Let’s Talk About PPGD
Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi is a webcomic started in the early 2000s by an artist known as Bleedman and centers around the adventures of the Powerpuff Girls as they leave behind the city of Townsville for greener pastier in the city of Megaville, which contains characters from other Cartoon Network shows like the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Samurai Jack, and Courage the Cowardly Dog, along with Nickelodeon shows and even other anime like Medabots. It’s a massive crossover with several moments of awesome.
After moving from their hometown, the girls try to fit in as the story continues and end up following different paths in the school. Blossom ends up working along side Dexter from Dexter’s Laboratory, Bubbles ends up becoming a cheerleader with Mandy and Olga, and Buttercup joins classes taught by Jack. This gives them different perspectives and character development that should be seen, and creates unique circumstances you would never see otherwise.
However, while it starts out as a comedic story, things aren’t all fun and dandy when they find themselves getting involved in a plot that involves the Cluster from My Life as a Teenage Robot among other threats. One of the latest arcs had several characters die and… well, just take a look:
Needless to say, some things get dark at times. But it has it’s heartwarming moments as well, and some of the romantic developments are interesting to watch. The artwork starts out less than stellar, but gradually improves to the extent that it’s visually noticeable.
Overall, it’s a good fan-comic over 10 years in the making and you should read it. It updates every few weeks or months depending on the artist’s whim.
You can find a Tv Tropes page: Here
And read it online for free: Here
Let’s Talk About Avas Demon and Why You Should Read It!
Ava’s Demon is another webcomic that I’m into that has artwork like something out of Disney and Pixar. It’s something of a polar-opposite of Blindsprings, but it has it’s charm as a space-faring fic. Fair-warning, I’m not going to hide spoilers so read at your own risk, and don’t eat anything or you’ll regret it.
The story is about a girl known as Ava who, as pictured above, is possessed by the soul of a space-empress named Wrathia that constantly ruins her life with the intent to drive her into suicide. This has ultimately cost her all her friends, got her expelled from her previous schools, and generally left her miserable.
In fact, when she is eventually killed after her planet gets destroyed, her greatest relief was that she didn’t die by Wrathia’s hands. This leads to a conversation where Wrathia manages to convince her into a pact after explaining that TITAN, the current conqueror of the universe managed to take over her world so she used space-alchemy to reincarnate all her most powerful warriors into new bodies, in the hopes that they would be strong enough to best TITAN. It clearly didn’t go as planned, but the gist is that now Ava has to find the hosts of the other warriors, most of whom are conveniently around her without her knowledge, to overthrown the guy.
It goes without mentioning that this art is goddamn gorgeous, but this webcomic gets seriously dark and disturbing at times. Even the impaling scene from above pales in comparison to some of the later scenes.
Overall, it’s a decent webcomic that’s easy on the eyes, but has some seriously dark overtones. And while it used to update like twice every week, it’s been on hiatus for months with only a single 30-page update last month. That being said, I recommend it highly and you can go read it:
Spider-Verse Team Up #1 Review
Keeping this short for the time, this is my review of Spider-Verse Team-Up #1.
The comic opens on Earth-94 where an optimistic Ben Reilly runs into Vultures from alternate dimensions and has to be bailed out by Old Man Spider and Spider-Ham. It’s clear he’s one of the naïve spiders because the time spent with him talking ends up with them getting hit with paralysis darts despite the fact they should have Spider-Sense and he alone managed to overpower it via sheer optimistic willpower. I call asspull but whatever. As they drag him to the safe haven for spiders both Spider-Ham and Old Man Spider can see that he has no clue what he’s in for, but considering how the other Bens have fared and how they’re being hunted he may as well die among friends.
In the second part we get Spider-Man Noir and Six-Armed Spider. Noir is…. Well, negative through and through, as he refers to the fact that the Aunt May and Uncle Ben being alive only because they are sticking with him by his bedside being the only good that Peter Parker has been done, but is willing to leave him behind since he’s helpless despite being a totem. Six-Armed Spider decides to go check on his blood work since he has an idea.
Eventually Peter morphs into a Man-Spider so Noir drags him onto the roof while Six-Arms gives him a cure he made before Noir goes for the mercy kill approach. He explains that he originally made it for himself but it didn’t work and gave him six arms, but since that Peter was younger his cells could revert back and cure him. That Peter loses his spider abilities but he has a family and a normal life that they could never have, which Noir calls a win in his books.
