TF Views

And....some random reviews....


"Casanova" #1 and #2: These were an extra that Scourge threw in to a trade. The high concept is that a philanderer is transported to an alternate time line to replace his dead (and more admirable) counter part. In terms of tone and quality, it is basically "Giffen-the fun+Ennis+early 90s non Image indy". I read the first issue, skimmed the second and was generally under-whelmed enough to not bother reading the creator interview in the back of both. Fraction has never really impressed me, and this has not changed that.
Grade: D


"Wolverine and Power Pack" #4: This is part of Marvel's vaguely placed kiddie line. One of the Pack kids ends up on a Japanese game show, so the whole family goes to Japan and the kids run into Wolverine. The plot is predictable and there are no real suprises nor any real high concept. Readable and worth giving to a kid, but nothing worth going crazy to find.
Grade: C


Dom
-gonna be a slow week.

Here's some short reviews.

-Atomic Robo & The Ghosts of Station-X #2: Last issue, Robo's spaceship thing exploded and he was hurling towards Earth. This issue, Robo almost dies from burning up in the atmosphere, but it turns out he's alright! It took them a few days to fix him up. Then the NASA dude who sent him on the mission to go save the dying astronauts calls him up and is all, "Hey, man, I didn't call you. I dunno who did but it sure as shit wasn't me."
The dialogue is, as always, crunchy and delicious. The two guys from Volume 3 who are pretty obvious Wegener and Clevinger visual self-inserts (don't worry Dom; they're idiots) are back (as they were last issue) trying to find out how and why 'a building disappeared.' It's obviously linked to Robo's situation. Am I the only one who reads Clevinger-insert's dialogue as being spoken by Steven Blum?
I'm starting to notice that something Wegener needs to work on, occasionally, is his backgrounds--there's quite a few panels in this one where there's just 'blank space,' with nothing behind it at all. Put a lamp there! A stupid poster. Something.
Other than that, though, this is still great stuff, and every issue continues to be a great place to jump on and you get a little bit more story. I feel like a lot happened here.

-Animal Man #1: I think this is a reprint. I heard Animal Man was good; some are saying it's in the top books of the New 52. I've never read an Animal Man book and my understanding of him is obviously limited. I thought Animal Man could turn into animals, like Beast Boy, but the book does a great job of dispelling that early on--I guess somehow Animal Man taps into some metaphysical "connection" to All Animals and can pull supernatural shit out of his ass related to animals. It's vague but it's interesting and I'm sure it'll lead to some neat stuff.
The book is really focused on his family life and how that affects and colours Animal Man's life; which is great! For once we've got a character whose family life isn't entirely incidental to his stories, which is something DC usually struggles with, especially when they adapt the stories to other mediums. (We all know how confused I was at Hal's ill-defined family in the Green Lantern film, and how much I hated the shoehorned in romance angle.) Animal Man stops a dude whose daughter died of cancer so he went nuts and took a hospital's children's ward hostage. And Animal Man has some serious questions about himself when he sees that--how does he know he wouldn't react similarly if something happened to his own daughter? Then he mysteriously bleeds out of his eyes and has a creepy nightmare that explains wtf is going on with the cover. Sort of.
The book ends on a cliffhanger (boo!) with Animal Man's daughter in their backyard with a bunch of animal corpses, apparently animated. So far, though, this book is well-written enough to make me want to go back and buy Issue 2, which is already out.

-Mega Man #6: And MM continues to be, bar none, my favourite book of the month. It's fun, it's 'funny,' and it plays out exactly like a good Mega Man comic adaptation should. Serious situations happen but they're never treated as grimdark, which (despite my love of the Protomen) is how you want it to be.
Two Original Characters who work for the police are suspecting Dr. Light and Mega Man of being involved in Dr. Wily's escape from police custody last issue--of course, we know that Time Man used his time-stopping powers to do it. Dr. Light decides that the best way to prove his innocence is to let them keep him in custody, at Mega Man's protest. Mega Man goes home, alone, to find that Dr. Wily had Oil Man kidnap Roll. And that Wily is so evil, he wrote the ransom note in 'Comic Sans!'
Time Man and Oil Man show up at Wily's hideout from the first arc with Roll in tow. Time Man and Oil Man argue a lot, with a lot of bad (read: hilarious) puns to do with their names. Oil Man says, at one point, that he's gonna clean Time Man's clock.
Oil Man's a little funny/odd, too. The original Japanese design looks kind of...blackfaceish. It's a thing with Japan, I guess--they never quite got past the idea that that portrayl is offensive. The artist for this comic got around this by having Oil Man's scarf up on his face the entire time, which is a very elegant solution. And then they make Oil Man talk in hip-hop slang. Wily says, at one point, to go do something or other, and Oil Man replies with "Word." It's hilarious. Roll wonders where these two extra Robot Masters came from; Wily says they were prototypes Dr. Light never finished and now they're "powered up," and loyal to Wily. This is hilarious because the US name of the game these guys came from was Mega Man Powered Up. (The Japanese name was "Rockman Rockman." Yes, really.) Also, Wily is wearing a labcoat over his orange fugitive gear which I'm sure is a reference to how he had an orange shirt on underneath at least one of his NES appearances.
Mega Man goes to the reformed original Robot Masters (Cutman, Gutsman, etc.) and explains that Wily escaped and captured Roll. They can't abandon the cleanup effort so they decide to split into teams; Cutman and Iceman end up going with Mega Man. They argue, a 'lot,' and puns happen big time. They infiltrate Wily's fortress but end up in some tunnels that're flooding. Iceman tries to freeze the water shut but it's too strong; Cutman gives him shit and Iceman says, "Oh, well why don't you try to 'cut' the water? I'm sure that'll work." The issue ends on another kind-of-cliffhanger where they're going through some tunnels and those vertical/horizontal moving robots from Cutman's stage in MM1 wake up and attack them.
I gotta say, I'm enjoying it. It looks nice without looking childish or overdrawn; everyone looks the way they're supposed to and I actually really like all the stupid puns. It's just really fun. If you like Mega Man and you aren't reading this, what the fuck's wrong with you?

