Underrated (maybe) comics you have never (mostly true) heard of

Some time ago I came across an article that led to another article that sent me in pursuit of different comics.

"The most underrated comics, according to Goodreads"

https://bookriot.com/most-underrated-comics-according-to-goodreads/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us 

"The best graphic novels you've never heard of"

https://bookriot.com/underrated-graphic-novels/ 

As you can see, both articles were written by Rachel Brittain and came courtesy of BookRiot. They tend to be more enthusiastic than I am about things, but I don't hold it against them.

At the time, reading the articles did not require a subscription. That could have saved me a lot of time. (I might hold the subscription requirement against them.)

I'm not saying that I regret reading these comics, exactly, but a lot of them sure weren't that good. Maybe it's me.

Without being able to refer to the articles (I'm not going to pay for bad advice), I may have missed some or gotten some mixed up, but this is what I've got.

I hated these most of all

Heavy Vinyl by Carly Usdin 

Rocket Salvage by Yehudi Mercado

Godshaper by Simon Spurrier 

Vagrant Queen by Magdalene Visaggio 

The Heart Hunter by Mickey George 

The Many Deaths of Laila Starr by Ram V 

Welcome Back by Christopher Sebela

and also... 

Crowded by Christopher Sebela 

If the whole premise is built on keeping someone alive whom everyone is trying to kill, but the target is so obnoxious you kind of want her dead...Mainly when I hated them it was for a lot of bad attitude and noise (sometimes being pretentious instead) but without a core humanity. That was more true of Crowded than any of the others and there was some competition.

Too much world-building, not enough interesting happening in the world. 

The Witch Owl Parliament by David Bowles 

M.F.K.: Book One by Nilah Magruder

Isola by Brenden Fletcher 

Prism Stalker by Sloane Leong 

What is the point, exactly? 

I See A Knight by Xulia Vicente 

This one didn't even build the world; there were so many more questions than answers. That can be fine, but I don't think they were even great questions. 

Kind of meh or maybe weird

Fun Fun Fun World by Yehudi Mercado

Catboy by Benji Nate

Cosmic Pizza Party by Nick Murphy

The last one is really meant for children. I believe the inclusion was to try and represent more ages, but I don't think it works for adults. 

At least some interesting ideas 

Afar by Leila del Duca

Djeliya: A West African Fantasy Epic by Juni Ba

Eve by Victor Lavalle

Ronin Island by Greg Pak

Mech Cadets by Greg Pak 

FTL, Y'All: Tales From the Age of the $200 Warp Drive by multiple contributors  

The Black Bull of Norroway by Cat Seaton

The last one is inspired by a fairy tale I had not previously known, but I accidentally checked that out first. 

The weirdest

Meal by Blue Delliquanti

This is literally trying to sell everyone on eating insects and how elegant and delicious that can be.

My favorites 

Umma's Table by Yeon-Sik Hong

Lifetime Passes by Terry Blas

School for ExtraTerrestrial Girls: Girl on Fire by Jeremy Whitley

Everyday Hero Machine Boy by Irma Kniivila

Those last four could not have less in common with each other. Well, maybe the last two have some similarities in terms of young people dealing with space stuff, but even with that they are very different.

Perhaps the real key is that I am likely to hate stuff by Christopher Sebela and appreciate work by Greg Pak. 

I focused on authors because those were the issues. There may have been art I liked more or less than others, but the issue was the story or lack thereof. Isola was clearly making an effort to be visually lush, which may be why there wasn't any room for storytelling.

It can work that if you like one thing by an author that you will like other things by them, but it's not a hard and fast rule. Besides, sometimes you need to try new things.

Reconstructing this list, I remembered many comics that someone recommended and then I hated, but there were also so many that I really liked. 

You don't know if you don't try. 

One of the nice things about graphic novels is that you can try them out a bit more quickly than more non-graphic books. 

Thicker than political affiliation

I just saw a clip where Jake Tapper rightly called out Senator Sheldon Whitehouse for his failure to take early allegations against Graham Platner seriously.

https://x.com/TheLeadCNN/status/2077550284083966013 

"Called out" may not be the best term for it. There is a question and a response, then a kind of snide follow up with a quick "Thank you" from Tapper and a "You bet" that I perceived as angry but resigned. 