Okay review time.
I found the stories kind of bland, but the characterizations stuck out. We see Old Man Spider and Noir are both jaded from their experiences and are willing to make tougher calls than their partners, but both Spider-Ham and Six-Armed Spider are more…. optimistic before resorting to more permanent solutions.
I give it a 3 out of 5.
Amazing Spider-Man #9 (Spider-Verse)
Okay, a lot is going on in Amazing Spider-Man #9 and these are my thoughts on probably the biggest issue yet in the Spider-Verse event.
The comic opens with Peter Parker being called in for work by JJJ, which is the first clue it’s not our Peter. The second is that Morlun gets his hands on him and starts feasting on him while the third is that they live on the moon. We then cut to Morlun’s siblings and the gluttonous one deciding to see what he’s hoarding on the 616-universe.
After that Peter gets woken up by Silk who tells him the solution to their problem when it comes to wanting to make spider-babies is for him to leave since the great web is closing in on him or something cryptic like that. This is further compounded when Mayday, Spider-UK, Anya, Miguel, Jessica Drew (616), and Spider-Ham, show up and tell him the short version that Morlun’s brother it coming. Peter immediately says to get in the damn portal before he shows up.
Kaine is not so lucky as the glutton found him and attacked the New Warriors (they’ll probably make it). He tries to skewer him with his Other powers, but that just makes the glutton want him more until Gwen Stacy, Ben Rilley, and Bruce Banner show up with the Old Man Spider. They get Kaine out but Bruce gets his spine snapped and they have to leave him behind.
All the spiders meet up on Earth-13, a safe zone because the Spider-Man there still has the power of a god and the only reason he hasn’t gone after the Inheritors is because his power is tied to his dimension. Anyway, long story short they need Peter there because he’s supposedly the chosen one. The comic ends in the Ultimate Universe as Jessica Drew (1610) and Miles Morales come under fire by the glutton’s sister.
We then get an epilogue where the head of the Inheritors holds a feast on a number of Spiders, quells his children’s squabbling, and then reveals he knows all connected to the great web after enslaving the Master Weaver before they munch on the collected Spider-Men.
Okay, okay review time.
A lot going on, most of it I like. There are some glaring issues, like the text being wrong and you have to wonder why they would just call out their secret identities in public. But I do like the characterizations of a good number of the spiders and the story is moving.
I give it full marks, 5 out of 5.
Superior Spider-Man #29 Review
The Goblin Nation arc continues in Superior Spider-Man #29 and I’m here to give you my thoughts on it as I review what went down.
The story picks up where it left off, with Anna being brought to the Goblin King by Menace. He tells her to hush up since he’s watching a News Report saying that Peter and Carlie were buried alive, leaving Menace and Anna distraught as their sister/lover were thought to be killed. The Goblin King brushes the death of Carlie off, saying he’ll make her a new sister, thinking that the death of Spider-Man’s best friend was the real tragedy since it was so boring.
The goblin raid continues and it’s revealed that just about every hero in New York is out there and trying to stem the flow, with the head of Alchemax trying to have the mayor unleash the Goblin Slayers to help save people for the PR boosts. JJ, however, doesn’t’ want them out until they can take down Spider-Man with it being made apparent his grudge was getting in the way. It’s enough that one of his staff members leave him behind, saying enough is enough.
MJ is with May and the others she saved, as far away from New York as she could manage, telling them to keep calm and explaining that it was their only choice. She receives a call from Otto, who she tries to get to calm May down, only for him to brush her aside as he tries to cure Carlie with Sanjay. That ends when the Goblin King hacks his number and tells him to put on the mask and meet him.
The Goblin King apparently took killing Spider-Man personally, because he wanted to be the one to do it as his number one enemy while Otto was number two, so he destroys everything related to his legacy, including his childhood home, the place where he had his accident, the clinic where he saved a little girl, and the place where the police have stashed all his goodies. He then tells him that he’s got a classmate of his as a hostage and tells him to meet him at the university.
Trying to get there he ignores a mugging and tries to have the police chief come help in his place, but they think he’s in on it and JJ unleashes the Spider-Slayers to search for him. When he finally arrives, the Goblin King has Lamaze as the hostage. He states he saw the footage of Otto trying to save him during Stunner’s rampage (he must’ve glossed over Anna being there) and assumed he was the closest thing Otto had as a friend.
