Archive for the 'reviews' Category

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Making An Az Of Himself

March 18th, 2009 Posted by Esther Inglis-Arkell

Azrael is the member of the Batsquad I know least about.  He was long gone, continuity-wise, by the time I started reading comics.  The first issue of the new Azrael: Death’s Dark Knight didn’t make me regret that one bit.

It’s not that the book is bad.  It’s just that I don’t care for Azrael.  I can’t exactly pin down why.  The guy’s self-righteous, yes, but self-righteousness is Batman’s stock in trade.  And yes, he does go crazy and try to kill people pretty regularly, but Superman does that as well.  Azrael actually succeeds in killing people, but of course, that’s what the Secret Six do and I love them.  That’s what back-from-the-dead Jason Todd does, and I like him.

That’s right.  Old Azrael ranks below Jason Todd in the Bat hierarchy. 

Azrael fans: What, if any, selling points does this guy have?

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Tik tik tik(boom)

March 16th, 2009 Posted by david brothers

A few days ago, Leigh Walton, marketing coordinator of Top Shelf and writer of Picture Poetry, hit me on the instant messaging machine. “Have you been following ‘Tikboom’ on Top Shelf 2.0?” he asked. I hadn’t, and while we talked, I caught up on Tikboom.

It turns out that Tikboom basically rules, and you can see the proof here. It’s a light-hearted story starring three little creatures (Cake, Turtle, and something that almost definitely isn’t a banana). They’re pretty pissed at global warming, like all good creatures, and set out on a quest to stop it. What follows is a tale involving ice cream, a nuclear bomb, and an octopus. It has this very care-free feel to it that I enjoy, and the art is equal parts cute and expressive. I’m also extremely fond of the hand-lettered sound effects. That kind of thing shows both careful attention to craft and a willingness to use all of the comics page as art. I wish more people employed letters-as-art– John Workman is definitely one of the major reasons why I love Walt Simonson’s Thor and Orion as much as I do.

The comic is cute and funny in a way that isn’t cloying. In fact, the humor comes off pretty deadpan to me sometimes. Characters say funny things, but the humor isn’t punctuated with a guy pulling an oh-so-wacky-whooooooaoaooaaoaaaa-Jim Carrey face or anything. It’s just funny. It doesn’t need parlor tricks to make you laugh. The bit where the turtle is talking to the cop in chapter three and slipping, falling, and explaining that the giant missile is not a car, it is a missile, is solid gold to me. It’s just good, straightforward humor. Show your friends.

I’d be remiss and a jerk if I didn’t point out Top Shelf 2.0 as a whole, too. It’s updated Monday through Friday with something new for you to read. It’s also basically the best company-run digital comics portal out. Marvel, DC, and Top Cow all have digital comics portals, and all three leave something to be desired. I’ve tried to read Shadowline books where the scrollbars disappear, Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited is an unwieldy beast, and Zuda is slow.

Top Shelf gets it right. All you need to put comics on the web is a jpeg and a couple of arrows. TS2.0’s interface is simple. There’s a breadcrumbs header, which lists the site, the creator, and the title of the comic. You can click on them to go back a level. There’s a drop down box flanked on either side by two arrows. The arrows let you go forward and back, and the box has the pages listed. And beside that is another drop down, this time for related comics. Here you can find comics by the same creator or in the same series.

We’re all on high speed here, but that’s no reason not to keep it this simple. I’ve grown pretty fond of reading webcomics on my phone, and TS2.0 is basically the only comics company who’s doing it right. I realize that Marvel/DC need to serve ads or track views or whatever, but I honestly don’t even want to use MDCU. It’s clunky and ugly and awkward. If they had a TS2.0-style front-end, I’d be way more interested and way more likely to use it. As-is… eh, I’m okay without it. There are plenty of webcomics out there that actually want me to read them.

JPG. Couple of arrows. Keep it simple. TS2.0 gets it right.

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The Marville Horror Part 5: Comics – Pretty Much the Word of God

March 12th, 2009 Posted by guest article

Article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett.

It actually took me seeing the variant for this one to understand what the hell was going on with the regular cover. Apparently our pinup girl is holding one of Wolverine’s claws for some reason, completely independent of his arm.

Anyhow. The recap page is skippable, at this point they’re so bare-bones from trying to sum up things and keep the illusion of a coherent plot that it’s not worth it. All it gives us that we didn’t know is, “Yes you are really about to read a comic where Wolverine evolved from an otter.”

