Floppytown Reviews

Should have a bunch of reviews up at FLOPPYTOWN this week, including Avengers Prime #3 (already up),Captain America #610, Skull Kickers #0 & Action Comics #893.  Swing by and check them out.

Floppytown: Steve Rogers Super Soldier #3

Inspired by The Singles Jukebox, Matt Springer has wrangled a bunch of people into contributing brief reviews on single issues of comics each week at a new site called Floppytown.  The first post is up today, which is a review of Steve Rogers: Super Soldier #3 and I have a contribution. 

This looks to be a fun project, so swing on by and please contribute as the more will be the merrier. 

It Came From....The Vending Machine...AGAIN

After last week's exposure to the horrors of Mad Basil's Bavarian Bakery's "treats", I decided to play it safe and stick with something out Milton S. Hershey's proud company, the Hershey's Cookies 'n' Creme bar.

The bar itself seems to be a white chocolate delivery mechanism for bits of chip-shaped chocolate cookie that are not wholly unlike Oreo wafers. The "cookies" portion provide 90% of the taste, which is quite good, being encased in the viscous, not-quite-solid white chocolate keeps the cookie bits from being too dry. However, it is the white chocolate membrane that provides the biggest minus of the bar, the texture. The cookies are crunchy, but the chocolate is largely tasteless and gel-like, making if feel like you're eating delicious cookies encased in snot. If you can get over that reaction, it is not an unpleasant snack, but really, you should seek psychological help if that is the case.

Comics!

After skipping three weeks, went to the store on Friday and picked up a whole gang of comics that had been languishing in my box, let's talk about them.

Dracula: The Company of Monsters #1

I really love Kurt Busiek's writing and since Marvel's since decided that their cool, old-school Dracula wasn't cool enough and turned him into the refugee from Middle Earth by way of Twilight, I felt like checking out Boom!'s attempt to update him for the current age.

While this issue certainly isn't bad, it's esentially a 22 page info-dump setting up the series. It feels more like a "story-before-the-story" zero issue than the proper start to the book. Our main character is Evan, a middle-managment schlub who is stuck doing research on Vlad The Impaler for his boss and uncle Conrad. The issue goes onto give the history of Vlad as he makes a deal with the devil for immortality and Evan and Conrad fly to a secret dig site in Greece. That's really it, not bad, the art is certainly nice. Scott Godlewski's work elicits a John Romita Jr. vibe that serves the story well. Again, there's nothing bad here, just nithing that compels me to stick with it.

Thor: The Mighty Avenger #3

Can't really explain how much I love this comic. Updating Thor's origin to the present (and most likely bringing it more in line with the up-coming movie) this book has really been doing everything right. After the first two issues briskly introduced out main characters, the third issue begins our main storyline as Thor tries to remember why he's been exiled on Earth. This issue brings Hank Pym & the Wasp to Oklahoma to investigate the death of one of Hank's mentors (who was killed in the previous issue by My. Hyde). This brings them into conflict with Thor, who's having visions brought on by Loki, making him believe he's besieged by Frost Giants, forcing him to slug it out with Giant Man.

Roger Landridge, who does great work on Boom!'s Muppet comics, really comes through here. His characterizations of both Pym and the Wasp are spot on, and makes the usual "two heroes slog it out due to a misunderstanding" plot and does something interesting with it. Both advancing the main storyline and offering up a solid. single-issue story. Chris Samnee again provides excellent visuals and Matt Wilson's coloring is just luscious. Oh yeah, and did I mention that this is an all-ages title? This proves that all-ages, doesn't mean, "for kids only".

Action Comics #892

I've been seeing a lot of people on the internet dismissing this book simply because it's Action Comics and Superman isn't in it, and those people are really missing out. Paul Cornell has been a favorite of mine since his run on Captain Britain & MI-13 over at Marvel, here he's telling the story of Lex Luthor, addicted to the power granted him by the Orange Lantern ring during Blackest Night, he's scouring the Earth for traces of other power rings, determined to have their power for his own.

This issue, Luthor travels to the arctic to search out a plume of black-power-ring energy that has developed, bringing Deathstroke with him as protection. Unfortunately, the energy begins taking over his team, leaving him to out-fight it and out-think it.

This book is turning out to be rather fun. Luthor is an interesting main character, in that he's really the villain of the title, but Cornell does bring through his charisma that you can't help but root for the jerk, at least a little bit. As usual, Pete Woods provides some great art, and while I think he's probably the best Superman artist working today, I don't have a problem with the big blue boyscout sitting this one out for now.

