Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Vol. 3: Calamari Rising is a comic that understands a crucial grotesque truth: apocalypse is funniest when it shows up uninvited at closing time. The publisher’s synopsis gives the premise in one beautifully deranged breath: Wormwood wants “that quiet drink,” but the Brotherhood of the Calamari arrive, bringing along a “parasitic infection,” … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Review – Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Vol. 3: Calamari Rising by Ben Templesmith
T.A.E.’s Book Review – Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Vol. 2: It Only Hurts When I Pee by Ben Templesmith
Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Vol. 2: It Only Hurts When I Pee is a deliciously deranged exercise in comic-book grotesquerie, but it is not merely a string of jokes dressed up in slime and tentacles. The collected edition runs 120 pages and sends Wormwood and his companions into Lephrechaunia to find the Leprechaun Queen, the only … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Review – Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Vol. 2: It Only Hurts When I Pee by Ben Templesmith
T.A.E.’s Book Review – Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Vol. 1: Birds, Bees, Blood & Beer by Ben Templesmith
Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Vol. 1: Birds, Bees, Blood & Beer is one of those comics that understands a crucial truth of horror-comedy: the grotesque works best when it smiles back at you. Collected here from the first miniseries plus the original “Taster” issue, the book arrived in 2007 as a 152-page, creator-owned burst of fully … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Review – Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Vol. 1: Birds, Bees, Blood & Beer by Ben Templesmith
T.A.E.’s Book Reviews – Rose (Bone #0) by Jeff Smith
Jeff Smith’s Rose is a prehistory written with the pressure of legend. It does what the best origin stories do: it enlarges the world without flattening it. Rather than functioning as mere background for Bone, the book deepens the moral architecture of that universe by showing how inheritance, fear, and choice take root long before … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Reviews – Rose (Bone #0) by Jeff Smith
T.A.E.’s Book Reviews – Bone, Vol. 9: Crown of Horns by Jeff Smith
Jeff Smith’s Bone, Vol. 9: Crown of Horns is the series’ most overt movement toward apocalyptic resolution, yet it remains deeply committed to the intimate emotional textures that have always distinguished Bone from simpler fantasy adventure. What might have been a mere end-of-quest climax becomes, in this author’s hands, a meditation on fear, sacrifice, memory, … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Reviews – Bone, Vol. 9: Crown of Horns by Jeff Smith
T.A.E.’s Book Reviews – Bone, Vol. 8: Treasure Hunters by Jeff Smith
Jeff Smith’s Bone, Vol. 8: Treasure Hunters deepens one of the series’ most appealing paradoxes: it is at once playful and grave, elastic with humour yet increasingly governed by fate, memory, and inheritance. Even the title is revealing. “Treasure Hunters” sounds like a child’s adventure serial, but the writer uses that promise to expose how … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Reviews – Bone, Vol. 8: Treasure Hunters by Jeff Smith
T.A.E.’s Book Reviews – Bone, Vol. 7: Ghost Circles by Jeff Smith
Jeff Smith’s Bone, Vol. 7: Ghost Circles is one of the series’ most haunting achievements (no pun intended), a volume in which the fantasy adventure grows stranger, darker, and more inward-looking without losing its wit or momentum. What makes the book so compelling is that it does not simply escalate the plot; it deepens the … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Reviews – Bone, Vol. 7: Ghost Circles by Jeff Smith
T.A.E.’s Book Reviews – Bone, Vol. 6: Old Man’s Cave by Jeff Smith
With Old Man’s Cave, Jeff Smith deepens Bone’s strange alchemy of pastoral comedy, epic fantasy, and uncanny menace. What has gradually become clear by this sixth volume is that the author is not merely telling a children’s adventure story that happens to grow darker over time; he is building a mythic world in which humour, … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Reviews – Bone, Vol. 6: Old Man’s Cave by Jeff Smith
T.A.E.’s Book Reviews – Bone, Vol. 5: Rock Jaw, Master of the Eastern Border by Jeff Smith
Jeff Smith’s Bone, Vol. 5: Rock Jaw, Master of the Eastern Border is the series at its most adventurous and, at the same time, one of its most morally alert instalments. What first seems like a comic detour into wilderness peril becomes, on closer reading, a sharp meditation on power, hierarchy, and the uneasy alliance … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Reviews – Bone, Vol. 5: Rock Jaw, Master of the Eastern Border by Jeff Smith
T.A.E.’s Book Reviews – Bone, Vol. 4: The Dragonslayer by Jeff Smith
Jeff Smith’s Bone, Vol. 4: The Dragonslayer is the point at which Bone stops feeling merely playful and begins to reveal the moral architecture beneath its comedy. The series has always balanced cartoon buoyancy with old-world menace, but here the writer sharpens that balance into something more intricate: a story about inherited violence, mistaken identity, … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Reviews – Bone, Vol. 4: The Dragonslayer by Jeff Smith