I guess that's how these interviews go. A history of people being more open and honest might involve Whitehouse saying something like that he wasn't paying that much attention or he is old-fashioned and doesn't worry too much about the complaints of women... there can be a lot of contributing factors.

I need to note that Jake Tapper sucks pretty frequently.

He has been better about this, following up with Lyndsay Fyfield and picking up the ball the New York Times dropped. 

Whitehouse is not a terrible senator. At least, there are worse ones. 

Representing Rhode Island, he might not even have been paying too much attention to the Maine race, but asked about Platner -- a candidacy that was getting a lot of attention -- Whitehouse said:

"Seems like a lot of nothing. I mean, the only one who had anything to say that seemed 'unsettling' was a woman who works for right-wing political operations."

That doesn't have to mean that Whitehouse was a big Platner fan either, but his answer came down pretty squarely on the side of Don't Believe Women.

I've written about this before, though it has been a few years. Once more, it's not that you automatically believe women, but you do take their stories seriously. You look into it. Is there corroboration?

One of the disturbing things about Whitehouse's comment here is that he refers to his experience as a prosecutor and professional skepticism is important, but there was no corroboration. 

Fyfield had corroboration, having told friends and having diary entries, which the Times knew but did not share.

Because of that, we can say it is not completely Whitehouse's fault that he did not know, but I can't help but wonder how perfunctory the dismissal of rape allegations was when he was a prosecutor. 

Whitehouse is a Democrat; this series is not just going to be picking on leftists.

Sadly, there are some forces that transcend political party, built into the structure of our society and government.

If I harp on that a little, well, I hope at some point it has an impact.

Poisoning the well... Oops! Too much!

I'm starting to think that yesterday's post was the wrong one for everything to go in the most logical, self-evident order.

I guess the odds were always against this being perfect.

Anyway, I have been thinking about James Comey.

I have this memory of the first time that he was talking about investigating Hillary Clinton's e-mail server. That seems like it should have been the July 5th, 2016 press conference, but that doesn't seem quite right. 

It was definitely before October 28th of that year.

What I remember is that after admitting that he could not find any wrongdoing, but that maybe they hadn't had enough time, someone (I assume a member of Congress) asked about if maybe they could open some other investigation and Comey responding "I wish you would." They were all very pleased with how amusing and clever they were.

Then in October 28th there was the release of a new investigation into Weiner. Even before knowing it would not have any implications for Clinton, it would have been unusual to announce at that point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Comey 

Comey justified it as "guidance", perhaps feeling good about the final results exonerating Clinton, except that he just said it did not change his July results. 

Well, his July results had been to say that he couldn't find anything while still giving the impression that Clinton was crooked, which a lot of people were already eager to believe.  

I think Comey liked to see himself as a martyr for integrity. That he was accused of favoring Clinton by the right when he was clearly not being fair to her might give him the appearance of not being partisan.

I believe that Comey did not want Trump to win the election. Given how things played out, that would have been smart of him, though I do not believe he was thinking in those terms.

However, I also believe that Comey did not want Clinton to win. That she was on track to stuck in his craw. He didn't want her opponent, but he couldn't stand her being all high and mighty. He wanted to throw some mud at her so even though she would still win, she would at least still have mud clinging to her. He was the big boy who could make that happen.

Yeah, he lost his job, but other people have suffered far more for his actions. 

Comey was not a leftist; he wasn't even a Democrat. He still shares some traits.

One of those -- and we are in a different stage now -- was not truly understanding the depth of the racism in this country. (Easy to avoid when you're a white guy.)

Trump was such an unusually inexperienced, unintelligent, corrupt candidate that it was hard to believe he could possibly win. There should have been so much that made people reject him.

However, in the wake of a successful Black president, there were people who desperately wanted the racism, especially for the right to say that everyone else is the real problem; we're great! That's way better than a woman!

Maybe leftists do understand that now, and that's why they are going for white Nazi fail-sons. (Yeah, that's another post.)

Of course, that has drawbacks, and they have gone with some non-white candidates too, and even a few women. 

They remain notably racist and sexist. It's a feature, not a bug. 

Once you open the door to that, you can't always get it shut again.

Lies, lies, lies, yeah

 Last week's posts essentially made three points:

1. We are at our best through our caring for each other, but...
2. That gets held back by sexism.
3. That gets held back by racism. 

