Elzburg Reviews

Hawkeye, Volume 1: My Life as a Weapon by Matt Fraction My rating: 4 of 5 stars • pretty funny, made me chuckle a couple times right from the first couple pages • the art is absolutely atrocious. Or, lineart, I guess, since the colours are nice. Except there's no shading, so that's also shit. View all my reviews

This One Summer  by  Mariko Tamaki My rating:  3 of 5 stars The last words on the second-last page of the book: Maybe I will have massive boobs. Me: Lol what if this is the last sentence and it’s about boobs. Me: *flips the page* Boobs would be cool. The absolute madlads did it. They made the last *two* sentences about boobs. Anyway, hi, hello, welcome to this review, lol. I haven’t written a review in a hot minute because of school, but I read this  for  school and have some things I wanna say so here I am!!! This One Summer  is… about… one summer. A super duper regular-on-all-accounts summer. Like, so insanely regular that that’s what I thought the point was: to make the most normal contemporary book possible about what being a kid on a beach in summer is like. And I thought it succeeded with flying colours at this. It was even borderline boring at parts, but then I would remember what I was reading and would think, “... actually--yeah, th...

Miki Falls, Volume 1: Spring by Mark Crilley My rating: 4 of 5 stars I can’t lie, I did not have very high expectations going into this book. That’s probably because I always can’t help but fear the worst whenever I read something written by someone I’m familiar with, whether it be a friend, an author whose book(s) I’ve read before, or in this case, someone whose YouTube videos I had begun watching in grade 5. Those videos are the reason I bought this series, but I’ve been apprehensive to read them for a while now for the aforementioned reason, and also because this is Crilley’s first manga venture and I knew that the art was going to be a bit… Off. I can’t say that I was wrong about the art, but as for the rest of the book I was happily surprised. The concept of this book is along the lines of things I’ve read millions of times before, however it has been twisted on its head and I found myself liking it a lot. In the past, I've complained about ...

Lulu Is a Rhinoceros by Jason Flom My rating: 3 of 5 stars The second I saw the cover of this book and read the synopsis I immediately thought that this was going to be a book that uses animals to create an allegory about transsexuality, as another installment in the growing genre of kid’s LGBTQA+ books. The whole "that's what she sees when she looks in the mirror" business felt really on the nose, and I feel like the authors purposefully used this wording in order to generate buzz around this book. In actuality, this felt like any other normal kids book. You have a character who feels misunderstood by their peers, and so they go on a "journey" to find and/or prove themselves and eventually end up finding peace with who they are and/or a group who accepts them. To me, the story was told in a way that presented Lulu like any other silly character in a children's book that had a silly problem stemming from their silly misco...

Princess Princess by Katie O'Neill My rating: 1 of 5 stars Princess Princess was okay... Yeah. That's pretty much it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ *EDIT* Lmao I'm editing this before I've even posted it because while I was writing I found more things to bitch about. I was planning on rating this two stars, but honestly, this comic has absolutely zero value both as a story and in its failed attempt at trying to make some important points. I get what the author was going for: To make a gay fairy-tale-type-thing in the name of representation and talking about issues such as self-worth, female empowerment, and the impact of other people's expectations and whatnot. But... The author did nothing with these great ideas. It was literally just: Princess saves other princess from tower. Then a prince. Boohoo we learn their "tragic" backstories and then they overcome them. It just felt like... Nothing, really. This felt like the most shallow and un...

Snotgirl, Vol. 1: Green Hair Don't Care by Bryan Lee O'Malley My rating: 3 of 5 stars While reading this it quickly became apparent to me that this comic is not going to be for everyone. The main character is a snotty snooty privileged whiny asshole who is definitely not going to stride well with most people, I’d imagine. But in my case I tend to favour asshole characters and I also feel good potential in the story, which is why I enjoyed this. As a stand-alone this first volume is not much. It introduces us to our main character Lottie Person and her life and “struggles”. It’s about the really hard-hitting problems in our modern society such as allergies, break-ups, boyfriend stealing bitches, outfit stealing bitches, shitty friend bitches, merking bitches, hot bitches, not bitches; The whole works, really. It’s all quite vain, as you can see, so if whiny rich kids (she’s actually 25 and three quarters years old) aren’t your style you might...

Love - Tome 4 - Les dinosaures by Frédéric Brrémaud My rating: 4 of 5 stars I was blown away by the second installment of the Love series, but I didn't really enjoy the third one, so I wasn't sure what to expect going into this latest book. But, I did see that it's about dinosaurs, so that definitely piqued my interest. As you can see from my rating, I quite enjoyed it. It was the day in the life of some dinos. I sure do like me some dinos. The wordless format of these books create this super realistic feeling atmosphere, as if I'm watching a wordless documentary and what is happening is actually real. That's the magic of these books, and why I enjoy them so much. I didn't enjoy the third volume because despite what I just described, I thought the story was lacking so I couldn't enjoy myself. Also there wasn't enough variety in the animals. Good thing these problems were fixed in this volume! It was super cool seeing ...