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Huntress: Getting Past The Crucifix and the Crossbow

March 11th, 2009 Posted by Esther Inglis-Arkell

For me, Huntress has always been one of DC’s least accessible characters.  It seemed like she was given half a helping of costume, two helpings of temper, and sent in whenever Batman needed to tell someone they had ‘crossed a line.’  Helena Bertinelli could kick, punch, toss off one-liners, and work with a cape, but she was more like a collection of behaviors than a person.

That’s why Huntress: Year One was such a pleasant surprise.  Though it is a Year One book, the mini-series follows Helena from childhood up through her assumption of the Huntress persona.  It examines her deep religious convictions, her time bouncing between mafia families after her parents are killed, and her instinctive feminism.  What emerges from these examinations is a young woman who  is surprisingly thoughtful, though still in possession of the smoldering anger that characterizes Huntress in regular continuity.

It’s the characterization of Huntress, and of those who inhabit her world, that makes this book really interesting.  Through Helena we meet various mob bosses, young heirs, mistresses, wives, and hangers-on, none of them boring.  Some surprise the reader only with the depths to which they will sink.  Others take unexpected turns.  All of them have a heft that’s unusual for comic-book characters.

Another strength of Huntress: Year Oneis its overt feminism.  Unlike most comics, Huntress doesn’t confine its feminism to a wronged woman beating up a sexist man.  It considers an adolescent’s first few quibbles with male authority and gendered language.  It explores the compromises made by women and men living in male-dominated social structures like the mafia.  And it takes a refreshingly unsentimental look at female victimhood.  This book doesn’t frame its victims as martyrs meant to set the plot in motion, or provocateurs who are complicit in their own suffering.  Nor does it imbue female suffering with any kind of glorification.  Victimhood is a shitty way to live, not an operatic finish to a pretty story.

The true test of a mini-series is if it leaves you wanting more, and Huntress did that for me.  The continuity would be tough to hammer out, of course, but in some ways continuing the comic would take fewer contrivances than a lot of other series.   The figures in Helena’s life are so fleshed out that they seem able to carry on the story simply by being themselves.

All six issues of the Huntress: Year One mini are out.  It is also available as a softcover trade paperback.

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The Marville Horror Part 4: Stay with the TARDIS, Damn It

March 11th, 2009 Posted by guest article

Article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett.

If you’re still foolish enough to trust the covers, you might think this issue is action-packed. You’d be very wrong, though. Let’s see what our recap-writing buddy has to say this time.

See that movie reference there at the end? Yeah, I don’t think Jemas knew there was a Jurassic Period, because over the next two pages they all keep referring to it as “How long until Jurassic Park?”, “150 million BC — Jurassic Park”, and it’s rather irritating. Also irritating: we know damn well from the first issues that the time machine can send things to a pinpoint time. It’s how all the stuff arrived right where Al was when it was sent back to him. For some reason, this has changed all of a sudden, because now instead of just punching in “150 million BC” as a destination, they have to count up through the years at “50 million years an hour” and so they need to stick a young organism inside the time machine with them inside a bag made from Al’s future-shirt.

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The Marville Horror Part 3: Like an African Fertility God

March 10th, 2009 Posted by guest article

Article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett.

Every time I see that cover, I keep thinking it’s Lockjaw, the Inhuman dog. Anyway. This time we get a recap page full of straight-up lies.

Shot 1 is actually them sending back the time machine, from last issue, sort of ruining the “last son” thing they were aiming for. Why they didn’t mention, “Oh hey Al has a time machine now!” is anyone’s guess. The origin thing I can’t really debunk, the love story is mentioned here for a second and final time (and is still using panels from issue 1 because it does not exist), and I don’t know how the hell Al got credit for capturing Spike Lee when he, uh… just walked out of the room, and left a confused Frank Castle to talk with the irritated director.

Now, issue 3 of Marville is entirely different from the last two. For one, they didn’t bring in an inker on this one, and the change actually gives it a look I like. This will, of course, be tossed out in an instant when this issue ends. The second is that there are no word balloons, thought bubbles, or for that matter, anything beyond “what will make this shot look the best”, no real in-between panels for motion in here. Dialogue and actions are conveyed in the script laid on top of the images throughout the issue. It’s almost like a storyboard.

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The Marville Horror Part 2: Take Us to Poor People!

March 9th, 2009 Posted by guest article

Article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett.

