Category: 1993
-
I think Madwoman would read better as a single narrative, instead of sectioned off into installments. Jordorowsky makes a major plot addition this installment–the protagonist hallucinates his younger self as an advisor when it comes to being inappropriate with one of his students–and it just changes the tone completely from the last entry. The content…
-
The Madwoman is growing on me. Moebius’s artwork is solid throughout, maybe not the best thing for a talking heads story, but Jordorowsky keeps getting better. The story–and the reason for the title to include Madwoman–is becoming more and more clear. It’s no longer a boring academia story, it’s now a quirky academia story. I’m…
-
What a disaster. Madwoman is probably the best entry overall and even it’s pretty weak. Moebius is drawing a melodrama–it’s a soap opera and not a visually interesting one. Once the talking heads section passes, there’s some nice design at least. He’s always capable, but it’s sort of pointless. Jordorowsky has one rather excellent scene,…
-
The Bacchus makes up for any other possible deficiencies this issue. Campbell (and Bacchus) retell the story of the Minotaur and it’s simply wonderful. I’m not sure it’s historically accurate, though I don’t know. I’ve never read such an in-depth Minotaur story. The other two stories aren’t bad, but they really don’t even come close…
-
I didn’t know it was possible for me to care about Paleolove and I’m not entirely sure I really do. But I am mad at Davis for the way he ends this story. It seems like the last Paleolove (yay!) but he kills off a side character in the exposition and it’s a really weak…
-
The Predator story keeps getting worse (it turns out it’s just a prologue to some limited series, I love it when Dark Horse uses Presents to advertise their licensed properties). Given Raskin’s worsening artwork and Stradley’s bad writing–he uses a government report as the narrative exposition, he’s used similar devices in the past successfully… here…
-
Though pre-Internet, one can still find all sorts of trivia about why Last Action Hero supposedly failed. Apparently the studio rushed the release, not allowing for editing or proper post-production. That rush might explain why some of the special effects appear far cheaper than one would expect (I’m thinking of the magic beams appearing drawn…
-
Now here’s a good issue. It’s mostly about Seth–the character–looking for old New Yorker cartoons. It’s about more–there’s stuff with his family, stuff with a friend–but the emphasis is on him looking for old New Yorker cartoons in general and this one artist in particular. What’s really interesting about the issue is how much attention…
-
I’ve read this story before. Young adult male falls in with older, unavailable woman, experiences a broken heart, realizes it’s all okay though. I think I’ve even read it in an indie comic, maybe even another published by Drawn and Quarterly. In other words, Seth doesn’t have anything original going here. It’s not bad though.…
-
Tardi jumps around quite a bit in It Was the War of the Trenches, but does follow a general sort of narrative progression. Though the stories–it was originally serialized, with some delay, in anthologies–all feature their own characters and situations, they move forward in time. Even when Tardi resets at one point, the subsequent vignettes…
-
Talk about an anachronism… McGregor’s got a line of dialogue about people in capes flying. Zorro takes place in the 1800s, which might be a little before Superman, but I’m not sure. McGregor also does all his mountain man (the villain) dialogue in a Deliverance dialect, which is sort of effective, since it makes one…
-
Robocop goes up against the I.R.S.? Who can win? So far, with Mitch Byrd’s artwork looking like the McFarlene school of everything having lines being a far cry above the other series from the publisher, Roulette is the best. It’s not promising, because it’s still set in the stupid post-Robocop 3 continuity where Dark Horse…
-
It’s so, so bad. I mean, I thought since Grant turned in a decent third issue, he might be able to pull off a fourth too, but no. It’s just awful. It’s hard to explain how bad it is without sitting down and reading it because it’s just so unbelievable. Grant goes for this melodramatic…
-
Holy cow, Robocop, it’s almost an okay issue! It doesn’t take much for an issue of this series to be better than before, since the first two issues–and lots of this one–are so exceptionally terribly, but this issue does have some imagination to it. No, not imagination, sorry, what was I thinking… not imagination. Storytelling…
-
The problem, occasionally, here at Comics Fondle is the length constraint. Each review of a standard issue is one hundred and fifty words. I have five words to say about Robocop: Mortal Coils issue two. What a piece of crap. So how to fill the other hundred words? Does it matter what’s wrong with it?…
