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Xombi (1994) #21
So David’s poor fiancée never gets a single line. She never even gets to mention he looks twenty-five years younger than the last time she saw him. Rozum’s not just shortening the series this issue; double-sized or not, he’s hurrying up the storyline. At one point he inexplicably shifts perspective in a way to trick… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #20
Maybe Rozum should have just written a novel. This issue has David meeting his essentially immortal future love—they won’t get together for eighty years, which is then the lifespan of the series’s potential present action—and the Rabbi going around her castle seeing a bunch of funny supernatural people. Rozum has names for everything and everyone,… 📖
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Sidewalks of New York (2001, Edward Burns)
Sidewalks of New York is Edward Burns embracing the idea of becoming the WASP Woody Allen. Well, Burns is Irish Catholic, so not exactly the WASP Woody Allen… but something nearer to it than not. It’s his attempt at making a quintessential New York movie while being aware he’s making a quintessential New York movie.… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #19
Talk about padding. Before I forget, the fiancée does come up again for a brief mention. No appearance, but a mention. The issue itself is David and the Rabbi going through some more strange stuff and then waiting for this ancient, immortal woman. It turns out she’s David’s soulmate or something, but he doesn’t know… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #18
This issue, concentrating on the second xombi, is pretty good. Rozum always does well with these done-in-ones and this issue, though it’s part of a bigger story (there’s some subplot brewing going on too), is basically one of those issues. David and his problems are barely mentioned (everyone has seemingly forgotten the fiancée… it’s amazing… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #17
After what seems like his editorially mandated guest star issues… Rozum gets Xombi back on track. This issue continues directly from what Rozum promised three issues ago—David gets to find out about the strange world he lives in. It doesn’t open with him, however. Instead, it opens with the reader finding out David is going… 📖
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Matter Fisher (2010, David Prosser)
For most of its seven or eight minute running time, Matter Fisher manages to be style over substance. In a great way. There’s no heavy-handed narrative, no attempt at fashioning a satisfying narrative. It’s just a beautifully made mix of CG and hand-drawn animation as this anonymous fisherman accidentally destroys the universe. Director Prosser comes… 📖
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Bad Dog (2009) #3
Okay, the sidekick’s name is Wendell. Not sure why it stuck with me this time since he’s not in the issue very much. Instead, it’s Lou and this other character off fighting border hoppers. Except they’re not really border hoppers, at least not in the traditional sense. I won’t spoil, since Kelly spends half the… 📖
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Purple Violets (2007, Edward Burns)
I’ve been avoiding seeing Purple Violets for almost four years–I thought it was going to be one of Burns’s lesser works. So, obviously, it shouldn’t be a surprise it’s his best film (it’s also his best film as a director). I’m having some trouble trying to figure out how to start talking about it. It’s… 📖
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Bad Dog (2009) #2
Kelly follows the same format as before, with some minor changes. There’s a lot of humor, then some action, then some more humor and then the serious stuff. The humor goes a little crazy here, actually, overloading the book. Kelly implies the serious material more than concentrates on it, instead emphasizing the absurdity of the… 📖
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Bad Dog (2009) #1
The most striking thing about Bad Dog is Diego Greco’s painted art. Besides one problem, it’s some of the finer painted comic book art. Joe Kelly’s characters and situations tend to be absurd and Greco turns Bad Dog into this incredibly polished political cartoon. He’s very talented. Except when it comes to werewolves. The protagonist… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #16
Okay, by not reading the cover, I missed knowing the giant rat—Boogieman—was guest-starring from one of the Milestone superhero books. It looks like this issue is where Rozum had to bring in guest stars to try and up the sales on Xombi. There’s some other character in it too, some flying chick with a bad… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #15
Yeah, Xombi’s definitely taken a change in direction. This issue, Rozum brings back some barely relevant monsters and makes them attack the population. Can David and his friends stop them? Who knows, there’s a cliffhanger first—this issue makes the third where David’s powers don’t make a significant appearance. Neither does his fiancée. No mention either,… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #14
I think I just hit the point in Xombi’s publication history when it got an editorial mandate. This issue does not contain the story promised at the end of the last issue. It does not feature David’s fiancée returning. It does not even mention her. Instead, David’s hanging out with his nanotechnology expert friend. He’s… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #13