I missed the first issue and have no desire to have gaps in the run. And, pun humour is not exactly selling me.

The book ends on a cliffhanger (boo!) w

Single issues stories have not been the standard for ~30 years at least. Get over it.


Dom
-is going to be one full compilation behind on renumbered "Cobra" as of this week. *grumble*

Eh. Some books are still doing it right. Robo does well enough most of the time. I still felt satisfied and I'm gonna go back and grab the second issue, so.

As for "gaps in the run," buy the trade, it's like twelve bucks, and get over yourself. I haven't even read Issue 4 because I don't even need to to know what happened--Mega Man kills Copy Robot and beats Wily, the end. With a series like this where it's 'guaranteed' to be long-running, or at least they're not going to do anything like obviously kill off Dr. Wily, it's way more about the journey than it is the destination.

Alternatively, I will just up and send you all the damn comics.

I am trying not to pick up too many trades now. I have a huge "too read" pile, even just counting the comics, at the moment.

If it is about the journey more than the destination however, then that is all the more incentive to read each issue in order.


Dom
-barely keeping up on weekly books as it is.

Dark Wolverine 12-14:
Damn, this book is so much better than any rational person would expect it to be. I picked up 3 issues yesterday on a whim, (because the only other book I picked up was "Cobra" #6 and I have not yet read the first 5 issues), and was fuly impressed. Williams is staying consistent with the Wey/Lui take on Daken and writes Moon Knight well enough that I double checked to see if Bendis co-write the issue. Given that Daken is a minor character, it is a safe bet that any changes resulting from this arc will be legitmate, rather than stunt based.

Grade: A/B

I am seriously considering picking up more compilations of this series.


Dom
-really, "Dark Wolverine"? Really. Yeah.

You have problems, Dom. I consistently recommend good comics to you which you deflect for arbitrary reasons like "I missed the first issue" or "I have too much to read now anyway," and then you decide, on a whim, to buy 'random issues of Dark Wolverine?' Seriously? I bought AHM and MaxDinos because of you, damn it. You suck.

That sounds a lot more argumentative in tone than it's supposed to be, wow, that legitimately looks like I'm attacking you over this. Which I'm not!

Onslaught Six wrote:You have problems, Dom. I consistently recommend good comics to you which you deflect for arbitrary reasons like "I missed the first issue" or "I have too much to read now anyway," and then you decide, on a whim, to buy 'random issues of Dark Wolverine?' Seriously? I bought AHM and MaxDinos because of you, damn it. You suck.

That sounds a lot more argumentative in tone than it's supposed to be, wow, that legitimately looks like I'm attacking you over this. Which I'm not!

It's ok O6, he's gonna have to track down issues 1,2,7 and 8 eventually cause I'm gonna send him my copies of 2-6. It's nothing against the comic, I'm just out of comics completely and Dom's seems the perfect home for these to go to.

Yesterday was kind of an impulse buy. I walked in to Newbury, and saw that there was only one book from my pull-list that week, and it was a book that I am so far behind on that I am not going to be caught up before Christmas. (And, hey, maybe I will be done with "Exiles" by then.....)

And, seriously, "Dark Wolverine" is good. I am really thinking of picking up compilations of this series.


Shockwave, are you sure about doing a full purge?

Part of me is thinking that 2012 is going to be "the year". If Costa leaves "GI Joe" and is not replaced with a good enough writer, I will drop "Cobra" which may well be my only "anchor" book at that point.

I am done giving "Transformers" longevity points. If the Roberts/Barber run reads like "Chaos", then I am out. None of the Marvel books that I read are good enough to keep me in. And, I am avoiding DC altogether.

Either way, I want to move exclusively to compilations by this point next year.

If I drop everything now, I will have a year or two worth of comics to read before being officially out.

But, even if I do drop everything, I do not know if I want to make a full purge of it.


Dom
-likely to drop "New Avengers" at the end of the recently started arc.

I think Shock's pretty sure.

Since you're loading things off, what else have you got? Update your for sale list. (Incidentally, how's everything going?)