Author: Andrew Wickliffe
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Artist Mike Ploog is back to inking himself, and it is glorious from the first page. There’s even a recap of the previous issue, so everyone can see what they missed not having Ploog ink himself. The recap also burns some pages for writer Len Wein, who’s got the somewhat inglorious task of picking up…
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I wish I hadn’t made the fumetti joke about last issue and the photographs; in this issue, when there are newscasts, artist Sean Phillips just copies and pastes some video captures. Sigh. This issue’s back to Dylan’s perspective, starting before Kira’s experiences last issue but covering them. When she’s hiding out in his closet during…
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So Howard Chaykin doing layouts of a teen superhero book without being pervy. All the dudes look about forty-five. It’s hilarious. It’s not good, but it’s hilarious. There’s only one female Legionnaire in the story—Phantom Girl—who’s not as scantily clad as Cosmic Boy, so not the salacious Chaykin one might expect. Also, he’s just doing…
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The feature has art by Ernie Chan and Frank McLaughlin. Chan’s figure drawing is rough. Batman looks silly and uncomfortable, contorting his way through the story. Gerry Conway’s got the script credit, so when the mystery villain turns out to be a Punisher clone called the Black Spider… well, at least they got Conway to…
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I was geared up for a Garth Ennis war comic, but A Walk Through Hell is a supernatural horror police procedural; FBI agents are the leads (so far), but still. And it’s very modern; it opens with an active shooter situation at a mall at Christmastime, there are tweets, one of the characters bitches about…
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It’s a better issue than last time but still far from the Werewolf heights. The issue’s enough to stop the free-falling, though; if only Marvel gets someone who can ink Mike Ploog’s pencils. Frank Bolle does the job here, and, while better than Frank Chiaramonte, he’s still not great. The werewolf at least looks scary,…
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Wait, what just happened? Writer Ed Brubaker just took Kill or Be Killed on a seemingly unplanned detour, bringing back Kira—the friend who started dating Dylan’s roommate but then started sleeping with Dylan (in the first arc)—and entirely redefining the character. Not to mention giving her a character. Also, she’s got blue hair now. And…
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Gattaca is a science fiction triptych character study by way of film noir. And while the film’s a murder mystery, it only uses the film noir device—narration—for a non-mystery section of the film. The narration ends with the murder mystery, not coming back until the finale. It’s an absolutely fantastic structure from writer and director…
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The Intruder has third act problems of the deus ex machina nature, and they’re actually welcome. If the film figured out how to finish better, it’d be more challenging to talk about. It’s already an exceptionally unpleasant experience. William Shatner gets top-billing as the title character. He’s a slick, charming, clean-cut Northern (well, Western—he’s originally…
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I went into this issue doubly hesitant because it’s about Ultra Boy being framed for murdering his ex-girlfriend, An Ryd, and I avoid Ayn Rand fans. Maybe it’s just the letters; maybe there’s no connection. Or just a name familiarity one. The character’s barely in the comic, just long enough to double-cross Ultra Boy and…
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The first half of George Carlin’s American Dream is a history lesson. Big history and little history; it’s the history of comedy in the second half of the twentieth century; it’s the story of Carlin and his family. It’s the story of his career and how success changed his life; how some things got better,…
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Despite an exceedingly dull finale, a disappointing motorcycle chase sequence, and numerous pointless teasers, this issue ends better than it begins. The first scene is Batman 2039 trying to convince one of his allies he’s not the problem, he’s the solution. There will be a similar sequence at the end for another character, who can’t…
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Oh, no, is Werewolf by Night going to run off the rails this early? I’m hoping it’s just Gerry Conway burning out on the writing, though the Frank Chiaramonte inks ruin the Mike Ploog pencils too. Actually, the final art’s so de-Plooged, I wonder if he even finished the pencils. There’s occasionally effective art, mostly…
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It’s as though “Frasier” heard me across time and made some immediate adjustments—it’s another radio station episode, but unlike last episode, it features a bunch of scenes for Kelsey Grammer and Peri Gilpin at work. It’s also got regular station guest cast (Edward Hibbert), and then station manager Tom McGowan’s practically a regular. There are…
