It’s happening, everyone. I am going public with this: I think My Little Pony is fucking delightful, and the newly released IDW comic is no exception.
I’m not going to sit here and defend My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic – if it’s not for you, it’s not for you. The magic of friendship simply is not for everyone.
However, I, along with millions of fans, feel that the magical team behind MLP:FIM is on to something here. The show, now in its third season, is a smash hit among all ages, and with 100,000 …

Whether you’re a purist who keeps your precious comic books in safety deposit boxes or a n00b who just jumped on the bandwagon at Hollywood’s behest (yeah, tell me I’m wrong, girls-who-think-Green-Lantern-has-always-looked-like-Ryan-Reynolds and kids-who-think-Batman-always-sounded-like-Christian-Bale-constipated), you should at least be aware that comic books are cool now. At least, that’s what I’m putting out onto the Internet and as we all know, everything on the Internet is true.
With that said, 2011 was actually a bang-up year for the world of comic books. The San Diego Comic Con has not yet been …

Hello Racket readers! We’ve got a special interview for you! I was able to sit down with Steven Struble, the creator and writer of Li’l Depressed Boy. Li’l Depressed Boy is a comic put out by Image Comics that details the misadventures of the Li’l Depressed Boy and his love of music. Issue 7 is now out in stores this week and features the one and only Andrew Jackson Jihad!
How long have you been writing Li’l Depressed Boy
I did the first Li’l Depressed Boy webcomic in May of 1998.  So, …

If you’re a fan of comics from the 90’s, you’ll be pleased to hear some surprising titles just got new action figures as part of Shocker Toys’ Indie Spotlight collection. All the toys in the line have a bonus Isz figure from The Maxx to use as target practice. A throwback to the era when MTV still played music and showed cutting-edge alternative animation like Liquid Television instead of reality show douche-bags on a continuous loop.
I was actually  pretty excited to see they had a figure for Scud the Disposable …

Reconcilers
Written by Erik Jensen, art by Sheperd Hendrix
Viking Warrior Press
7/10
In a world of corporate superiority, Reconciliation is the process of settling contract negotiations…through teams of murderous mercenaries…on live TV! While it’s a bit of a tired idea, Robot Jox had a similar one first, it’s not a bad graphic novel. There’s some questions I have, like what’s up with the mutants (like grotesque monstrosities, not X-Men), what’s the deal with the “real news” versus Mad Max-like attacks on supplies, etc. But there’s only so much character development and back story …

Two Gentlemen of Lebowski
Adam Bertocci
Simon & Schuster
10/10

Remember when you had to read Shakespeare in high school? It sucked balls, didn’t it? High school English teachers, hear me! Ditch the Bard! Give your students this instead. You get to keep your sense of Olde English superiority with a tale that the kids already know. Adam Bertocci shows that he’s a little achiever and wrote this not as a joke, not under a contract but just because. Just because, man. That lack of dependency allowed Bertocci to craft this tale with plenty …

Henry And Glenn Forever
Igloo Tornado
Cantankerous Titles
10/10

A visual representation of a fantasy held by gay punks and queer-bashing (and probably queer themselves) conservatives alike, Henry and Glenn Forever show “how it could have been,” should two of the punk scene’s most muscle-y (read: cuddly) frontmen have opened their beefy hearts to each other. Igloo Tornado, the artist collective with a band name better than most band names, bring you a variety of sketches, awkward moments and super-cutesy imagery featuring these two lunkheads.
It doesn’t hurt that Hall & Oates are represented as …

Medium Raw
Anthony Bourdain
7/10
Anthony Bourdain found unexpected attention ten years ago with his memoir Kitchen Confidential exposing New York City kitchen/restaurant culture. With the success of Kitchen Confidential Bourdain found himself fame as the Travel Channel’s resident international foodie bad boy.
With the release of his new memoir Medium Raw some like me may wonder, “What does Bourdain have to say of interest or conviction now that he is famous and no longer cooks? Has success made him lose his edge?” After approaching Medium Raw with some hesitancy, I found that that’s …

