Monthly Archives: June 2009

A new comics-curmudgeon diving head first into the thousands of back issues on our shelves, grabbing a random comic, writing what I think. Today’s issue:

Comic Book: Tor #4 (2 in stock)

I think this is a new-ish series about a classic character, rather than a re-issue of a classic work. It’s certainly done in a style that’s several decades old. As usual I’ve jumped in right in the middle, and the protagonist starts out below ground trying to escape from a tentacled beastie. The story is the classic “misfits and outcasts surviving in a hostile world”. There’s no dialog, just narrative, but the narration does capture the characters’ perspectives. Different from most of the things I’ve seen recently, nice change of pace.

Diving head first into the thousands of back issues on our shelves, grabbing a random comic, writing what I think. Today’s issue:

Comic Book: Push #5 (2 in stock)

Issue 5 of a 6 issue movie prequel. I haven’t seen the movie. Has anyone seen it? Is it any good?. If the writing is like the writing in this issue, I’d guess it’s ok but not great. Probably has lots of good action and effects but only ok plot, characters and dialogue. Am I right?

Diving head first into the thousands of back issues on our shelves, grabbing a random comic, writing what I think. Today’s issue:

Comic Book: C E Murphys Take A Chance #2 (4 in stock)

This is what I’ve been hoping for when starting this little feature: something I’ve never heard of that turns out to be pretty darn good! The setting is reasonably standard trope: non-super-powered vigilante fights crime in a universe where 8.1% of the population* has super powers. When story with a pretty common plot turns out to be a good read, that usually means the writing’s pretty good. In this case, the characters are well drawn (not talking about the art, though that’s also fine if not groundbreaking), the dialog is convincing, and the action moves along nicely. I’ll be tracking down the rest of these, looks like there’s 5 issues in total. Thumbs up!

• * I did the math, it’s actually slightly tricky! 25% of world population gets a virus, 1/3 die, 1/3 recover normally, and 1/3 get superpowers. So, 7.5% (0.3 * 0.25 = 0.075) of the original population is super. But… 7.5% died, so we’ve got a smaller population… 7.5 / (100.0 – 7.5) = 0.081

Diving head first into the thousands of back issues on our shelves, grabbing a random comic, writing what I think. Today’s issue:

Comic Book: Ninja High School #165 (3 in stock)

Oh my. I don’t know what audience this title is geared to, but it’s certainly not me. OK, I understand it’s issue #165 and there’s a lot of backstory I’m missing, but I found this one to be mostly incoherent. Basically, there’s a fight where random people keep showing up, engage in cliched melodramatic dialog, then get stabbed. At the end it turns out someone is a robot. Oof.

Diving head first into the thousands of back issues on our shelves, grabbing a random comic, writing what I think. Today’s issue:

Comic Book: Ghost Rider #31 (2 in stock)

Gotta appreciate a comic where, jumping in at issue #31, you get a clear summary of where the story’s at along with a crisp, well executed 32 pages. Yeah, it’s bubbling with some of the standard comic book cliches (anti-hero shamed into action, etc) but it’s all well executed, even if it’s not blazing new trails. Maybe the word is “workmanlike”? Merriam Webster defines this as “competent and skillful but not outstanding or original”, and that seems about right. Thumbs up, but not jumping up and down. I’ll save that for later…

Diving head first into the thousands of back issues on our shelves, grabbing a random comic, writing what I think. Today’s issue:

Comic Book: Welcome To Hoxford #4 (7 in stock)

I’m not generally a big fan of the horror genre, though I’ve been reading a decent “Vampires on the Mississippi” book lately (Fevre Dream by George RR Martin), so maybe this comic will appeal…

I do like Ben Templesmith’s art. I’ve seen and appreciated his covers for a while, but this is actually the first time I’ve opened one up. Gorgeous colors. Nicely creepy. He likes to draw beasties with great big curvy tongues.

This is the last issue of a werewolf story, taking place in a mental institution named “Hoxford”, and it looks like it nicely ties up some reasonably straight forward story lines: werewolves vs. werewolves, inmates vs. werewolves, etc. Nice twist to the story, too. Not bad, maybe I’ll hop back to the earlier issues and read the whole thing!

Diving head first into the thousands of back issues on our shelves, grabbing a random comic, writing what I think. Today’s issue:

Comic Book: Everybody’s Dead #4 (4 in stock)

Zombies and frat boys. Zombies get hacked up, non-zombies get ‘et. Characters, dialog, story and art: all kinda flat, but there are some amusing bits here and there. Didn’t really hold my interest, shrug.