Angel season 6

[TheCorpulent1]

I can't really say. I'm not upset I bought any of the issues (except maybe #10-12), but I doubt I'd recommend the comic to anyone unless they're a really huge Angel fan. Maybe not even then, given how badly the story is f***ing some of the characters over.

 

[BrianWilly]

Angel: After the Fall #13
Nope.

Sorry, but nope. Dropped. Which for me just means that I'll still be reading it but not buying it which, okay, not exactly the scathing criticism that it should be, but still. Drizopped. I said last time that this issue had better be Olympic Gold, and it simply wasn't. We're still screwing around with a bunch of vampire Gunn shenanigans, but with that added "HEY EVERYTHING THAT'S HAPPENED IS PREP TIME FROM THE GODS" bit that I hated about season 4. The art is marginally fixed, but it's on the marginal side of marginal. And the dialogue is not fixed at all. I know it's irritating that I harp on this, but it's a big deal. The fact is that no cast member of Angel ****ing talks this way. None. It's confusing, and it's stupid. It doesn't sound like them, it sounds completely like some other character. Just try to imagine J. August Richards or Charisma Carpenter speaking these lines.

Yeah, there's good things here. The part where Wesley goes, straight up, "Make no mistake. The prophecy is about Angel. Period. The end. You are crazy and stupid." And also the part where Cordelia is like "If we were that sneaky, we'd be grey hats" 'cause y'know what, both those lines sound like lines that these characters would actually say, instead of Lynch trying to fit everyone into this mold of his that just, I dunno, belongs somewhere else.

(5.3 out of 10)

 

[Manic]

I was kinda shocked when I walked into the comic shop today and the clerk gave me an issue of Angel. It had been so long, I plum forgot they were still publishing it.

Then I popped into this thread, and was completely confused by BW's previous post. Either BW made a mistake and reviewed #12 back in September, or IDW made a mistake and published two different issues as #13. I'd go check the last issue of Angel I bought, but I keep my stack of IDW comics under my Marvel stack, and that's just too much damn work.

Anyway, apparently the latest issue of Angel: After the Fall came out this week. Um... hooray. I was a tad confused about this issue, because it feels like it's been nearly 2 months since the last issue. So if that wasn't bad enough, I had to deal with more of Gunn's inane rambling (which never seems to make sense in this book, as Lunch seems to have confused Vamp-Gunn with freaking Drusilla) and the fact that Spike apparently got dusted and popped up as undead as ever a few pages later.

And good lord, Mooney's attempts to make his drawings look like the actors (which he does a decent job of) sometimes leaves us with some wacky facial expressions. Especially Cordelia's. The ghost, I mean. Cordy the Dragon just got ripped to pieces.

 

[CBG]

Well, #14 cleared it.

Fred is still gone; it was just Fred's leftover memories that 'influenced' Illyria.

 

[BrianWilly]

In case anyone was still wondering.

 

[Manic]

So... anyone else still reading this title? It just got a new creative team, just in case you dropped it before.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I read up to the issue before last. I haven't gotten to the one with Angel and the leopard on the cover.

It seemed to be getting better a bit. All the horribly contrived hell crap is done, at least. Yeah, we lost Wes again, but hopefully now we can get back to the core of the series--Angel helping others while he constantly straddles the line between redemption and pure evildom himself. A back-to-basics approach where it's just Angel on his own might actually be good.

 

[CBG]

I'm still attached.

Still hoping that maybe they use Jheira again.

Was also right about Illyria and Fred.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Jheira?

 

[Jennifer Walters]

Jheira?

Bai Ling's character from the season 1 episode "She". Joss toyed with the idea of making her a regular at one time.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Ah. I didn't really like her...

 

[Manic]

Jheira? Talk about characters not impactful enough for me to care about.


Kate just came back, though.

 

[Harlekin]

I dropped this with #17. The title kinda soured me on reading the further adventures, honestly. I'll stick to rewatching the television series from here on out.

 

[BrianWilly]

It just seems to get worse and worse. Writing, story, art -- oh goddamn the art -- I just don't know what the ****.

 

[Manic]

I know it's only been one issue, but I think it's improved a little since Urru and Lynch left.

 

[BrianWilly]

You think so? That latest one with the Kate and the city people and the whatever? And the goddamned art.

 

[Manic]

The art is a definite step up from Urru's. I thought I was getting used to Urru's art at some point, but then I went back and realized the coloring just got better.

 

[BrianWilly]

Wait. Really??http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/3197/katen.jpg

Different stokes, I guess..

 

[Manic]

Wait. Really??http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/3197/katen.jpg

Different stokes, I guess..

Maybe it's just me, but I prefer Ross over Urru.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Look, let's not pussyfoot around here: both suck. Neither is a good comic book artist by any means. I think Ross and Urru are actually about even for me; they're just bad in different ways. Urru makes everything look gelatinous while Ross has slightly suckier layouts. Neither of them could do character likenesses, but that's not a big deal for me since I think the comics shouldn't even try to be photorealistic anyway.

One thing that does bother me, however, is the "comic book-ization" of Kate. A halter-top tac vest? Really? When the hell did Kate ever show us that she would in any way ever be caught dead in something like that? Everything about her in the early Angel seasons screamed sort of sloppy, conservative, no-nonsense hardass. I like that Kate is back and I like how they're using her in the story, but the visual presentation of her is so distracting.

That said, I'm enjoying the back-to-basics feel of the Angel series now that that hell stuff is over. I like the idea of starting fresh with a new team and a new twist in the form of everyone in LA knowing Angel and knowing what he's done for them. In a good writer's hands, that could be dramatic gold as the perennial loner and recluse that is Angel is forced to deal with this stuff.

Unfortunately, the writers of Angel don't seem to have good hands. They have smelly, possibly s***-stained hands. The dialogue is bad. Flat-out, no two ways about it, bad. Nobody has their distinctive voice from the series. Angel feels like such a generic cardboard cutout of a comic book hero that it saddens me. I really wish I could love this book but, clearly being the bastard stepchild among the Buffy/Angel pair, Angel gets shafted by Whedon being only superficially involved in its production. Buffy's comic gets fantastic writers from the show who've got loads of experience with the characters and know them inside and out... Angel gets Brian Lynch and now... who is this... Kelley Armstrong? Who is this person? Why is she writing this series?

Bleh, I really want to love the Angel series as much as I... like... the Buffy series. The difference is that Dark Horse gets it while IDW just doesn't.

 

[Harlekin]

I read issue #18 a bit ago. Blegh, so glad I dropped this.

 

[Lord]

Sorry for the thread necromancy here
But since this thread was able to go this long i think i should come here to ask if the After the Fall and IDW stuff are worth reading, aparently only the first 17 issues are trully canon but the rest of the story also seems interesting.

And since Angel has come back to Dark Horse, has anybody been reading Angel & Faith?

 

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