Showing posts with label a-v. Show all posts
Showing posts with label a-v. Show all posts
Monday, July 28, 2008
What I Read This Week
glamourpuss #2 -- Dave Sim's schitzophrenic juxtaposition of high fashion, subversive satire, and the history of cartooning continues here, with more focus on our de facto star glamourpuss, plus an appearance by her evil twin, Skanko. Sim's work has never been straight-forward in my experience, but this is really out there, ranging from glamourpuss talking about how a lot of the world's problems could be solved by beautiful women flying into hotspots and staring down the "mama's boys" until they cracked, to Sim examining how everything from the art styles Jack Kirby and Bruce Timm relate back to Terry And The Pirates. Luckily, just because it's out there doesn't mean it's not good reading.
Futurama Comics #38 -- Trapped on a primitive jungle planet -- the only have dialup, for instance -- Leela becomes the queen of a tribe of nerds who ship books from the Amazon. Meanwhile, Fry tries to avenge Bender's untimely destruction by wearing his body as a suit of armor in what may be the greatest parody of Tales Of Suspense #39 ever ("Get out of here, you owls!"). Your usual array of wacky Bongo hijinks and comic book riffs, including the blonde muscleman known as 56K-Zar, king of the jungle.
Two-Face: Year One #1 -- Mark Sable and Jesus Saiz team up to explore the early days of ADA Harvey Dent, working to shut down the mob in Gotham City and dodging allegations that he is the Holiday Killer, all while controlling his own inner rage. I really enjoyed this story (admittedly, I am biased... I mean, Two-Face) because it ties into what has already come before -- namely The Long Halloween -- while still offering a new and different tale of the young and idealistic Dent. (There's a funny bit which ties directly into a character's murder in Long Halloween which at first seems contradictory, but in the end makes sense.) If you like Two-Face as a character then you should definitely check this series out -- stinks that we have to wait till September to get the second issue!
Captain Action: First Mission, Last Day -- In the 1960s, a secret government organization is convened to battle the silent alien menace of the Red Crawl -- the ACTION Directorate and their champion, Captain Action! A "comic novella" (that is, a text story with accompanying illustration) of the original Captain Action, this reads like a Destroyer novel with lots of science fiction overtones. Nicieza is game here, and his prose has a nice style to it which plants it firmly in the men's adventure genre, as I said. The illustrations, provided by Ruben Procopio, are nice pinup style pictures, and provide a nice visual aid for some of the more outlandish images Nicieza describes verbally. While I know that Moonstone is intending on using the young Captain as seen in their #0 issue as the star of their future stories, I would very much like to see more tales like this one featuring the original, "classic" Captain Action as well. The only major drawback here is some confusing copy-editing problems in the text that really should have been caught in proofreading. Other than that, very enjoyable.
The Pick Of The Pile is Two-Face: Year One. Yeah, probably a bit obvious for me, but I really enjoyed that issue, which is saying something considering that all four of these were very, very good comic books.
So what did YOU read this week?
Monday, May 12, 2008
What I Read This Week
...Or, The Last Week I Got To The Comic Shop.
DC Universe #0 -- The DC Universe is set up for the next year or so in this 50-cent come-on comic. I think it owes a lot more to Brave New World than it does to Countdown to Infinite Crisis insofar as it is a series of previews of upcoming titles with a somewhat weak through-story rather than the other way around. Still, I enjoyed it, and seeing all the big, epic storylines planned all in one place was nice, especially for the cost. Johns and Morrison are obviously having a blast working on this event, and the various artists give the work a broad feel -- the transition isn't jarring because of the wide range of previews inside.
Avengers: The Initiative #12 -- Uh, wasn't this supposed to be a face-off between Iron Man and War Machine? If so, why did they have about 3 lines of dialogue between each other? I guess if you were reading Initiative already this might be alright, but other than some fun at the expense of Henry Gyrich, and some nifty use of thought baloons, the whole thing falls flat. The whole point that Slott and Gage are making ("The Initiative is bad... mmkay?") kinda seems ill-advised considering the title of the book, and Uy's art is poorly suited for a superhero title. I feel like a sucker for buying this.
