Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #259

I actually did a quick Google, and nothing came up (despite the image results showing the very obvious covers side-by-side), so I’m going to assume this detail isn’t an undeniable fact: Legion of Super-Heroes #259 looks ridiculously like Whatever Happened to the Man on Tomorrow a couple of times.

I didn’t even realize the covers until after reading it; I was thinking more about the last page, which has a sad Superboy flying away from his future pals. It’s time for him to go back to Smallville and stay. And his reasoning is so goofy I’m going to spoil it.

Superboy is quitting the Legion of Super-Heroes because he came across Ma and Pa Kent’s gravesite in the future. He imagines they die from some weird tropical disease, and he’s not there to save them. He realizes it’s not real and doesn’t know how they died, which sets him straight enough to fight the bad guy, Psycho-Warrior.

Psycho-Warrior is writer Gerry Conway bringing his late seventies laziness to Legion of Super-Heroes. Last issue, Conway established P-W is from the same mental hospital as Brainiac-5 but not the connection. The connection is P-W saw the Legion going and visiting Brainy and being nice to him, and P-W hates friendly people, so he decided to kill Legionaries. Or at least render them comatose.

P-W’s got a surprisingly bad secret origin too, but he’s basically just a done-in-two super-villain who can move the story along.

After the bad guy’s defeated, Superboy tells his Legion friends he’s going to the past to stay because he can’t forget death’s serious business, and he’s been having too much fun in the future. Or something. It makes no sense, and it’s poorly written, with Conway apparently trying to do a Silver Age homage—an even more gracious interpretation than when I opined he might be trying camp—and it’s more about the spectacle. They’re really doing this nothing-burger of a farewell.

The Legion all waves, knowing they’ll never see Superboy again and whatnot, but none of them are particularly affected. “We all knew this day would come,” one says.

None of the Legionnaires mention they’ve been doing body modification to appear young to Superboy before he leaves, so it’s more like he’s their pet. They’re secretly mentally abusive to him.

Whatever. Conway never used Superboy enough for it to matter he’s leaving, and Conway’s been so disappointing it doesn’t matter if Conway’s not stuck with Superboy anymore.

The Joe Staton and Dave Hunt art tries a little harder than usual. Fails but tries. Staton’s at least got the Silver Age composition down.

Why the heck did they put Conway on this book he’s clearly not interested in doing.

Anyway. Farewell, Boy of Tomorrow.

P-W’s got a surprisingly bad secret origin too, but he’s basically just a done-in-two super-villain who can move the story along.

The Legion all waves, knowing they’ll never see Superboy again and whatnot, but none of them are particularly affected. “We all knew this day would come,” one says.

None of the Legionnaires mention they’ve been doing body modification to appear young to Superboy before he leaves, so it’s more like he’s their pet. They’re secretly mentally abusive to him.

Whatever. Conway never used Superboy enough for it to matter he’s leaving, and Conway’s been so disappointing it doesn’t matter if Conway’s not stuck with Superboy anymore.

The Joe Staton and Dave Hunt art tries a little harder than usual. Fails but tries. Staton’s at least got the Silver Age composition down.

Why the heck did they put Conway on this book he’s clearly not interested in doing.

Anyway. Farewell, Boy of Tomorrow.

Stoker’s Dracula (2004) #4

The issue ends with an afterword from Dick Giordano talking about finishing the Dracula adaptation thirty years after he and writer Roy Thomas started it. He confirms my suspicions they didn’t actually have it plotted out; rather, they did that work thirty years later. Or twenty-eight or whatever. Plus, it sounds like artist Giordano did a lot of the scene breakouts—it’s a Marvel book, after all—but also, no wonder the story’s got no pacing.

I can’t remember the last quarter of Dracula, the novel, but assuming the big events in this issue are correct, there’s not much Thomas is responsible for doing poorly. The fearless vampire hunters treating Mina as damaged, sinful goods? From the book. I do wonder if Van Helsing’s journal, written in awkward, stilted, but proper English, is from the novel or if Thomas paraphrased. When Van Helsing speaks, he jumbles his word order (a non-native speaker, he’s Dutch). It’s distracting.

Also distracting is white-haired Jonathan Harker (his wife was unfaithful, regardless of being brainwashed and mind controlled, his hair was bound to change). He gets the narrator seat a bit, and even though I’m only a few months delayed, his diary doesn’t sound like his diary at the beginning of the series.

