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Fatale #14 – Review

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Minhquan Nguyen

FATALE #14

By: Ed Brubaker (story), Sean Phillips (art), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colors)

The Story: It’s not a good idea to sneak into a Nazi camp armed with just a pretty face.

The Review: The one nice thing about striking a bunch of titles from your pull list is that it frees up some funds to try out new ones.  For me, I’d heard a great deal about Fatale, nearly all of it good, so after having recently Dropped Constantine, Demon Knights, and Katana, it seemed like a prime opportunity to pick up the series.  Besides, I’m a real sucker for the supernatural and classic pulp, and Fatale seems to promise both in great abundance.

My timing couldn’t have been better.  As it turns out, this issue is something of a transition chapter, a flashback to Josephine’s earlier days.  In many ways, it could have very well served as a debut issue, as it quickly introduces you to our lead, the series’ premise, and some of its most important mysteries.  On the same note, however, if you’re a long-time reader of Fatale, it’s entirely possible the developments in this issue will be redundant to you.
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Filed under: Image Comics, Reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Dream Merchant #1 – Review

Posted on May 17, 2013 by dfstell

DREAM MERCHANT #1

By: Nathan Edmondson (writer) and Konstantin Novosadov (art)

The Story: A man has strange dreams and is chased by spectres of death.

Review (with minor SPOILERS):  This probably simply isn’t my type of comic.  I’ll go into details about why I didn’t love it, but it obviously works for some people because as I pull-up the issue on my iPad, I see that the Comixology community is rating it 4/5 stars.  Of course, most of the comics on Comixology have 4/5 stars, but still, someone is clicking those buttons and enjoyed the issue.
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Filed under: Image Comics | Tagged: , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Chin Music #1 – Review

Posted on May 13, 2013 by dfstell

CHIN MUSIC #1

By: Steve Niles (writer), Tony Harris (art), Bill Tortolini (letters)

The Story: Something about 1930′s era gangsters and demonic forces and Egypt.  It’s really not very clear….

Review: This comic issue really challenges the idea of buying a comic “just to look at the art” because it looks amazing–but doesn’t have much story.

From an art standpoint, you won’t find many comics that look better than Chin Music #1.  It’s really glorious stuff.  I love all the interesting things that Tony Harris does with his panel borders.  He really turns the panel borders into part of the artwork with all these filigrees and whatnot.  I don’t know whether to wish that more artists drew inspiration from Harris or to cringe at the thought of artists doing non-expert jobs aping Tony Harris panel borders.  Regardless, if you’re interesting in seeing someone playing around with the concept of the entire page in a comic being a work of art, then this is an issue worth checking out.
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Filed under: Image Comics | Tagged: , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

The Walking Dead #110 – Review

Posted on May 10, 2013 by dfstell

WALKING DEAD #110

By: Robert Kirkman (writer), Charlie Adlard (art), Cliff Rathburn (gray tones), Rus Wooton (letters)

The Story: Will the truth get out about Rick’s little insurrection before Rick can even rally the troops?

The Review (with SPOILERS): This issue has a fair share of good and bad in it.  Let’s talk about the bad first and get it out of the way.  Last issue, we saw Rick and Jesus spreading word of their insurrection to some of the other communities when suddenly it appeared that one of their putative “allies” had jumped over the wall of Hilltop to go warn Negan that trouble was coming.  Cliffhanger!  End of issue!  So, we had a month to worry if the plan had been revealed prematurely or whether Negan actually had an extensive network of spies in the communities.

It was honestly a real downer to see Jesus just chase down this runner and make him change his mind.  It might be a realistic way for the story to play out, as in, “in real life, you might actually have a wishy-washy guy who changes his mind all the time.”  But, this development didn’t make for a very interesting story.  There was a bit of tension when Negan’s men showed up, but even that seemed pretty light.  Imagine how tense it would have been if Jesus had caught this Kal guy winking at the Saviors and then Jesus had to kill the whole crew–and then Rick and Jesus would have to mount their attack before the Savior patrol was reported overdue.  Not saying that Kirkman should do it that way, but I think that would have been more interesting than what we got.  All isn’t over and it’s still highly possible that this group of Saviors will return to Negan and tell him that Kal and Jesus were “acting weird,” but I don’t see much point in making your story boring now just so it’ll seem cooler when you make it exciting later.