Maybe some more later.  Going to try to dole this out in some smaller chunks.

Review: Batman Odyssey #1

Neal Adams has returned to Batman with Batman: Odyssey, the first of two mini-series touching on the high-points of his career. While the art is certainly very nice, the story itself is lacking.

Batman starts the story, relating to Robin (Dick Grayson, though he’s drawn wearing Tim Drake’s costume) one of the earliest adventures of his career, back when he packed guns as part of his repertoire. The hook of the story is to explain to Robin why they don’t carry guns, though the phrase “Batman doesn’t kill” would seem to be good enough explanation for me. From there, Man-Bat wanders into the Batcave with some important information. Bats yells at him for using the Man-Bat serum instead of simply coming as his human self, stopping him from relaying some information that he thinks Batman needs to know. From there, Batman shows off his new Batmobile to Robin while driving/flying/boating to stop the Riddler who is, apparently, committing two simultaneous crimes.

This book is a mess, the Batman featured here seems to hew closest to Frank Miller’s “G--damn Batman” from his All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder’, berating Robin, while lamenting in his internal monologue that he should be more supportive of the boy. While I realize that historically that Batman did sport guns back in the day, I had long thought that had been retconned out, so it was just jarring to see them show up here as a plot point, the same for Dick wearing Tim’s costume. I realize that this was the first issue of a 12 issue story-arc, so it’s natural for it to throw out a lot of plot threads that will be followed up on over the coming issues, but there was a haphazardness to this that felt like it was throwing a ton of stuff at the wall, just to see what will stick. It felt like Adams drew a bunch of pages and then waited a year before worrying about grafting a plot onto it.

As for the art itself, it’s certainly very nice. Though not as smooth as his 70’s work, Adams can still draw the heck out of a Batman comic. The scenes with Batman driving his “new” Batmobile (actually a retooled model of Adams classic coup model from the 70’s) are just gorgeous, if only the dialogue written over them was not so clunky.

I had high hopes for this book, and I still do, but I can’t say that I’m not more than a little disappointed at the opening issue to this series. Hopefully, though Adams stumbled out of the gate, he’ll get back up and charge to the finish.

Batman: Odyssey Part 1
Neal Adams - Story & Art
Michael Golden - Inking (pp. 19 & 20)
Continuity Studios - Color
Rob Leigh - Letters
Mike Marts - Editor

Review @ PopSyndicate: Zatanna #2

This week at Popsyndicate I review Zatanna #2:

After a slow week at the comics shop, I cast around on twitter to see if anyone had a good recommendation for a comic to review this week. The overwhelming favorite was Zatanna #2, and they were right. In current comics, it's very odd for the second issue of a new series to be a perfect jumping on point, but this one is jsut about perfect.

Zatanna, returning home after a rough night with the Justice League, just wants to fall asleep, but a nightmare-imp named Fuseli has other ideas. Since Z's home is impervious to both physical and mystical breaking & entering, Fuseli enters her mind via the nightmares of others, eventually entering into Zatanna's turning them against her. This leads to some frankly, beautiful full-page spreads by Stephanie Roux depicting their battle through the dream-scape.

Head on over here to read the full review.

Review @ PopSyndicate: Hawkeye & Mockingbird #1

In Marvel's most glaring ploy to get my business, they've brought back the main characters of the first superhero comic I started reading in earnest, West Coast Avengers: Hawkeye & Mockingbird.

As Marvel continues their roll-out of The Heroic Age, Hawkeye & Mockingbird picks up where they left off from the New Avengers: Reunion mini-series with the heroes reunited in body, if not in spirit.

Following up on the events of their miniseries, Hawkeye (no longer using the Ronin identity) & Mockingbird are running the underground law-enforcement organization WCA (get the acronym?) and open the issue hunting down a shipment of stolen weapons.  After a car chase, they stop the shipment, and run into two blasts from their past.  First Crossfire, the villain behind the plot that got these two together in the first place, shows up, somehow involved with the weapons.  Also, conveniently, teh granddaughter of the Phantom Rider (who Mockingbird threw off a cliff in the Old West) shows up and is not too happy to see her back in the land of this living. 

Read the rest here.  Also, if you're interested, check out where it started in Avengers: Hawkeye, West Coast Avengers: Assembled & New Avengers: Reunion.

