Comics

Daredevil: Born Again Season One Disney+ (2025)

Daredevil Born Again Season 1 poster First off, this really should be listed as Season Four as it’s not a reboot and it contains all of the key principal actors reprising their roles. Disney+ has certainly made peace with graphic violence in their adult fare as the show doesn’t have any real difference between Netflix and its current home.

The show is very much interested in comparing the arcs between Kingpin and Matt Murdock. Several times throughout this season there are lengthy cuts back and forth between the two showing us how they are going through similar things.

In the end, does motivation matter? I hope so. Otherwise we are stuck with a girlfriend character that’s not very interesting, a work life for Matt that even he doesn’t care about, and very little time in the red suit. I really liked the Netflix run but I hope the first ep of “Season Two” finds a good priest to give Matt some absolution so we can make the show more interesting and a little bit more of a faster pace.

Backstage at the Strips by Mort Walker, 1975

Cover image When I was a kid and trying to feed my insatiable appetite for comics and information about the comics, I used to haunt the ‘741’ section of the local library. In the Dewey Decimal System, that is where the art books, including whatever was stocked for comics, would be found.

I probably read this book first in 1979 or so. After rereading it as an adult, I can guarantee I didn’t understand many of Walker’s anecdotes dealing with drinking and sex/sexual tension! The book reads as a loving roast of Walker’s contemporaries and mentors, but Walker also serves himself up as a target of stories. Someone reading this book for the first time might not even get a fair amount of the references, but as a capsule of what the newspaper strip business was like it’s a great resource.

I have a softcover edition in excellent shape that I picked up on vacation for original cover price. A great deal! You get to see the origins of Beetle Bailey and Hi & Lois and the back twenty percent of the book is strip reprints. My only complaint is that some of the graphics don’t reproduce well and are hard to read.

I have a small library about newspaper strips and it was a wonderful surprise to be able to add this childhood read to my permanent library.

Harley Quinn Season 5, (2025, Max)

Harley Quinn Season 5 Even though I’m not a huge fan of Harley Quinn -overall-, there are certain takes on the character that have held my interest. The Max series is one of them. I enjoy the voice actors, and that I am reviewing it the week that episode 10’s finale dropped speaks to how much I like it.

It’s a strange alt-DC where you can have the Joker hanging out with Bruce Wayne and Bane is weirdly passive. The main plot of the season wasn’t that great, but that’s mainly an excuse to get some interesting B & C stories going with the fairly large cast of characters.

The show hasn’t yet been renewed for a sixth season, and it ends in a satisfying way if this is it for this iteration. If you’ve never seen it, and you can handle the dialogue that is very much NSFW (or kids) it’s a fun and fast watch with each episode less than a half-hour.