Coady and the Creepies from BOOM! Studios ends this week and Sam is sad to see it go (and hoping for more in the future!), while she also enjoyed the Lumberjanes: Faire and Square 2017 Special. Jackson’s found that Shirtless Bear Fighter from Image Comics may be the best built-up joke in comics in some time and Captain America: Steve Rogers from Marvel Comics is starting to wear thin on Renee.

Read all of our reviews and let us know what you think in the comments!

Sam’s Reads 

Coady and the Creepies #4 (of 4)

Authors: Liz Prince
Artist: Amanda Kirk
Publisher: BOOM! Box
Source: BOOM! Studios DRC
★★★☆☆

From the beginning, I’ve really enjoyed Coady and the Creepies. It’s a unique looking book that always tried to be more fun than anything else. But I’m admittedly a little sad that the series is over now because the ending felt so incomplete. Don’t get me wrong: the over-arching storyline that we’ve been following throughout these four issues gets wrapped up pretty nicely. But the ending leaves open a lot of questions and we get this whole cliche “The End – Or Is It?” on the final page.

Now, like I said, the main plot ends up being wrapped up really well. The guy who has been trying to sabotage the Creepies turns out to be the witless lackey of some old, dead punk rock legend who has a bone to pick with the modern punk scene. In particular, he’s not a fan of the Creepies because I guess he sees punk as more hardcore – and way less feminine. He’s been stealing the souls of rockers and punks for years – including the souls of Coady and Shil. But, it turns out, because Coady has an identical twin part of her soul was saved by Corey. (And I guess Shil does, too, because only part of his soul had been captured, too.)

Basically, the Creepies save the day and release the souls of everyone who has been effectively imprisoned by this punk rock asshole. Even Marnie is saved – though at the end she’s possesses Shil’s cat instead of moving on.

I guess the reason I’m a little disappointed by the ending is that we’re still left with a ton of questions – and some of these questions come up in the final issue. Since there’s no confirmed second miniseries or any issues at all past this one as far as I know it feels like maybe we could have gotten a bit more closure – and not opened up any new mysterious plot points.

And this might sound dumb but I feel bad for Shil that his cat is now some teenage girl trapped in a cat’s body instead of, you know, his beloved cat. I know, I know. Humans should take priority. But Shil traveled everywhere with this cat and now his cat is gone because obviously Marnie is going to be staying with the Creepies. Poor Shil.

This final issue of Coady and the Creepies does a good job of wrapping up the series but it leaves a lot of questions still unanswered. Hopefully we’ll find out sometime soon whether we’re going to get any more issues down the line. But as far as this four issue miniseries goes, Coady and the Creepies was a fun, unique series that blended sisterly love with punk rock and the supernatural and we’ll be sad to see it go.

Lumberjanes: Faire and Square (2017 Special)

Authors: Holly Black and Gabby Rivera
Artist: Marina Julia and Gaby Epstein
Publisher: BOOM! Box
Source: BOOM! Studios DRC
★★★★☆

This year’s annual special has two truly amazing stories from a pair of awesome creative teams. The first story is the titular ‘Faire and Square,’ which is heavily influenced by the story of Robin Hood. It sees the Lumberjanes attending a mysterious Renaissance Faire in the woods. Meanwhile, the second story sees them acting out their own series finale to one of Ripley’s favorite telenovelas. They’re fun little one-shots, though if you ask me the Renaissance Faire story would have been an amazing four to six issue arc because it’s awesome.

Seriously, I would have totally been down for ‘Faire and Square’ to have been a longer story arc. Holly Black is an amazing author and her middle grade work is really suited to a book like Lumberjanes. The story that she told was great and I loved the introduction of the new character, Rowena. I really wish Rowena could have been recruited to give up her RenFaire travels to spend the summer with the Lumberjanes so we could see her again at some point.

Also, the ‘dragon’ in the story is awesome and the resolution to her story was actually really creative on the author’s part. But, I digress. Marina Julia’s illustrations were awesome. She added a unique style to the book that didn’t quite look like anything we’ve seen before – or at least not something we’ve seen in a while. 

Now, admittedly, I was less excited for the back up story, ‘Las Estrellas Del Campo: Edicion Lumberjanes’ but I still enjoyed it. I liked that we got a Ripley-centric story where she wasn’t going 100 miles a minute the whole time. We saw her disappointed and sad.

