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Bought/Thought 05/12/07

I haven't. I went to my shop on the way to work today, but they only had volumes 1, 3, and 4. They had 2 on Wednesday, but I wasn't sure about the series, so I just bought vol. 1 to try it out. Now I hate myself a little bit more. :(
 
That's why you lack Wallace Wells appreciation. Volume 2 will make you love him. :up:
 
I already like him. I found it hilarious that he steals Stacey's boyfriends. :)
 
The whole thing is a ****ing gem. I really hope Edgar Wright can do the books justice.
 
I'm leary of a film version of this. They're probably gonna cast a bunch of *****ebags who look good but can't act, like they do in almost every movie built around 20-somethings. :(
 
Have you seen of his past films? I have faith. If there's anyone that can bring SP to the big screen, it's Wright.
 
Yeah, he doesn't seem too interested in working with anyone who's not a major talent. :up:
 
FEARLESS #2: Grabbed this in Manhattan because my local shop doesn't get every Image title, even new launches. This continues with the story of Adam Rygert, an man crippled with phobias and anxieties until he met Lionel, his mentor and creator of a serum that completely eliminates ALL fear, allowing him to become the armored vigilante, Fear. Fear has attracted the attention of the mafia and last issue, his mentor's apartment was ransacked and his secret identity was supposedly known. Without access to as much of the serum as usual, Adam starts to regress into paranoid delusions, illustrated simply and yet powerfully by artist PJ Holden. There is a subtle sense from a conversation that Adam has with his reporter girlfriend that he may care for Lionel's well-being due to his addiction to the serum almost as much as due to any emotional feelings towards him, or at least that was the impression I got. The Gasparian Crime family makes their play as Victor Gasparian Jr. is introduced, but is seemingly a snivelling coward in comparison to Garan, his enforcer. In the end, though, Victor takes the serum himself and murders Garan, only to end up with some magical ring of his fathers that turns him intangible, and all while Fear is on his last dose of serum. The themes of the series are simple and predictable, but it maintains a flair, a style, and a charm all it's own. Naturally I expect Adam in the climax to prevail without the serum, but that is perfectly alright. I could argue it is a shame you hardly ever see an Armenian name aside for random mobsters in comics, but no biggie. FEARLESS isn't the best indie superhero comic on the market, but it has a charm to it that I enjoy. It is well written and drawn, and the action is effective, and Fear has a spooky design while still maintaining some superhero-ish looks. Worth the extra trip.
 
I read the first issue of Fearless when Newsarama posted it a few days back. It wasn't bad, but it didn't really grab me, either. I did notice that while Holden's art style was nice to look at, his storytelling abilities weren't so hot. There was just something about the dialogue and the images that didn't add up for me.
 
I won't say FEARLESS is my favorite Image title; books like INVINCIBLE, WOLF-MAN and DYNAMO 5 blow it away, but I still enjoy it a heckuva lot more than some Marvel titles I could care to mention, which all sell about 200% or so more.
 
Wolf-Man needs to come out more frequently. Kirkman needs to ditch Howard after the first storyarc and get someone who's efficient. I don't like Howard's art nearly enough to forgive these kinds of delays. :o
 
PhotoJones said:
Wolf-Man needs to come out more frequently. Kirkman needs to ditch Howard after the first storyarc and get someone who's efficient. I don't like Howard's art nearly enough to forgive these kinds of delays. :o
Click to expand...

To be fair, they announced from the start Wolf-Man was going to be bimonthly at best.
 
It's not even kept that schedule has it? And bimonthly schedules suck, anyway. :o
 
A totally freaking late B/T from me, covering two weeks of stuff and even then I probably forgot about something.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #9
End of the age of magic? My mind went totally Fraywards. Nice Big Bad, btw.

I didn't expect Gigi to die, though in retrospect I'm not sure why I didn't expect it. Vaughan finishes up this arc in a spectacular way, not necessarily in terms of action and shock (although there is that here too), but emotionally. The littlest things mean the biggest things for these characters and BKV totally gets it.

And he really gets Faith, as we've established by now. Her admission that even today she always felt nothing but love from the Mayor...it's so simple, and yet it's so good.

I'm glad this divide between Buffy and Giles occurred. It may not be a direct continuation of the s7 events, but it inforces the notion that not everything is fluffy happy bunnies (
emot-gonk.gif
) with these two and for good reason. A potential criticism of this s8 is that since everything takes place an indeterminate length of time after s7, any grievance can just be forgotten, any status quo can just be shrugged off, and any character quirk can just be pulled out of thin air for any reason 'cause, hey, it's been a while right? Such was the case with Kennedy, for example. But no, this shows us that events which took place before is still relevant today. If you don't know what happened before, you probably don't know why this thing happened today. Continuity. Learn to love it like I do, as in slowly and with lube.

(9 out of 10)


Green Lantern Corps #18
Wow. Gibbons just totally pulled a Ninja Vanish on us now didn't he? It was his book just a month ago and now it's...not.