When I want to talk about how leftists (and Republicans) get it wrong, the racism and the sexism keeps coming up. They get very offended when you call it that, but ignoring that foundation won't help.

There is a strong resistance to engaging with the truth, which means resistance to any reasonable engagement, doubling down, and not worrying about sincerity.

I am going to give two very recent examples that relate.

One is from Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, regarding a lack of forthcoming information on Mitch McConnell's status:

"I publicly and privately urged the last administration to address the public’s concerns with the former president’s health. I’m calling on Sen. McConnell to do the same and provide voters an update on his own health. Let’s end the crazy speculation. Just tell us what’s going on." 

This series will also cover people who sound like they are saying good things but are doing damage at the same time. 

It is reasonable to call for information on McConnell, especially given some of the relevant circumstances. The public pronouncement may not have been the best way of doing it, but maybe he had tried other channels with no luck and that was a last resort.

What was completely unnecessary was the reference to Biden. It's easy to miss, but it's important because it's part of a larger theme of (I could also reference Jon Stewart here) trying to convince us all that Biden was severely incapacitated, as opposed to having one debate that didn't go well. The fact that the presidency was being well-conducted and that Biden is to this day -- although old -- healthy and functional and way more rational than the current president is not something to talk about. 

I believe there is some guilt for bad choices, but an inability to admit those choices or that guilt. Keep an eye out for it and you will see it a lot, with other themes that create a pattern.

The other example relates to several not well-established accounts going hard on calling Haley Stevens a millionaire.

Stevens is a Michigan representative who is currently running for Senate. She is running against Abdul El-Sayed, currently a favorite of those getting amnesia about their Platner support, so it's going to be that kind of campaign.

El-Sayed might be a millionaire, but he won't release his taxes so that's unknown.

Stevens has released her taxes; her income and accumulated worth and all of that is well below even one million. However, these attackers are saying that because she is keeping campaign donations from SpaceX instead of redirecting them to charity, and because she has a campaign chest of more than a million, that means she is keeping it and therefore a millionaire.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/haley-stevens-elon-musk-critic-keeps-spacex-pac-money-key-michigan-sen-rcna351252 

Many of the leftist candidates do refuse to take money from PACs, but they end up getting a lot of money from other donors and they tend to already be wealthy... I don't think it's the moral high ground they think it is.

As it is, the $50,000 from SpaceX has not kept her from criticizing Musk; she is known for that.

There is certainly the potential for corruption. Yes, big donors might expect to exert influence, though they can't force that. More common is that candidates will allocate a large part of their campaign chest to salaries for "advisors" who happen to be friends and family. Platner did a lot of that. 

Campaign finance laws can prevent some of that. Stevens so far has a pretty good record of being open about finances, but none of that matters if you have decided the person is not on your team.

A big theme is not giving anyone else any credit.

Currently, Zohran Mamdani is getting a lot of praise for his click-to-cancel rule. Biden had one, but then between a Federal Appeals court and Trump, it's dead. If you try and bring that up, you get responses that Biden just didn't have any initiative and gave up too easily, as opposed to it being easier to get things done in a pretty solidly liberal state than on a national level with a bunch of obstructionists.

Okay, if your philosophy is going to be that only my candidates are good and everyone running against them is bad, can you at least actually start with truly good candidates?

Or is there something you are looking for that gets in the way? 

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/07/better-than-wed-hope.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/07/worse-than-wed-like.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/07/with-friends-like-these.html 

Black Music Month quotes for 2026

As stated last week, things are not necessarily happening quite in their proper month, but things are happening.

In this case, it's pretty straightforward. These are quotes by Black musicians. They are from different eras and styles, but no one that I hate, either musically or personally. 

Some of them I love a lot; Nile Rodgers probably tops that list.  

Some of them do not have the most inspiring personal lives. You can't ask people to be perfect, but there are places that I draw the line. For me, that means that there will never be Michael Jackson. Ever. I know a lot of people will disagree with that one, but my feelings are strong.

It also meant no David Ruffin.

Under other circumstances I might be able to see using Ike Turner or James Brown, but not this round.

One thing about Ike Turner is that I have read Tina Turner's memoir, I Tina. 

That might seem like something that would make him someone I would never reference, but it actually gave me some sympathy for him. The start of his life had some terrible violence, and I can have sympathy for that. I'm not saying that it justifies things he's done, but I can have some understanding. 

