Violet

#39-40 - Mask - ★★★★ (Fun nightmarish horror story. Really Nightmare on Elm Street-esque visuals.)

#50 - Images - ★★ (Bland Joker Story.)

#52-53 - Tao - ★★★ (Decent Spiritual story with Kung-Fu action. Great art.)

#54 -Sanctum - ★★★★★ (Mike Mignola issue, one of my favorite Batman stories of all time.)

...I really wish this had been a truly trans story as I know reading something like this when I had been in middle school would've have been so so impactful. As it stands it is ever so slightly gender queer but at it's core it really does seem to be another story about a boy and a girl falling in love.

I adored the art throughout and there were certainly plenty of cute moments, I just think I wanted more than the story was willing to give.

I know the series probably gets better from here but I can't help but give this first volume a 5. Heartbreaking, depressing, hopeful, beautiful, dreamy. Absolute perfection of the medium, I'm in love already.

More of a 3.5 than a four since it's certainly not my favorite Gaiman. Giving it a four just for that chapter in Gotham, really lovely characterization all around. That appearance of Swamp Thing was also just beautiful and might just be my favorite scene in the entire book.

I could read another 100 pages of them just crawling through that weird mansion labyrinth. The detail is just immense, every inch of the page is covered with strange mechanisms and objects. The idea that all that being hidden underneath a sleepy New England town just pushes all the right buttons for me.

If the story was exclusively about that mystery and all the organic(?) instruments & machinery than I'd give it a ★★★★★ easily. Shame about the weird sex stuff though, super uncomfortable and didn't really need to be there.