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It’s another new-to-“Frasier” writer credit this episode: welcome, Sam Johnson and Chris Marcil. I just realized the title, Radio Wars, might be a nod to the annual Bar Wars episodes of “Cheers.” There’s not much warring, though, mostly just Kelsey Grammer getting pranked. The episode begins with Grammer asleep in bed, a phone call waking…
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I just found out comments haven’t been working. Probably since I “upgraded” to the new WordPress plan. Quotation marks because comments not working is just the latest item on the list of fails related to the new Pro subscription. Besides being able to install plugins—I broke the site with one already, obviously—there’s nothing better to…
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I’m trying to imagine my take on this issue if I’d kept reading Kill or Be Killed the first time I tried. Would I have been validated, disappointed, disinterested, indifferent, enthused? Probably not enthused. Writer Ed Brubaker changes things up this issue entirely, complete with a rationalizing explanation in the back matter, but basically, he’s…
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This issue reprints a couple Adventure Comics from 1967, written by a sixteen-year-old Jim Shooter, proving he was better at writing comics in his teens than in his thirties. Though I’m sure there’s an abundance of evidence on that one. Shooter also does the layouts, with Curt Swan penciling and George Klein inking. The art…
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I'm getting worried I was supposed to be reading Luba's Comics and Stories simultaneously to Luba. The last two issues have had ads for the other comic, which makes me wonder what creator Beto Hernandez's version of the Superman shield with the reading number would be… probably something amazingly obscene. Hopefully. This issue's almost entirely…
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Star Trek: The Motion Picture: The Restored Director’s Edition occasionally feels like a fan project. Or at least a temp project. Like the new opening titles, set in gold. They look like they were done using an iPhone app. Then there are shots where they couldn’t find the original materials, so the picture suddenly looks…
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There are worse movies than Teen Wolf Too. There have to be worse movies than Teen Wolf Too. It’s a mantra you can use when watching Teen Wolf Too. Of course, given the era, there may be even a worse theatrically released movie from the same year (1987). But Teen Wolf Too is just the…
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Year 100 started with Jim Gordon (named after granddad) not knowing anything about “The Bat-Man of Gotham” and thinking it was an unlikely urban legend in the first issue to revealing he was the warden of Arkham Asylum. And it was filled with super-villains. And then he let the federal police kill them all, getting…
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Frank Chiaramonte inks the Ploog this issue, resulting in some really good art, but not the sublime standard Ploog’s set doing his own inks. It seems like Chiaramonte takes over a few pages into the comic; after a while, the faces lose that Ploog character. The expressiveness. Or maybe, since it’s eventually just the villain,…
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This issue is where I jumped off Kill or Be Killed the last time I tried reading it. The funny part is I’m now utterly dispassionate about the issue. Sure, I can see where Sean Phillips’s lagging art would’ve bothered me—Dylan runs into his ex-girlfriend (who I think they teased in the first or second…
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Teen Wolf is a rather dire Wolf. The best things about the movie are James Hampton as the dad and the werewolf makeup, which seems entirely designed to allow for a stuntman to play Michael J. Fox when he’s decked out. Otherwise, it’s never better than middling and often much worse. Some of the problem…
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This issue is weird. The story’s weird, and the issue’s weird. The story’s weird because it’s about the Legion committing numerous intergalactic crimes because their financial benefactor is in danger. The issue’s weird because, well, the art is… lacking. And the art’s from Walt Simonson and Jack Abel. I’m not the most well-read on Simonson,…
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About a third of this issue is talking heads. First, it’s unnamed Batman 2039 and his team—including a new Robin, who starts the issue working on a bitchin’ motorcycle for Bats—talking through what led up to last issue’s issue-long chase sequence, and then it’s cop Gordon and his gang looking through the archives for information…
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Werewolf by Night’s got a cliffhanger to resolve at the beginning of its first issue, which is awkward. Especially since writer Gerry Conway’s going to take so many shortcuts. He’s in a race to resolve everything, concluding in a breakneck single-page wrap-up, and he never gets a chance to setup Werewolf as its own book.…
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The most unrealistic thing about Kill or Be Killed is Dylan isn’t a white supremacist. Like, historically speaking. Also, his classes in graduate school. Much of this issue’s about him trying to find his next target, starting with a subway fantasy about taking out a couple punks, but then it turns out he’s just watching…
The Stop Button 