idea behind this series isn’t super original (stuff like American Gods leaps to mind, but also — though not set in our world — Michael Scott’s Paedur the Bard books, and quite a few others that I’m just not retrieving from memory in this second), but it’s a fun enough exploration of it, which maybe nudges the idea in a slightly different direction by having superheroes a la Marvel also be part of the mythology that comes to life.
Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)
Tags: Allison O'Toole, book reviews, books, Chip Zdarsky, comics, Frank Cvetkovic, graphic novels, Jason Loo, Paris Alleyne, SF/F
Posted July 9, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Fence
Genres: Graphic Novels Pages: 112
Rating: Synopsis: Tryouts are well underway at King’s Row for a spot on the prodigious fencing team, and scrappy fencer Nicholas isn’t sure he’s going to make the grade in the face of surly upperclassmen, nearly impossibly odds, and his seemingly unstoppable roommate, the surly, sullen Seiji Katayama. It’ll take more than sheer determination to overcome a challenge this big! From the superstar team of C.S. Pacat (The Captive Prince) and fan-favorite artist Johanna the Mad comes the second volume of this acclaimed, dynamic series.
Book two of C.S. Pacat’s Fence (with art by Johanna the Mad) pretty much straightforwardly follows the first book, without a gap. The art is still gorgeous, the plot/character interactions are still predictable in a way I find pleasant (but won’t be winning points for originality), and it rattles along at a good pace.
I really love the relationship between Harvard and Aiden, which I’m guessing is heading to romance, but which is also just cute as best friends — especially when Aiden dropped everything to go chat to Harvard (and is so sensitive to his every shift of mood, even as he appears to care so little about everyone else).
Nothing startling happening here, but I’m having a lot of fun getting back into it.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, C.S. Pacat, comics, graphic novels, Joanna LaFuente, Johanna the Mad
Posted June 27, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The All-Nighter
Genres: Fantasy,
Graphic Novels Pages: 119
Series: The All-Nighter #2 Rating: Synopsis: In the wake of Ian's disappearance, tensions are running high at the diner. Alex and Joy are stuck covering shifts when they'd rather be out fighting bad guys. To make things worse, people start disappearing just as a new super hero team arrives in town--could the two be related?
What if they're dealing with something bigger and more dangerous than super villains--and what if Alex's decision to become Nightshock put it all in motion?
“Season Two” of Chip Zdarsky’s The All-Nighter picks up not long after the first volume, with everyone trying to reckon with the disappearance of Ian at the end of the volume. We see a bit more of the “found family” aspect in this volume, even if it fragments a bit toward the end, and we also see a bit more development of Cynthia as a character.
And of course, come the end of the book there are some preeeetty big consequences for Alex’s actions, and everyone’s thrown into even worse turmoil.
I haven’t said much about the art so far. It doesn’t bowl me over but it works, characters and events are pretty clear and easy to follow.
Overall, the middle volume is okay, and the ending sets things up for an explosive finale.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: Aditya Bidikar, Allison O'Toole, book reviews, books, Chip Zdarsky, comics, graphic novels, Jason Loo, Paris Alleyne, SF/F
