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COMICS COMICS COMICS

As you can tell by the last post, I just wanted to get back to the comics again. I will finish my network scorecards as soon as possible, and I have a lot to post on coming up. But for now, I wanted to talk about some recent comics.

Golden Plates #1, AAA POP COMICS: This is an interesting project from several standpoints. One, why hasn’t this ever been done before? As soon as I heard about the idea of a strait adaptation of the book of Mormon which is lengthy and will take a few years to produce, by a real artist, but could then be re released in different formats for years seems like such a great idea, that one wonders why no one has tried this with the old or new Testament. Second, I’ve never been aware of Allred’s religious affiliation, and I can’t help but wonder what’s going on there – what’s the motivation behind him doing the project. Third (corollary to #2) is this Allred’s project from now till when he finishes, or will he do anything else in the meanwhile. Lastly, the text on the inner front and back covers is uncredited, and sounds like something that would have been written by the writer/artist as an explanation or mission statement, but, again, it makes me wonder what made the project happen? That said, the art’s great, including the color art, and the adaptation reads good in a Classics Illustrated kind of way, but I lent this to a Mormon friend, and I’ll let you know what he says about the accuracy of it when he gets back to me.

BPRD The Dead #1 (Of 5): I can’t say anything you haven’t already heard. I like the feel of these Guy Davis drawn issues, and I hardly noticed it when Mignola dropped out of doing the full script, but these minis are more tightly continuitied end to end then most of Marvel’s continuing series. This should definitely be one long series if they intend to carry on this main meta-storyline.

Challengers Of The Unknown #6 (Of 6): Everyone has analyzed this to death, so let me take a brief, more superficial crack at it. I like Chaykin, and I liked American Flagg a whole lot, but coherence has never been his strong suit. The last two issues salvaged this series which, before then, was well drawn and designed, but hopelessly indistinct and muddy. I also read Twilight recently (the little remembered 3 volume prestige book from the early(?) 90’s that Chaykin wrote and Jose Garcia-Lopez drew the living crap out of), and it is obvious to me that Chaykin is a page design genius, has a nice art style, and tackles wild ideas, but is just not a great storyteller. In Twilight, Garcia-Lopez’s page compositions are instantly understandable (while actually incorporating Chaykin’s stylistic tics such as talking TV heads), which helps tame the scattershot nature of the story. As I said, the last two issues of the Challengers series are the most lucid, and thus recovers somewhat from the truly disjointed early issues.

Detective Comics #800: First story – pure frigging crap. War Games has been awful and has ruined every Bat-book it hat touched. Even Brubaker’s Catwoman was completely unreadable. I’m glad it’s over, but the scars may last. The last third of the issue, which is the first Lapham story, is so much atmospheric fluff, and doesn’t bode well, but hopefully this story was done just to set the tone of Lapham’s Gotham, and this is not what we will see every issue.

Intimates #1: I liked this, but it required a lot of concentration for a story that wasn’t exactly highbrow literature. Casey is hit and miss with me, and this looks like I will probably like it well enough, and the text crawl used as pop-up video exposition is a nice idea. We’ll see.

Question #1 (Of 6): Good art can’t save the lack of any point.

Astonishing X-Men #6: This series is really cooking now after a sluggish start. This feels like the real X-Men somehow.
I want to comment on Avengers #503 (#88), Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes #1 (Of 8), and Avengers Finale #1, but I’m out of time… tune in next week for my reaction!

posted by Todd C. Murry @ 5:32 PM