I’d also forgotten how we were headed towards a terribly anti-climatic ending, which the comic does nothing to improve. Over-reliance on the narration, workman art from Giordano, stamp, done, move on to the next. The epilogue’s bewildering and, I suppose, where Thomas is most at fault. There must’ve been something better, maybe even something relevant.

The art’s okay. This new material is about getting through, not showing off. Almost everything is a montage sequence of some kind or another (with the narration tying the panels together). It doesn’t let Giordano work up any moment with the characters.

In the end, however, it’s not Thomas or Giordano’s fault Bram Stoker left the villain out of the last fifth of the story. It’s Giordano’s fault Van Helsing looks like a mischievous but not malevolent Keebler Elf, but whatever.

And the weird “follow the money” investigation the boys conduct is boring. They found Dracula thanks to accountancy.

Yawn.

I really wish they’d gotten to finish this back in the seventies. It’s cool they got to finish it thirty years later. But cool isn’t enough to make it succeed. Thomas and Giordano are just being too rote, especially for the finish.

See How They Run (2022, Tom George)

Sam Rockwell can do an English accent. See How They Run occasionally has him use it but mostly has him stone-face while sidekick Saoirse Ronan amiably chatters away. The movie only asks Rockwell to act once or twice; he can do it with the accent. He’s not really a stunt cast because the movie doesn’t have him do anything, so it doesn’t get anything from him. He and Ronan are fine together. She’s the one who acts, he reacts, so their scenes all work off her momentum. For a while, it seems like the film’s building towards them as a duo, which works.

Sadly, it doesn’t end up going there, instead taking an ill-advised diversion involving a big-time Shining nod (though Amanda McArthur’s production design sets it up, lots of red carpets), where detective Rockwell talks to the murder victim at an art deco bar. It’s part of the second red herring suspect—as narrator Adrien Brody (an American film director in London adapting a stage play) would say, comes with the territory in a whodunit. See How They Run constantly reminds it’s a genre piece and shouldn’t be judged too harshly. Usually to modest but satisfactory effect. The problem with the second red herring suspect isn’t the red herring; it’s the lack of a third. They just go right into the finish, which involves bringing in the supporting cast and putting Rockwell and Ronan in a charming but pointless driving montage.

Because once the film inexplicably gives up on Ronan and Rockwell as a duo, it becomes a relatively engaging Agatha Christie spoof. Ronan and Rockwell were just diversions. Though then, the movie ditches the suspect pool to a fantastic cameo and an elaborate in-joke involving Brody’s film director before finally settling on being an unofficial advertisement for the Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the world.

See How They Run is set in 1953, during the first cast’s run, meaning someone is playing Richard Attenborough—Harris Dickinson. Dickinson is 6’1” and change. Attenborough was infamously shorter; pretty sure it was a plot point in at least one picture, if not more (he was 5’7”). The problem with Dickinson is he’s never a suspect. Neither he nor wife Pearl Chanda. It wouldn’t matter except the movie’s short murder suspects.

The first prime suspect is screenwriter David Oyelowo, who doesn’t get along with the victim. He doesn’t get along with the victim, Brody, his boyfriend Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, or anyone else. Oyelowo gets the film’s “and” credit; he’s the closest thing to a stunt cast.

And he’s not up for the task. He’s okay, but never anything more, once too often less. It’s an adequate performance, nothing more. Ruth Wilson and Brody are the other supporting cast members with the most to do. Brody’s amusing as the unlikable American, while Wilson’s only around to fill in backstory for other suspects.

Director George often uses a split screen device to show different characters’ perspectives. It’s almost good once, but it’s a padding gimmick. Run’s artificially enthusiastic.

Luckily, the cast and production are enough to get it through. It’s not a good star vehicle for Ronan, but she’s definitely the star in it. Until the third act, anyway. The third act’s a mess.

See How They Run’s fine. Affable, likable, engaging, disposable, which puts it ahead of the Mousetrap play if the samples are any indication.

Shadows on the Grave (2016) #5

Creator Richard Corben’s got some co-writing help again on this issue of Shadows and it doesn’t work out. The whole issue just never quite works out, including the Greek epic, which bums me out.

The issue starts okay, with a one-page romance comic gag. Nice art too. The issue’s got excellent art from Corben throughout—including some great art on one of the stories—but it’s not enough to compensate for the slight writing.

