( Kamui: The Perfect Collection 2 by Sanpei Shirato )
( Total Sell Out by Brian Michael Bendis & others )
( Total Sell Out by Brian Michael Bendis & others )
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This might become a list blog
...but I have no idea really
02 September 2008 @ 08:01 pm
Ultimate Marvel Team-Up 2 by Brian Michael Bendis and lots of artists
This is odd: all written by Bendis, all but one story largely played for laughs. The last story, a rerun of an old Dr Strange, is most successful because it ran for two issues (and it has excellent Ted McKeever art). The FF and Man-Thing stories (the only one not written as more or less comedy) spend so long building up background and origin stories and all that that there is no room for stories. I liked the X-Men one, because it is just conversation, and cleverly balanced. Very missable, but a reasonably entertaining read.
29 April 2008 @ 10:13 pm
25 April 2008 @ 07:44 pm
Daredevil: The Widow & Golden Age by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev
I like Bendis's Daredevil a great deal - he's terrific on the details of conversation, and he's done a few very daring things with the character, particularly the way he has sustained and used the effects of the revelation of his secret identity. The Black Widow volume has some of the best dialogues you'll find in superhero comics, including in a special where we see the conversations with other heroes after the identity shock. That also has lots of guest artists, and the quality varies hugely. I like Maleev - dark and moody, very appropriate - but there are problems with him too. His Nick Fury looks like he figured he could get any bloke to pose for photo reference, and as long as he bunged an eyepatch on, it would pass for Fury. In Golden Age we get loads of flashbacks, and while he handles the noirish '40s scenes well, his early-DD pastiche is pretty dreadful, especially when he tries to do fight scenes, which are depressingly slow and stiff. This story is impressive - it uses the Kingpin's predecessor as gang leader to explore the gaps in Marvel history very smartly indeed, and in the contemporary segments gives us some great scenes between DD and a promising new hero. This series might stand as the most solidly intelligent long-running superhero series I've read - obviously there aren't many examples where one writer has stayed so long with a character (his Ultimate Spidey beats it), but it really is superb street-level superhero writing.
I like Bendis's Daredevil a great deal - he's terrific on the details of conversation, and he's done a few very daring things with the character, particularly the way he has sustained and used the effects of the revelation of his secret identity. The Black Widow volume has some of the best dialogues you'll find in superhero comics, including in a special where we see the conversations with other heroes after the identity shock. That also has lots of guest artists, and the quality varies hugely. I like Maleev - dark and moody, very appropriate - but there are problems with him too. His Nick Fury looks like he figured he could get any bloke to pose for photo reference, and as long as he bunged an eyepatch on, it would pass for Fury. In Golden Age we get loads of flashbacks, and while he handles the noirish '40s scenes well, his early-DD pastiche is pretty dreadful, especially when he tries to do fight scenes, which are depressingly slow and stiff. This story is impressive - it uses the Kingpin's predecessor as gang leader to explore the gaps in Marvel history very smartly indeed, and in the contemporary segments gives us some great scenes between DD and a promising new hero. This series might stand as the most solidly intelligent long-running superhero series I've read - obviously there aren't many examples where one writer has stayed so long with a character (his Ultimate Spidey beats it), but it really is superb street-level superhero writing.
08 April 2008 @ 06:46 pm
03 April 2008 @ 11:43 pm
30 March 2008 @ 11:54 pm
25 March 2008 @ 03:24 pm
( Showcase Presents Superman Family 2 )
( Troubletown: Told You So by Lloyd Dangle )
( Metropolis by Osamu Tezuka )
( Gypsy Collected by Smolderin & Marini )
( And Then One Day - Sketchbook by Ryan Clayton )
( Path of the Assassin: Battle For Power part 1 by Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima )
( Stormwatch: Final Orbit by Warren Ellis & several artists )
( Young Avengers: Family Matters by Allan Heinberg & Jim Cheung )
( Ultimate X-Men vol.7: Block Buster by Brian Michael Bendis & David Finch )
( Ultimate X-Men vol.13: Magnetic North by Brian K. Vaughan & Stuart Immonen )
( Ultimate Spider-Man volume 9: Ultimate Six by Brian Michael Bendis, Trevor Hairsine, Joe Quesada & Mark Bagley )
( Ultimate Spider-Man volume 11: Carnage by Brian Michael Bendis & Mark Bagley )
( Troubletown: Told You So by Lloyd Dangle )
( Metropolis by Osamu Tezuka )
( Gypsy Collected by Smolderin & Marini )
( And Then One Day - Sketchbook by Ryan Clayton )
( Path of the Assassin: Battle For Power part 1 by Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima )
( Stormwatch: Final Orbit by Warren Ellis & several artists )
( Young Avengers: Family Matters by Allan Heinberg & Jim Cheung )
( Ultimate X-Men vol.7: Block Buster by Brian Michael Bendis & David Finch )
( Ultimate X-Men vol.13: Magnetic North by Brian K. Vaughan & Stuart Immonen )
( Ultimate Spider-Man volume 9: Ultimate Six by Brian Michael Bendis, Trevor Hairsine, Joe Quesada & Mark Bagley )
( Ultimate Spider-Man volume 11: Carnage by Brian Michael Bendis & Mark Bagley )
16 February 2008 @ 12:00 am
Actually those aren't reviewed here - both pieces seemed substantial enough* to be worth putting on Freaky Trigger instead of here:
Enemy Ace
Spider-Man
I think I will routinely post links here if I put a review somewhere else, to sort of keep a single source for all of them, in case I want to find one again. I expect I will be putting a few reviews of architecture books up on my Japanese Arts website when I put that section together (a few weeks from now, I hope), for instance.
* Your mileage may vary
Enemy Ace
Spider-Man
I think I will routinely post links here if I put a review somewhere else, to sort of keep a single source for all of them, in case I want to find one again. I expect I will be putting a few reviews of architecture books up on my Japanese Arts website when I put that section together (a few weeks from now, I hope), for instance.
* Your mileage may vary