Author: Andrew Wickliffe
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It’s a much quicker read than I’d like, which is the nature of a licensed title. Even a circularly licensed one like Harley Quinn: The Animated Series. It’s following the source media’s plotting. The issue amounts to about a seven-minute segment of TV; between commercial breaks. Harley and Ivy get to Selina’s, with Gordon in…
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So while this issue has Mon-El going around declaring Shadow Lass is “his woman” and people better recognize, cultural mores of the late seventies didn’t allow writer Gerry Conway to point out the Legion is fighting a shit monster. The Legion is helping with post-Earthwar rebuilding, and something strange is going on down in the…
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It’s a horror mystery starring Dracula. Some skeleton is coming to life and terrorizing people, only he’s after specific people, not just everyone. Based on writer Marv Wolfman’s descriptions, it’s more a zombie than a skeleton, but there’s still such a thing as the Comics Code, so it’s a skeleton in the art. The text…
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So, it turns out sometimes you do actually need a story. No matter the locations, no matter the photography, the music, the actors, the editing, even the directing, sometimes you can’t get away with eighty minutes without some kind of narrative. Five Nights in Maine is the story of newly widowed David Oyelowo. He becomes…
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So, I figured out where Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers’s Detective Comics belongs. As a comic strip in late seventies Playboy. Seriously. Rogers’s art is detailed but plain, intricately designed but not artsy. Englehart’s exposition is childish—“comic book-ish”—and treats Batman as a fascist action figure, but it’s incredibly consistent. Lots! Of! Declarative! Statements! Plus, this…
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Umm. I feel bad for writer Garth Ennis. I feel bad he did this issue. There are desperate ways to stretch out a series, to pad an issue, to make the right count for a trade. But somehow, Ennis surpasses all of them with this unconditional waste of time issue. I feel bad for Goran…
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“Evil”’s original conceit was a supernatural procedural. Hot priest-to-be Mike Colter, hot-but-appropriately-aged psychiatrist Katja Herbers, and funny and cute tech guy Aasif Mandvi investigate cases and prove they’re either not supernatural, or their solution gets left up in the air, but the danger abates. It’s changed over the seasons, though this episode leans in heavy…
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Don Perlin makes his first appearance in the Werewolf by Night credits, and I felt the tinge of inevitability. He’s inking Gil Kane’s pencils; about the only okay thing ends up being Wolfman Jack. Kane and Perlin’s regular people are pretty bad, Perlin’s fault, but Kane’s layouts for the action aren’t very good, not Perlin’s…
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But, wait, what if Dylan’s a ghost and he’s been dead the whole time? Okay, writer Ed Brubaker doesn’t end the issue on that reveal, but he ends it on one much more similar to it than I’d have thought. It’s definitely an intriguing cliffhanger, though Brubaker’s either going to do something interesting with it,…
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Batman ‘89 ends far better than it should, but still disappointingly. Writer Sam Hamm doesn’t go for an action-packed Batman finale, instead letting Bruce Wayne do the final showdown, which ought to emphasize Billy Dee Williams’s Harvey Dent, only doesn’t. It very strangely reduces Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne material as well. Hamm seems to know…
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Well, I misremembered this issue, and not for the better. I thought Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale were going to do Bizarro. And although they use some of the same characters from the Bizarro origin in Man of Steel, Lex has a very different plan to humble Superman. Lex is this issue’s narrator. It opens…
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This issue starts with the Roy Thomas and Dick Giordano adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which I read in reprint. I’m not going to check the original novel, but I’m not sure Stoker had Jonathan Harker be a shitty racist about China (complaining about how their trains ran in 1897). Harker writes in his diary…
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William Gibson’s Alien 3 is two levels of incomprehensible to the non-Alien franchise fan. First, you’ve got to know your Aliens, then you probably should know your existing Alien³. Familiarity with Dark Horse Comics’s original Aliens series might not hurt either, so you can better appreciate when Hicks shows up on the very last page.…
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The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour picks up right where the second season of “Harley Quinn” leaves off. Harley and Ivy are on the run after Ivy’s failed wedding, Commissioner Gordon in hot pursuit. There’s a very brief recap of the show in general and then Ivy’s not-wedding to Kite Man. It’s well-balanced exposition from Harley…
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This issue’s an object lesson in bad art and how it can ruin a story. Not the feature, which has Jack Abel inking Joe Staton, but only because it’s not a good story. Len Wein scripts, finishing last issue’s cliffhanger about the Fatal Five’s latest scheme against the Legion. Only it’s not a scheme. The…