Note this classy cover by Greg Horn. We’ll be covering those in the next update, don’t you worry. But when we last left Marville

Ah yes. I also forgot to mention there is no love plot. There is no pining or anything. I don’t know why the hell they added that to the blurb, probably because almost nothing from the first issue is going to carry over into this one and they needed to fill space. Also space-filler: the Kingpin blurb, but we’ll get to that.

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Brief Watchmen Post

March 8th, 2009 Posted by Esther Inglis-Arkell

Saw it.  Liked it.  Was rather surprised at that.

At first I thought the style would knock me out of the picture.  I was wrong.  There were some sequences, especially at the beginning of the film, that made me roll my eyes when they started but turned out to be strangely affecting.

Also, I think that my earlier concern that the overall darkening tone of comic book movies would take the edge off of this one was incorrect.  Obviously, this would be more of a shock if it were compared to the early Superman movies instead of The Dark Knight.  But Watchmen isn’t so much about shocking us as it is showing us these wacky people with certain power levels and certain senses of responsibility, and never quite the right balance between the two.

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The Marville Horror Part 1: Better Sales Through Self-Immolation

March 8th, 2009 Posted by guest article

(Gavok note: Several weeks ago on the Something Awful forum, someone started up a thread asking for people to name five comics that are effectively worse than Countdown to Final Crisis. An interesting challenge, I filled out my list by mentioning Marville. I had never actually read it, but I’ve heard such horror stories. This led to two main reactions. Some suddenly remembered the series and angrily agreed with my suggestion. Another decided to test my suggestion by seeking out the book and reading it for himself.

That would be Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett, who was astounded over what a piece of shit the book was and readily agreed that it was easily one of comic’s greatest missteps. It only seemed natural that I’d try to convince him to put his knowledge to use and do a series of guest articles about the short-lived (not short enough) series. Sit back and enjoy his descent.)

You know how in high school, you can slowly start to see people form their opinions on alcohol? There are the kids who try it out, some don’t like it and stop, others become social drinkers and learn their limits, others just leave it alone for their own reasons, so on. But sometimes you see the ones who obviously haven’t had a drop in their lives trying to talk it up like they were getting shitfaced all the time. Odds are you know the guy I mean. Always telling stories that anyone who had ever had a drink knew were blatant lies, you just nod to his face, and laughed when he left.

All right, now if you run into that kid again, I want you to show him Marville, because this book feels like a drunk wrote it. I don’t mean that it’s puke-stained or anything, but anytime it looks like something is gonna start to take shape in this (like, say, A PLOT), it all gets thrown away for another tangent, like the guy lost his train of thought and just came back with, “So then this other thing…” Over and over again.

Let’s back up a second. Marville is based on a bet between then-President of Marvel Bill Jemas, and Peter David, who was writing Captain Marvel at the time. The most details I can find on why the bet came about has something to do with self-referential writing: Jemas claimed David’s book was too insular and thus its sales were plummeting. It kicked off a promotion called “U-Decide”. Captain Marvel would be renumbered to 1 again, David would make it more accessible to people unfamiliar with the character, and it would be put up against Marville, Jemas’ entry into a competition of sales numbers. (Ron Zimmerman somehow wedged himself into this contest with Ultimate Adventures. Not a single person knows why.) In the long run, David beat out his competition handily, going on to 25 more issues after the reboot, as opposed to a combined 13 (if I’m kind… technically it would only be 12, more on this later) from his opponents.

I tell you this story because the fact that Jemas decided to enter a sales competition spawned from an inaccessible book’s failure with Marville, a series which permanently lodged its head up its own ass about a page in, is irony in a painful to read format.

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An Interview With The Team That Reinvented Supergirl

March 4th, 2009 Posted by Esther Inglis-Arkell

Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures In the Eighth Grade was reviewed on this site a few months ago when the fist issue came out.  Conclusion:  funny, sly, and cute as a button.  Since then I’ve been reading the book and it has managed to keep all those descriptors accurate, despite having to pull off several difficult balancing acts.  The book has to fold in enough ancient continuity to make the long-term superfans happy while making sure the story is accessible to new readers.  It has to keep the language simple enough for young children without being dull for an adult reader.  And it has to make us laugh at the miseries of junior high while reminding us why we wouldn’t be dragged back there kicking, screaming, weeping, thrashing and begging for mercy.

At WonderCon, Landry Walker and Eric Jones spent most of their time signing and sketching at the SLG Comics booth or being mobbed during signing events for DC, but I managed to talk to them briefly about how Supergirl came about. Read the rest of this entry �

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