Tomasi takes the reins of this book, and while it's too soon to tell what he's bringing to the table what with this being a complete crossover issue and all, signs are looking acceptable enough. He took what he was given here and crafted a good enough story around it. Hell, it might as well have been his idea alone to give AnalFun here an actual backstory and personality, considering that said backstory/personality was more or less absent under Gibbons.

This is a sort of weird issue as well, in the grand scheme of things. The entire issue focuses on TakenFromBehind and his much-hyped "epic" fight against Superboy-Prime. Except that...the fight ends up being anything but epic. InThePooper flails about like a drunken sailor, don't use a tenth of what we know the power of Ion is capable of even in this diluted form -- hell, he barely uses any of his Green Lantern powers -- and basically ends up at the receiving end of the pwnstick.

Which is strange because...this is kinda exactly what I wanted, isn't it? I was blabbing from day one about how much DroppingTheSoap doesn't deserve his status and how he doesn't deserve to be the one to one-up Prime. He's too new. He's too undeveloped. This would be, what, his sixth issue of appearance? His fifth, maybe? You can't just appear in a total of five issues and then proceed to finish off the Final Boss. That would be cockdickery on every level.

Well, it turns out that someone out there agrees with me. BendingOver's performance here is exactly like how you'd expect a n00b to perform. He thinks exactly like a n00b, he fights exactly like a n00b, and he ends up exactly like a n00b. Which is good. Which is exactly what should happen. Except..it feels a bit awkward, because it's so sudden and it doesn't really feel right with how he's been portrayed in issues prior. In the issues prior, he's been flawless. He fights amazing, he's ridiculously efficient, he makes no mistakes, and his achieved victory through prodigious ways...he basically outHals Hal Jordan. Everything we've read up to this point tells us that he should beat Superboy-Prime, and then there's suddenly this. "This" may make more sense, but it sure wasn't organically flowing out from preceding issues. Which leads me to suspect that maybe Gibbons and Tomasi don't entirely agree on DoggieStyle's presentation.

So what next? He gets trained by Kyle, as per solicits suggest? It would definitely make sense; I'm thinking the Guardians would be more than a bit disappointed in their project and would want some help in getting it fine-tuned.

Speaking of which, I've never really paid much mind to Daxamites in the DCU before, but now that they're firmly New Earth canonized, I can't help but feel a bit uncomfortable about the whole idea. What we have here is an entire race of beings -- thousands if not millions in number -- who are basically Superman. It's questionable whether they can reach his precise power levels what with Supes himself recently becoming more Silver Age in his scope, but here is an entire planet with potentially invincible powers...they're not in danger of extinction and they're not in middle of wars and they're not being hunted down or anything, it's just that they only thing which prevents an entire planet-full of people from becoming Godlike Beings is that they're all xenophobic. That's it. That's the only reason.

...

I have a really hard time swallowing that. It's really the same sort of plot bunny which begs the question of why no Kryptonian ever became superpowerful in the entire history of their people -- same answer is given, they're just xenophobic -- but at least we can accept that those Kryptonians are all bloody well dead now. These Daxamites aren't. They're alive and well and currently just chilling in the DCU. I don't know why it gets to me, but it does. It...throws things out of whack. Upsets the balance or whatever. Brings disharmony to my chi. Etc etc.

(7.5 out of 10)


What if...Uncanny X-Men
Someone's going to have to remind me why I bought this. Liefeldian anatomy, a completely irrelevent storyline about an antagonist that I hate with dark fire, and more disruptive advertisements per square page than a Michael Bay movie.

Oh, wait, now I remember...the last page of Jean in her decked out White Phoenix prom dress was totally worth it. I can be such a fan****e sometimes.

(6.2 out of 10)


Justice League of America #15
Pretty much just a big action issue interspersed with quips and ass shots. It's...good enough, I suppose. But I have to start agreeing with people that this is kinda watered-down JLA, kinda standardized and not very interesting on any level beyond "hey look it's Batman." It's better in a lot of ways than Meltzer, and yet lacks a lot of what Meltzer had in very significant ways.

What we have here is basically the cartoon, in theme and scope and execution. Which is just fine for the cartoon...hell, it's better than fine for the cartoon, performing far and beyond what the cartoon might be expected to do...but only because it's the cartoon. This is the comics. It's expected to do...different things. And we need to start seeing some of those things. McDuffie's wedding special made me so excited for all this because of exactly those things.

(7.6 out of 10)
(6.9 out of 10 for the whole arc)


Justice Society of America #11
Aww. Power Girl X-Raying her dead relatives' corpses through the ground. How heartwarming.

Lotsa great character bits and good storytelling. But is it a good story? This entire arc is basically built on The Hype of seeing Kingdom Come Superman in current continuity, and I think we do see bits of The Hype falling away and breaking down at this point. And what we're left with is...an odd little story where nothing's really happening. There's no threat, no overarching goal, no nothing.

On the other hand...to his credit, Geoff Johns is still Geoff Johns. Even in a story where nothing really happens, he still manages to cram a lot into the issue. Little things like Starman and Bats: The Musical. And larger things like the Flashes' interaction. It does fit together nicely. And the next issue looks quite interesting.

(7.1 out of 10)


Annihilation: Conquest #2
See, the book immediately begins to pick up when the Star-Lord crew comes along.

