One Weird Trick (Sex Criminals Volume 1)

When Mark and I visited Arizona over the holiday break, we hung out with his friend Jordan, who works at a comic book store in Tempe. He recommended this smart, fresh, graphic novel to me. One Weird Trick is about a young woman who wants to save her library from foreclosure, her unusual superpower, and her sexcapades with a likeminded young man she meets at a party. A fun and flirty caper with nice illustrations, this is my bookclub's February pick (along with The Picture of Dorian Gray), if anyone wants to read along!

Witchblade: Origins Volume 1

Just finished reading Witchblade: Origins Volume 1, my first comic book ever. I asked the guy in the comic book stand at Dragon*Con to recommend me something that:

1. Has a strong plot (not stupid or silly)

2. Has interesting character development

3. Is visually cool

4. Has cool costumes

I would say this largely fits the bill. The plot is definitely intriguing and it is visually awesome. It remains to be seen whether the characters will develop in the next volume, although I will check them out and see. As far as costumes go, this girl wears next to nothing all the time, so there isn't much to speak of there. The Witchblade itself is pretty sweet though (pictured on the cover), so I could definitely do a costume with her wearing it with one of her many miniscule dresses.

At first it was hard for me to get used to reading all the different speech bubbles, and the intermittent (and seemingly arbitrary) bolding of words was annoying, but I got over that.

Would recommend.

Scott Pilgrim

I've recently gotten interested in the Scott Pilgrim comic book series. Scott, a 23-year-old bassist for his band Sex Bob-omb has a smooth life. He lives with his hilarious gay roommate Wallace Wells, and is dating a 17-year old chinese girl named Knives Chau. That is, until a roller-blading delivery girl named Ramona Flowers shows up. Scott falls for her right away, but the road to her love is not covered in petals. Turns out Scott Pilgrim has to fight her 7 evil ex-boyfriends to earn the right to her love. The series then turns into a laugh-out-loud, retro-game styled, battle for Scott to keep his band in line, his own life under control, and defeat the League of Evil Exes!