The feature stories are all eight pages, which is a Shadows no-no. Corben does much better when he varies the length for what the story actually needs. None of the four features are balanced well this issue. It’s such a bummer.

The first story is about a guy who gets lost in the rain in rural America, pulls up at a stranger’s house, demands the old lady put him up for the night. Now, elements of that narrative have already appeared in Shadows within the last couple of issues. What’s the house’s secret, will the rude dude survive, and so on. It’s a mad-libs Corben horror strip.

The following story is the exact same situation. It feels very familiar—the protagonist is a shitty nephew gone to swindle a rich aunt (same setup as a story… in the last couple issues). When he gets there, his aunt’s got a secretary who makes him wait to see her, which gets the guy curious enough to snoop. Disaster ensues.

Beth Reed co-writes both stories. The first one’s better than the second, but the second is where it’s clear what’s going on. The script’s trying too hard to fit the “formula,” which seems to be because of Reed. It doesn’t make sense for Corben to write “more Corben” but with a co-writer.

I did just have the thought maybe a few writers used the same prompts from Corben. If so, those stories obviously should’ve been presented together and with context. This issue’s entries would still be lesser compared to whenever they appeared before, but the book wouldn’t seem repetitive, at least.

The third feature is Corben solo writing. A blind woman is in Africa trying to find a cure from a remote, hostile tribe. If Corben establishes the time period, it wasn’t forcefully enough I remember, but hopefully, it’s sometime in the mid-twentieth century and not today.

The art’s phenomenal, with Corben illustrating from the point of view of the blind woman, which is incredible stuff. The script’s just okay—the plot’s underwhelming, and the twist is creaky—but the art makes up for it. Though it’s still a bummer. The first story didn’t work out, the second story didn’t work out, the third story didn’t work out.

Surely the Greek epic will come through.

Incomplete. The Deneaus chapter gets an incomplete. It’s eight pages too, which is way too short. Corben rushes the opening hook, which brings the Greek gods into the story, but then the main action is about the shitty prince and his shitty king dad. Corben pads around it a little, but the whole story is just their villainous banquet.

It doesn’t hurt the story, big picture-wise, but it does stall it out and bleed momentum all over the road. Some exquisite art on it too. Just not the story.

I once worried Shadows would be a “one good issue, one bad” situation. Now I hope there aren’t any more of these troubled issues before this wraps up.

Unsuccessful Shadows is still successful comics, of course, so the issue’s time reasonably well-spent.

Tomb of Dracula (1972) #26

I’m not sure if this issue’s Marv Wolfman’s best Tomb, but it’s his most ambitious. He weaves the story—which involves a missing magical statue, a dead shop owner, Frank Drake and Taj being shitty dudes, a Kull-related flashback, and Dracula’s familiar, Shiela, meeting a British witch—through Old Testament verses. The shop owner’s Jewish, and his son (David, who seems like he’s going to recur even after next issue) is visiting him from a yeshiva. Just as the old man is about to complete his life’s work, some bad guys break in and kill him.

Dracula shows up a few minutes later at the active crime scene, wanting the statue and realizing the son’s got a piece of it. Dracula tasks Shiela with befriending David, and he takes her to see this old British witch who tells them about Kull. No editor’s notes with issue numbers, which was kind of disappointing. This statue can grant wishes—an Infinity Gauntlet you don’t need to snap—and Dracula wants it to… make himself immortal immortal, not vampire immortal. So he can still be evil but during the day.

David and Shiela are a nice couple. Like, Tomb of Dracula’s humans are usually obnoxious. Look at Frank Drake, who’s laying about since abandoning Rachel Van Helsing and the vampire hunters. It’s been three days since he left her—I swear this book has three different timelines going at once—and a sexy troubleshooter named Chastity Jones has tracked him down. She wants to give him a job being rich and fabulous again, plus she wants to get busy. Does he want to call Rachel (who he luvs, he said), or does he want to get horizontal?

So, immediately, David’s a bit more sympathetic a human character.

Oh, wait, then there’s Taj. He only gets a page because he’s not white; he’s moping around India because beating up his wife last issue or whatever didn’t make him feel better. Some old friend comes to plead with him to see her. So he beats that guy up too. Taj is a dick.