Things move both quickly and slowly in this issue. Quasar and Moondragon -- who seems way smaller now than she was in the mini -- basically spend the whole issue talking about with the High Evolutionary, but they talk about reasonably significant stuff so it's tolerable. Ronan officially joins coalitions with the Annihilation Wave, which is so totally not going to end up badly at all. And Star-Lord's team, who I am having the hardest time calling by any name but the Zoo Crew, comes up with a plan that actually doesn't suck. Ultron shows up in a cape and busts sht up, and while he's cool at the moment I would like to see him do some bigger, badderasser things than merely ripping out a furry lesbian's heart for shts and giggles.

Up next: Adam Warlock does...something!

(8 out of 10)


The Trials of Shazam #10
I'm actually sort of impressed by Winick's reinvention of Tawky Tawny. I certainly don't know if I like it, but it actually felt like a reinvention, as in something with actual direction which at least implies an idea of what the hell he's doing, instead of the rest of this series which has felt at best like throwing darts at a board to see what happens.

On the downside, still so much Sabina. Oh Winick. NO ONE FCKING CARES ABOUT HER. She has passed the thin line of being an unremarkable, one-note character. It frankly astounds me that Winick could have any illusions at all about this, and yet issue after issue of this mini is still jam-packed with her zero-dimensional antagonist ass ****ing up space which she hardly needs in a series which hardly has room to waste. Seriously, Winick has two issues left to make anyone care about Freddie or this new status quo. I've been dubious that he could accomplish it in the first place, much less now.

(6.2 out of 10)


The All New Atom #18
Aka Simone Writes Wonder Woman...Round 3.

It comes off better than the last issue, which is a very good thing since the last issue wasn't too bad. At times the humor feels forced (She's licking him? What?), and I think the whole "makes people tell the truth" thing is overexaggerated a bit here for the lulzes, but mostly it's just damn right. Nowhere else are we going to get WW's opinions on "those" Power Girl rumors (and y'all know exactly which ones I'm talking about), communing with a giant talking head, and death by the Ted Grant Grill. Lifetime guarantee!

(8.5 out of 10)


Blue Beetle #21
Ah, this book. So good no matter who writes it.

Jaime and Traci are so cute right now, I'm almost certain they're going to break up. Shucks.

(9 out of 10)


Teen Titans #53
First of all? Yes for DARK VENGEANCE.

Second of all, whoa there guys. What's going on with the plot now? I mean, I understand what's going on with the plot, I'm just a bit jilted by how weirdly we arrived at this point. Of course Jaime makes everything better, but seriously we were just fighting a while ago and then suddenly Starros? I usually wouldn't advocate more exposition for any comic, but this seems to be the one time where we really could have used some.

And yeah, Kara taking Conner out in one punch is...irritating...but let's just chalk it up to Tim's sucky cloning skills.

It's basically good though. I'd like to see better, but it's basically good. Looking forward to next ish.

(7.5 out of 10)
 
Update:

Northlanders #1

Vertigo's latest non-superhero product, and since I'm always game for a violent period piece, I eventually decided to check it out (a good review on the X-Axis, too), although the last thing I need is another book to buy, really. Anyway, our protagonist ("hero" doesn't quite fit) is Sven ("the Returned", being the title of this arc), who was born in a crappy little settlement in Orkney to a Viking chief, and, after departing to make his living in Byzantium (where the sun never set on the Roman Empire), hears that his dad has died, and his uncle Gorm (sounds like a villain) has stolen his inheritance; now, he's got no interest in ruling his slum of a town, he just wants some cash. So he heads come to collect. As O'Brien noted in his review, Sven isn't particularly sympathetic as a main character; he gratuitously murderers an old man who brings him news of his father's death, most notably; but he's fun to watch. I also really like his perspective in life; most stories act like there's nothing cooler than being a Viking, but Sven has been to Byzantium, lived the good life, and knows that, objectively, his people live in abysmal poverty in a cold, uncomfortable part of the world, and he'd much rather just get whatever he can out of it and go back to the Mediterranean. It's a very good start. And writer Brian Wood promises "a lot of sex and a lot of death" in future installments, and isn't that what we all read Vertigo for?
 
Cool review. It's interesting to hear that the guys from the X-Axis dug it, considering that they very, very rarely dig anything. I loved it. I can't wait for more. :up:
 
Oh yeah, I read The Overman #1. It's... weird. It seems kind of like a Heavy Metal or 2000 AD story in a longer format to me. It's really hardcore, dystopic sci fi with a lot of odd sexual elements. Not a whole lot about the actual plot is revealed in the first issue, but it's interesting enough that I'm gonna keep reading. White's art is really good, too. Obtuse in some places, but I think it's intentional because it fits with the comic's generally mysterious tone.
 
Hmm...How long is it intended to be? And what does it seem to be about?
 
It's 5 issues. It purports at the beginning to be about the end of the world.
 
I think so. It's obtuse, like I said, but it seems to be worth puzzling out.
 
Picked up BKV's The Escapists HC today.I had no idea this was already out,I never got to check the series out in singles and was really pissed.
 
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