Caliber #1 -- In the West, a great conflict is brewing between the new settlers and the established natives, and only a weapon of great and fantastic power can stop absolute chaos and lead civilization. This Weird-West-Meets-Round-Table update is, first off, beautiful; the art by Garrie Gastonny is lush and does a good job of capturing the "wide-vision" landscape (an interesting contrast to Cboins work in the first few issues of Graveslinger). The story, by Sam Sarkar, wanders a little bit and struggles to get it's footing, but by the end becomes clearer and sets up what should be an appealing adventure. Definitely worth checking this one out, especially with it's reduced price point ($1.00).
glamourpuss #1 -- I don't think anyone is ever really quite sure what Dave Sim is going to produce except for Dave Sim himself, and glamourpuss seems to contradict even that. This comic starts out as an examination of the "photo-realistic" cartooning style as used by Al Williamson and his disciples for newspaper strips decades ago, with Sim trying to recreate this "beyond noir" style through the liberal use of lines and black ink. But then it seemingly starts to get away from him, descending into a sort of narrative about high fashion model glamourpuss, in a series of satirical jabs at the fashion industry and publications such as Vogue and it's ilk. It's all very strange but also quite captivating -- the kind of off-the-wall thing most expect from Sim considering that we are all living in the "Post-Cerebus" era, so to speak. Definitely not for everyone, but check it out, you might be surprised.
The Pick Of The Pile this week is a tough call. DC Universe was a lot of fun, but really not overly substantial; Caliber was exciting and very pretty, but had some unclear bits which required a second look; and glamourpuss was challenging and fun, but still pretty far out there. In the end, I am going with Caliber, which set the ball rolling for what promises to be a rolickingly Weird Western.
So what did YOU read this week? (And the one before that, I guess.)
DC Universe #0 -- The DC Universe is set up for the next year or so in this 50-cent come-on comic. I think it owes a lot more to Brave New World than it does to Countdown to Infinite Crisis insofar as it is a series of previews of upcoming titles with a somewhat weak through-story rather than the other way around. Still, I enjoyed it, and seeing all the big, epic storylines planned all in one place was nice, especially for the cost. Johns and Morrison are obviously having a blast working on this event, and the various artists give the work a broad feel -- the transition isn't jarring because of the wide range of previews inside.
Avengers: The Initiative #12 -- Uh, wasn't this supposed to be a face-off between Iron Man and War Machine? If so, why did they have about 3 lines of dialogue between each other? I guess if you were reading Initiative already this might be alright, but other than some fun at the expense of Henry Gyrich, and some nifty use of thought baloons, the whole thing falls flat. The whole point that Slott and Gage are making ("The Initiative is bad... mmkay?") kinda seems ill-advised considering the title of the book, and Uy's art is poorly suited for a superhero title. I feel like a sucker for buying this.
Caliber #1 -- In the West, a great conflict is brewing between the new settlers and the established natives, and only a weapon of great and fantastic power can stop absolute chaos and lead civilization. This Weird-West-Meets-Round-Table update is, first off, beautiful; the art by Garrie Gastonny is lush and does a good job of capturing the "wide-vision" landscape (an interesting contrast to Cboins work in the first few issues of Graveslinger). The story, by Sam Sarkar, wanders a little bit and struggles to get it's footing, but by the end becomes clearer and sets up what should be an appealing adventure. Definitely worth checking this one out, especially with it's reduced price point ($1.00).
glamourpuss #1 -- I don't think anyone is ever really quite sure what Dave Sim is going to produce except for Dave Sim himself, and glamourpuss seems to contradict even that. This comic starts out as an examination of the "photo-realistic" cartooning style as used by Al Williamson and his disciples for newspaper strips decades ago, with Sim trying to recreate this "beyond noir" style through the liberal use of lines and black ink. But then it seemingly starts to get away from him, descending into a sort of narrative about high fashion model glamourpuss, in a series of satirical jabs at the fashion industry and publications such as Vogue and it's ilk. It's all very strange but also quite captivating -- the kind of off-the-wall thing most expect from Sim considering that we are all living in the "Post-Cerebus" era, so to speak. Definitely not for everyone, but check it out, you might be surprised.
The Pick Of The Pile this week is a tough call. DC Universe was a lot of fun, but really not overly substantial; Caliber was exciting and very pretty, but had some unclear bits which required a second look; and glamourpuss was challenging and fun, but still pretty far out there. In the end, I am going with Caliber, which set the ball rolling for what promises to be a rolickingly Weird Western.
So what did YOU read this week? (And the one before that, I guess.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