For a lot of the ones I love, memoirs are a part of that, but sometimes it gives you understanding, and care, without it quite leading to affection.

There will be another post about that. 

Daily quotes: 

6/1 “The blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning.” -- John Lee Hooker

6/2 "The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you." -- B. B. King

6/3 "Live each day like it's your last, 'cause one day you gonna be right." -- Ray Charles

6/4 "It's a hurtful place, the world, in and of itself. We don't need to add to it. And we're in a place now where we all need one another, and it's going to get rougher." -- Prince

6/5 "Sometimes you have to let everything go - purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything - whatever is bringing you down - get rid of it. Because you will find that when you are free, your true creativity, your true self comes out." -- Tina Turner

6/6 "It's easy to hear the voices of others and often very difficult to hear your own. Every person you meet is going to want something different from you. The question is: what do you want for yourself?" -- Beyoncé Knowles

6/7 "Art, well good art at least, takes you to a place you go during the experience of it, and then after you experience it you are different." -- Nile Rodgers

6/8 "We all have hearts.... If you have a heart, love somebody. If you have enough heart, love everybody." -- Stevie Wonder

6/9 "When I saw corruption, I was forced to find truth on my own. I couldn't swallow the hypocrisy." -- Barry White

6/10 "Stand up - above the crowd. Even if you've gotta shout out loud!" -- Tevin Campbell

6/11 "Risk the fall to know how it feels to fly." -- Alicia Keys

6/12 "I think the whole world is dying to hear someone say, 'I love you.' I think that if I can leave the legacy of love and passion in the world, then I think I've done my job in a world that's getting colder and colder by the day." -- Lionel Richie

6/13 "You learn so much from taking chances, whether they work out or not. Either way, you can grow from the experience and become stronger and smarter." -- John Legend

6/14 "Don't block your blessings. Don't let doubt stop you from getting where you want to be." -- Jennifer Hudson

6/15 "Dreams don't have deadlines. Believe in yourself." -- LL Cool J

6/16 "You have to stand for what you believe in and sometimes you have to stand alone." -- Queen Latifah

6/17 "It takes a long time to get to be a diva. I mean, you gotta work at it." -- Diana Ross

6/18 "Crying is cleansing. There's a reason for tears, happiness or sadness." -- Dionne Warwick

6/19 "Sometimes the best things are right in front of you; it just takes some time to see them." -- Gladys Knight

6/20 "Your wealth can be stolen, but the precious riches buried deep in your soul cannot." -- Minnie Riperton

6/21 "God doesn't do the work for you; he does the work through you. It's not enough to look up; you must also look within." -- Patti LaBelle

6/22 "Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something." -- Gil Scott-Heron

6/23 "You have to learn to get up from the table when love is not being served." -- Nina Simone

6/24 "I feel that it is healthier to look out at the world through a window than through a mirror. Otherwise, all you see is yourself and whatever is behind you." -- Bill Withers

6/25 "Life is not about finding our limitations, it's about finding our infinity." -- Herbie Hancock

6/26 "The loudest noise in the world is silence." -- Thelonious Monk

6/27 "I don't really try to predict what can and will happen with things. Sometimes you think something's gonna be a huge success, and it isn't. And sometimes you pay no attention to something whatsoever, and God just makes it into everything." -- Donna Summer

6/28 "My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being...When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups...I want to speak to their souls." -- John Coltrane

6/29 "Once I could play what I heard inside me, that's when I was born." -- Charlie Parker

6/30 "Whenever I say goodbye it’s never for long because I believe in the power of love." -- Luther Vandross

With friends like these...

You may have heard about the disappearance, then death, of Nolan Wells on Horn Island in Mississippi over July 4th:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/07/nolan-wells-body-found-mississippi-island 

There is a lot of speculation and now there is a lot of misinformation:

https://www.mississippifreepress.org/officials-seek-publics-help-in-nolan-wells-death-investigation-as-misinformation-spreads/ 

Discussions happening on Twitter are giving examples of the danger of Black people being isolated with white people.

I am not going to link to any of the threads because I don't want anyone targeted. Plus, if you do find the threads, you will find serious comments plus floods of white people saying it's reversed and the Black people are the dangerous ones and remember Iryna Zarutska! 