We also got to see once again just how much her family means to her. And while she’s all over the place sometimes she’s really a very understanding, caring kid which we get to see here. Plus she’s got some epic friends – because who else would act out their own episode to a show they had never seen before? I go back and forth on how I feel about Gaby Epstein’s artwork but I think it’d actually be cool to see her do a full-length Lumberjanes arc.

Lumberjanes: Faire and Square gives fans two epic new adventures in one super-sized special issue. The creative teams are great and the stories they tell fit right into the Lumberjanes canon. Holly Black and Marina Julia’s ‘Faire and Square’ make us yearn to see them back someday for a full-length story arc while Gabby Rivera and Gaby Epstein’s is the perfect backup story fully of all the fun, quirky Lumberjanes antics we know and love. Definitely a must-read for Lumberjanes fans!

Sam Wildman is a co-founder and co-editor at Nerdophiles. She owned her high school punk rock poser status. Follow her on Twitter @samaside.

Jackson’s Reads

Shirtless Bear Fighter #1 (of 5)

Authors: Jody Leheuk and Sebastian Gerner
Artist: Nil Vendrell
Publisher: Image Comics
Source: Image Comics ARC
★★★★★

It’d be easy to say that Shirtless Bear Fighter is, as they say, right what it says on the tin but that doesn’t quite do this gloriously, ludicrously stupid comic justice. Shirtless Bear Fighter, written by Jody Leheuk and Sebastian Gerner and illustrated by Nil Vendrell, feels like a never-ending improv session, every “yes, and” escalating the insanity to the point of absurdity. When the line “That bear’s rubbing his ass on America” appears less than 10 pages into the story, you know you’re not in familiar territory here.

Shirtless Bear Fighter focuses on, well, Shirtless, a bear fighter called in by an unnamed, cliche government agency to fight a rogue bear that’s attacking the US. That story is mostly there for jokes, which come fast and mostly riff on ‘80s action and buddy cop flicks with a healthy dose of bear puns, penis jokes, and ursine suplexes.

The story follows the beats you would expect, especially if you can spot the major reference points but that’s not what’s important here. Shirtless Bear Fighter #1 is all about escalation, about taking a dumb joke one page further, one punch harder and just seeing what comes out. That applies as much to the dialogue and humor as it does to the increasingly jam-packed and detailed panels of the back half of the issue and the results are glorious.

Shirtless Bear Fighter #1 is an example of what comics do best, offer a bank slate with nearly no creative limitations. It’s a comic that explores one joke to the fullest extent it can, watching as each occurrence gets funnier and funnier until lines like “The President won’t negotiate with bearrorists” are equal parts dadaist anti-humor and gut-busting hilarity. It’s one of the smartest dumb comics to land on shelves in years and sure to be a cult-classic.

Jackson Adams is a staff writer at Nerdophiles. Follow him on Twitter @JacksonInACup.

Renee’s Reads

Captain America: Steve Rogers #18

Author: Nick Spencer
Artist: Javier Pina
Publisher: Marvel Comics
★★☆☆☆

As Cap gives one of his dictator speeches, other characters make weak token protests against Cap. In turn, Cap completely obliterates the people and places they value. At face value, these half-hearted protests show the difficulties and the fear people have when attempting to stand up to a government agency. However, the underlying theme of this issue seems to support Hydra and Cap’s neo-nazi ideals and emphasizes that it’s easier to surrender than to fight. At least T’challa provides some hope of resistance, but even that seems rather lackluster.

Captain America is giving a speech to the cabinet and essentially tells everyone that there will be no questions and everything he says is final. A general half-heartedly opposes him and gets shot down. Cap goes on with his Hydra propaganda speech when T’Challa interrupts him and tells him to stop invading his land. Cap is then met outside by Namor and his army, only to be shown defeated later, his temples and his people destroyed.

In this month’s Captain America: Steve Rogers, Cap has become the next reincarnation of Hitler. Cap embraces the Nazi brainwashing, which would make it an interesting commentary on human nature, except Cap written like a poorly written caricature in an overly convoluted fanfiction.

Renee Marriott is a staff writer at Nerdophiles.