Review @ PopSyndicate: Secret Avengers #1

Almost forgot to mention that I have a review up at PopSyndicate for Secret Avengers #1:
 

As The Heroic Age dawns on the Marvel Universe, Ed Brubaker tries his hand at writing his own Avengers team, bent on cleaning up the messes of the previous administration.

As in our own universe, the problem with suddenly deciding that things are going to be better now is that there are still problems left behind.  Under the care of Norman Osborn, powerful artifacts were sold off to the highest bidder, or just neglected so that any random do-no-gooder could grab them where they were left lying around.  Steve Rogers (the former Captain America), now in charge of the nation’s national security, has assembled a group of agents with the intention of using them to gather these objects.  Unfortunately, these things never are as easy as they seem.  When stealing back the Serpent Crown from Roxxon Oil, they discover that this was not the crown they were looking for, and that it may be related to Roxxon’s efforts to find oil on Mars, efforts that were suddenly abandoned and scrubbed from their records.

Head on over to read the full review.

Reviews @ PopSyndicate: Siege #4

Also this week @ PopSyndicate, I review the rather lackluster conclusion to Siege: 

Marvel's event comic to end all of their event comics (or so they say) comes to a close, not with a bang, but with a whimper. This is especially disappointing following on how strong the three previous issues were. Where did it all go wrong?

Check it out!

Reviews @ PopSyndicate: Sweet Tooth Vol. 1

This week I'm reviewing Sweet Tooth Vol. 1 over at PopSyndicate:

Jeff Lemire's new Vertigo series releases it's first collection this week. A post-apocalyptic adventure featuring a strange, and very sweet protagonist who shows us that even at the end of the world, there's still time for candy.


Gus lives by five rules his Father has imposed upon him:
5. Never have a fire in daytime, cause people can see the smoke.
4. If I ever see anyone other than my Dad, I run and keep running.
3. Always say my prayers so as God don't decide to come make me sick too.
2. Never forget to pray for Momma, cause she was the prettiest lady God ever made.
1. Never, EVER leave the woods.

Head on over here to check out the full review.

Review @ Popsyndicate: Free Comic Book Day Round Up

Today over at Popsyndicate, I offer up a round up of my favorite books from last Saturday's Free Comic Book Day:

Another Free Comic Book Day has come and pass, and by the anecdotal evidence of the giant crowd I experienced at my local comics shop, and the glowing notices I have seen around my circle on twitter, it looks to have been a success. After reading through the pile, the rather large pile I might add, of books I picked up, it also looks to have been one of the best in terms of the actual comics that were produced for the day. Almost all of the larger publishers actually produced new content for their books and most of those were full issues of series. Here's a run-down of some of the highlights of the books I picked up.

Overall, it was a pretty great haul, with some minor disappointments.  Head on over here to read the full run down.

Review @ PopSyndicate: The Brave & The Bold #33

Today at PopSyndicate, my review is up for The Brave & The Bold #33, and I am less than enthused.

J. Michael Straczynski continues his mining of continuity for new stories and comes up with mixed results.

There are fewer books that I've gone into this year that I wanted to like more than this one.  It featured three characters who I enjoy quite a bit (Wonder Woman, Zatanna, & Batgirl) but who rarely seem to socialize, and that was part of the hook for me, them socializing.  As much as I love punching in comic books, I also enjoy seeing heroes living and interacting in situations where they're just having fun and not trying to save the universe.  

Head on over here to read the full review.

Review @ PopSyndicate - Siege #1

Over at PopSyndicate.com I offer my thoughts on Siege #1:

I have not been a fan of Marvel Comics’s recent run of “event” comics.
Starting with Avengers: Disassembled five years ago, Marvel, with Brian Michael
Bendis at the helm has put out a series of ever-escalating events that seemed to
be leading…somewhere, but just never quite got there. It was incredibly
frustrating because they always seemed to be stories that had a beginning, a
middle, and then a “to be continued” that was in no way a satisfying
ending. While I understand that in on-going comic books, there really is
no such thing as “The End” since Spider-Man is still going to come out next
month whatever happens, but each one of these events simply ran into the next,
constantly losing momentum until it seemed the endgame was to simply get people
not to care anymore. So with Siege, we’re faced with what Marvel claims to
be the end. This is where it was all leading and, frankly, it’s pretty
darn good.

Head on over to read it in full.

Also, I am still going to be doing my weekly media journals, but I'm switching the scheduling so they'll publish wednesday mornings. Just works better for me, and this is all about me, after all.

