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Atlas (2010) #3
Huh. It’s hard to say what Parker’s doing or why. He basically drags a quarter of an issue’s worth of story out to an entire issue—the bad guys infiltrate the Atlas headquarters, nothing else important happens. He ends it on a hard cliffhanger with Venus shot and Namora possessed. There’s some investigation into 3-D Man’s… 📖
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Atlas (2010) #2
There’s the Atlas I love. Parker brings back everything great about the series (the serious tone with the humor, Mr. Lao having something going on he forgets to tell Jimmy about) and adds 3-D Man to the roster. The issue’s pretty simple—we get an introduction to the team as 3-D Man tries to escape (including… 📖
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An American Werewolf in London (1981, John Landis)
There’s a lot of good stuff about An American Werewolf in London–for example, Landis doesn’t have a single joke fall flat–but something about it just doesn’t work. Something Landis doesn’t do, as a director. I can’t quite put a label on it, since he does so many things well. Like the English setting. With Robert… 📖
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Atlas (2010) #1
Parker does something very strange for the first issue of Atlas. He barely features them. There’s a backup with the team in the fifties, which helps, but the primary story belongs to 3-D Man, a character I’m unfamiliar with. He’s got ties to the fifties too, so I guess he sort of works, but giving… 📖
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The Lost Thing (2010, Andrew Ruhemann and Shaun Tan)
The Lost Thing is based on Shaun Tan’s picture book, which explains how it juggles being melancholic while still full of wonderment. It’s a partial, epically told metaphor for growing up. It’s a lovely little film with a great structure. The first half contains most of the scenes. The protagonist finds this gigantic, friendly creature… 📖
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The Thessaliad (2002) #4
Something’s off with the eyes this issue. It never looks like people are looking where they’re supposed to be looking. Otherwise, McManus and Pepoy do a fine job. This issue—and the last one—are narration free as Willingham turns Thessaly into the main character (she was the subject in the first issue and shared the spotlight… 📖
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The Thessaliad (2002) #3
Willingham does a good twist and cliffhanger this issue. It’s especially funny since he sort of mocks any reader—like me—who fell for it in the dialogue. It’s nice how he can work on both layers. I sort of remember this one—when Barry Allen guest stars in a great panel. But definitely not the end. Pepoy’s… 📖
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The Thessaliad (2002) #2
Willingham is still writing a little fast. This issue’s better, but it’s really just four conversations—three of them involving the same two people (protagonists Thessaly and Fetch). The conversations are good and amusing but they only sort of move the story along. Willingham has this idea of a question, with guardians. Moving past a guardian… 📖
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The Thessaliad (2002) #1
I do so enjoy Shawn McManus art. His work on this issue of Thessaliad is nice and finished. The way he mixes styles, inviting, almost comic strip-ready art with grotesque (hell hounds losing their flesh but still eating people) is just lovely. I think as a kid I didn’t appreciate him. I was a dumb… 📖
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Spies Like Us (1985, John Landis)
Spies Like Us ought to be better. The problem is the length. Well, the main problem is the length. Donna Dixon having a big role is another problem. The movie’s just too short. At 100 minutes, it actually should be just the right length, but there’s a lot Landis skirts over because he doesn’t have… 📖
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The Bulletproof Coffin (2010) #6
Do they pull it off? Do Hine and Kane bring Bulletproof Coffin to the conclusion it deserves? No. Do they bring it to a satisfying conclusion? Definitely. Does this satisfying conclusion suggest a depth greater than what it actually contains? Yes. It’s very slick. The issue’s a great example of why revelations have to be… 📖
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The Bulletproof Coffin (2010) #5
Hine and Kane seem to be aware they’ve set themselves up for a needing a big, satisfying conclusion… not sure if that awareness makes it more likely or less. Once again, the layers start folding in on themselves, making it very hard to understand exactly what—if there is a “real” timeline—is going on. Some of… 📖
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The Bulletproof Coffin (2010) #4
And they keep going. Hine and Kane add yet another layer or two to the book, making it nearly impossible to figure things out with maybe charting it. With only two issues left now, I’m hoping they can pull off a good conclusion. The way they deal with cliffhangers—the series has them now—is nice. It… 📖
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Guillotine Guys (2010, James Ricardo)
Guillotine Guys is weird. Not so much in its content, but in what’s good and bad about it. Protagonist Russ Kingston is a fantastic physical actor. The first half of the short is silent and Kingston is wonderful. The other actor, Mark Wood, is lousy. His expressions are terrible. The second half, with dialogue (which… 📖
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The Bulletproof Coffin (2010) #3