I think this issue is Rozum’s best on Xombi, but it’s hard to say. It’s so unrelentingly, hostilely downbeat, it’s difficult to fully appreciate it. The issue’s not about David. He appears at the bookends, consulting the Rabbi as to how to inform his fiancée about his… lifestyle change. The Rabbi tells David about his… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #12
Rozum brings in David’s fiancée here—though only on the phone—but he doesn’t really need her. The issue, written from David’s perspective (which is good as it was the last time), is more about introducing David’s friends. His regular friends… who don’t notice he looks twenty years younger. Birch now draws David like a punk teenager… 📖
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T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (2011) #6
Um. I don’t know if Spencer could have written an issue with less content. I mean… this thing is paced worse than one of those Ultimate Spider-Man’s where Peter just stares at a something for twenty pages. The mission is over. Nothing is resolved with the twist from the last issue. In fact, Spencer just… 📖
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T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (2011) #5
Yeah, I definitely think the longer first two issues spoiled me. Or maybe it’s just the position Spencer puts the reader in. After totally changing the status quo with the last cliffhanger, he changes it again this issue. Or at least he implies he didn’t totally change it like he suggested. Maybe I’m just upset… 📖
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T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (2011) #4
Now there’s a big surprise. Spencer was pretty cute the way he diverted attention from it; it works. Unfortunately, the issue is the first weak one in the series. Not because of the twist, but because backup artist George Perez apparently wasn’t hired to draw anything important. Instead, Perez draws the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. orientation tour. It… 📖
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T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (2011) #3
Ah, here we go… Spencer has to deal with a regular length issue. He does well–the soft cliffhanger all of a sudden makes a lot of sense with the pacing. He’s going through the team’s first mission. Even though the issues focus on an agent, the handlers provide the continuity. But this issue introduces an… 📖
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Dead Again (1991, Kenneth Branagh)
I indistinctly remember the last time I saw Dead Again, I didn’t think much of it. I don’t know what I could have been thinking. Until the last act, which slaps a mystery conclusion onto an amnesia thriller without enough padding, the film’s utterly fantastic. Branagh’s direction is great, but the most striking thing initially… 📖
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T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (2011) #2
Spencer does just fine with the pacing again. Of course, he’s got another over-sized issue. This one concentrates on one of the agents, Lightning, who’s a disgraced Olympic runner. One assumes the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. organization did something to lead to that disgrace, but it’s never made clear. The protagonists—Toby and Colleen—continue their charming bickering. I wonder… 📖
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T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (2011) #1
Spencer does great with an oversized first issue, but I’m wondering how he’s going to be able to do his multilayered narrative in a regular length one. While T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents seems pretty innocuous, it’s actually this spy thriller with double crosses and “Get Smart” references and some really good dialogue. Spencer sets it up with… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #11
So the big revelation this issue? David Kim is kind of an angel. The guest-starring angels, off panel, tell him so. And, just as Rozum has pushed the series as far away from tangible reality as possible, the back matter promises to bring it back. Next issue will feature David’s fiancée, who apparently hasn’t missed… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #10
Rozum paces the issue somewhat well. He was some twists in the first few pages by the end, I thought they happened last issue as the hard cliffhanger. It lets him utilize a couple different tones to it. Of course, Birch helps with the tone too. The end becomes this frantic chase sequence, usually comedic;… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #9
More mentions of Xombi‘s meaning—it’s pronounced zombie, notch—but nothing explaining how David became one (it’s not just a science thing, presumably, but also a magic thing) when he had his science-driven origin. His friends don’t talk much about it either. Rozum does something very strange here, bringing another of the supporting cast into the issue… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #8
So apparently the title, Xombi, isn’t just a riff on zombie, but some way of describing David Kim. We learn about it from the latest bunch of new characters Rozum adds this issue. I don’t think he goes a single issue without introducing two new characters. Here it might be four. Again, not much of… 📖
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Manhatta (1921, Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler)
