A series that had some nice ideas and art ends poorly.
To have the details SPOILED for you read on…
Tag Archives: Image Comics
Review: Sex Criminals #1
Matt Fraction’s new indie sex-comedy gets off to a surprisingly mournful start in this sharp new comic from Image.
Review: Lazarus #1
Greg Rucka, Michael Lark, and Santi Arcas craft an awfully compelling debut issue about a reluctant super-soldier in a dystopian future.
SPOILERS
Review – Prophet, Vol. 1: Remission
Brandon Graham has turned Prophet into something resembling a lost, classic sci-fi comic from the 70s. Joined by a team of talented indie artists, Graham has crafted a legitimately must-read new book.
Review: Creator Owned Heroes
I have never really loved, or even hated, anything produced by Gray or Palmiotti and 30 Days of Night, my sole venture into Niles’ work, was underwhelming to say the least. So I bought this book solely on the strength of its concept. An anthology equally featuring serialized creator-owned stories and comics-magazine-style content, e.g. interviews, pictures, etc. Although, as many have commented, the format isn’t exactly novel, the creator-owned hook is what really has caught people’s attentions. As with virtually every form of entertainment, it’s incredibly pervasive for comic book fans to elide a certain key term: industry. The comic-book industry, by all accounts, doesn’t seem to possess the most progressive model regarding labour issues. Like most fans, it’s something I know in the back-of-my-head yet my desire to see Batman hook Superman in the face with a kyprtonite mecha suit ensures that those thoughts stay exactly there – in the background. However, I do want to see comics – as a medium, as a format, as an industry – grow, expand, mutate. In the last three decades it certainly has. The advent of the graphic novel, literary acceptance, the looming spectre of the digital revolution. None-the-less, for those unlucky enough not to be one of the handful of superstar writers, they don’t seem (and this from an outsider’s perspective) to reward their creators commensurate with the blood, sweat and tears that go into production. Enter creator-owned heroes. With this book, these guys are really trying to carve out a new space free from corporate exploitation but also editorial interference. The numbers will tell if this is a successful venture financially, but creatively, it mostly delivers.
Review: Saga #1
“It was a time of war. Isn’t it always?”
I’m going to say this up front: Saga, Image’s new ongoing from Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man) and artist Fiona Staples, is my first new must-read book of 2012. Combining gorgeous creature design and playful worldbuilding with cynical, adult storytelling, Vaughan and Staples have crafted a book that is genuinely unlike anything else on the shelves right now. Funny, bloody, dramatic and, at times, ridiculous, Saga #1 does everything an opening issue needs to do with economy and style.
Review: Fatale #1
Fatale #1
Look, we like Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips here at read/RANT. Throw in Dave Stewart, perhaps my favorite colorist currently working, and you’ve got yourselves a winner – as evinced by naming Criminal: The Last of the Innocent the best graphic novel of 2011. So you can imagine how excited I was to see the team reunite so soon after the most recent chapter of Criminal concluded. I went in to Fatale pretty much completely blind, having missed the preview that came out during my fairly relaxed holiday season. And while it wasn’t at all what I was expecting, Brubaker and Phillips have come up with a satisfying blend of crime, pulp, and straight-up horror.
Review: The Red Wing #1 (of 4)
Two years ago, I’d never even heard of Jonathan Hickman, but now he’s unavoidable, creating and contributing to some of my favorite Marvel and Image titles. He’s an immensely talented creator, and with books like The Nightly News and Secret Warriors, he’s joined the short list of creators whose work I’ll check out based almost exclusively on his name. The most recent such title? The Red Wing, a sci-fi time-travel war story with a somewhat retro aesthetic about a man lost in time and a son who set out to find him. Hickman provides a lot of hooks but little idea of what shape the story to come will take.
Top 5 Best Comics of May 2011
Review: Nonplayer #1
Top 5 Best Comics of March 2011
Top 5 Best Comics of January 2011
Top 5 Best Comics of October 2010
Top 5 Best Comics of September 2010
The Unread Canon #12: The Walking Dead: This Sorrowful Life
As a beginning note, this may be my last installment on The Walking Dead, at least for now. While I do have “The Calm Before” and “Made to Suffer” (they’re the last volumes of my collection) and I am enjoying the series, it doesn’t lend itself terribly well to this sort of critique, or at least it doesn’t the way I’ve been doing it. The flaws remain the same: the forced, stilted dialogue in particular is something I doubt Kirkman is going to get over after 36 issues, nor his tendency to overexplain character’s motives. Meanwhile, the story has slowed down considerably and looks to be going in a slightly more traditional path. I’ll make my final decision in the next two weeks, after reading “The Calm Before”, but rest assured – should The Walking Dead be removed from the roster, it won’t be forgotten. I fully intend to keep reading, and may jump in should I notice a particularly large shift in tone, some interesting new themes, or anything along those lines, I might jump in with an Unread Canon Interlude sometime. And in the meanwhile, I’ll be taking some suggestions for what to follow next: right now, front runners include Ultimate Spider-Man and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Have any thoughts on the subject? Chime in in the comments.
Top 5 Best Comics of May 2010
So incredibly late on these, but I will catch up soon. Never fear! I read 27 comics in May, and these were the best.
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One Shot 3: Astro City #1/2
Twenty-two pages fills up fast. There’s no denying that. Action sequences often eat up huge chunks of a book, and you can only fit so much dialogue on the page before it becomes cluttered, not to mention how much of the probably excellent art you’ll be covering up by doing so. So, understandably, most writers will have their stories run in arcs, often using well over 100 pages to let it unfold. It’s not hard to see why, but the tendency to keep expanding the story is part of what makes it so rewarding when you come across a single issue that manages to not only exemplify what it is you so love about that particular book, or even comics in general, but that manages to do so with an impressive economy of storytelling. One Shot is meant to take a close look at why those issues work as well as they do, the way they do.
The Unread Canon #9: The Walking Dead: The Best Defense
“The Best Defense” is the fifth volume of The Walking Dead, and it’s pretty different from what’s come before. Previously, each volume was a solid stand-alone story. Yes, each one built off of everything that came before, and did so VERY, very well… but they were nonetheless essentially standalone stories. You could conceivably read, enjoy and understand “Safety Behind Bars” without having read “Days Gone Bye” or continuing on to “The Heart’s Desire”, and while you’d miss out on some interesting and important character development, I think you’d find each story enjoyable in its own right. But while “The Best Defense” is an engaging, enjoyable read, it’s also almost purely wrap-up from the previous arc and set-up for the next one.
Review: Free Comic Book Day 2010
Well, I could pretty much copy my intro from last year’s FCBD coverage. I did pretty much the same thing. I didn’t go to the comic book store, instead spending my time with boxing, beer, and babes. I got my free comics early, so I can still review these things.
The Unread Canon #6: The Walking Dead: The Heart’s Desire
Everyone has a set of entertainment by which they’ll swear, the ones they’ll eventually convince every friend to watch/listen to/read. Sometimes, those suggestions are echoed time and again all over the place, and even the most jaded, world-weary or dirt-poor fan of the medium has to get curious about just what all that fuss is for. That’s why I’ve started The Unread Canon, my attempt to experience a great deal more of comics than I already have and take a look at the books that, over the past few years (or, in some cases, decades) have achieved passionate, vocal critical and fan supporters that have nevertheless managed to slip by me and to try and look at how they grew, how they aged, why they work, or why they might not work so well anymore.
read/RANT! 