Okay, so Hine and Kane up the ante a little here. This issue takes the meta-fiction aspect of the comic—where the protagonist interacts with the idea of these comic book creators who share their names with the creators of Bulletproof Coffin—to the next level. Not only is the protagonist, in the “real world,” dealing with… 📖
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The Bulletproof Coffin (2010) #2
The second issue doesn’t deal with the first’s soft cliffhanger, so I imagine Hine and Kane have something else planned in regards to the protagonist’s family. I’m just hoping they don’t go Truman Show. This issue has a flashback comic of a crime series, sort of a proto-Punisher. Oddly, even though the character’s a ghost… 📖
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The Bulletproof Coffin (2010) #1
Bulletproof Coffin is strange. Hine and Kane set it up as a thriller, possibly a superhero book, definitely with some horror and sci-fi elements. It also ends with the implied scene the protagonist’s sons are going to be mask-wearing psychopaths. There’s also the meta-fiction aspect—Hine and Kane are off-panel characters in the story, they produced… 📖
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Burke & Hare (2010, John Landis)
I don’t know how Landis could have a more indistinct return to feature directing than Burke & Hare. The film manages to be completely professional in all aspects–though the use of The Proclaimer’s “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles),” so well identified with Benny & Joon, is questionable. There are occasional Landis touches, but nothing really… 📖
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Black Widow (1999) #3
Grayson’s back to true form here, with terrible dialogue and sexy smooth talker Matt Murdock. It appears he’s got a cell built in to his Daredevil costume. He shows up towards the beginning, talking to the Black Widow II. I’m sure this story wasn’t Grayson’s idea—maybe someone at Marvel thought it sounded good—but it’s just… 📖
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Black Widow (1999) #2
So who shoots her (Natasha) at the end? Is that SHIELD? Why’s SHIELD shooting her? This issue might be better written than the last. The conversation between Natasha and Matt is nowhere near as bad, though Grayson’s characterization of him as a lech seems a little off. Well, no, it seems a lot off. Grayson… 📖
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Black Widow (1999) #1
For some reason, I was expecting more from Jones. I wasn’t expecting anything from Grayson (and, oh, did she deliver), but Jones… I thought he’d at least do a consistently good issue. Instead, it’s like he’s alternating. One panel is good, the next isn’t. He has these terrible eyeglass lenses, which makes Matt Murdock’s cameo… 📖
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Gorilla-Man (2010) #3
Parker plays fast and loose with the logic for the conclusion. Not for the flashbacks–which is careful not to overlap the previous Gorilla-Man origin–but for the modern stuff. It ends on a strange note, showing Ken to maybe be Parker’s strongest Agent of Atlas. He’s able to make profound statements and tell crude jokes and… 📖
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Gorilla-Man (2010) #2
There’s a little bit of action (in the modern story) at the open of the issue, then it’s a trip down memory lane. Parker makes the connection between Ken, his past and his current mission rather quickly; I’m glad he didn’t try to keep it for a surprise. He’s able to cover a lot of… 📖
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Gorilla-Man (2010) #1
Parker sets the series (presumably, at least the first issue implies) in modernity. It’s in between Atlas titles, with Ken on an Atlas mission to Africa to stop some bad guy. That part of the story isn’t the most interesting, of course. The most interesting is the flashbacks to Ken’s childhood Parker peppers the issue… 📖
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Hellboy: Seed of Destruction (1994) #4
Rasputin still doesn’t get identified by name—but based on all the expository dialogue, it’s surprising Hellboy couldn’t figure it out. I guess he never took any history classes. The series winds down with some more big action sequences, one involving Abe and Liz Sherman. Well, not exactly Liz Sherman. Mignola and Byrne had very little… 📖
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Hellboy: Seed of Destruction (1994) #3
Adams (sorry, starting with him again, I know) must intentionally draw bad faces. Everything else is so detailed… faces not. So it’s a choice. A bad one, but a choice. Mignola and Byrne get a lot of content into this issue. I don’t think Rasputin ever even gets named, just his history introduced—the majority of… 📖
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Hellboy: Seed of Destruction (1994) #2
You know, if Adams stuck to the way he draws in medium long shots… he’d make a good comic strip artist. Sorry to talk about the Monkeyman backup, but I thought I should open with a nice comment about Adams. It’s probably never going to happen again. The Hellboy part of the issue is very… 📖
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Hellboy: Seed of Destruction (1994) #1
All right, so Mignola and Byrne conceive Hellboy as sort of a hard boiled detective. Not in the content so much, but in the first person narration Byrne writes for him. It also doesn’t really match the way Hellboy talks in dialogue either. But the big problem is the way the story’s split. It opens… 📖
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Bachelor Mother (1939, Garson Kanin)
