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Battlefields: The Tankies (2009) #2
Oh, it’s lovely. Ennis has something of a narrative tree going here–he has his main story with the tankies, but then he’s got command’s story. Command’s story has a little to do with the tankies, but not much. It has it’s own subplot. I think maybe half the issue has nothing to do, immediately, with… 📖
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: Dust to Dust 5 (September 2010)
Oh, I thought it was a five issue series. It’s an eight issue series. Hmm. Not sure I would have made that commitment after the second issue letdown. This issue is mostly action. There’s a lot of flashback from the rogue android. They call them rogues, not renegades. There’s a lot more of the Terminator… 📖
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: Dust to Dust 4 (August 2010)
Now I’m reminded of A Scanner Darkly, the film adaptation, I haven’t read the book (also by Philip K. Dick). Something about the colors. It’s a brave move, to try to continue Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Roberson isn’t failing. The first issue just suggested he’d knock it out of the park, kind… 📖
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: Dust to Dust 3 (July 2010)
With my expectations adjusted following the second issue, Dust to Dust is getting leveling off. Or at least it seems to be. Roberson has three distinct voices this issue–Reed, the empath, who has a second person narration. The android blade runner talks in the first person. He was a lot more interesting as a narrator… 📖
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: Dust to Dust 2 (June 2010)
Unfortunately, the second issue is not as strong as the first. It starts off with some awkward second person examination of the empath. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to remember his name. The story’s split between three plots–the renegade androids, the “blade runner” and the empath who are pursuing them and a scientist who… 📖
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: Dust to Dust 1 (May 2010)
First, let’s see if I can figure out how to describe the comic. Dust to Dust is a prequel to Boom!’s ambitious adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? That novel was adapted into a little movie called Blade Runner back in 1982. The novel’s popularity has never reached… 📖
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Batman 339 (September 1981)
It’s a strange issue in a couple ways. Primarily because the Robin backup is some kind of life-affirming emotional origin of the character. It’s well-produced–Conway and Novick really make the reader pay attention to all the time shifts–and it’s trite and well-meaning. In other words, solid eighties mainstream work. Unfortunately, Novick’s art is better on… 📖
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Battlefields: The Tankies 3 (July 2009)
The final issue of Tankies is even better than I remembered and maybe even imagined. I’m really glad I forgot the ending–Ennis gives it two finishes, one for the tank company, one for the colonel at command–and it’s just perfect. What the colonel’s ending does is a little different–Tankies is not just a standalone story,… 📖
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Battlefields: The Tankies (2009) #1
I’ve always claimed The Tankies as Ennis’s best of the Battlefields (first series, anyway). I didn’t really remember why. Then I read the first issue again. Ennis sets up the story as a mission story. Maybe not even a mission, maybe just a part of a mission story. The present action is continuous. He opens… 📖
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Battlefields: The Tankies 2 (May 2009)
Oh, it’s lovely. Ennis has something of a narrative tree going here–he has his main story with the tankies, but then he’s got command’s story. Command’s story has a little to do with the tankies, but not much. It has it’s own subplot. I think maybe half the issue has nothing to do, immediately, with… 📖
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Good Hair (2009, Jeff Stilson)
I don’t write a lot of responses to documentaries on The Stop Button. There are many reasons for it, with the primary one being I’m not sure what constitutes a documentary film. But Good Hair is definitely the kind of documentary I respond to here on The Stop Button. I first heard about it on… 📖
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Battlefields: The Tankies 1 (April 2009)
I’ve always claimed The Tankies as Ennis’s best of the Battlefields (first series, anyway). I didn’t really remember why. Then I read the first issue again. Ennis sets up the story as a mission story. Maybe not even a mission, maybe just a part of a mission story. The present action is continuous. He opens… 📖
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Detective Comics (1937) #506
I know kids actually read comic books back in the eighties so Conway had to keep them in mind, but he’s got a story about a golden mannequin lady killing people… he didn’t need to open with a really obvious prologue setting up the character. He could have just revealed it all when he will… 📖
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Battlefields: Dear Billy (2009) #3