After spending the issue in the literal shadows, watching the humans do their things, Dracula gets into some trouble of his own while looking for the statue pieces, leading to a surprising cliffhanger. Though only because Dracula assumes he can’t possibly be in danger, but there wouldn’t be much of a comic without it.

It’s a strange combination of character study, mystical adventure, and Dracula. There are some bumps, but Gene Colan and Tom Palmer’s art is exquisite, and Wolfman’s working his buns off.

Dan Dare (2007) #4

I’ve never read any Dan Dare besides this series. I assume it’s some British Silver Age book about British derring-do in a sci-fi setting. So I don’t know if writer Garth Ennis is doing some homage with the pacing of this issue or just the plotting of the series in general.

Here’s what the first issue promised: retired space adventurer Dan Dare coming back to save the galaxy (colonized by the British, natch) from the Mekon, his old enemy (and presumably the main villain in the original Dare comics).

So far, the series has delivered: a traitor Prime Minister, Dare, and sidekick Digby stranded on a hostile alien world full of monsters. No galaxy saving from Dan, just people saving.

In this issue, Ennis reveals that anti-whatever plotting is intentional and will continue. He leans heavily on using talking heads scenes to fill in the backstory. The issue opens with the Prime Minister and the Mekon, who’s a silly-looking fifties alien but terrifying in his brevity. He seems to have some psychic control over a sizeable percentage of the population (both aliens and humans, including the PM), but it’s unclear. You wouldn’t want to ask him.

Ennis splits the issue between the Mekon, the Home Secretary on Earth, as she uncovers the plot to sell out humanity, and Dan on the alien planet with the monsters. Things are getting grim for Dan, which is precisely where they’re supposed to be but also not. The plan needs Dan to be somewhere else; no one could predict he’d try to save some dumbass colonists because they haven’t read the old Dan Dare either.

It’s a fantastic mix of wild sci-fi, political thriller, and British colonial action, with one heck of a tense finale. Ennis and artist Gary Erskine deliver a dynamite (no pun) close to the first (informal) arc. Presumably, the series will reset itself going forward, though I also have no idea because Ennis is very unpredictable here. Delightfully so.

Erskine seems rushed at times—though the incredibly boring alien ships don’t help; hopefully, it doesn’t trend. Dan’d survive it just fine (even rushed, Erskine’s solid), but still. He’s got some very enthusiastic panels; the more, the better.

Dare’s a damn fine book.

Werewolf by Night (1972) #23

Reading this issue, I kept having to remind myself writer Doug Moench doesn’t want Jack Russell to sound like a jackass, quite the opposite. Moench writes Jack’s narration as a combination of hard-boiled detective, beatnik, and, I don’t know, Charles Atlas advertisement text. It’s the purest obnoxious surfer bro Jack’s gotten in two dozen plus Werewolf comics, and, wow, does it get old fast.

The last issue ended with Jack under arrest for murder; this issue opens with him fighting the return villain—Atlas (a disfigured movie star out to kill all those who contributed to his accident)—but then flashes back to the cliffhanger resolve. The series’s new useless cop character interrogates Jack, Jack calls Buck for five grand (in seventies Marvel-616, the cops set bail), and then Buck fills Jack in on the villain’s origin.

After countless accessory or inappropriate appearances (with Jack’s seventeen-year-old sister), Buck finally becomes integral to the issue’s plot. He wrote the script for the movie where Atlas got hurt and can narrate the flashback-in-a-flashback to Jack, saving his involvement for the end. I’m not sure why Moench wanted to pace it that way, other than Atlas busting into the apartment like Kool-Aid Man would have an extra jolt.

But it doesn’t.

Neither does Jack’s background transformation to Wolfman Jack.

The fight then catches up to the opening splash page, where the werewolf and Atlas are fighting in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Atlas also kicks the werewolf’s ass, which raises questions about why Jack wants Buck to shoot him with a silver bullet if he can just be beaten to death.

The Don Perlin and Vince Colletta art is just as bewildering as the werewolf rules, with Colletta inking a lot of busy little lines. He’s not adding detail, just noise, and killing any implied movement in the artwork. It’s an ugly comic.

If Jack doesn’t get some humility soon, this book will be even more of a slog than I expected.