Paper Girls, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan My rating: 2 of 5 stars I ordered this because it was only 7 dollars online (as opposed to the 17-19 that comic bind-ups usually run for), it has a cool cover, and because it’s by the author of Saga : Brian K. Vaughan. Honestly, I couldn’t really ask for much more in order for you to sell me a book. Sigh. I am bad with money. Going into this I had literally zero idea of what this was going to be about. After reading it, and then reading the synopsis, I can’t help but feel it’s slightly… Misleading? “Four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls uncover the most important story of all time.” Like what does that even mean? That’s so vague. Later in the synopsis it says that this series is about nostalgia, and I could definitely tell that that’s what they were going for without having to read of that being their intent. I feel like that might be a bit of a sneaky tactic to try and reel in the 80’s folks by manipulati...

Saga, Vol. 2 by Brian K. Vaughan My rating: 4 of 5 stars The plot, world, and story are all pretty interesting. I like what happened, it kept my attention. I might have complained about the art in my review of the first volume, but I like the art. I say "might" because I read and wrote the review for volume 1 two years ago so who the hell remembers that. I do remember predicting not reading volume 2 for a while, boy was I on the mark. Got the next two volumes lined up, may or may not read 'em soon. I'm kind of worried because I've heard some negative reviews on how the story progresses so I hope I'll still like it. All of my Saga Reviews: Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 Volume 4 Volume 5 View all my reviews

Saga, Vol. 3 by Brian K. Vaughan My rating: 5 of 5 stars Good shit!!! I'm enjoying these a lot more than I thought I would! I'm kind of torn on what to rate this, keep it 4 stars or bump it to 5 because why the fuck not. The latter won out, obviously. These are pretty funny which is a blast, and I am absolutely in love with Gwendolyn's design, oh my god. She is gorgeous . It makes me feel like cosplaying her, and I even have her exact body type and everything, except I'm not black so I don't feel like I could do her justice. So that's sad but I'll keep adoring her from afar. (view spoiler) [EVERYONE'S DYING OMG!!! (hide spoiler) ] All of my Saga Reviews: Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 Volume 4 Volume 5 View all my reviews

White Sand by Brandon Sanderson My rating: 2 of 5 stars White Sand is a creative effort by Brandon Sanderson and the team at Dynamite. It was a previously unpublished venture of Sandersons', and it has finally been brought to life in graphic novel format. I've never read any Sanderson before but having heard much applause for his work I decided to download this graphic novel. Sanderson is a fantasy writer, and fantasy this was. It had it's own world, own magic system, different cultures and races, monsters, and new vocabulary. I honestly didn't know what I was getting myself into and wasn't ready for all of this. The story was intriguing at first but it started to drag and I even considered dropping it. It felt like being hurtled headfirst into this new world that I knew nothing about and it wasn't a fun time. At the same time, once I started to understand a bit more of the world and what was going on, it became interesting once again. As i...

Le Lion by Frédéric Brrémaud My rating: 3 of 5 stars Love: The Lion is a graphic novel that shows the going abouts in a day of some African animals. We follow a multitude of animals, not just lions as the title might suggest. This is the third book in a series that does this similar concept but with different animals each volume, so they don't need to be read in any particular order. After finishing it I was pretty confused so I immediately went back and re-read it to try and figure out what I missed. I figured out that the lion with the dark mane is the one from the begining and all through to the end. I was confused at the end because I was like "who is this random black maned lion? He was there earlier but like?" Yeah I dunno. Love: The Fox was the first book of this no-narrative type of storytelling I had ever read and it blew my face off. I haven't read the first book in this series, Love: The Tiger so I can't compare to...

Sunstone, Vol. 2 by Stjepan Šejić My rating: 4 of 5 stars I was kind of sceptical when I was reading Sunstone volume 1, since there wasn't too much story progression in that. I guessed that some must happen this second volume, and I was right! We get a lot of Ally's backstory, and we meet some new characters. There's more bdsm (el duh) and it's honestly addicting! I have to give these back to my friend tomorrow, but I still have to read the next two volumes and I'll be damned if I don't! On to the next one, onto the next one. Click to read all of my Sunstone Reviews: Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 (Really short.) View all my reviews

Sunstone, Vol. 1 by Stjepan Šejić My rating: 3 of 5 stars I really don't know how to rate or review this, so I'll start with a little backstory. So at some point, a month or more ago my friend told me about how a mutual friend/acquaintance of ours (we'll call him Big Gay Stan) had brought lesbian porn comics to school. And was casually reading them in the English class they had together. We had a few chuckles about this and went about our merry ways. Yesterday I had a meet-up with a different friend. Right when we met up they informed me that Stan was also going to probably join us. I was looking forward to spending time with my friend, but I nodded anyway. So Stan comes and we're off. He's kind of shy and doesn't say much at first, as we hadn't talked in nearly a year. I eventually end up breaking the ice by accidentally punching myself in the jaw (as I do) and all of us laugh our asses off. Later, we're sitting on th...