Now, the good part of the issue was all the stuff around Ezekiel and the Kingdom.  When we first met Ezekiel a few issues ago, he was interesting, but the whole thing seemed far-fetched. Why does he talk like that?  Why does he have a tiger? And, for crissakes, WHAT does the tiger eat?

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Filed under: Image Comics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Ten Grand #1 – Review

Posted on May 5, 2013 by dfstell

TEN GRAND #1

By: J. Michael Straczynski (writer), Ben Templesmith (art) and Troy Peteri (letters)

The Story: A hard-boiled PI gets involved with a demonic cult.

Review (with very minor SPOILERS): There’s not a whole lot to say about this comic.  The story is derivative and not reason enough to buy the comic, and while Templesmith’s art is pretty strong, you can get Templesmith art from various collected editions because he’s not really breaking new ground (for him) here.

So what makes me call the story derivative?  Well, the main character is a private investigator or hit man or something.  I guess most people would call him “hard boiled” because that’s a shorter word than “unshaven, dirty, rumpled clothes, heavy drinker, no family”.  Of course, this dude works out of the seedy side of town where he gets approached by a young woman who wants him to do a job. And (of course) she is earnest and (of course) she can only barely afford his fee and (of course) the case has some past connection to the PI.  It’s just very cliche and since it happens in the first few pages of the comic, your attention is already beginning to wander.
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Filed under: Image Comics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Five Weapons #3 – Review

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Minhquan Nguyen

FIVE WEAPONS #3

By: Jimmie Robinson (story & art), Paul Little (colors)

The Story: All of us would be more motivated to race if there was a kiss waiting at the end of it.

The Review: I knew from the start that Five Weapons isn’t really aimed at the adult reader.  With names like Jade the Blade and Joon the Loon, you know that Robinson’s appealing to a more innocent demographic.  Even so, I continued to labor with the idea that this title would fall along the lines of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-type series: upbeat and fun, but with a serious side as well, open to more angst and violence than, say, something from Johnny DC.

This issue forces me to recalibrate that understanding.  Five Weapons sits comfortably between TMNT and Tiny Titans in the maturity spectrum of comics.  It’s not quite as frothy as the works of Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani, but it doesn’t seem given to moments of sobriety the way TMNT frequently does, either.  In other words, it has just enough narrative complexity to occupy the mature mind, but not enough to challenge it.
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Filed under: Image Comics, Shadowline | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Jupiter’s Legacy #1 – Review

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Minhquan Nguyen

JUPITER'S LEGACY #1

By: Mark Millar (story), Frank Quitely (art), Peter Doherty (colors)

The Story: In this case, the kids are disappointing because they don’t wear outlandish outfits and punch people.

The Review: Ever since Alan Moore did it with Watchmen, deconstructing superheroes, or turning the genre on its head, has become so common and popular that it’s become almost a sub-genre all to itself.  You have series like Astro City, which explores all the hard, largely avoided questions about costumed vigilantism, or you have series like the recent Sex which force superheroes to engage with the more pedestrian messiness of the real world.

So from the start, the premise of Jupiter’s Legacy doesn’t strike you as a particularly novel one.  However, as you read on, you realize Millar’s not so much playing with superheroes as a storytelling genre, but rather commenting on their symbolic importance.  On one level, he’s getting at why superheroes as a concept ever had as much impact as they did—and still do; on another level, he’s also investigating the bigger importance of the values they embodied.
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Filed under: Image Comics, Reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 10 Comments »

East of West #2 – Review

Posted on April 25, 2013 by dfstell

EAST OF WEST #2

By: Jonathan Hickman (writer), Nick Dragotta (art), Frank Martin (colors) & Rus Wooton (letters)

The Story: Don’t like the Electoral College?  How about having the Four Horsemen choose the next President?