About three quarters of Strand and Sheeler’s shots in Manhatta could just be stills. It’s less about the camera being motionless than about the subjects being motionless. While the subjects are varied, a lot of them are related to the water—whether the tugboats or the ocean liners or the docks, there’s a lot of water… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #7
Just after I’ve gotten used to the supporting cast, Rozum gets rid of them for a new one. These people have more to do with David, I suppose, but they’re his regular friends. They’re nowhere near as interesting as the wacky, magical ones. This issue starts a new arc and Rozum has returned to the… 📖
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The Sixth Gun (2010) #11
Bunn has taken the reader’s expectations—or at least, Bunn’s perception of the reader’s expectations—and reversed them. It means he gets to end this issue, and its arc, in an unexpected place. Gord, who’s been sort of a seventh wheel around The Sixth Gun for a while, is apparently bowing out for a bit and Becky… 📖
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The Sixth Gun (2010) #10
If Bunn feels he needs to redeem Becky in some way, he’s sure taking his time about it. There’s some awesome looking awful stuff this issue—Hurtt reminds, more than once, of he and Bunn’s previous series, The Damned, with the supernatural elements—but also of important has to be Billjohn. Well, Billjohn the clay golem. He… 📖
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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994, Kenneth Branagh)
I’m trying to think of good things about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It starts off poorly, with an opening title seemingly made on a cheap video editor from the late 1970s, then moves into the Walton framing sequence. Apparently, no one involved with the film—Branagh, the screenwriters, the producers—understood the point of these frames in the… 📖
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The Sixth Gun (2010) #9
Ho hum. Bunn does the exact thing I was really hoping he wouldn’t, but he aggravates the situation by accelerating Kirby and Becky’s friendship into a sexual relationship immediately this issue. Well, not immediately, because Gord and Drake sit around and talk about the six guns possibly being even more trouble than they imagined. Then… 📖
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The Sixth Gun (2010) #8
Things are still developing, but while they do, Drake gets into a bit of trouble and we get to see Hurtt do a man versus giant alligator scene. It’s a fantastic few pages from Hurtt, who’s otherwise not doing a lot of action this issue. There’s some talking and some more of those discreet little… 📖
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The Sixth Gun (2010) #7
Twice in this issue, Hurtt and Bunn have these little actions—Becky clutching her arm, later going for the gun in her purse—and they’re silent moments in small panels. The reader needs to pay attention to The Sixth Gun, or he or she is going to miss something. Most of this issue is just prepping for… 📖
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Mr. Stache (2011, Jac Schaeffer)
Mr. Stache is a little like a “Saturday Night Live” sketch, if they did good ones. The whole thing is done in summary, narrated by Kali Rocha. She sort of sells it—the film’s actually at its best when she, the narrator, starts talking about her own experiences and not the content of the film. Otherwise,… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #6
And so Rozum promised a lot, maybe without realizing it, from this issue and he delivers. He delivers more than I hoped. He seems to get how important it is for Xombi to finally be about the protagonist. This issue, the supernatural oddness of the last four are almost forgotten; their brief mentions are all… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #5
The soft cliffhanger implies Rozum is going to start dealing with David’s stuff next issue. I’m not holding my breath, but I am somewhat hopeful…. This issue is another mixed bag. The issue revolves around this giant monster—who Rozum just now introduces, even though he’s been sort of present a while—and the gang trying to… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #4
Even Birch seems to give up a little this issue, which introduces a bunch of new things—not just new characters, but new creatures—for David Kim to contend with. Birch’s faces look unfinished, like he skipped inking them because he had to much other stuff to do. There’s only a little stuff with Kim this issue;… 📖
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Thor (2011, Kenneth Branagh)
Thor has two problems to overcome. Director Branagh is successful at one of them. The first problem is half the film takes place in mythological Asgard, which is an ancient place, but very modern with all the latest streamlined architecture—think if Art Deco molded with neon, some magical stuff and then inexplicable horse-based transit. For… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #3
At one point this issue, the Nun of the Above—who’s that nun I mentioned last time—tells one of the new cast members she’s never heard of him. My response is similar. I’m weary at trying to keep the cast straight. From the first five pages, Rozum has got five or six people moving through the… 📖
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Xombi (1994) #2
J.J. Birch is the perfect artist for this book. He can even make cute little mechanical birds like mildly scary. Rozum resolves his cliffhanger. Actually, it wasn’t a hard cliffhanger, but a soft one. There are no happy moments, no redemptive ones, no smiles. Well, maybe some smiles. Here, Rozum introduces the supporting cast—and, yes,… 📖