Wednesday Wrap-Up

Absolution #1
Avatar

I’m not really a super hero kind of guy but I love what Avatar does with the quintessential comic book trope. Instead of the torch bearers of morality that is the traditional portrayal of these characters, we get flawed and imperfect humans in a struggle to rectify their ideals with reality. John Dusk is a super hero who’s sick of seeing the same scum regurgitated by the system to continue their violent ways. When Dusk kills a perp his whole outlook changes. There’s nothing really outstanding about this title, I just love the dystopic super hero story.

The Boys #33
Dynamite

The Boys never gets boring, it just keeps getting better. If things keep going the way they are, there won’t be any supes left for The Boys to take care of. Not much story development in this issue but the action that does occur more than makes up for it. If you’re not reading The Boys, you’re missing out

Chew #3
Image

Most of you probably missed this title when it first came out due to the limited printing and high demand. By this point however, you should be well caught up considering they’re already on their second printing of the first issue. I love the top-heavy character designs by Rob Guillory and John Layman’s quirky premise is handled with expert comedic timing. This five issue mini-series should definitely be on your pull list. Continue reading “Wednesday Wrap-Up”

Wednesday Wrap-Up

Air #10
Vertigo

By about the sixth issue of G. Willow Wilson’s and M.K. Perker’s Air I thought I had a pretty good handle on just what in the hell was going on. Amelia Earhart showed up in a floating city in the clouds and made everything clear to me. Now I’m in Mexico before the French conquered England and I feel like I’m just starting over again. While I may have lost the path of the story the comic continues to be fresh, crisp and smart. This series is definitely worth your time but this isn’t the time to jump in.

The Dark Tower: Fall of Gilead #2
Marvel

To tell you the truth, I’m just slogging through most of these tragic bits until I can leave the tales of Roland’s adolescence and move on to the parts of the stories where he’s a bad-ass ninja with cowboy boots and a revolver. Much like watching Titanic, we know Gilead will fall, we know Roland will live and his father will likely die. All that happens later though. For now Stephen King fans will have to make do with Roland going to jail. I get the feeling this is just leading up to a mountain of tragedy in the next four issues.

Executive Assistant Iris #1
Aspen

This comic is a steaming plate of bad-ass. While most of the issue is turned over to the task of demonstrating just how epically bad-ass it is, there is a kernel of a story in there. David Wohl seems to have an interesting story going for him but so far it’s obfuscated by a lot of business speak and ass kicking. Eduardo Francisco’s art lives up to the high standards set by Aspen’s other works and John Starr’s colors are visceral and vibrant. This isn’t a must have but you definitely need to take a look because there won’t be very many copies of these laying around.

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Wednesday Wrap-Up

Anna Mercury 2 #1
Avatar

Hooray! Anna Mercury is back! In this new series one of the constellation worlds has sent something into our world and it’s Anna Mercury’s job to recon this previously unexplored world that inhabits a dimension next to ours. The hottest red head in comics since Mary Jane Watson is in it up to her neck almost as soon as she hits the ground. I’ve got nothing but wonderful things to say about this comic. Buy this comic. Subscribe to it. You’ll thank me.

Berserker #0
Top Cow

Okay Milo Ventimiglia, thanks for the new comic series and all but weren’t you supposed to be working on Rest. Did that series ever finish? I don’t think so. Essentially Berserker is exactly what I thought it would be: a dude going crazy from blood lust killing anyone he meets. The surprise is that I enjoy the setup to what I know is coming. If Top Cow can keep that up, I’ll stick with the series.

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DMZ: America’s Second Civil War

With DMZ, Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli have created one of the best comics of this decade. While it’s just as good as Y: The Last Man or 100 Bullets, DMZ is almost patriotic, albeit in a very subversive way.