Review (with SPOILERS): This was another really strong issue for East of West.  Some little mysteries are explained, but more is left vague–and left vague in a good way.  The ultimate effect is to leave me wanting the next issue immediately!  This comic just has “IT”.  It reminds me of that old Simpsons‘ episode where Bart gets hired over Lisa to do local news because Bart has “zazz”.
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Filed under: Image Comics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Five Ghosts: The Haunting of Fabian Gray #2 – Review

Posted on April 21, 2013 by Minhquan Nguyen

FIVE GHOSTS: THE HAUNTING OF FABIAN GRAY #2

By: Frank J. Barbiere (story), Chris Mooneyham (art), S.M. Vidaurri & Lauren Affe (colors)

The Story: This temple is in desperate need of fumigating.

The Review: Homages are all well and good; there’s nothing wrong with indulging in nostalgia, even if we occasionally make the old times seem much better than they actually were.  However, an homage shouldn’t just be a pastiche of period conventions; it should have the imprint of the creator delivering it, rather than simply step in the footprints of his predecessors.  Some part of his contemporary thinking should appear in the work.

As much as the premise and look of Five Ghosts recalls the work of Joe Kubert, I’m pretty sure that Kubert would never have opened an issue on a stream of flowing semen.  Setting that bit of imagery aside, the first three pages take on a very interesting, sophisticated format, each divided into four panels, each panel showing a different period of Fabian’s life, each continued on their counterpart panels on the other pages.  It’s an unusual storytelling choice, but it does succinctly explain Fabian’s life to date, particularly with his twin sister Silvia and how he came by his “powers”: “a tragic encounter with an artiface known as ‘The Dreamstone.’”
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Filed under: Image Comics, Reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Mara #4 – Review

Posted on April 20, 2013 by dfstell

MARA #4

By: Brian Wood (writer), Ming Doyle (art), Jordie Bellaire (colors) and Clayton Cowles (letters)

The Story: Professional volleyball may be no place for a super-being, but the military is happy to have Mara.

Review (with minor SPOILERS): This issue doesn’t have much zap to it.  After three issues chronicling the downfall of Mara Prince from “Super-Star Volleyball Icon” to “Horrible Cheater!”, this was the issue to show how the military really doesn’t care about fighting fair.  It was a predictable place for the comic to go, but the execution is off and it results in a story that doesn’t ask any interesting questions or cause any passions to be aroused.
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Filed under: Image Comics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Chew #33 – Review

Posted on April 18, 2013 by dfstell

CHEW #33

By: John Layman (writer/letterer) & Rob Guillory (art/colors)

The Story: Tony Chu goes on a secret mission with the Navy.

Review (with minor SPOILERS): This issue highlights two things that I love about Chew.  One thing is how unflinching Layman and Guillory are in their approach to humor.  These guys take chances and push the envelope into edgy areas.  But the other thing they excel at is never seeming to push the joke too far.  That balance is really hard, especially when you consider that much of the humor of Chew is coming at the expense of people’s racial or sexual identity.  You’re playing with fire in those areas because a lot of people will snicker along with you one minute and then call you a racist/homophobic the next.

As far as I can tell, I’ve never seen Layman and Guillory cross the line into poor taste!  It’s an amazing highwire act that they pull off every month and I love them for it.  

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Filed under: Image Comics | Tagged: , , , , , | 3 Comments »

The Walking Dead #109 – Review

Posted on April 11, 2013 by dfstell

By: Robert Kirkman (writer), Charlie Adlard (art), Cliff Rathburn (gray tones) and Rus Wooton (letters)

The Story: What’s going on over at Hillside?  And how many people need to be “in the know” for the insurrection to work?

The Review (with SPOILERS): 

1. Remember Maggie? - I’m not OCD enough to check for the last time Maggie appeared in TWD, but it’s safe to say that we haven’t seen her for at least 5-6 issues.  That’s a shame because Maggie is a bedrock character for the series.  Characters like Rick and Negan are interesting, but they’re really the people holding the world back from whatever comes next. It’s Maggie and the kids who will define what humanity will become in this world.  So, she’s always been interesting from a human interest standpoint.  First she and Glen showed that boys and girls still can fall in love even in the middle of the apocalypse.  Now Glen is dead and we’ll have to see how Maggie relates to Sophia (who will become more “little sister” than “daughter,” given their slight age difference) as her own child.  I want to see Maggie figuring out how she’ll manage all of this while looking out for kids.  She looks like she is in a safe place now, only  for chaos to loom on the horizon.  Let’s not have another extended Maggie absence.