-
How to start… maybe licensing Robocop 3 instead of Robocop is a bad idea. I mean, it’s not like The Terminator, where licensing got all split up, sequel after sequel. Dark Horse could have gotten Robocop and not had to do sequels to Robocop 3, right? This issue is Robocop in Denver. It’s kind of…
-
It’s finally over. I’m sure no one thought, seeing this series, Leon would go on to do anything good. Or draw anything competently. I mean, the art in this issue is the worst so far. It’s absolutely atrocious. I guess Dark Horse was being mindful of Robocop as a children’s property at this time, which…
-
Actually, I’ve changed my mind about Nguyen’s art. It’s not, you know, in the artistic sense, any better, but it’s like he’s doing a Mad magazine adaptation here. He’s trying to fit everyone he can into each panel. Heaven forbid Dark Horse had tried some imagination with their Robocop license and turned this one into…
-
I always forget how ugly some nineties art can be. Nguyen’s fairly competent, I mean, I can recognize his characters, even if the facial details leave something to be desired and he’ll occasionally layout a panel well, but his Robocop is bulky and gross. It looks like a five year-old’s Robocop, certainly not a sleek,…
-
I can’t remember the last time I read a comic book adaptation of a movie–they’re the opposite of the novelization, which expands on the source material (for the most part, since the writers are working with a script, not a final cut)–comic book adaptations truncate everything they can to tell a cohesive narrative. And they…
-
Umm. Yeah. Where to start with Demolition Man. Stallone’s really personable in it. It might be his most personable, because the viewer automatically identifies with him as the modern (mostly modern) guy in the strange future. The real star is Sandra Bullock, whose performance is far from perfect and her character is poorly written, but…
-
If it weren’t for the fantastic Brad Fiedel music (until the end credits) and the Pittsburgh locations (the city really is underutilized as a filming location, with Striking Distance taking fantastic advantage of its mix of urban, green and water), there’d be nothing to distinguish this one. It’s a B movie given a high profile…
-
It’s actually not hard to find nice things to say about Robocop 3. There’re about fifteen nice seconds of Phil Tippett stop-motion, Dekker’s got a neat way of shooting cars to give a sense of realism (his cinematographer, Gary B. Kibbe, did a lot of Carpenter’s films)… umm… wait, I’m sure I can find a…
-
Two major things about Soderbergh’s approach to a memoir adaptation. They’re somewhat connected, so I might not manage to separate them out. King of the Hill has no frame, it has no narration. It has no context. It does not feel, at all, like a “true” story because there’s no attempt to classify itself as…
-
I remember when Stalingrad came out on VHS. I was working at a video store and argued for ordering it, based on the ads mention of it having the same producer as Das Boot. Still, I was a little surprised at how much the opening credits try to go for a Das Boot feel. It’s…
-
Dennis Quaid’s performance in Flesh and Bone is complicated. The character, the hints the film offers into him, is more complicated, but Quaid’s performance somehow encapsulates all those unknowns without defining them. The film has some really strange touching scenes, as Quaid’s character lets down the wall long enough to express himself. And the anguish…
-
Malice starts relatively okay, but it’s got a terribly flawed first half. Until the point Bill Pullman takes over as lead character, especially as Alec Baldwin and Nicole Kidman are spiraling through their lawsuit, it seems like Malice is going to be a well-produced disaster. It’s well-made, reasonably well-directed–Becker does a good job for the…
-
When the film started, I sort of marveled at how absurd it was–Joel Schumacher and Michael Douglas making a subversive movie, then I quickly realized Falling Down isn’t subversive… it’s “controversial.” Obviously, Schumacher doesn’t have a controversial bone in his body–and neither does Douglas–so Falling Down gets repetitive and boring before too long. I suppose…
-
I try not to concern myself with the Academy Awards these days. I scoff at the thought of them actually awarding quality, but I’m still pleased when someone like Clint Eastwood wins and perplexed when something like Crash does too. So I’m a little surprised at my reaction to Rosie Perez in Fearless. I’m enraged…
-
Outstanding, high concept comedy about misanthrope weatherman Bill Murray going to a small-town to cover the titular holiday, only to discover he can’t ever leave–he’s repeating the same day over and over and over again. Great Murray performance. Really smart script (by director Ramis and Danny Rubin). DVD, Blu-ray, Streaming.Continue reading →
The Stop Button 