I’ve seen Bachelor Mother at least twice before but didn’t remember the most salient feature of the film. I even forgot what a big part Donald Duck plays in it (though I did remember David Niven’s watching the clock to wait to say “good afternoon” as opposed to “good morning”). No, what I forgot was… 📖
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The Pact (2011, Nicholas McCarthy)
From the first few seconds of The Pact, one thing is clear—McCarthy has amazing composition and editor van Zyl knows how to cut. The first half or so of the short is a conversation between a brother and sister, played by Sam Ball and Jewel Staite, respectively. Two more things become clear as the conversation… 📖
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Death on the Nile (1978, John Guillermin)
I’d forgotten John Guillermin directed Death on the Nile. The opening credits, a static shot of the river, suggest a much different experience then the film delivers–between Guillermin directing, Jack Cardiff shooting it and Anthony Shaffer handling the adaptation. I suppose I should have remembered Shaffer also adapted Christie’s Evil Under the Sun to similar… 📖
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Star in the Night (1945, Don Siegel)
Star in the Night opens with cowboys, but it’s not a cowboy story. It’s a nativity told at a roadside motel. The dialogue for the cowboys is so bad, one has to wonder if they’re just cowboy impersonators and that detail got cut. The film proper begins when J. Carrol Naish meets up with angel-in-disguise… 📖
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Widowmaker (2011) #4
Swierczynski tries a little Mockingbird and Hawkeye romantic banter moment or two and he fails. It’s all right though, because he’s not really hinging much on it. In fact, he’s hinging almost nothing on those two this issue–Black Widow narrates the issue. There are still the problems with Garcia and Ruggiero. Lots of eyes getting… 📖
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Widowmaker (2011) #3
I miss Swierczynski. McCann does a decent job plotting the issue–there’s a lot of action in it, as well as the investigation into the spy stuff–but it’s a stinker. First, yeah, I think the Lopezes are trying to make Black Widow unattractive. There’s a weak romance moment for Hawkeye and Mockingbird here too. Strange how… 📖
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Widowmaker (2011) #2
So Marvel is now alternating creative teams on limited series? I’m only mildly complaining–mostly about Ruggiero and Bit’s inks on Garcia, who I thought did better work. Maybe I’m wrong. There’s a lot of problems with faces here (and eyes being totally inked over). It’s not terrible art, but it looks very rushed. As for… 📖
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Widowmaker (2011) #1
So for some reason, while everyone else gets drawn young and beautiful, the Lopezes draw Black Widow aged and weathered. She’s got more lines around her eyes than Rob Liefeld draws on a bicep. I know this book is a continuation of Hawkeye and Mockingbird, maybe making Widow unappealing is to bolster Mockingbird. Actually, of… 📖
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Murder on the Orient Express (1974, Sidney Lumet)
There are two significant problems with Murder on the Orient Express. Unfortunately, both of them are aspects of the film’s genre. Well, one of them is an aspect of the genre and the other is related to the film’s extremely high quality acting. So, neither of them are “problems” in the traditional sense. First, the… 📖
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Girl (1996) #3
Milligan brings Girl to its unexpected and fantastic finish. In some ways it’s the least visually outlandish issue of the series. Fegredo is confined to a very realistic rendition now. The result is something a little more visually engaging than the other issues. Because the reader finally knows exactly what Fegredo’s supposed to be drawing… 📖
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Girl (1996) #2
Milligan delivers an outstanding issue. One of the greatest things about Girl is how unpredictable he makes the narrative. But it’s more than just coming up with a great cliffhanger to this issue, it’s coming up with a great resolution to the previous issue’s cliffhanger. In between, Milligan fills in a bunch more about main… 📖
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Girl (1996) #1
I suppose there is a little sensationalism in Girl. It takes place in a town called Bollockstown and there’s a lengthy dream sequence and a couple mammals going out a window and plummeting to their deaths. But Milligan makes the whole thing feel everyday. The comic’s about a–you guessed it–girl named Simone. Her family’s awful,… 📖
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Superman / Batman (2003) #75
Levitz wraps up the arc with a Legion of Super-Heroes story guest starring Batman. Superman’s in a panel or two. Lex’s planet has paid-off (in the future), with a Kryptonite-infused Lex clone going through history after Superman (and Superboy). The story’s unpredictable and funny. And Ordway’s mostly just drawing, not trying to look painted, so… 📖
Adam Hughes, Billy Tucci, Brian Azzarello, David Finch, Duncan Rouleau, Francis Manapul, Gene Ha, J.T. Krul, Jerry Ordway, Jill Thompson, Lee Bermejo, Michael Green, Mike Johnson, Paul Levitz, Peter J. Tomasi, Rafael Albuquerque, Sandra Hope, Scott Williams, Shane Davis, Steven T. Seagle, Teddy Kristiansen -
Superman / Batman (2003) #74
Ordway tones down the new style here a little and this issue has the best art of the arc. Levitz also changes gears, totally removing Lois Lane and revealing why Lex is so important. Well, actually, he already revealed Lex’s importance, he just didn’t reveal the connection. This issue doesn’t help in that regard. While… 📖