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Books Read December 2022

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  1. Jerusalem: Chronicles From The Holy City
    A graphic memoir about a Canadian comics-artist who moves to The Angriest Little Holy Land!

  2. My Hero Academia, Vol. 5: Shoto Todoroki: Origin
    A touching meditation on nepotism, the point at which punching stops being metaphorical, fucked-up grippers, and rest assured: we #RememberTheSickos!

  3. Alien, Vol. 2: Revival
    It’s like Catcher In The Rye, except instead of a disaffected youth it’s a phallic, chitinous nightmare! Also, I walk back some anti-synthetic rhetoric REAL fuckin’ quick!

  4. Pyongyang: A Journey Into North Korea
    The same guy from the Jerusalem one up above brings us another graphic memoir about going to maybe the only place more fraught than the holy city of at least four major world religions, and he is WAY more provocative and unbothered regarding a regime that absolutely kills people than you’d think a man with a wife and children would be! Seriously he brings a copy of 1984 into fucking North Korea, I am genuinely shocked he made it out alive.

  5. Harrow The Ninth (The Locked Tomb Series, Vol. 2) – Tamsyn Muir (R)


    Wait–wait lemme doublecheck that, make sure. Oh yeah here it is:



  6. Kemono Jihen, Vol. 2
    Aw yiss, time for teammates to get powers too and murder some PERFECTLY INNOCENT monstrous sewer-frogs with them! And then: a heist because a vampire is bored because he can’t play his video games, and if the gang doesn’t entertain him he’ll quit paying their rent!

  7. Heterogenia Linguistico, Vol. 3
    Harpies and Snekfölk living in harmony! HOW CAN THIS BE???

  8. My Hero Academia, Vol. 6: Struggle
    The superchildren of UA Academy finally learn life’s most important lesson: you work hard in school to get a job and have a great life, pass exams that felt like the most important thing you can imagine, and then you go work for an old man who makes ten times what you do but doesn’t know how to rotate a PDF.

  9. Beastlands: Keepers Of The Kingdom
    Listen, I think we can all agree with the protagonists of this book: fuck any king who thinks he can lead an extermination campaign against our adorable ridable flying dragon-tiger guys.

  10. Die, Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker (R)
    Die continues the fine tradition of Transported-Into-A-Game stories such as Tron, Jumanji, and that one episode of Community. Yes, it’s a premise that’s been done before, and yes, its Edgelord mien has all the subtlety of me begging for my cat’s love, but here’s the thing: its a rare edgelord whose edge cuts, and when you encounter one, you will leave without some of your blood.
  11. Yakuza Reincarnation, Vol. 4
    Boatjacking for fun and profit, or as technical texts and more finicky law enforcement agencies refer to it, “piracy”! And listen: that’s great, I love that for us.
    But, much more importantly: 👏FOUL👏MOUTHED👏MER👏MAID👏GIRL👏GANG👏

  12. Kemono Jihen, Vol. 3
    Well duh, of course we’re visiting the hometown of our most emotionally unstable, traumatized team-member! He can show us all the local sights, like where his parents died, and also the giant spider-lady!

  13. My Hero Academia, Vol. 7: Katsuki Bakugo: Origin
    Okay, SOMETIMES splitting the party is a good idea: when it emotionally tortures teen superheroes for our entertainment.

  14. Sakamoto Days, Vol. 4: Quiet On The Train
    Come fight a Frankenstein in an underground lab while technically still on the clock at a convenience store! That’s right: you just got paid to punch the Modern Prometheus.

  15. A Galaxy Next Door, Vol. 3
    🎶IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII love this fuckn series🎵
    Okay these two kids have found a way to annul their accidental engagement (long story, see here) and now can start actually dating like equals, and they are SUCH ADORABLE DORKS but uh-oh, there’s employment trouble on the horizon! Machi’s gonna have to start charging for those Tarot readings.

  16. Radiant Black, Vol. 3: Rogues’ Gallery
    How are you supposed to fight your villains when your villains’ villain is…the economy???

  17. Radiant Red, Vol. 1: Crime And Punishment
    SOMETIMES you just gotta say “Shuck that jive, man! SHUCK ALL YOUR JIVE!” and become a lava monster to beat the shit out of some gangsters and MAYBE your husband if you can figure out how mad you’re allowed to be at someone who has a gambling problem. And then this other chud and his clench of multicolored goons want you to be on their superhero team? UghhhhHHHHHHHHFINE

  18. Heterogenia Linguistico, Vol. 4



  19. If This Book Exists, You’re In The Wrong Universe (John, Dave, And Amy, Book 4)– Jason Pargin (B)
    And you may find yourself in a world with darkest-timeline Furbies that demand to be fed human teeth
    And you may find yourself in a Facebook group for incels who think the world is a simulation
    And you may say to yourself “What would Dr. Marconi do” and hear him say “Dawgs I have no fucking idea”
    And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
    (Hint: I don’t want to blame it all on that man and his psychic-parasite cucumber-wife burrowed into his brain having loud, raucous relations on your bed, but it certainly didn’t help.)

  20. Once & Future, Vol. 1: The King Is Undead (R)
    King Arthur is BACK and he is RACIST, but to be fair, not in the ways you’d think he’d be; I dunno about you, but I can’t remember the last time I heard my conservative uncle rail against the Saxon menace or complain about how he walked two blocks and didn’t hear a single conversation that wasn’t in Frankish.

  21. Once & Future, Vol. 2: Old English (R)
    There are three things you need to know:
    1. Duncan is Pure of Heart and Dumb of Ass, and has been raised since birth to be the embodiment knightly virtue to the point where the narrative-driven metaphysical mechanisms of this universe symbolically count him as Percival
    2. His grandmother is a badass retired monster hunter living in an old folks’ home
    3. They’re about to have a WEEKEND AT BEOWULF’S, BAYBEE
  22. Once & Future, Vol. 3: The Parliament Of Magpies
    Sure, go ahead and trust Boris Johnson with the knowledge that the supernatural exists and the Old Stories are trying to impose themselves on our reality. He and Arthur (well, this Arthur, anyway) would certainly agree on Brexit.


It ain’t no use in turnin’ on your light, babe
I’m on the dark side of the road

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