Disappointed, he threatens to leave and find someone else he cared about. Otto tries to gut him like a fish, but the goblin turns out to have hacked his mechanical arms and turn them against him. One is about to kill him when Lamaze intercepts it, leaving Otto confused about why he would do such a thing.
Lamaze states that it was because when Spider-Man saved him and Anna from Stunner, he regretted running away when she needed help and since then all he wanted was a chance to do what was right. To that end he thanked Otto for showing him what it meant to be a hero and then dies in his arms. Okay, credit where it was due, that was bittersweet.
However, the moment is ruined when the Spider-Slayers show up. Jameson is willing to lose everything to kill him and manages to get Otto in a pinch until Spider-Man 2099 shows up and shuts them down. But, unlike everyone else who grabbed the idiot ball, he knows something isn’t right with Peter and wants answers. Sadly the comic ends before he can get them as the Spider-Slayers are hacked by the Goblin King and grabs both of the Spider-Men.
Okay, review time.
The fallout continues as we see more character assassination on Peter by Otto, who’s getting a taste of what it’s like to be on the opposite end of the whole situation for once. Not only that, but he’s dragging Jameson and several others down with him in the process. That being said, I’m calling bull that the Avengers and every hero in New York are being pressured. New York is where like 90% of them are concentrated at. It’s the one place where the only way for things to get this bad was if they had super-powers again like Spider-Island.
However, I did like the issue and I’ll give it a 4 out of 5.
New Warriors #2 Review
The second entry into the newest incarnation of the New Warriors series is out and I’m here with my review of the comic issue. So let’s start shall we?
The issue picks up with an Inhuman riding a train in New York that comes to a crashing halt. Naturally he had nothing to do with it, but this is the Marvel Universe so he’s automatically to blame. He flees before they can gather a lynch mob to get him, only to run across Sungirl facing off against the evolutionaries to defend the mutants that were under attack last issue.
At the same time in New Salem, Vertigo and Justice are under attack by the same force. They explain that they once defended mutants but were betrayed by them, just as Speedball and Brutacus show up. Brutacus gets taken down fairly easily and they get ready to take him in for gene-sampling when Justice takes off the kid gloves and levels the mouthy evolutionary, asking for answers to what was going on as they retreat.
In Mexico, Scarlet Spider starts a fight with Faira on the assumption that she was responsible for the slaughter. She kicks his ass quickly and is about to drown him when Humming Bird does her fear thing and calms the situation down long enough for her to explain the situation. Atlantis was in the middle of a fight with Deviant forces when the evolutionaries showed up and started slaughtering them all, so she came to the surface for heroes and he started attacking her. Scarlet Spider wants nothing to do with things, but naturally the bad guys show up at that moment deciding to get the Clone (Kaine), Demigod (Aracely), and Atlantian (Faira).
Going back to Speedball and Justice, they arrive at the Avengers Tower in New York to search their database to learn about the enemy. A general overview of the past encounter with the X-Men is given and Cyclops warns that they should be considered an extinction-level threat. An alert then goes out requesting help due to an incident in the subway and they decide to jump in.
In the subway, the evolutionaries stop their slaughter for a moment to try and reason with Sungirl by stating they only want to protect her kind (humanity) by eliminating….well, everything else. She’s a hero so she can’t let that happen, so they are left with no choice but to attack her when the Inhuman from before, Mark, shows up and eats their energy blast. Then Justice and Speedball show up, so the evolutionaries decide to retreat.
As the comic ends, we find Nova in a containment field with the High Evolutionary, who states he intends to have him help cleanse the earth of all impure beings before the Celestials return.
Okay, review time.
No complaints overall, it’s a solid issue that picks off where the previous one left off. The art is nice and crisp, while the plot is progressing nicely with no wasted panels. We have a general idea of what’s going on and we can see the future team coming together nicely, with more of their personalities fleshed out.
You can see how Sungirl is still new at the hero thing, while Justice is clearly the most experienced. Mark was basically just thrown into things, but he didn’t hesitate to help stop a kid from falling when the train stopped or helping Sungirl. Kaine is still a hot-head with a potty mouth while Faira makes it clear she’s a rather skilled combatant and Aracely is playing peace-keeper.
It gets a solid 5 out of 5 and I recommend it for purchase.
Twilit Dreams Circle 