2. Loose lips sink ships. - If you tell too many people, it isn’t a secret anymore.  Didn’t Rick and Jesus go to high school?  Each time you tell someone your little secret, it becomes just a little more likely that someone you don’t want to know will find out.  What’s interesting is the contrast in reader perception.  When Rick tells Andrea/Carl/Michonne, my feeling was, “Well, it’s about time you stopped being such a jerk and trusted your friends.”  But, when Jesus tells his buddies and one of them seemingly runs off to inform Negan, it’s more, “You idiot!  You’ve gotta keep secrets like this CLOSE!”  We don’t really know this “Kal” character, so it’s hard to say whether Jesus has horrible judgement or if Kal betraying Jesus is akin to Michonne betraying Rick.

3. Cast is becoming a little too large. - Too many people and too many plotlines.  We just met Ezekiel and his “Kingdom” last issue and now he doesn’t show up again.  No appearance for Eugene, Rosita and the Arlington Bullet Company.  Lots of little bit-appearances for many of our favorite characters.  I’m sure this sort of thing doesn’t matter once the issues are collected, but when you read single issues it does affect the story when stories/characters don’t appear from month-to-month just because the cast is a little too large.
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Filed under: Image Comics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Saga #12 – Review

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Minhquan Nguyen

SAGA #12

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: Prince Robot just can’t wait for a book signing.

The Review: I always enjoy giving a so-called controversy a few days to land.  I notice that more often than not, the scandal that prompted such initial furor usually turns out to be far less interesting than it first appeared.  To me, it’s all about learning as many hard facts as you can before you start making your opinion on the matter and putting it out into the world.  One’s good opinion is too precious to squander on half-baked gut reactions.

So it didn’t surprise me one jot that the story of Apple apparently refusing to allow Comixology to sell Saga #12 on its app, due to a couple bukkake visuals in the issue, turned out to be a story of Comixology preemptively deciding not to submit the issue to their app for the same reason.  Was the concern worth it?  Well, I think once you’ve allowed the uncleaned, bare loins of a gargantuan space ogre to go through the publishing channels, all bets are off at that point, right?
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Filed under: DC Comics, Reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments »

Mind the Gap #9 – Review

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Minhquan Nguyen

MIND THE GAP #9

By: Jim McCann (story), Rodin Esquejo & Dan McDaid (art), Arif Prianto (colors)

The Story: Here there be monsters under the bed—or frightened women, whichever one.

The Review: I would’ve been more intrigued by McCann’s announcement that this would be a silent issue had it not been for the fact that Batman and Robin had such an issue last month.  That not only wears down the initial novelty of the thing; now we’re going to instinctively want to hold up the two issues side by side and see how they stack up against each other, even though they’re completely different products.  That’s our competitive nature for you.

Ultimately, Batman and Robin made better use of silence in its story and also had better reason to use it.  In depicting the aftermath of Robin’s death, silence seemed to embody the wordless grief that comes after someone dies, making the lack of text naturally profound.  Here, silence is used merely to heighten suspense—that is, where suspense already exists.  In fact, for the first half of this issue, the lack of dialogue or sound feels more happenstance than purposeful.  The only way to describe the difference is that the story in Batman and Robin needed silence, whereas Mind the Gap didn’t need sound.
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Filed under: Image Comics, Reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Five Weapons #2 – Review

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Minhquan Nguyen

FIVE WEAPONS #2

By: Jimmie Robinson (story & art), Paul Little (colors)

The Story: The Staff Club motto: speak softly and carry a big stick—minus the “softly” part.

