Braxton Wages

I’ve been a Cure fan for 23 years. They have been my favorite band for that long and I’ve listened to all the new albums since 2000 and it feels so weird that it’s been 16 years since 4:13 Dream and now The Cure have a No.1 album with what is one of their darkest but most beautiful albums. And it feels great to be a Cure fan because we all know they deserve it. They are the most personal and most emotional of all bands and this album is testimony of that.

3 and a half stars. IMO the last great Pumpkins album. It rocks unabashedly. The album with all the bonus tracks is the best version of this album.

Two and a half stars. Google won’t let me half a star. The first act isn’t very good, the second act is ok but the third act I like and not just because it has Mellon Collie style heavy songs like In Lieu Of Failure and Harmageddon, the softer ones like Canary Trainer, Cenotaph and Pacer are also very good. Take what you will from that.

Just know that I’ve been anticipating this Frank Miller Superman story for a very long time and it was both what I was expecting and things I was not. My reluctance came from having read many, many Superman origin stories so I was weary of being bored or unimpressed but I wasn’t as there are some very surprising additions to Clark’s backstory. This comic reminded me of Frank Miller of old particularly of the early 90’s (not surprisingly considering The Man Without Fear was Miller and Romita, Jr.’s last collaboration and it feels like a spiritual continuation of that). And the structure of the story is a little weird as it touches upon very specific moments of his origin and doesn’t encompass everything in it which is a good thing in my opinion. Romita Jr.’s art is magnificent as always. I recall some rumbling criticisms about his artwork of late and basically I cannot tell, it is fine by me. Overall, I feel like this book is for fans would want to read a different spin of the archetypal superhero in terms of highlighting obscure episodes of his early development.