New Reviews @ PopSyndicate

Have two new reviews up at PopSyndicate today:



Adventure Comics #4

While Geoff Johns certainly has enough balls up in the air juggling his current event, Blackest Night, he decided to use this tie-in as a sequel to his last two event titles, Infinite Crisis and Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds.

Punisher #11

If Jason Aaron’s Punisher MAX is the Punisher version of The Wire, Remender’s is the Punisher version of Crank.

PopSyndicate.com Review: R.E.B.E.L.S. #10

My review of the Blackest Night tie-in, R.E.B.E.L.S. #10 is up at popsyndicate.com:

I haven't been keeping up with DC's "cosmic" titles since 52, but since I was picking up a copy of R.E.B.E.L.S. in my quest to get all of the promotional lantern rings DC is distributing with various Blackest Night tie-in titles. My familiarity with this title is limited, though I had read L.E.G.I.O.N. back in the day because I was a fan of the event it had initially spun out of (Invasion!), I was unaware of what took them from being a "legion" to being "rebels". Though that information was not forthcoming, the issue itself was a good introduction to the characters and its overall concepts.

Go here to read the whole thing.

Review @ Popsyndicate - Assault on New Olympus

My second review is up on PopSyndicate for Assault on New Olympus #1:

Picking up from the dangling story threads from Incredible Hercules and The
X-Men Vs. Agents of Atlas mini-series, Assault on New Olympus kicks off the
story line that will be flowing both through the main Hercules story in
Incredible, along with the new, Agents of Atlas back-up story.

Read the full review here.

Book Review: Star Wars: Death Troopers

Let's get this out of the way first off, while I am definitely a Star Wars fan, I haven't read anything from the Expanded Universe since reading the Thrawn Trilogy back in High School/College. I always thought the EU was way too bogged down in "cannon" and when I tried picking up one or two of the novels a few months ago, they were darn near impenetrable. Anyway, seeing as how Halloween was coming up, I was in the market for scary things, movies, books, comics, what have you. So when I heard the elevator pitch of "Star Wars with Zombies", I was sold, or rather, whatever the equivalent term is for getting it at the library.

Star Wars: Death Troopers is exactly what you would expect from a mash up of Star Wars and zombie movies. In fact, it is everything you would expect. Take the following factors: a damaged prison ship/bus/space ship, an abandoned island/town/bigger space ship, and the usual motley group of well-meaning and cruel prisoners/guards, throw in zombies and you have the story right there. Hell, you've seen this movie, both on the big screen and probably six or eight times on TV if you enjoy SyFy Saturday original movies (like me!). But though the story is as familiar as any zombie story is, doesn't mean it's bad. It's a well done piece of work, taking the same old tropes and working in familiar settings and characters (whose identities are supposed to be secret since they are not featured on the book cover and don't appear until half-way through) of the Star Wars Universe.

The setting is, the deep-space, imperial prison barge Purge has come up lame somewhere outside of normal shipping lanes, finding an abandoned Star Destroyer, a party is sent aboard to scavenge for parts that may help them get underway. Unfortunately, the away team brings back more than parts. Suddenly it's up to a corrupt guard, a plucky Imperial doctor, two teenage prisoners and a pair of "rogue smugglers"* to get out alive.

the familiar tropes of the zombie genre are trotted out efficiently and done well. though there are a few twists added into the methodology of the zombies, it's nothing Earth-shattering. You get the horror of what is going on and the carnage is certainly not made more family-friendly since this is a Star Wars book. If made into a movie, this would definitely be "R" rated (though there are no boobs or swears, so you never know). At least suspension of disbelief is made easier since you can assume that George Romero movies have not made it out to the Outer Rim, so you don't have to wonder how stupid the characters are not to know to shoot them in the damn head.

It's a solid book, if you want a Star Wars zombie book, you can't go wrong here, but if you want anything more than simply that, you'll have to hope for a sequel.

*Three guesses as to who they are.

Star Wars: Death Troopers
Written by: Joe Schreiber

Review @ PopSyndicate.com - Beasts of Burden #2

I've started doing comics reviews for popsyndicate.com, for my first one, I chose Beasts of Burden #2.

With the on-coming Halloween holiday, it seems appropriate to discuss Beasts of Burden. Spinning out of Dark Horse’s horror anthologies the book seems to be rather simple, neighborhood dogs (and a cat) dealing with supernatural dangers to themselves and their families.

Go here to read the full review.

