I Am Groot
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher!
Groot is back - smaller and better than ever! When the Guardians of the Galaxy get caught in a wormhole, a pint-sized Groot finds himself out on his own, billions of light-years away from his team, on an entirely alien and unknown world full of strange creatures and societies. Seriously underdeveloped and with nobody who can understand him, Groot will need to make the journey to the center of this world if he is to find the way back to his family!
It's no secret that Groot is one of my favourite characters from Guardians of the Galaxy and Guardians is one of my favourite series! So I've been super stoked for a series that's aaaaallll about Groot as well as curious as to how it would be done!
I loved the art and the art style. It was beautifully drawn and nice and colourful, and the colour scheme fit the series nicely.....plus Groot is so freaking cute!
Baby Groot is is enjoying his childhood according to himself, which means he's low-key misbehaving. He pulls the crew through a mysterious portal and ends up getting left behind and has to fend for himself on a strange new planet. There's a nice, shady Administrator in charge of everything and determined to stop Groot from returning back to where he came from and you know...generally up to no good! The whole planet has a sense of wrongness that translates from the page and the images.
Groot gets himself a new oddball crew, Diplatessa, Dhamsus and Buddy! They where such an interesting group and I was curious about each of them! They fit with Groot well and I enjoyed the interactions between them all, they provided for a nice amount of comedy. A couple of the characters had to translate for Groot, obviously, but the volume went along quite well despite Groot not being able to say anything but "I am Groot".
I Am Groot is fast paced, entertaining and humorous. Groot as the main character has certainly been a lot of fun and a wild ride! I'm really hoping there will be more! We get to see another, kind of creepy planet, and there's some little easter eggs thrown in for you to spot! We also get to see some fun interaction between Groot and Rocket and some more of the friendship between the two!
The Unbelievable Gwenpool Vol 3: Totally In Continuity
Rating: 5/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy!
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher!
Gwen Poole continues to make friends and influence people across the Marvel Universe! But what will some of Marvel's greatest heroes make of Gwen and her bizarre perspective on the world they live in? Whatever happens, it'll be Unbelievable!
So, I see this has some mixed reviews over on GoodReads, but I'm really enjoying this series! The art is bold, bright, colourful and well drawn. The writing is freaking hilarious. This series is just so laugh out loud hilarious, and entertaining right from the first page. It's genuinely hilarious and never fails to crack me up and make me chuckle.
In this volume, Gwen gets her Buffy on as she faces off against a Vampire to save some sassy Skeletons and a Necromancer. Then she's thrown in to a fantasy game setting and RPG references and jokes abound as she teams up with some familiar faces to fight her way out. It gets all SAO/Elder Scrolls, I'm not going to lie. Just without the virtual reality of SAO. Then we get some The Hobbit vibes as Gwen has to take down a ring of Dwarves up to no good after busting out of prison.
There's some brilliant cameo's in this volume for you guys to look forward to! Not just characters we've seen in the series before, but Hawkeye (Kate Bishop), Ghost Rider and....the character we've all been waiting for. Yep. We finally get that face off, I was a bit worried about said character at the beginning, he looked like he was trying to cosplay Robin Hood very badly, and was getting way to in to his role as 'The Unkillable Beast", the description of this, when paired with the knowledge that it's this specific character...completely slayed me.
There's also some nice little Easter Eggs as well as cameo's throughout this volume, for instance, you might want to have a close look at Big Ronnie's shelves....
Gwenpool is fast becoming one of my favourites, she's snarktacular and sarcastic...it's brilliant! She breaks the fourth wall perfectly, and throws out references left, right and centre that you can understand and relate to. Like she's probably all of us when put in her position, let's be real. I actually find her to be fairly relatable because of her nerdy knowledge.
The story is moving in an interesting direction if the cliffhanger ending is anything to go by and things might be able to take a turn for the serious...sort of. It probably won't get too serious let's be honest but you'll see what I mean if you read the volume!
The Christmas Special is also included in this volume and Christmas is all wrong, to the extent that we have some greats like "I Saw Spidey Kissing Galactus" which I found hilarious, Pantsgiving I was a bit eeeeehhh about and Red Skull going all A Christmas Carol gave me pause too. Like it was wacky but I wasn't entirely in to it, I'm not going to lie! Still, it was nice of them to include it, right?!
If you haven't checked out Gwenpool yet you're missing out on a hilariously wild ride, populated with familiar faces and the guest stars as it where, don't take away from Gwen or her story, the plot still focuses on Gwen which is nice to see!
