Books

Book 682: Camp Cutlery – Robin Carnilius

If you’re a fan of McTucky Fried High, Carnilius’ hilariously poignant YouTube series about anthropomorphized food surviving high school, you’ll definitely appreciate this one. (If you’re not familiar with McTucky, I included the teaser for Season 1 below.) When they reached out with a review copy of the book, I recognized the name and my response was “definitely!” to reviewing this one.*

Camp Cutlery: A Hunger for Justice picks up not long after the McTucky Fried High series ends and it follows Peanut, a transgender social justice warrior, through their journey at a correctional facility. The biggest challenge by far of reading a work that is a continuation of another work is the pre-set expectations and frankly, no author, can do anything about those. This being said, this story definitely works on most levels, but for me a good portion of the charm was lost from the animated series.

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Book 676: Sense of Wonder – Bill Schelley

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I said I’d take a look at this after the publisher reached out to me about a review copy.* As much as I love the MCU and the various graphic novels I read (especially LGBTQ+ ones), I haven’t read comics since the early 1990s when I read a ton of Star Wars comics at the local Borders, I was going into this blind when it came to comic fandom.

Sense of Wonder is a deep dive into comic fandom from its earliest moments to the colossal behemoth it has become today all through the lens of Schelly’s life and experiences. I had no idea that fanzines were a thing back in the 1960s (oh hey, internet generation) and thanks in part to Schelly’s wonderful writing style and the methodical yet meandering journey he takes you on in this work, I now long for the days of pre-internet community building via snail mail, rides from parents to other parts of town, and collect phone calls.

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Books

Book 652: Bob’s Burgers: Char-Broiled (Bob’s Burgers #5) – Jeff Drake, Brian Hall, Rachel Hastings, Mike Olsen, Mark Von Der Heide, and Anneliese Waddington

Bringing the Bob’s Burgers comic adaptation to a close with issues 13-16, Bob’s Burgers: Char-broiled was kind of disappointing. I think there were other continuations through the free comic book day issues, but this was the last trade paperback anthology.
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Books

Book 644: Encore (The Backstagers #3) – James Tynion IV, Rian Sygh & Walter Baiamonte

Of the three, this was my favorite. Rebels Without Applause and The Show Must Go On were both good reads and absolutely must be read together, but I think this one was more what I was expecting when I picked up the firs tone. This is a series of vignettes centered around Valentine’s Day and Halloween. They’re short, they’re adorable, and they don’t require knowing the entire backstory of those first two volumes.

My favorite of the stories was the Valentine’s Day story around Beckett. Who doesn’t love a bah humbug story with a happy ending? It didn’t hurt that Jory and Hunter were extra adorable.

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Books

Book 643: The Show Must Go On (The Backstagers #2) – James Tynion IV, Rian Sygh & Walter Baiamonte

This was a  good quick read and a must read if you want to have any idea about what’s going on in Rebels Without Applause. They really should’ve put this into one collection. Maybe they did it because of the timing of these last four issues, but it wasn’t worth reading one and then waiting for the other.

The Backstagers: The Show Must Go On contains all the backstory that Volume 1 really needed to make it make sense, mostly. There seems to be a time jump between issue four (end of volume one) and five (beginning of volume two). I’m not sure if I’ve missed a lot (there are novels and I believe this was a webcomic) because the whole thing seems more disjointed than I thought looking back on it.

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