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I've received volume 5. It's a very well put together, oversized, hardback book. Entirely in French but Google lens is doing an actually decent job of instantly translating the speech balloons. The lettering is very nice in that familiar  Asterisk style and somewhat all over the place so the fact that the software can recognise the words to a reasonable degree is remarkable. My French is OK but there are certainly some words and phrases I need help with. It's just I have to hover my phone over the words... oh well it's this or get better at French.

I'd be quite tempted to include Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman to someone who hadn't read any comics before, but I know a few of my friends who aren't fond of it and I wonder if it's aged badly. The main thing I remember was that it seemed to be a charming, almost innocent take on Clark and co, with strong storytelling and great art, but I might have to revisit it to see if that is the case. Then I'd also echo the support for Charley's War, include Zoe Thorogood's It's Lonely At The Centre Of The Earth to highlight what modern indie comics can be, and also put in V For Vendetta. But yeah, might have to check out All-Star Superman again to see if I'm as fond of it as I was the first time around.

I thought of mentioning ASS (sorry) too, but there's quite a bit in there that references other Supe stuff like Bizarro, the scientist at the start, and, err, other stuff that escapes me, a lot of which I wasn't exactly familiar with myself. So it might not work so well for a complete noob. I still like it a lot (I do wonder if that's quite a bit to do with Frank Q though).

[Invincible]

I don't read a lot of Superhero stuff myself but my suggestion there would be Invincible.

I'd recommend Planetary for a really excellent superhero comic. It's all done in around 30 issues and is very well plotted. Not sure if it's massively novice-friendly though. Probably helps if you've read some sci-fi, comics, or are at least aware of the genre conventions. There's a lot of pulp sci-fi reference in it.

Hopefully they continue the web exclusives

I have to admit to a preference for the Ezquerra ones. It's great that they are doing this series in hardback rather than TP so we get classic artwork from the true maestro. Weird, I know.

Not weird - I prefer the regular ones too. Placing the Ezquerra drawings on a flat but very strongly coloured background works really well and provides striking covers. Kudos to the designer(s).

I'm not much of a fantasy genre fan, so I've only read a couple of her sci-fi novels, The Dispossessed and aforementioned The Left Hand of Darkness which I found to be chewier fare than yer typical Asimov and Clarke stories, which while terrific reads are more like adventures to be raced through. Your write-up really makes me want to give Earthsea a go, Alec, thanks. I'm off for a browse.

This is such a good architectural drawing it took me a moment to figure out what was going on. Bravo, Dan.

I'm completely in awe of Cliff Robinson's line work and attention to detail here. And Dylan Teague (presumably) must have a hellavuh job flatting it all for colouring. His colour work is also excellent. I love his treatment on backgrounds.

Is Cliff an old-school pen and ink man do we know?

The juxtaposition with Harrison's more CGI-looking work is striking (I love both covers).

Hey Colin, in your subsequent review posts please can you add a link to the latest 'roundup' post (ie the post with the list of links to the previous sets of reviews) in the 'where did all this come from' section? That would be much appreciated, thanks. Cheers, Jon

[Marshall Law - Fear And Loathing By Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill]

Marshall Law - Fear And Loathing By Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill - The most unsubtle satire on superheroes ever, it's amusing but it really didn't need to be quite so on the nose, I kept on thinking "Pat, hey, come on here, let the reader do some of the leg work, you don't need to spell everything out quite so blatantly!". There are times when it's strangely repetitive as well, especially when it comes to Marshall Law's narration, yet despite all of that I do feel mean for criticising it because there are aspects I loved, and O'Neill's art is awesome, I just wish Mills had had more faith in his audience. 3.75/5.

Fair enough, I haven't read it in a while, but certainly at time of reading, this was one of my favourite comic books. The end of the book does have a lot of exposition in the form of the dissertation on Super Heroes but on following readings I just skipped over the words and looked at the priddy pictures . The main mystery of the story is compelling - I certainly didn't spot the twist / baddie until the reveal. As well as a great plot you've got well drawn, sympathetic characters, the excellent world building and then you've got Kev O'Neill at the top of his drawing and colouring game... it was a thing of wonder, for me, at the time.

Of course nowadays you think, SPOILER, his girlfriend was well and truly fridged, in the worst possible way, and another important female character is portrayed as a haggard, vengeful shrew, and yet another is literally portrayed as a whore and all of them meet the worst, most violent ends. So, y'know, for the major female characters in the story it's... not great.

A couple of following stories were decent but then it all went downhill a bit, story and art-wise, and Mill's subsequent portrayal of Lynn felt like a total betrayal of the character, so I wouldn't bother.

Sod it, I've ordered Dredd and Wolfie Smith off the Hachette site, but can't get Dark Judges Deliverance and its not available on the Forbidden planet website either

The 2000AD books have in the past come back into stock on the Hachette site so it might be a case of just waiting for a while. It's probably worth getting in touch and checking though, as this might be less likely now we're nearing the end of the run. They are not exactly transparent about this sort of thing.

That's some great movie-poster style work from Mark Harrison. Is this referencing something? It's like an inverted Abbey Road. Worth checking out on a big screen.

Good line-ups. Lawless obviously yay. And most are keen on the Out. Closure on the Maitland saga, all good.

Fargo and McBane, sure. McBane looks like he's on his uppers. Surely he can't be doing undercover?

Looking forward to more Devlin with PJ who has a sweeter take on the character, this might be one of the less horrifying episodes.

Death Cap was OK, hoping for more fireworks this time (speaking of Boo, loved Void Runners, can we have some more of that?).

The recent Rogues have been fine, with superb artwork. There's not much jeopardy in flashbacks though, and I'm not sure this character is that interesting without his quest for revenge. Still, Ennis is well qualified to have a go, so good luck, fingers crossed!

Just to note given the chat elsewhere about Amazon on the forum today...

The Amazon site is quite useful to find (and link to) items for a discussion like this. I'm not recommending it particularly. Where one purchases is up to one!

Personally I do buy "things" from Amazon for the convenience, fast delivery (I have Prime) and usually don't have an issue with the packaging.

For comics and books I'll usually check out 2nd hand options first. If it's Rebellion I'll usually use the 2000ad shop, or Forbidden Planet. Hachette I've bought both direct and more often from FP.

I confess though in this case it was an Amazon purchase. I hang my head in shame!

[Blueberry]

A quick note as I've had a look at the collected editions on Amazon. My French is pretty rusty but the sequence Colin refers to starts here, at Tome 5:

https://amzn.eu/d/0cNwp4Gq

And continues to Tome 7 (I think).

I've always wondered about Blueberry, heard it mentioned lots in the past, but wasn't interested in a Western comic. In French. Until now! So I'm picking up Tome 5 to give my rusty French a workout.

It can accompany my French edition of Asterisk in Britain a French friend bought me a while back. I struggled with it even when my French was half-decent. Working out the puns is hard for a non-native.

The Citadel would have been better served without the silly 'everything will change' pretext that was used to hype it up beforehand. I was more than happy to read it at the time, it was a good slice of flashback Dredd and Dan Cornwell is great. It didn't shift Dredd's overall arc like it was apparently hyped to but I don't think it was really meant to, was it?

Thanks very much for taking the time to write up this explanation Funt - makes sense. I just blithely whizzed through it in my usual fashion so missed the subtext.

So sorry, and excuse me for taking your quote out of context...

No problem at all.