Catwoman (2002) #2

Darwyn Cooke owns this issue. It begins with an action sequence: Catwoman breaking into Gotham PD to get a look at the autopsies on the dead streetwalkers. Cooke breaks each page into a dozen or two panels, sometimes splitting a horizontal frame, more often zooming in on one particular aspect of the action. All in his “cartoony” style. There’s never better movement in comic art than the first act of Catwoman #2. It’s a masterpiece.

And he doesn’t let up the rest of the issue ambition-wise. There’s Selina and Holly’s girl talk, done in art deco—to contrast the noir—and then the finale reveal. While Selina (and the reader) have heard about what the killer’s doing to the women and then read the reports, the finale shows the immediate aftermath, complete with the cops robbing the corpse.

Cooke’s superhero noir is a genre itself. Absolutely beautiful, superior work.

Ed Brubaker’s script is mostly successful. The Selina narration’s solid (and appropriately sparse at times), but he runs into a couple hiccups. First, obviously, Selina’s characterization of Batman in her narration is one of a dick—he’d care the women were dying, but they chose that life, didn’t they? Second, when Selina does decide she’ll be the one to stop the killings, it appears to only be after the finale and seeing the latest victim. The narration comes too late in the visuals.

Otherwise, the writing’s excellent. The issue has the lengthy action open, which slows down once Selina’s broken into the morgue, then the flashback to her and Holly’s conversation after last issue, then back to the present and the latest killing. Based on the initial pacing, they could’ve gotten away without having Selina arrive at the crime scene in time. The issue’d earned its two dollars and four bits by then, but Cooke and Brubaker somehow find time (and pages) to continue.

Though had they not paced it so well, that final narration fumble might’ve been avoided. But Catwoman’s inordinately rare faults being side effects of its great successes seems on par for the book.

It’s just too good for its own good.

Infinity 8: Volume Five: Apocalypse Day (2018)

Apocalypse Day’s agent, Ann Ninurta, is the most reliably badass agent since the first volume. There are other comparisons between Ninurta and the first volume’s lead, like being blonde, midriff-revealing, and obsessed with babies. The first volume’s lead wanted to have a baby, Ninurta’s got a baby. Well, a toddler. Ninurta’s taking her to daycare when the Protocol 8 order comes in, and she’s off to the bridge, where even the captain is sick of doing the setup spiel and leaves it to the icky dude lieutenant.

Who, as per usual, does inappropriately come on to Ninurta (who’s already scored one hot boy’s phone number, a smuggler, and his crew riding the Infinity 8), but she shuts him down without a thought. The comic winks through Ninurta getting the assignment; while she’s never heard it before, the captain, the lieutenant, and the reader are on their fifth go-around.

Ninurta’s also the first agent to have a good grasp on Protocol 8, which will be important later on. While the time reset has always been a factor of Infinity 8, it’s a lot more integral to Ninurta’s character arc. Not really a character development arc because it’s the fifth volume, so she doesn’t get to finish things up, but arc. She’s got a killer arc.

Ninurta’s initial investigation of the space graveyard is no different than anyone else’s. Less exciting, in fact, they apparently gave all the good missions to the first four people. Ninurta’s just flying around, looking to see if she can stumble into anything before time’s up.

Complicating things is an inventor on the Infinity 8 who’s just perfected a resurrection beam. Unfortunately, it makes the resurrected mindless zombies—down to bite transmissions; Infinity 8 is excellent for introducing other genres’ tropes into its sci-fi setting.

Oh, and then something else goes wrong, and the beam gets amplified all over the ship, creating at least a few zombies, but more importantly, it travels across the solar system-sized space graveyard of dead things. So Ninurta doesn’t just have the zombie outbreak on the ship to worry about (her kid and ex-husband are still there, and she doesn’t trust the ex in a zombie outbreak), but also everything in space trying to kill her too.

She’ll go back and forth from the ship and graveyard various times, eventually teaming up with her love interest and his band of misfits for some comedy relief and zombie fodder. Ninurta’s also got to make sure her kid’s okay, which isn’t easy on a ship overrun with zombies.

The story’s always very sci-fi, but writers Lewis Trondheim and Davy Mourier heavily leverage the zombie story tropes. This person’s got it and is hiding it, and so on. The emotional weight of Ninurta’s story is heavier than any of the lead agents to date, though Patty Stardust was in a lot of danger last time.