The Review: I have a pal who’s an aspiring screenwriter/film director/producer.  When you go to his house, he has stacks of DVDs lying around, and all of them are “good movies”: Hitchcock, Scorcese, and Kubrick; French, Italian, and Dutch art films; movies watched by fewer people than those who read my reviews.  You’ll find a lot of stuff about the nature of life, death, the unbearable lightness of being, but you won’t find, say, Princess Bride or Airplane!*

I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t go through those movies endlessly without some kind of break where we watch something just out of fun.  That’s the same sentiment I have about comics, but if anything, the world of comics has even fewer works that operate on a purely fun level.  That’s why titles like Five Weapons are kind of a precious commodity in this market.  Sometimes, it’s nice to read something that embraces silliness with only a wink of irony.
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Filed under: Image Comics, Reviews, Shadowline | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Morning Glories #25 – Review

Posted on March 30, 2013 by dfstell

MORNING GLORIES #25By: Nick Spencer (writer), Joe Eisma (art), Alex Sollazzo (colors), Johnny Lowe (letters)

The Story: Season One of Morning Glories comes to an end.  Will secrets be revealed OR will the plot keep twisting?

Review: Morning Glories is a challenging series.  This issue represents the end of “Season One” and I can’t say that events are much clearer than when we started with issue #1 a few years ago.  We still don’t really know who these kids are and what the Morning Glories Academy represents.  If that lack of revelation is going to be a problem for you, well–you probably shouldn’t read MG because it’s not a revelatory type of series.  Or it isn’t that type of series YET.  This series really reminds me of 100 Bullets in terms of its pacing and that great series wasn’t even getting warmed up at issue #25.

In some ways, you have to admire the creators.  I know they’ve heard the hissing that “we need to know what is going on” and to “get on with it”, but they are just plugging away with their story at their pace.  This is the type of comic book that we could only get from a wholly creator-owned affair.  Imagine if Spencer and Eisma tried this pace of storytelling in a Marvel or DC book?  How long would the editors have allowed it to continue?  Five issues?  MG would have been rebooted several times since with multiple new #1s, crossed over with EVENTS and featured guest appearances by Deadpool.  So, let’s appreciate the creative commitment to telling a story the way the creators want it to be.  I wouldn’t want all of comics to be paced like MG, but there is certainly a place for a few books like this.
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Filed under: Image Comics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

East of West #1 – Review

Posted on March 29, 2013 by dfstell

EAST OF WEST #1

By: Jonathan Hickman (writer), Nick Dragotta (art), Frank Martin (colors), Rus Wooton (letters)

The Story: A future American is visited by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Review (with slight SPOILERS): I can’t say that I fully grasped East of West #1, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t love it.  One thing I enjoy about Jonathan Hickman’s storytelling is his interest in “What If?” settings.  Pax Romana was about what could happen if the modern day Catholic church was able to send an army back in time to smooth out dark ages and “fix” events that caused the Catholic church to lose influence.  The Manhattan Projects is about what could have happened if the super-scientists of the early 20th century banded together.  Transhuman was kinda a “what if” with science run amoke.  Hickman is just really good at coming up with scenarios that are funhouse-mirror versions of our own world.
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Filed under: Image Comics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 8 Comments »

Elephantmen #47 – Review

Posted on March 27, 2013 by dfstell

ELEPHANTMEN #47

By: Richard Starkings (writer & letterer), Axel Medellin (art)

The Story: Hip, Ebony & Trench investigate a Chinese moonbase.

Quick review (with SPOILERS): This was probably the strongest issue of Elephantmen in the last year or so.  I DO love this series, but it sometimes suffers from being decompressed and not being a monthly book.  As such, you’re always at risk for losing the story.
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Filed under: Image Comics | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Five Ghosts: The Haunting of Fabian Gray #1 – Review

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Minhquan Nguyen

FIVE GHOSTS: THE HAUNTING OF FABIAN GRAY #1

By: Frank J. Barbiere (story), Chris Mooneyham (art), S.M. Vidaurri (colors)

The Story: Who wins—samurai or Nazi?  As if you had to ask…

The Review: Ever since I started covering Joe Kubert Presents, I’ve been reflecting on the lack of good, old-fashioned adventure tales on the stands.  If you have an appetite for either superhero material or concept series of varying degrees of originality and grimness, then you can easily have your fill.  What I’m really hungry for is some simple excitement—globe-trotting mysteries, mortal heroes doing extraordinary feats, thrills without fraught drama or abstract thinking.