They recently made almost the exact same comments when people expressed concern over a lone Black woman on a DC Metro train surrounded by masked Patriot Front members. I think that, if for multiple events that come up you keep countering with the same example, it weakens your case.

With this discussion, the personal examples were not that your white friends will murder you. It is more that there might be a carelessness or mischief that is not intended to result in death, or even harm, but still can.

One example was a girl in college whose white friends insisted that she accompany them to a party; she needed to loosen up. The moment she had a drink in hand and a guy approached her, the friends suddenly disappeared. Someone else looked out for her and escorted her home, but that could have had a worse ending.

(While walking her home, that guy said "Get better friends" and he was right.) 

There were mainly things like that, being left without a ride or adjacent to danger, sometimes with injuries but usually just a close call. Of course, these are the people who lived to tell their stories. 

Of the non-personal examples, people brought up Tamla Horsford; she did not survive.

There was also video of a family paddle-boarding that found a young man in the water whose "friends" were making monkey noises at him and telling him he would be fine because he had a (child's) life jacket. The family gave him a tow. While he declined their offer of a ride, they did check to make sure he got home safely. 

That could have been worse.

The helpful family was white. Obviously there are many people who not be terrible and who will step in when other people are being terrible. 

However, we have a history going back of Black people being supposed to be unusually strong and with a higher tolerance for pain, as well as being lazy and criminal and sexually available and all sorts of other stereotypes swirled in with an expectation that their labor and helpfulness and deference belongs to the white people around them. 

We also have people working diligently to roll back any protections, as well as erasing the history so their efforts don't look so insidious.

In a world where some religious leaders talk about the "sin of empthy" and decry "wokeness," is it any surprise that things like this happen?

Or that there are people (maybe bots) with nothing better to do than to tell you it's not like that?

This is where we are. 

We need to be actively anti-racist.  

Which is just one more reason that Nazi tattoos need to be immediately disqualifying. 

Worse than we'd like

I also recently finished Nobody's Girl by Virginia Giuffre.

In April I had also read The Lasting Harm by Lucia Osborne Crowley. They join a long list of books I have read about rape culture and harassment.

One thing that I hadn't really thought of before reading Nobody's Girl was the impact of #MeToo.

The lawsuits had been going on, along with the discovery and a shameful plea agreement years before. They picked up traction because of #MeToo and the prosecution of Harvey Weinstein.

That's wrong and unfortunate, but it wouldn't seem as horrible if we had really made progress in this area. 

As it is, there is still the tendency to dismiss and downgrade and call things unsubstantiated even when the substantiation is right there. 

There are still people who only want to hear about the Epstein Files if they relate to Democrats. 

Platner supporters wouldn't listen to Lyndsay Fifield because she was a Republican; with even worse allegations from a Democrat, finally most people are willing to let him go. 

(At least one person is still assuming she remembered it wrong, some are saying she is lying, and of course none of it should have mattered in the first place because the Nazi tattoo should have been disqualifying right away, but that's for a different post. We'll get there.)

There is a long litany of only lightly-punished convictions for men raping and murdering women. 

Do I say that supporting the carceral state? That's also a longer discussion, but since we do have a carceral state, then looking at what is punished and who is punished is telling. It remains really hard to find that a woman's bodily autonomy and welfare can be held equal to a man's, and be more important than his right to abuse her.

It is really disappointing that protecting children only gets used as a motive to attack drag queens and vaccines.

Whenever the discussion comes up, in addition to replies that the girls knew what they were doing or got paid, you will find people asserting that once someone is menstruating that she is a woman and at the peak age, so it's all good.

No, not all men, but too many.

And it's sickening. 

This is happening in the same era where I keep seeing more serious discussion about how universal suffrage was a mistake.

As easy as it would be to think that is just talk, there were people who kept asserting that Roe v. Wade was settled law right up until the Supreme Court was adequately stocked by Trump. Then there was a case already to go.

Convenient.

Except it's not convenience, it's planning.

There are scheming, evil people who know what they are doing to shred every tool to help there be equity and inclusion among diversity.

I don't like that, but it wouldn't matter so much if there were not so many people who say they are against that level, but will still say that she was almost an adult, or discount coercion, or find "woke" to be a bad thing without stopping to think what it means or why there are people who don't like it.

We all need to be more actively engaged, and with more care for each other.