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The Savage (mini!) Critic: April 4th, 2002 By Brian HibbsWelcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. One thing I’ve noticed about myself is that if I break my habits in writing the Critic, it is much less likely to get done. Normally I write this Friday morning before I go into the store, but since comics were a day late, due to Easter, there was no way I could do that this week. Anyway, after attending the World’s Saddest Star Trek convention this afternoon with Jeff Lester (we went to laugh at the geeks, but there weren’t even enough of them to do so! I tried betting Lester $20 to go up to Grace Lee Whitney and offer her some vodka, but the coward wouldn’t do it!!!) (NOTE: THAT WAS A JOKE. We Know that Alcoholism is a serious disease) – Jeff and I realized that I STILL hadn’t written the Critic for the week, so I rushed home to do just that. But, y’know what? I haven’t the willpower to do the whole thing this week, so I’ll just do a MINI-Critic, covering JUST new stuff, or points of interest. Back to the regular format next Friday... DEADLINE #1: Marvel’s Marketing guy, Bill Roseman, gets his writing debut right here, and he actually does a damn fine job for a first script. The lead character is a smidge clichéd in places (that whole hard-bitten reporter thing), but the story worked out most of its clumsiness before the first half was over. Plus, Guy Davis is illustrating this, and I don’t think he’s capable of doing less than wonderful work, so there ya go. However, I gotta say that Greg Horn’s covers are creeping me out more and more – they’re "realistic", sure, but there’s something TOO slick about them that makes me feel icky. Good. HIGH ROADS #1: Lenil Yu is a fab artist, and what’s best is that between projects he seems to be taking the time to reinvent himself – each new job is a leap forward. He’s abetted by some EXCELLENT coloring, and the whole package just looks great. Problem is, the script is pretty bad. Starting with a flashback where the protagonist is doing utterly improbable actions, and having an inane monologue while doing so, I just said "forget it and look at the pretty pictures". Once we actually get to the story, my brain woke up a little – singing midget Hitler impersonators is a concept one can never have enough of – but not enough for me to care about it at all. Excellent art, awful script, averages down to an OK rating. MARVEL KNIGHTS DOUBLE SHOT #1: Joe Quesada can sure draw, huh? The visual staging of the issue was great and probably wouldn’t have worked as well in lesser hands. Nice, tight little script by Garth, and the whole first story worked. Prob is, it’s short. Very short. Like 22 panels, short. The second story, some blah-blah about the Kingpin’s tailor, felt much much longer. Like most anthologies, one judges it based on what they liked least, so I’d narrowly give this the thumbs down. If it were $2.25, that might have changed the balance the other way. Eh MARVEL MANGAVERSE #1: Dunno – some of the redesigns and rethinkings are cute: the look of the Watcher, the idea of Galactus as a weapon in the form of a giant eye. But I can’t see this having much long-term appeal, really. Now instead of being a nice one-time event that people can get into, it’s a monthly "what if?" with an unchanging premise. I don’t see any sales evidence that people want to buy that (Spider-Girl, Mutant X, Bishop, etc.), but maybe they found the right formula this time. Anyway, the comic itself was fine, I suppose, but nothing much buttered my biscuits. Eh MORLOCKS #1: I’m a big-fan of Geoff Johns’ Flash work, and I loved Shane Martinborough on Detective; but the pairing here didn’t work for me. Might be that they introduce a whole slew of seemingly uninteresting and/or inadequately explained new characters (one gets the sense this was all leftovers from Johns’ coming up with new Rogues for Flash), but it’s far more likely the use of mutant-crutch #1: The Sentinels. Morrison’s use of them didn’t make me churn, because he came up with a new spin for them, but I really never ever need to read another Sentinels story again. However, I did find the "premise" of the team (banding together to let each member get one last wish) new and interesting – however, it was not actually in evidence IN the comic, just mentioned in a passing line of dialogue. Sorry to say, I gotta give it an Awful MUTIES #3: Quick note that Dean Haspiel illustrated this. We sold out absurdly fast, too, given that we still have plenty of the first two issues... Anyway, nice art (as you’d expect), thin story where the final "twist" fell flat – and since all these stories have going for them IS the twist, that puts me at Eh MY FRIEND DAHMER #1: For his second project now, I think I can safely say that Derf probably shouldn’t be doing long-continuity. His pacing on a couple-panel cartoon is excellent (I’m a big fan of his The City), and his observational style works really well in that format. As a multi-page story, however, it seems like ALL disinterested observation, and no real emotional contact. That doesn’t necessarily work against his real-life high-school friendship of Jeffrey Dahmer, given what happened, but I never felt engaged like I did in almost any other "reporterage" kind of book one could name. Derf’s a great observer, but only a mediocre story-teller. OK SUPERMAN & SAVAGE DRAGON CHICAGO: Just like a big long issue of the Dragon, except it’s $6, and it’s got "underwear on the outside" jokes. Eh TRANSFORMERS GENERATION ONE #1: I don’t really get nostalgia. Me, I feel like there’s more than enough NEW cool things coming out to get all misty about old stuff. But, sure, with G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Micronauts all looking to be HUGE comic hits, I guess it’s the New Trend (replacing, I suppose, Widescreen). Here’s my problem with the comics: they depend far too much on geekish preknowledge and love for the characters, rather than trying to tell a good story on their own terms. I actually don’t think I’ve ever read a Transformers comic before this, and I certainly can’t differentiate between the robots visually. So, when the issue ended with the Big Reveal of... another robot, covered in ice, I was all, "huh?!?". Why is this a big deal, in the context of the story presented, when they already had another robot under their control? Well, whatever, this comic isn’t designed for me. It looked slick enough, and Dreamwave, thankfully, has abandoned the colored and/or transparent lettering effects they’ve used in the past, so I can’t give this a BAD rating... it just didn’t mean anything to me. OK ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #21: I just want to say that Bendis keeps surprising me – this was a real change-up in Peter’s life, and it didn’t seem contrived or forced one bit. This was probably my favorite comic this week (although I HATE HATE HATE HATE the lettering!), and absolutely the Spider-Man comic to read if you’ve given up on Spider-Man comics. Very good.
For Sake of Completeness, here’s a list of all of the OTHER comics that CE got in this week, that I did NOT review! Love me, anyway. ALIAS #8
And, for even MORE completeness sake, here’s a list of books, TPBs, GNs, magazines, and other things that CE got this week. I generally haven’t read any of this by the time I post these reviews. Though I generally attempt to give at least one recommendation amongst the TPBs each week, since I HAVE read the material at SOME point. BATMAN NINE LIVES HC This Week’s TPB recommendation is: Another hard week to make a single choice... I’ll lean towards the Krazy Kat Komplete Komics, I think, just because this is such classic material. |
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Average Rating for the Week: 10 books reviewed (!!! Only 10? I suck!) for an average rating of 3.70 (out of a possible 7.00). Pick of the Week: I gave it away above, but Ultimate Spider-Man #21 was a good, solid, light-hearted read. Pick of the Weak: Purely of what I reviewed above (making this the least fair Weak pick ever): Morlocks #1. Sentinels suck!
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All Material on this page:
© 2001-2005 by Comix Experience (except the graphic, which was appropriated
from Tales of Suspense #21,
and is probably
© Marvel Comics). Reproduction without permission is expressly
forbidden.