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5 (21) 4 (33) 3 (35) 2 (9) 1 (3) 3.6 starsAverage score of 101 user reviews
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Happy Winter's Day, everyone! 0
Originally published at The Hub City ReviewWith regards to form, very little separate the comic book or the graphic novel from its close cousin, the children’s book. The former is told entirely through pictures, with writing superimposed over the illustrations themselves, whether in the form of dialogue balloons, thought bubbles, or narration boxes. The later alternates between writing and illustrations, with the written sections obeying all the rules regularly applied to prose. Far more t...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. And he’s bad-ass!” 0
Originally published at The Hub City ReviewThe most wonderful time of the year is finally upon us. The fully decorated Christmas tree in my living room, up since the day after Halloween, will certainly attest to such. So will this week’s publication of Klaus #1, Grant Morrison’s gritty reboot of the “jolly old elf,” albeit neither all that jolly or old in his telling. It’s part of a growing trend of reinfusing the historically darker elements back into the yuletide ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
"I never asked for this." 0
Originally published at The Hub City ReviewThe idea of a Cyborg solo-series was sound: a Detroit-based hero with cybernetic enhancements who “never asked for this.” Vic Stone could have been DC’s very own Adam Jensen, and his book could have been just as serious an exploration of the transhumanist themes implicit to the character in comics as Human Revolution was in video games. However, after an incredibly strong debut issue, Cyborg has been in swift decline, with issue #4 bei...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Joe Chill in Hell... Again 0
Originally published on The Hub City ReviewOften when the works of a great writer become inaccessible to later generations, whether due to differences in language or changes in culture, subsequent writers engage in a process that is a strange admixture of adaptation, appropriation, inspiration, and translation. Such is extremely common among the works of Shakespeare. The Taming of the Shrew was reimagined for American audiences as 10 Things I Hate About You. West Side Story had earlier done the ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
More powerful than a locomotive? More like an absolute train wreck 0
Originally published on Hub City ReviewBeginning with the 1960’s Batman series starring Adam West, live action adaptations of super-heroics on television has had a penchant towards camp. Only in the past decade have recent entries into the genre taken significant steps to sanitize such shows of their soapier elements. Arrow, The Flash, and season one of Heroes all favored mythology over melodrama. Both the deliberate, self-aware hamminess of Batman and the sincere fan-service of the CW sup...
2 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
Revenge of the Jedi 0
Even with Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens coming out on a weekly basis, the promotional blitz leading up to the film’s December release has been so frenzied that this outstanding miniseries has hardly had the chance to grab the Star Wars spotlight for itself. The first issue released mere days after Force Friday, and the conversation was still centered squarely on what new merchandise fans had looted from the understocked shelves of Targets and toy stores mere minutes after midnigh...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
The new New Gods 1
Justice League #45 is an issue that should have been delayed. Whereas Jason Fabok, currently the series’ main artist, has drawn every issue in The Darksied War so far, and according to solicitations will finish the remainder of the arc from #47 onward, this issue and the next mark a drastic artist shift, one which is incongruent with the rest of the series.None of which is to say the art is bad, per se. But despite Justice League being a monthly series and not an event, The Darkseid War is...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Gods old and new 0
Best known for his portrait of Marylin Monroe and canvases of Campbell soup cans, Andy Warhol was one of the pioneers to infuse commercial art into high, appropriating it from popular culture and preserving a place for such in the marble mausoleums of fine art galleries. Perhaps it is only appropriate, then, that Warhol should feature so prominently in Miracleman, one of the pioneering enterprises on the part of Moore and later Gaiman to infuse high art into commercial comic books. Within the st...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
All in the valley of Death rode the three starfighters 0
Apart from Star Wars and Indiana Jones, my favorite Harrison Ford movie is probably Air Force One, wherein the President of the United States single-handedly defeats a cell of Russian terrorists who had taken the plane hostage. In my favorite scene of the criminally underrated White House Down (which asks the age old question: what if Die Hard were set in the White House?), President Jamie Fox wields a rocket launcher from the back of a Humvee, blowing up a vehicle full of terrorists as they cha...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
The New Adventures of (the old) Superman 4
Superman: Lois and Clark #1 is a strange patchwork of references and homages to prior Superman series. This in itself is not problematic; in an overly reductionist way, even Morrison’s All-Star Superman could be described as vignettes heavily inspired by Silver-Age stories and his own previous work on the character. With regards to Lois and Clark, however, such a description is not overly reductionist, but simply accurate. The connective thread which binds its uneven patchwork is itself to...