No More Dirty Looks
Siobhan O’Connor & Alexandra Spunt
Da Capo Lifelong Books
10/10
Finally, finally, finally- the book I have been waiting for! I have been known amongst friends to dabble here and there in environmentalism and will give the occasional “Don’t use that, it’s bad for you” rant, but for the most part, I am all talk and not a lot of answers. Why? To be quite frank, it’s because more often than not, I am too lazy to do the research- especially when it comes to cosmetics. There’s a lot of …

Just Kids
Patti Smith
HarperCollins Publishers
9/10
New York City, summer, 1969. A hot, sweltering mess full of sweat and musk and bodies colliding against each other, a heady metropolis with a milieu to match. Yet even as the millions of artists and businessmen and intellectuals went on with their lives, history was already unfolding in front of them. In St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, not far from Carnegie Hall, jazz legend John Coltrane was being eulogized. A little further up the street, Andy Warhol had just been shot by model and protégé Valerie Solanas, …

Serious As Dog Dirt
Bam Margera
MTV Books
5/10
Oh, good. Offensiveness, stupid stunts, DiCo, and the usual bits that you would attribute to the Jackass star are found in abundance in his book, Serious As Dog Dirt. Yet, I’m not laughing. Why? Simple: Jackass is the easiest form of entertainment: watching people hurt themselves by being dumbasses. Add the slightest amount of work into the equation and you’re fucked. A book by Bam is exactly what you would think it is: a tattoo session with Ville from H.I.M. (Which I am pretty sure …

Shootin’ the Sh*t with Kevin Smith
Titan Books
6 of 10
I have a long-harbored affection for Kevin Smith. His Clerks movies are two of my all-time favorite movies, his podcast and college talks make me chuckle, and I briefly contemplated stealing Silent Bob Speaks from the library. I dig the man’s style and sense of humor- he’s crude, vulgar, and at times childish; he’s a huge comic book nerd (and he even writes comics!); and deep down, he is a huge softie.
I was stoked to see that he was “writing” yet another …

C. Albritton Taylor, Donovan Leitch, Jim Rugg
One Model Nation
Image Comics
6/10
It’s rare for us here at Racket to review a graphic novel, let alone admitting to have read them. [Emperor's note: That's not accurate, I have a profound fascination with graphic novels, as does Caitlin.] The last time this reviewer touched a comic book was perhaps ten years ago, and that’s not counting stuff slugged for school newspapers and the like. So when we found out about One Model Nation, we were skeptical. It turns out that skepticism …

Max Brooks & Ibraim Roberson
The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks
Three Rivers Press
9/10
Max Brooks rules pretty good. If you’re not hip to the most authoritative voice in contemporary zombie-awareness training, stay away from me should the undead start popping up. Between the Zombie Survival Guide and the tales included in World War Z lies all the knowledge one could use to fend off the zombie hordes. Headshots, crowbars (all the bashing power of a bat, PLUS the added bonus of being able to pry open doors), supply lists and more are …

Grunge
Photos by Michael Lavine, Text by Thurston Moore
Abrams Image
7/10
At 27, I am old enough to have owned a Nirvana album while Kurt Cobain was still alive, but young enough to have never had the chance to see them on anything but MTV Unplugged. The grunge scene was one that appealed to me just as much as punk had; people who didn’t really feel that they belonged anywhere, dressed a step up from the homeless and knew how to make a guitar screech. Yes, I liked Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Mudhoney and …

Ballads of Suburbia
Stephanie Kuehnert
MTV Books
8/10
While on the whole, I enjoyed my time in high school, I do NOT miss high school. Kuehnert’s second novel REALLY drives that point home. I do not miss the outright verbal viciousness, the stress of learning how to date, and the shit tons of friends loaded to the eyeballs on drugs I couldn’t pronounce.
Ballads follows Kara and her immediate social circle as they deal with divorce, depression, death and some other terrible things that start with the letter D. And in true teen fashion, …