Patty returns this issue, making it her third appearance in Infinity 8 (so more than fifty percent). Ninurta and her sidekicks need a speedy starship, and damned if Patty isn’t part of the entourage, along with her dipshit guru boss, who doesn’t have a chance to be as much of a dipshit because Patty didn’t get the mission this volume.

How the individual agents affect the outcomes of their missions will be an interesting thing to reflect on. While their mission is exploration and reacting to what they find, everyone’s got a lot of baggage complicating matters. Well, maybe not the agent in the first series, whose interest in having a baby was comedic, not character development.

There are some other callbacks, whether it’s a one-panel cameo from a familiar robot or an alien species readers ought to remember who like to eat dead things. It’s a very full second half. There’s some breathing space in the first, but things go from bad to worse at the halfway point, and it’s pandemonium afterward.

Surprisingly, Trondheim and Mourier have a significant reveal in the last act, so Infinity 8 isn’t going to wait until the final volume to spill. Another significant reveal from the previous volume (or was it the volume before) also comes back in a big way, so maybe they’ll pace out the reveals. Can’t wait.

The only thing wrong with Apocalypse is just okay artist Lorenzo de Felici. From his aliens, he’d do a great Muppet comic. From his people, he’d do something where everyone has too big eyes. It’d be fine if he made up with it on the rest, but the visual pacing’s hurried and unsure. With the right artist, this volume would be the easy best. With de Felici, it’s a contender.

But.

Anyway. Can’t wait to see where Trondheim steers Infinity next.

Stoker’s Dracula (2004) #3

Like all faithful Bram Stoker’s Dracula adaptations, Stoker’s Dracula has hit the point where the source material’s bad writing is causing problems. Or, at least, lazy plotting. But it’s not writer Roy Thomas’s fault; it’s all on Stoker.

The most obvious example is someone screwing with Van Helsing’s plan to save Lucy’s soul. Last time it was Lucy’s mom, who died almost immediately following as a comeuppance; this time, it’s a maid. Thomas leaves in Van Helsing’s being super classist about the maid.

This issue is entirely “new” material. Artist Dick Giordano no longer draws Dracula exactly like he appeared in Tomb of Dracula, though sticks pretty close. He does not play up the Count’s gauntness, which makes it odd when multiple people comment on it. This issue’s got Jonathan and Mina seeing the Count in London and fairly soon getting involved with the vampire hunting plot.

There are numerous plotting conveniences straight from the novel. The boys exclude Mina so she can go and have an offscreen arc with Dracula as his steady victim, Mina not reading Jonathan’s journal until after they see Dracula, not to mention Jonathan not being able to tell Mina about his experiences and instead demanding she read the journal. She also types it up when she reads it, which, fortunately, we don’t see. Stoker’s Dracula leverages the finest in cheap mid-aughts computer lettering, including the horrendous newspapers. There are some notes and telegrams; they also look terrible and anachronistic, not just for the nineteenth-century setting but also with Giordano’s artwork. The “new” Stoker’s isn’t as, well, slutty as seventies Marvel black-and-white magazines, but it’s pretty bloody. Slick, barely better than Comics Sans lettering doesn’t fit.

Other weak sauce plotting includes Van Helsing’s trips back to Amsterdam to keep him away from the story, Jonathan’s boss dying off-page and leaving him the business, and numerous other recently deceased characters. The adaptation also draws attention to how little impact Dracula has on London, other than having turned Lucy into the “Bloofer Lady,” something Thomas rushes through. Unfortunately.

Given the adaptation’s previous success with Mina and Lucy and not with the boys, one would’ve hoped Thomas might stick closer to her. He does not. She’s off doing her own thing; no girls allowed. Thomas also doesn’t fix frequent narrator Jack Seward’s weird obsession with Lucy. It’s nowhere near as bad as before, but it is concerning when it comes back to start off the comic. This issue covers Jonathan and Mina in England, Lucy’s resurrection and destruction, and Dracula’s (romance-less) pursuit of Mina.

In a fun twist—I can’t remember if it’s from the novel—Dracula seems very aware he’s messing with his former victim’s new wife and taking delight in being that guy.

Stoker’s is an admirable exercise, but the new material isn’t as good as the old material. It’s not just thirty years taking its toll on the creators; it’s the novel getting into its muddy parts. Back in the seventies, they got stopped at just the right point before the book got too busy and messy.

I expect the last issue to be an entirely acceptable, entirely underwhelming read.