The moment I read the premise to Five Ghosts, I knew I’d found something to satisfy my craving.  And right from the opening sequence, this debut issue didn’t let me down.  You have the eponymous Fabian singlehandedly breaking into an Austrian castle full of Nazi guards to steal the “Augusta family jewels”—with the help of “five literary ghosts”: the wizard, the archer, the detective, the samurai, and the vampire.  The whole thing feels like a childhood fantasy come alive, the kind where you imagined yourself imbued with all the talents of your favorite heroes.
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Filed under: Image Comics, Reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Saga #11 – Review

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Minhquan Nguyen

SAGA #11

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: Will this tree hold together long enough to escape a mini black hole?

The Review: I don’t think there will ever be an outright bad issue of Saga; the caliber of both the writer and artist is just too strong for that.  But I think within the title’s spectrum of excellence, the issues that fall within the lower range will be those that, once you get past the entertainment value of the words themselves, don’t quite advance the plot very much or short-change a part of the story that can use more development.

That said, we always have to keep in mind that Vaughan prefers the piecemeal method of storytelling on this series.  There’ll be times when he’ll hold back or cut short what seems to you the natural progression of a scene so he can deliver it later, at a more opportune time.  Such is the way he’s dealing with these flashbacks of Alana and Marko’s early relationship days.  We basically went from the painful initial meeting directly to the first kiss, without ever seeing the fairly important steps between.  While I’m sure Vaughan has a clear timeline for when he wants us to see those scenes, it can be a little annoying to experience them out of order like that.
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Filed under: Image Comics, Reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Mind the Gap #8 – Review

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Minhquan Nguyen

MIND THE GAP #8

By: Jim McCann (story), Rodin Esquejo (art), Arif Prianto (colors)

The Story: It’s going to take some marriage counselor to tackle Mr. and Mrs. Peterssen’s issues.

The Review: Image is producing a lot of very fine series these days, and of course Saga’s getting a lot of attention from both the critics and masses, but I have to admit that of all the Image titles, Mind the Gap may be my favorite.  It’s hard to explain why.  Unlike Saga or The Walking Dead, you can’t really pick out an obvious appeal with this series (except for consistently lush, gorgeous art from Esquejo).  Its virtues, like its story, are esoteric in nature.

Reading through this issue, though, I think it’s that very conceptual quality that keeps me attached to the story.  I just have to admire the craft McCann puts into it.  When you really examine Mind the Gap, it functions not unlike a Tom Stoppard play,* where everything takes place on one set, with all the characters coming in and out in various combinations at precision-timed cues to keep the energy of the scene moving even if the setting does not.
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Filed under: Image Comics, Reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

The Walking Dead #108 – Review

Posted on March 15, 2013 by dfstell

THE WALKING DEAD #108

By: Robert Kirkman (writer), Charlie Adlard (artist), Cliff Rathburn (gray tones), Rus Wooton (letters)

The Story: Rick goes to meet the leader of another enclave of people.

The Review (SPOILER ALERT): 1. A bigger view of the world. - Even most fans of TWD have wanted a bigger worldview of the landscape that the zombies and survivors have created.  While Kirkman isn’t showing us other parts of the world, we ARE getting the more wide-angle view of the world with all these enclaves around Washington, DC.  Counting Ezekiel’s “Kingdom,” that makes FOUR little human settlements (with Arlington, Hilltop and Negan-ville being the others) and you get the sense that there could be more communities in the vicinity.  Suddenly we have room in the series for “extra” characters.  That’s a very different thing for a series that made its bones as a story where all the characters could sleep inside Dale’s RV.

It also allows us to draw some conclusions about the rest of the world.  Wouldn’t it make sense that other large cities would have similar networks of survivors?  So, we’re talking about a world that still has a decent number of people remaining.  Why has nobody gotten a ham radio running yet?  And why do the zombies still have clothes?

2. Ezekiel is just strange. - What a weird set-up Ezekiel has!  I mean, he calls himself “King,” he holds court on an old theatre stage, he requires his milita scouts to speak like old fashioned knights and he has a pet tiger.  Ezekiel seems like a pretty placid dude, but I’m not sure that anyone can rise to a leadership position in TWD without having a hard edge about them.  Tigers eat ~50 pounds of meat per day according to wiki.answers.com.  What is he feeding that thing?  Does he let it loose to hunt?  Does he feed small children to it?