3 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
In a week with four Star Wars comics on shelves, Shattered Empire is easily the best! 0
I have a confession to make: I’m not particularly excited about The Force Awakens. I’ll be seeing the film opening night, of course, waiting hours in line if need be for center row seats to the first IMAX 3D showing available. But as I’m waiting in line, it will be with no small measure of apprehension and a growing sense over the past many months that this film isn’t being made for me.You know what I am excited about? Feverishly rabid in my anticipation of, in fact? Each...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
More steps into a larger universe 0
Beyond any skill as a director, perhaps George Lucas’ greatest contribution to universe he created in Star Wars was as a translator, his particular modus operandi being to take pre-existing elements and adopt them into the genre of space opera. The whole of the of A New Hope may be seen as Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress… in space. Likewise, its main cast may be seen as various archetypes described by Joseph Campbell… in space. Star Wars may not have been the first...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
An issue that's merely "okeeday" 1
The character of Han Solo is no stranger to retroactive continuity. The most famous alteration in the history of film existed solely for the purpose of softening his character. Even given such, the revelation at the end of issue #6 that Han was (possibly) once been married was far more radical a change than having Greedo shot first.This in itself was not an unworkable idea. Harrison Ford’s characters are no strangers to sordid romances from the past suddenly coming back into his life (cf. ...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Logan may be the best at what he does, but this series is not compared to the original. 1
When the Secret Wars tie-ins were first announced, the most common expectation was that the various sequels would be fairly close continuations of the themes and plots from the original stories. Beginning with the final page of issue one and becoming increasingly more evident throughout the following installments, Brian Michael Bendis and Andrea Sorrentino’s Old Man Logan is a radical departure from Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s seminal Wolverine story.McNiven’s style was was...
3 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
As the characters become gods, the series itself receives a resurrection 3
The Darkseid War, continued in this week's Justice League #44, is a beautiful contradiction. On the one hand, it is a seamless continuation of the series to date. Helmed by auteur Geoff Johns in collaboration with some of the industry's top artistic talent, it has proven to be one of the most consistent series with regards to its quality of writing and art since the debut of the New 52 four years ago, behind only Snyder and Capullo's Batman in such respects. Furthermore, it is clear that this wa...
3 out of 4 found this review helpful. -
Paradise Lost 0
The final issue of Alan Moore’s run on Miracleman begins with a page long wall of text, narration from the mind of Miracleman without accompanying illustration. What would normally prove a poor use of the visual medium becomes through Moore’s skillful prose one of the most exciting pages in the series. He writes:“I dream teenagers, the boys with their letter sweatshirts, girls with single brushstroke brows, in endless ice cream parlours, never growing old or running out of flav...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Paradise Lost 0
The final issue of Alan Moore’s run on Miracleman begins with a page long wall of text, narration from the mind of Miracleman without accompanying illustration. What would normally prove a poor use of the visual medium becomes through Moore’s skillful prose one of the most exciting pages in the series. He writes:“I dream teenagers, the boys with their letter sweatshirts, girls with single brushstroke brows, in endless ice cream parlours, never growing old or running out of flav...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
The Day After in a Galaxy Far, Far Away... 0
Anticipation for the upcoming seventh episode in the Star Wars saga, The Force Awakens, is quickly becoming a ubiquitous part of daily life in the few short months leading up to the film’s theatrical release. It’s been mere days since Force Friday, wherein a deluge of tie-in merchandise flooded store shelves, with eager collectors lining up before midnight to snag Lego sets, Black Series figures, plastic lightsabers, and remote controlled droids. I’ve passed on all of the toys ...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Praying for a Miracle 0
I recall much ado being made in early 2012 regarding the impending release of Before Watchman, which would for the first time see other writers pen tales in the same universe and continuity as Alan Moore’s opus magnum. One wonders if similar sentiments, albeit without decades of nostalgia and the internet echo chamber to magnify them, ran through the comics community of early 1990 as the Miracleman torched was passed from Alan Moore to Neil Gaiman.Similarly to how Watchman was a repurposin...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Of God and gods 0
Last week in Guardians of Knowhere, Angela and Gamora debated the divinity of Doom. The topic of godhood and who has it is being explored at large out across Secret Wars and its tie-ins. Similarly, a more focused exploration of the same issue is playing out over on the DC side of things in the pages of Bryan Hitch’s Justice League of America through the character of Rao. Neither title is either publisher’s first exploration of the concept of deity, though neither shows much improveme...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A Review of The Darkseid War so far 1
There is an ongoing debate in games criticism regarding whether games should continue to become more cinematic (that is to say, to emulate the conventions of film in presenting their narratives, such as through cut-scenes and story-structure) or more ludic (focusing on the elements unique to the games medium, such as environmental storytelling and strong player-protagonist identification). Comics as a medium likewise have their own unique set of strengths, and both for better and worse Geoff Joh...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful.
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