It’s a tad… Victorian, isn’t it? I mean, it’s an excellent issue and a decent close to Dear Billy, but it’s just too confined. With the whole letter to Billy thing–Ennis either has to use it as a letter to the guy or a narrative device. So he uses it as a narrative device. A… 📖
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Battlefields: Dear Billy (2009) #2
I can’t remember how Dear Billy ends. Even reading another issue, I can’t remember. I spent a while, in the back of my head, anticipating Ennis’s cliffhanger. Three issue limited, he’d have to cliffhang… but he doesn’t. In fact, for a comic featuring a nurse killing three–wait, four–Japanese POWs, the most sensational thing in the… 📖
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Battlefields: Dear Billy (2009) #1
I’ve forgotten most of the details to Battlefields, which is nice as it turns out. I then can remember things, anticipate them as I read, makes the experience seem richer. It’s a rather rich experience to begin with–Ennis’s writing here, from a first person female narrator, puts his contemporaries to shame. As usual. But I… 📖
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Detective Comics 506 (September 1981)
I know kids actually read comic books back in the eighties so Conway had to keep them in mind, but he’s got a story about a golden mannequin lady killing people… he didn’t need to open with a really obvious prologue setting up the character. He could have just revealed it all when he will… 📖
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Battlefields: Dear Billy 3 (March 2009)
It’s a tad… Victorian, isn’t it? I mean, it’s an excellent issue and a decent close to Dear Billy, but it’s just too confined. With the whole letter to Billy thing–Ennis either has to use it as a letter to the guy or a narrative device. So he uses it as a narrative device. A… 📖
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Battlefields: Dear Billy 2 (February 2009)
I can’t remember how Dear Billy ends. Even reading another issue, I can’t remember. I spent a while, in the back of my head, anticipating Ennis’s cliffhanger. Three issue limited, he’d have to cliffhang… but he doesn’t. In fact, for a comic featuring a nurse killing three–wait, four–Japanese POWs, the most sensational thing in the… 📖
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Battlefields: Dear Billy 1 (January 2009)
I’ve forgotten most of the details to Battlefields, which is nice as it turns out. I then can remember things, anticipate them as I read, makes the experience seem richer. It’s a rather rich experience to begin with–Ennis’s writing here, from a first person female narrator, puts his contemporaries to shame. As usual. But I… 📖
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Red (2010, Robert Schwentke)
I was unhesitant to enjoy Red. It’s one of those ensemble feel-good pieces (like Sneakers or Ocean’s Eleven), but it’s not a particularly upbeat feel-good piece. But I was rather hesitant to approach it as a good movie. But it is a good movie. It’s smartly written, beautifully acted (Red’s casting is superior)… and impersonally… 📖
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Red: Victoria (November 2010)
So the one screenwriter writes a great tie-in comic and the other (they’re brothers too) writes a crappy one? Did Wildstorm just put out whatever the filmmakers wanted? This comic will make almost no sense to anyone who hasn’t seen the movie… and if the reader has seen the movie, he or she will wonder… 📖
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Red: Marvin (November 2010)
Here’s how you do a movie tie-in comic–well, first, it doesn’t hurt one of the screenwriters is writing it–but it has to do with something in the movie. It’s not just some tale from the past, it’s a very specific tale and one referenced in the movie. The comic also provides some further context for… 📖
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Red: Joe (2010)
So here’s a moderately all right comic book. These Red movie prequels are sort of silly, since it’s establishing a bunch of totally unnecessary backstory. This issue, Morgan Freeman–sorry, Joe–muses on the costs of being a CIA agent. It’s mildly interesting musing because it’s set during the Cold War so there’s some decent spy stuff… 📖
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Red: Frank (2010)
I’m not sure if the Jason Masters art is supposed to look like Cully Hammer or if it’s just the cheap Wildstorm house style. Regardless, it looks a lot like the original Red, but with some really slick, shiny computer coloring. Of course, Masters makes sure the protagonist, Frank, looks like Bruce Willis and the… 📖
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Batman (1940) #338
It’s sort of hard to believe Conway wrote both the terrible lead story and the mildly charming Robin backup. I mean, the Robin story–Dick solving a mystery at the circus–has it’s problems, like Conway keeping crucial information until the last scene so as to explain all the problems away… but at least he’s trying. The… 📖
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Red: Victoria (November 2010)