Rick and Morty, Vol. 1 by Zac Gorman My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is the second TV-show-comic-series-thing I’ve read, the first being Bob’s Burgers . Where I had never seen an episode of Bob’s Burgers and was pretty impartial to it, I have watched both seasons of Rick and Morty and can easily say that I’m a fan. It was a nice little bit of bonus content to compliment the TV show. I’m pretty sure none of it is canon though so it’s not necessarily a must-read. Just if you really like the show and want more then I say go for it. It’s more of the same type of humor and it’s with the main cast that we all love. There are even some brief cameos from other characters like Bird Person, Squanchy, and Meeseeks. (Also: by brief I mean they don’t have speaking roles, you just see them in backgrounds.) Here are some specific things I liked. First of all, the build quality of the book was actually quite nice, and the pages had this odd rough texture which I like...

Brody's Ghost Volume 6 by Mark Crilley My rating: 3 of 5 stars This might have been the fastest read out of the whole series. I feel like I just read it and then it was over. Not much actually happened. Flipping through the book, it's pretty much just the end. The whole thing is the end. We finally found out exactly what was up with the penny murderer. (view spoiler) [It felt like it was kind of anti climactic that the penny murderer was literally just some random guy who we didn't even know. It made it seem like the revelation wasn't really anything special at all. Oh the penny murderer is just some random guy... okay then... We never got some actual backstory on the penny murderer, just that all of a sudden he snapped and went crazy for some unknown reason. At the same time I did like the whole protecting innocence thing and the pennies. I liked that motivation. (hide spoiler) ] To sum up the spoiler section, I was somewhat dissati...

Brody's Ghost Volume 5 by Mark Crilley My rating: 4 of 5 stars Good stuff as always. I don't even feel like writing a review, I just want to get right into the last book! By this point I don't even know what to say anymore, because this was pretty much like the other books in terms of art things like that. The story is super interesting and really intriguing and awesome. This whole series has just exceeded my expectations. Click to read all of my Brody's Ghost Reviews: Volume 1 and 2 (N/A) Volume 3 Volume 4 Volume 5 Volume 6 View all my reviews

Brody's Ghost Volume 4 by Mark Crilley My rating: 4 of 5 stars Before starting this volume I must admit that I had to flip through the last book because I didn’t remember what was going on in the story. Once I did, I was really surprised that I was able to go on so long without continuing with the story because book 3 really ended on a cliffer. These books are quite the enticing, fast-paced reads. There wasn’t really much humor in this volume, but that was okay because it was good anyway. I found myself thinking about how superficial (cough, nonexistent) the killer’s motivations were while I was reading the beginning of this volume, but we did end up finally getting some much needed insight into that. We also learn more of Talia’s backstory, so that was nice. A big part of this volume was character interactions. Flipping through my book, that’s pretty much all there is, actually. Brody vs. Talia, Brody vs. Landon, Brody and Gabe, and Brody and Ni...

Brody's Ghost Volume 3 by Mark Crilley My rating: 4 of 5 stars A review, but first some backstory: I started this series a whopping four years ago. There was this bind up of the first two books at the Scholastic Book Fair and I jumped at the opportunity to buy it. That was near the end of my weeaboo phase, and I had been watching Mark Crilley's manga tutorials on YouTube since grade five, which was the start of my weeaboo phase. I loved the first two volumes, but I never continued on with the series for a couple reasons. First: I just couldn't find the next books! Every single time I went to my local Chapters store I always searched for Brody's Ghost, but they never had them in stock. I could have talked to an employee and asked them to order the next book for me but... well, obviously I didn't. And I never ordered online back then either. Those were simple times. Second: It was just plain confusing. I didn't even know that my...

Brain Camp by Susan Kim My rating: 3 of 5 stars 3.45 stars. It took me a long time to finally pick this up because I don’t have a very great track-record with its publisher, First Second. I’ve read three other books published by them, Anya’s Ghost , and Boxers and Saints . All of these books were good but… unsettling or unsatisfactory in some way, and that’s the impression I’m left with whenever I think of them. I think Brain Camp may be my favorite First Second book I’ve read… either this or Saints . The story was interesting but jarring at the same time, because I didn’t really expect it to be as creepy as it was. There’s blood and a gross act of plunging a hand into someone’s throat. When things like that happened it was like I said: Jarring. And I'm someone who likes me some weird shit, okay? But whenever it happened here it always seemed like it came out of left field and didn't match the tone of the rest of the book. I enjoyed this bo...