The story takes place in an alternate-present or near-future setting, whichever makes you more comfortable. An army calling themselves the Free States and espousing a return to the true democratic principles of America has come from the Midwest. On the other side of the line is the incumbent, the good ol’ United States of America, which goes about things just as you’d expect our current administration to. Continue reading “DMZ: America’s Second Civil War”

Swamp Thing Vol 1: Saga of the Swamp Thing

Even for a guy who lost his wife in a bomb set up to kill him, was burned alive during the explosion and reemerged as a man whose primary fear should be Weed-B-Gon, the [debatably] “former” Alec Holland has it pretty rough. All the while, during his transformation, his wife was shot to death. Fast forward and we have a similar scenario occurring just a few years later. He’s been run out of his home, cornered down and shot, only to be left for the dead (again) but then cryogenically frozen by some G-Men, only to be dissected by Jason Woodrue (aka the Floronic Man, whom the Feds have on loan from prison). Woodrue, like Holland, is a botanist and has a plant form. The difference is that the Floronic Man has a believable and easily achievable human appearance. He literally sprays on artificial skin and shaves the facial hair-reminiscent wooden protusions from his face.

As if my introduction to the Swamp Thing could not get any more depressing, the pathos that – from what I’ve come to comprehend is at the core of Moore’s version – gets magnified when Woodrue discovers that the Swamp Thing is not Holland at all; he is just a collection of plant cells that think they’re Alec Holland, fused with his memories and therefore human. While conducting an autopsy on our hero, Woodrue (being as highly regarded a genius as Holland was), discovers that all of Swamp Thing’s organs are merely non-functioning replicas of human versions. He concludes that all human traces of Holland are gone! Continue reading “Swamp Thing Vol 1: Saga of the Swamp Thing”

Midnight Days: A Taste of Neil Gaiman’s Early Work

Sandman: Midnight Theatre
Vertigo Comics

I’ll be honest. When Neil Gaiman reveals he was just twenty-four when he began writing for DC and that most of the scribing he did was after midnight, I felt a connection since I am also twenty-four. I also attempted to give his stories some justice by only reading through them late at night, but I haven’t been making it to midnight. I’ve been crashing early and reading Days around 11:30 p.m. at the latest.

Nonetheless, Days, a mulligan’s stew of sorts, was written early in Gaiman’s career and contains several stories, the first few of which occur in the Swamp Thing comics magazine. Ever since I saw a cover of SWAMP THING #34, lovingly painted by Stephen Bissette, when I was twelve, I had wanted to read a Swamp Thing story. The image’s romanticism sucked me in with both an anti-traditional superhero quality and a fiercely trusting human quality, even though Swamp Thing’s costume is his ever-evolving plant matter construction and only resembles the human form in profile. Continue reading “Midnight Days: A Taste of Neil Gaiman’s Early Work”

Y: The Last Man

 
 

Although it has been many years since I could actually consider myself a fan or avid reader of comic books, there have recently been released a number of books that have attracted my attention and drawn me back into the world of comics. One of the most original and engrossing storylines was created by Brian K. Vaughn, writer, and Pia Guerra, penciler. Their brainchild, Y: The Last Man, is an ongoing series that was first released in comic book format in 2002 and which is currently available in collected book format.

Y tells the story of an ordinary—and unemployed—young man with a flare for escape artistry (Yorick) and his male capuchin monkey companion (Ampersand), whom Yorick is training to be a helper monkey. As the story begins, a phone conversation between Yorick in New York and his girlfriend, Beth, who is vacationing/studying in Australia, is cut short as all of the human males around the world—as well as most, if not all, males of any other species—suddenly and instantaneously collapse and die, most bleeding from all of their orifices. Both Yorick and Ampersand miraculously survive the “gendercide” and begin their journey to find Beth and, hopefully, some answers. As one might guess, the “Y” refers to the y chromosome that is necessary to produce a male during pregnancy (xx=female; xy=male). Continue reading “Y: The Last Man”

Pride of Baghdad: Ain’t No Pride When You’re Dead

By Dave Ginolfi

When this book was first given to me to check out i was excited but for some reason it lay stagnant in the back seat of my car for months. There it lived amongst cd’s and empty bags of fast food from late night hunger raids. What a diamond in the rough it truly became.

I was in a position where I desperately needed reading material. I was in the waiting room at a dentist’s office. With nothing but 101.3 The Rose and the smell of old people to occupy my time I decided to get sucked into a colorful world that reminded me of the Lion King with a twist of Steven King.

This book was so vivid if read fast enough it seemed to come to life. That’s also it’s only flaw – its length. Although it’s short, it’s also very fulfilling but getting close to the characters is hard as it comes abruptly to an end. Continue reading “Pride of Baghdad: Ain’t No Pride When You’re Dead”