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It only took fifteen issues (plus some Dracula Lives), but I finally get my Marvel Comics Dracula origin details. The issue’s somewhat coy about the revelations, starting with an incredibly entertaining sequence where Dracula’s journaling. A record must be kept of his thoughts and so on, as he’s Dracula. It ought to be obnoxious, but…
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It’s J. Alex Brinson’s first murder trial—as a public defender—and he’s up against jogging pal and former mentor Wilson Bethel, and Simone Missick’s their judge. I like how at some point, “All Rise” just stopped worrying about Bethel and Missick being besties and let her hear his cases. Missick, of course, was Brinson’s judge when…
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Despite primarily being a setup for next episode’s season finale, this episode of “The Boys” gets a lot done, and most of it’s excellent, with the occasional exceptional. It gives Karl Urban another great acting showcase, even though he’s stuck in a nightmare where he’s entirely reactive. Great direction from Sarah Boyd; it’s her first…
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Until now, “The Orville: New Horizons” has never felt aware of its own literal limitations. It’s the last season (for now, they keep saying, for now), and A Tale of Two Topas feels like show creator and episode credited writer and director Seth MacFarlane getting something done before the show’s over. All they need to…
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There’s a lot to be said about this issue, but the “highlight” has got to be when writer Steve Englehart describes Batman as the “pensive prince of shadows.” This line comes just before Batman goes to the Batcave and yells, “I’m the goddamn Batman,” to himself as a positive self-reinforcement. I’m only slightly exaggerating; Englehart…
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It’s a very talky, very unpleasant issue. Walk Through Hell has been gross before, it’s been mean before, but this issue, writer Garth Ennis turns it up to eleven. The bad guy—who maybe thinks he’s the Anti-Christ (we don’t get there yet, which will seem like burying the lede)—recounts his life history, starting with killing…
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Code 46 is a budget future-noir, down to the male lead being a fraud investigator (though it’s unclear why there’d be a third-party contractor investigating identity theft). But it’s not just a budget future-noir; it’s also a future eugenics thriller; the title refers to the legal code forbidding procreating with your near relatives. Cousins would…
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The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is a narrated character study. Protagonist Robin Wright is talking herself through her life while the film observes her, seeing where she’s gained the perspective of time and where she hasn’t. The film starts in the present, with Wright and husband Alan Arkin having just moved to a retirement…
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Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is not an action director but in an okay enough way. This episode’s mostly well-directed; Obaid-Chinoy just doesn’t know what to do with the first superhero fight or the chase scene. But, the chase scene works out. There’s the chaos aspect, and it being Iman Vellani’s first Bond movie chase scene through exotic…
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It took Marvel until Werewolf #11 to get Marv Wolfman writing the book. Just the credit alone is worth it, which they seem to get—the credit reads: “finally a Wolfman written by a Wolfman.” Wolfman does get to create a new villain—The Hangman; I’m pretty sure he goes on to more in Marvel. The Hangman’s…
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Despite finally giving full context for the bookend writer Ed Brubaker started in the first issue, the comic still can’t make it interesting. The bookending device is less interesting the more protagonist Dylan talks about it, and he talks a lot about it this issue. Well, he talks about the next part of the plan.…
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This episode has wonderful balance. It’s a “bigger” episode than usual, with a couple new big sets—a hospital waiting room, a doctor’s office—and it opens with Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce in a car. Everything’s going to mix barbed wit with sincerity, giving the episode a bittersweet quality. But first, Hyde Pierce needs to…
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There’s only one adult referenced in Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown. When the bus leaves Charlie Brown (voiced by Duncan Watson) stranded, they’ve established the driver’s silhouette. Not having any adults makes a lot of sense since, somehow, the Peanuts parents all decided to send their kids to a camp on the other side…
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Writer Jeph Loeb pushes a little too hard with the soft cliffhanger setting up next issue; it’s two pages plus a panel, but it feels longer because it ties into the final action sequence. It’s Lex Luthor machinating against Superman stuff, which is inevitable but also one-note. Loeb doesn’t give Luthor any depth; he’s caricature.…
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This episode ends with an odd, incomplete feeling. There’s no oomph to any of the storylines, and the resolutions are all put off until next time. There’s not even a cliffhanger, just Katja Herbers and Andrea Martin not being shitty to each other. It feels like a long episode cut up, but it also feels…
The Stop Button 