So the one screenwriter writes a great tie-in comic and the other (they’re brothers too) writes a crappy one? Did Wildstorm just put out whatever the filmmakers wanted? This comic will make almost no sense to anyone who hasn’t seen the movie… and if the reader has seen the movie, he or she will wonder… 📖
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Red: Marvin (November 2010)
Here’s how you do a movie tie-in comic–well, first, it doesn’t hurt one of the screenwriters is writing it–but it has to do with something in the movie. It’s not just some tale from the past, it’s a very specific tale and one referenced in the movie. The comic also provides some further context for… 📖
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Blade Runner (1982) #2
There are some real problems this issue–Goodwin’s got to adapt the stuff without Deckard (who in his adaptation isn’t just not a replicant, but is also a lot more the Deckard from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) and it’s just a mess. The way Goodwin structures it–the noir with Deckard and Rachel–it just doesn’t… 📖
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Blade Runner (1982) #1
After the first few pages, I think I decided Blade Runner is best comic adaptation of a movie I’ve ever read. Goodwin has a fairly complex and lengthy story to adapt here (especially since the film is confusing, especially the version Goodwin would have been adapting) and he comes up with a genius way to… 📖
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Batman (1940) #255
Batman fighting a werewolf with Neal Adams on art. It’s incredibly great looking. I don’t even remember the last time I read an Adams illustrated comic, so everything was a joy. His panel layouts here are just fantastic. It’s both action and horror (at the beginning) oriented and it’s simply masterful. Len Wein’s script is… 📖
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Red: Joe (November 2010)
So here’s a moderately all right comic book. These Red movie prequels are sort of silly, since it’s establishing a bunch of totally unnecessary backstory. This issue, Morgan Freeman–sorry, Joe–muses on the costs of being a CIA agent. It’s mildly interesting musing because it’s set during the Cold War so there’s some decent spy stuff… 📖
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Red: Frank (November 2010)
I’m not sure if the Jason Masters art is supposed to look like Cully Hammer or if it’s just the cheap Wildstorm house style. Regardless, it looks a lot like the original Red, but with some really slick, shiny computer coloring. Of course, Masters makes sure the protagonist, Frank, looks like Bruce Willis and the… 📖
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Red (2003) #3
Seriously, someone read Red and wanted to option it for a movie? I just finished reading it and I want to burn the memory from my mind. Ellis gives the comic some big Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ending like anyone cares. I’d forgotten how much I loathe this hipster comic books. This issue… 📖
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Batman 338 (August 1981)
It’s sort of hard to believe Conway wrote both the terrible lead story and the mildly charming Robin backup. I mean, the Robin story–Dick solving a mystery at the circus–has it’s problems, like Conway keeping crucial information until the last scene so as to explain all the problems away… but at least he’s trying. The… 📖
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Red (2003) #2
Did Ellis really spend an entire issue on quickly killing four assassins and a couple conversations? Now I remember why I avoid most of Ellis’s work–his pacing is absolutely atrocious. He has an idea here with Red–what if the CIA reactivated their best assassin and he came after them. But Ellis doesn’t have any more… 📖
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Red (2003) #1
I’m curious what Warren Ellis’s script for this issue looks like… it must be really short. Maybe he draws on the pages, thumbnails, sketches, something. Because he can’t be writing much on them. This issue has almost no dialogue after the first five or six pages. So it’s all up to Cully Hammer and he… 📖
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Detective Comics (1937) #505
Dan Adkins’s inks are a mess here. Because of them, there’s barely one good panel of Don Newton drawing Batman versus a werewolf. The story’s something of a surprise–with Conway concentrating solely on Batman; I assumed the issue, since Conway did Werewolf by Night, would be Batman meets Jack Russell, but it’s anything but. Since… 📖
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Blade Runner 2 (November 1982)
There are some real problems this issue–Goodwin’s got to adapt the stuff without Deckard (who in his adaptation isn’t just not a replicant, but is also a lot more the Deckard from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) and it’s just a mess. The way Goodwin structures it–the noir with Deckard and Rachel–it just doesn’t… 📖
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Blade Runner 1 (October 1982)
After the first few pages, I think I decided Blade Runner is best comic adaptation of a movie I’ve ever read. Goodwin has a fairly complex and lengthy story to adapt here (especially since the film is confusing, especially the version Goodwin would have been adapting) and he comes up with a genius way to… 📖