While I think Ezekiel is interesting, I find him a little implausible.  I tend to think that a TWD-like scenario where every community has the same basic engineering constraints in terms of keeping zombies out, worrying about bandits, feeding the populace, etc… would tend to produce very similar types of communities and leaders. The communities that tried weird things would quickly fail and all development would bottleneck towards what works.

3. Revolution? - It sounds like things could go badly for Negan.  It’s funny how different Negan looked in this issue.  He’s still kinda captivating when he’s on the page, but this time he looked like the bully that doesn’t know his own days are numbered.  I mean, he’s playing ping-pong with people who let him win and having sex with other men’s wives as everyone stares daggers at him.  Meanwhile all the little people are discussing how to team-up and take him down.  Negan is going to get murdered.  

I really like Negan as a character, and part of that is because he seems pretty realistic to me.  I think you’d get a LOT of Negans in the zombie apocalypse, but that they’d have a pretty short lifespan once people realized they could gang-up on the bully.  Is Negan going to be something more?  Will he fall only for Rick to realize that Ezekiel isn’t as friendly as he seemed?  Will Negan have a secret plan up his sleeve?  I’m curious to see how it all turns out, but also a little nervous because I’m starting to think about the real-life likelihood of these events; which is always dangerous for enjoyment of a story.
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Filed under: Image Comics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments »

Lost Vegas #1 – Review

Posted on March 10, 2013 by dfstell

LOST VEGAS #1

By: Jim McCann (writer), Janet Lee (art), Chris Sotomayor (colors), Dave Lanphear (letters)

The Story: A space-faring gambler gets conscripted to work at a Casino/Slave Ship.

Review: This issue was a total miss for me.  Your mileage may vary, but I didn’t enjoy this on any level.  My policy with negative reviews of creator-owned projects is to (i) draft a review, (ii) wait a day and (iii) if I still don’t like it, to be precise and specific about what I didn’t enjoy.  Criticism of creator-owned comics is no time to show the world how funny and witty the reviewer is.

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Filed under: Image Comics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Witch Doctor: Malpractice #4 – Review

Posted on March 5, 2013 by dfstell

WITCH DOCTOR: MALPRACTICE #4

By: Brandon Seifert (writer), Lukas Ketner (art), Andy Troy (colors)

The Story: With Penny out of action and Dr. Morrow fatally ill, it’s up to “everyman” Eric Gast to save the day.

Quick review: The Witch Doctor series has climbed to a pretty high point in my monthly reading stack.  It’s one of those rare comics that I just KNOW is going to be good before I open it up.  The story will always be clever and funny and the art will always be sumptuous.  As such, it’s one of the few comics that I just sink into and read without a lot of note-taking about the direction of the plot, the plausibility of characters’ actions or flaws in the art.  That simplicity doesn’t mean it’s “the best” comic out there; there are a lot of comics I enjoy like The Unwritten or The Walking Dead or Punk Rock Jesus that cover some challenging material and make you “work for it”.  Witch Doctor is more like Saga: Just sit back and enjoy the ride.
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Filed under: Image Comics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Saga #10 – Review

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Minhquan Nguyen

SAGA #10

By: Brian K. Vaughan (story), Fiona Staples (art)

The Story: Most mothers only joke that it feels like they’re giving birth to a little planet.

The Review: In Saga #8, we got a deeper glimpse into A Night Time Smoke, a book which figures heavily in Alana’s history as a soldier and whose contents interested Prince Robot too much to just be a trashy romance.  Clearly, there’s more to the book than a steamy attraction between a flesh-and-blood girl and a rock monster, but what that is exactly is more of a mystery, as well as the exact impact it had on our heroes’ lives.

Here, we finally learn more about the exact nature of A Night Time Smoke.  Despite the rather mundane language Alana reads from the book, the words seem to stun Marko.  Amazingly, he sees “[i]t’s not a love story at all, is it?  It’s about us, about the war between Landfall and Wreath.”  You should read the excerpt of the book yourself, but as an English major, even I feel there’s some extreme extrapolation going on for Marko to make that conclusion.
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Filed under: Image Comics, Reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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