Review: Dark Entries

DC Comics's adult imprint Vertigo recently launched a new crime line. I was fortunate enough to pick up the first two titles at the library recently and I barrelled through this one rather quickly. Getting star mystery novelist, Ian Rankin (author of the Rebus series) was quite a coup, the fact that he's writing a story featuring one of the stars of the Vertigo line, John Constantine is sure to be the icing on the cake. The only problem is that this isn't really a "crime" book at all, and only nominally a Constantine book.

Anyway, first things first. It's well done, and not having read any of Rankin's work up till now, it's obvious he has a nice ear for dialogue. The set-up is that John Constantine, paranormal/occult investigator is brought into a reality show, "Britain's Most Haunted". Apparently the contestants, who are locked in a "haunted" house are being, in fact, haunted. But it's not by the producers. Constantine decides that in order to diagnose the problem, he needs to enter the house.

It's around here that we hit the big twist of the story, one that it's really difficult to discuss the book without giving away, so if you want to skip the spoilers, scroll on down to where John's giving you the finger and read on.

It turns out that all of the "contestants" are really dead souls, pulled out of Limbo into a reality show being shown in Hell. The whole point of the show was to bring Constantine on board, the most requested contestant ever. It's here the story goes from being a detective story to straight up horror, and kind of loses the point as being marketed as being a crime story. But, it is quite good, so that's just an issue with the marketing.

My other issue with the book is that Constantine doesn't really feel like himself in this book. Sure, he's aloof ad a bit of a dick at times, but really, only at times. John Constantine is an asshole at all possible times, to everyone. This feels like the normal character on Prozac. I don't want to blame Rankin, maybe he (or editorial) felt they wanted to soften him up for wider consumption. But it just felt a little off for me.

The art by Werther Dell'edera is fine, nothing to write home about, but these books aren't meant to be artist's showcases anyway. HE does a fine job to set the mood and manages some touches that feel a bit like Guy Davis (B.P.R.D., Sandman Mystery Theater) in some of the later scenes.

A quick word on the format, it is damn nice. These small, 6" X 9" hardbacks have a very nice feel in the hand, reminiscent of the feel of Hardcase Crimes little paperbacks. Though they are small, they feel substantial. I may have to keep buy all of these just to see them all lined up on my shelf, much like how I like seeing all of my Hardcase books lined up. Yes, I realize that sounds a little anal/OCD, but the hell with it, one of the biggest charges I get out of collecting these things is seeing them all up on my book shelf. My preciouses....

Anyway, overall this is a good solid book, and I'm interested in reading more coming from the line, which is fortunate, because I have Brian Azzarello's book sitting right here, calling to me. Maybe if I get through this one quick enough I'll have something up about it mid-week, but I make no promises.

Comic Review: KICKBACK

Since David Lloyd, co-creator of V for Vendetta is going to be doing a signing at my local comics shop, I decided I should catch up on his more recent work, so I picked up his 2006 graphic novel, Kickback, and it's a nice little read.

Taking place in the fictional American city of Franklin City, the story begins with the police discovering a massacre in what looks like a drug deal gone wrong. Most interesting is that one of the victims is the city's biggest gangster, and soon the entire city is at war with the police paying the highest price. In Franklin City, every cop is on the take and it is a known fact that no one can prove. Our hero (such as he is) is Detective Joe Canelli, who at least feels bad about being corrupt, but explains it away as just being "the way things are". Along with investigating the case, Canelli has to deal with odd dreams he has of waling through some type of tunnel, dreams that have something to do with a child-hood tragedy.

Overall, this is a very good book, the setting and corrupt cops angle reminds me a lot of Ellis & Templesmith's Fell, another comic about being a cop in a corrupt city. Though this book is not nearly as aggressively weird as that one. It's also evocative of LA Confidential, which is about as high a praise as I can give a crime book.

Lloyd's art is as sharp as ever, he does some great work here, though some of the coloring looks a little muddy. Part of me wonders if that's an effect of the glossy paper that the book is printed on. Though my copy of V for Vendetta was lost in a flood*, I seem to remember it being printed on a much rougher paper that gave the colors a lot more depth. Other than that, my only other issue with the book is that a lot of the street signs and other background writing was added in digitally ad it doesn't seem to mesh well with the art on the page. A minor quibble.

This is a really good book, and Dark Horse has produced a nice hardcover for it, especially at the price of $12.95.

*I will be picking up a new copy at the signing.