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Showing posts from February, 2026

Invincible Universe: Battle Beast

Well, here we are again. I'm trying this one writing piece per day thing until I get bored and go on hiatus until the next Olympics. You may ask why write these when most eyes are glazed over from TikTok shorts and are unwilling to do an honest day's reading? Welp, I suppose writing is a therapeutic business, so let's just take this as our lotus pose for now and get on with it. Battle Beast is a cool little space romp starring a pissed-off lion who is desperate to be killed so that he'll be a little less pissed off. This series kind of hits like Saitama from One-Punch Man, if he were a little furrier and more deliberate with his approach to finding a worthy match.  Hang on a minute, though, we need a few sidekicks for this adventure to tick all the right boxes, and so our Battle Beast in question is joined by both a disgraced prince and an AI that is gifted with a robotic form. The former is eager to take his rightful place on a throne that was forcefully taken from a ...

Absolute Batman #17

The Hype Is Real If anyone still doubted that Absolute Batman was more than a flashy line-wide reinvention, issue #17 should continue to bring that view to a swift close. This series doesn’t just expand its rogue’s gallery, it rewires it. And the result is electrifying. #17 continues to provide complete re-imaginings of the Bat's famous rogues gallery, and it's Poison Ivy's turn to step up to the plate and get the Absolute treatment. She emerges not merely as an eco-terrorist or seductive botanist, but as something far more ideologically coherent and far more dangerous. Her motivations feel sharpened, less operatic and more systemic. Visually, the issue leans into the grotesque beauty of Ivy’s domain. The art team balances lush, invasive growth with urban decay, making every panel feel like a battleground between concrete and chlorophyll. Gotham doesn’t just host the conflict, it becomes the canvas for it. Most importantly, #17 confirms something long-time readers have...

The Infernal Hulk and Merleau-Ponty: Body Schemas and Structuring Absence

Won't the Real Hulk Please Stand Up? The Infernal Hulk comic series grants Bruce Banner his wish of separation from his monster, but the progression of the story reminds us to be careful of what we wish for. One of the most unsettling ideas in The Infernal Hulk is not that Bruce Banner loses the Hulk, but that losing him doesn’t bring relief. Banner is free of the monster, yet he is weaker, disoriented, and haunted by something that refuses to stay gone. The Hulk persists, not as a body, but as an absence that still shapes Banner’s life. This dynamic closely mirrors what philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes through the phantom limb. Amputees often continue to feel sensations in limbs that no longer exist. For Merleau-Ponty, this happens because the body is not merely a physical object, but a lived structure, a body schema through which we orient ourselves in the world. When something is removed, the body’s orientation does not immediately adjust. Banner’s condition in The ...