WHAT IS THE BUY PILE?

Every week Hannibal Tabu (winner of the 2012 Top Cow Talent Hunt/blogger/novelist/poet/jackass on Twitter/head honcho of Komplicated) takes on an between seven to thirteen reviews (or so) to share his opinions with you. Thursday afternoons you'll be able to get those thoughts (and they're just the opinions of one guy, so calm down) about all of that ... which goes something like this ...

THE BUY PILE FOR NOVEMBER 14, 2018

Star Wars Doctor Aphra #26 (Marvel Comics)

Jump from the Read Pile. ... and we're back. By narrowing the focus down to the best two characters in Star Wars right now (unless K2SO gets a lot more room to breathe) while engaging in breakneck plotting, this issue hits all the right buttons for those who just want to watch the world burn. The greedy, messy title character and her homicidal former servant/former master/current albatross hanging around her neck Triple-Zero are two wildly lawless maniacs stuck together on a hyper regulated world, all for the amusement of a professional sadist. So many wonderful character moments encapsulate these characters as they bungle, bribe and brutalize their way from mishap to misadventure. This Simon Spurrier script is a hoot and the tense, adventurous artwork from Emilio Laiso, Rachelle Rosenberg and Joe Caramagna takes you on a visual journey. RATING: BUY.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #38 (Marvel Comics)

This surprisingly effective issue goes deep down the rabbit hole as the title character tries to solve a mystery by consulting an Avenger who, clearly, is not the best. This intricate Ryan North script is funny and clever in all the right ways, while the perfectly paced artwork from Derek Charm, Rico Renzi and Travis Lanham made this very talky issue thrilling and filled with suspense. RATING: BUY.

NEXT PAGE: A new debut from David Walker, the end of Transformers Unicron and Vader's love of architetcure

NEXT PAGE: The Buy Pile Weighs In on Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Mister Miracle and Captain America

Have you ever opened your calendar and it was just thing after thing, but all you wanna do is sleep and that big project isn't done? Make that science-y AF and toss in some Marvel universe stuff and you've got Unstoppable Wasp #2. This issue came very close to making the mark with great action scenes and thoughtful characterization, it never resolved the core question it raised. Lots to like, but it missed making it home by a hair. RATING: HONORABLE MENTION.

Jook Joint #2 had a lot of really great character moments and developed its underlying plot very well, but its ending was super abrupt and inconclusive. Lots to like, but this wasn't quite well balanced enough. RATING: HONORABLE MENTION.

Daredevil #611 has a fight scene that is equal parts spectacular and ridiculous but a plot has very little going for it. RATING: HONORABLE MENTION.

RELATED: Daredevil Fights for the Entire Marvel Universe in Marvel Knights 20th #1

Robots Vs Princesses #3 did an interesting exposition dump that made everything suddenly make sense, and that's quite an amazing feat. The stakes are still vague and predictable, and the antagonist thinly defined, but this had some good stuff happening. RATING:HONORABLE MENTION.

Domino #8 had some cute character moments and a lot of great artwork while delivering a top notch Morbius the Living Vampire performance. The vagueness of the voices at the other end of the phone sapped some of the momentum from this and the world-ending threat wasn't such a big deal, though. RATING: HONORABLE MENTION.

Bitter Root #1 has a character called Berg that almost leaps off the page, a runaway charismatic figure that shines in every panel he graces. The underlying conceit has some flavor to it, the artwork is enjoyable, but a lot of the characters don't do enough to distinguish themselves. RATING: HONORABLE MENTION.

Fantastic Four #3 had a few very enjoyable moments of emotional honesty that connected. The plot itself, however, strained credulity as the team faced down the equivalent of a very uncreative god. RATING: HONORABLE MENTION.

RELATED: [SPOILER]'s Role in the Fantastic Four Break-Up Has Been Revealed

Terrible Elisabeth Dumn Against The Devils In Suits #1 showed some promise with great action scenes and a concept similar to the show Reaper but didn’t connect most of its characters nor make its core threat tangible enough. RATING: HONORABLE MENTION.

Star Wars Darth Vader #23 tells the messy, bloody story of the construction of Vader's castle on Mustafar. Vader's single minded focus on one thing is both his most endearing quality and his biggest blind spot. The plot is a little slower than it needs to be for the eyerolling ending but the art is good and there are a couple of nice, tense moments. RATING: HONORABLE MENTION.

Mister Miracle #12 proves that this series is more like the uneven Omega Men and less like the literally perfect Vision as almost nothing happens. Like, for an entire issue. Sure, Kanto gets punched, which is all well and good, but the rest of the issue is like watching segments of The Waking Life. Vexing and inconclusive. RATING: MEH.

For all its rhetoric and nuance, Captain America #5 dives back into cliche and familiarity while dodging the actual fights that are here. Taskmaster? That much time for Taskmaster? Ugh. RATING: NO. JUST ... NO.

Transformers Unicron #6 is a huge, splashy, needlessly busy mess that actually only focused on about six of its dozens of characters (the G.I. Joe team, for example, where completely irrelevant), had a visually neutral hug at its climax and established a status quo that's less an end to this storyline than just a stop. RATING: NO. JUST ... NO.

WHAT'S THE PROGNOSIS?

Two actually bad books, but man, that Aphra book gets more fun the more you read it. Let's call it a tie.

THE BUSINESS

The writer of this column just completed the latest season of the weekly web superhero comic Project Wildfire: Street Justice -- you can read it all for free for just a little while longer. Can't beat "free."

The writer of this column isn't just a jerk who spews his opinions -- he writes stuff too. A lot. Like what? You can get Scoundrel (historical fiction set in 1981 east Los Angeles), Irrational Numbers: Addition (a supernatural historical fiction saga with vampires), Project Wildfire: Enter Project Torrent (a collected superhero web comic), The Crown: Ascension and Faraway, five bucks a piece, or spend a few more dollars and get New Money #1 from Canon Comics, the rambunctious tale of four multimillionaires running wild in Los Angeles, a story in Watson and Holmes Volume 2 co-plotted by 2 Guns creator Steven Grant, two books from Stranger Comics -- Waso: Will To Power and the sequel Waso: Gathering Wind (the tale of a young man who had leadership thrust upon him after a tragedy), or Fathom Sourcebook #1, Soulfire Sourcebook #1, Executive Assistant Iris Sourcebook #1 and Aspen Universe Sourcebook, the official guides to those Aspen Comics franchises. Love these reviews? It'd be great if you picked up a copy. Hate these reviews? Find out what this guy thinks is so freakin' great. There's free sample chapters too, and all proceeds to towards the care and maintenance of his kids ... oh, and to buy comic books, of course. There’s also a bunch of great stuff -- fantasy, superhero stuff, magical realism and more -- available from this writer on Amazon. What are you waiting for? Go buy a freakin' book already!

Got a comic you think should be reviewed in The Buy Pile? If we get a PDF of a fairly normal length comic (i.e. "less than 64 pages") by no later than 24 hours before the actual issue arrives in stores (and sorry, we can only review comics people can go to stores and buy), we guarantee to try and review the work, if remembered. Physical comics? Geddouttahere. Too much drama to store with diminishing resources. If you send it in more than two days before comics come out, the possibility of it being forgotten increases exponentially. Oh, you should use the contact form as the CBR email address hasn't been regularly checked since George W. Bush was in office. Sorry!