-
Agents of Atlas (2006) #1
Coming back to the first Atlas series is a bigger treat than I thought it would be. I don’t remember much about it, but I certainly didn’t remember Parker uses Gorilla Man as the narrator for the first issue. It’s a nice entry to the setup because–strangely enough–Ken is the most human member of the… 📖
-
Piranha (2010, Alexandre Aja)
Aja opens Piranha with a pretty deft reference to the original film and follows it immediately with a rather big Jaws reference. The original, ostensibly a parody of Jaws, is absent any kind of reference… so it’s strange to see here. But it’s hilarious. And it might be the funniest of Aja’s other homages to… 📖
-
Battlefields: The Night Witches (2008) #3
Here Ennis plays with having two protagonists, the expectations that arrangement has on the reader. Play might be the wrong word because play suggests it might be fun. Ennis doesn’t do it for fun, he does it to get a surprising ending. See, the series has always had the two protagonists juxtaposed, but it’s only… 📖
-
Battlefields: The Night Witches (2008) #2
Juxtaposing the two stories–the young male Nazi soldier and the young female Russian flier–might seem like a standard approach, but it produces some unexpected things. The German fears the Russians, who the reader sees most personified as this young woman. She’s cheerful, mostly chipper and very good at her job. Her comrades are similar, caring… 📖
-
Battlefields: The Night Witches (2008) #1
I don’t know if I appreciated Braun enough the first time I read this series. He can do the complex expressions (ranging from unsure Nazis to zealot ones, not to mention the Russian female fliers who feel alienated and overwhelmed) and all the action and all the equipment. He adds a sense of innocent to… 📖
-
Fogtown (2010)
Fogtown is pretty gay. Actually, it’s completely and utterly gay. Fogtown is a gay detective noir comic book. Nowhere does the description mention it’s about a closeted (did gay guys in 1953 even know there was a door to the closet?) private investigator. The previews I found online don’t mention it either. In fact, it… 📖
-
Battlefields: The Night Witches 3 (January 2009)
Here Ennis plays with having two protagonists, the expectations that arrangement has on the reader. Play might be the wrong word because play suggests it might be fun. Ennis doesn’t do it for fun, he does it to get a surprising ending. See, the series has always had the two protagonists juxtaposed, but it’s only… 📖
-
Battlefields: The Night Witches 2 (November 2008)
Juxtaposing the two stories–the young male Nazi soldier and the young female Russian flier–might seem like a standard approach, but it produces some unexpected things. The German fears the Russians, who the reader sees most personified as this young woman. She’s cheerful, mostly chipper and very good at her job. Her comrades are similar, caring… 📖
-
Battlefields: The Night Witches 1 (October 2008)
I don’t know if I appreciated Braun enough the first time I read this series. He can do the complex expressions (ranging from unsure Nazis to zealot ones, not to mention the Russian female fliers who feel alienated and overwhelmed) and all the action and all the equipment. He adds a sense of innocent to… 📖
-
Fogtown (2010)
Fogtown is pretty gay. Actually, it’s completely and utterly gay. Fogtown is a gay detective noir comic book. Nowhere does the description mention it’s about a closeted (did gay guys in 1953 even know there was a door to the closet?) private investigator. The previews I found online don’t mention it either. In fact, it… 📖
-
Hotwire: Deep Cut 1 (July 2010)
Hmm… I don’t like Pugh’s cliffhanger. I get the need for it, to establish the bad guys of this series as the mercenaries–not just incompetent but evil (did Pugh write this issue before or after Obama renewed Blackwater’s contract?)–but it’s not a solid ending. The issue opens with this amazing one-page retelling of the previous… 📖
-
Hotwire: Deep Cut (2010) #1
Hmm… I don’t like Pugh’s cliffhanger. I get the need for it, to establish the bad guys of this series as the mercenaries–not just incompetent but evil (did Pugh write this issue before or after Obama renewed Blackwater’s contract?)–but it’s not a solid ending. The issue opens with this amazing one-page retelling of the previous… 📖
-
The Mask of Zorro (1998, Martin Campbell)
The last time I saw Zorro (which would have also been the first time), it didn’t impress me much. I don’t remember hating it, but I do remember disliking it. This time through, however, I find myself mellowed. It’s an enjoyable adventure picture, the kind Hollywood doesn’t make anymore. The amount of Zorro swashbuckling alone… 📖
-
Spider-Man/Human Torch (2005) #5
I read this series when it came out, but I barely remembered anything about it besides it being really good–I didn’t, for example, remember the crimes against the comic book medium the colorists perpetrated. Suffice to say, I didn’t remember this issue. This perfect issue. I mean, it’s a perfect close to this limited series,… 📖
-
Spider-Man/Human Torch (2005) #4
It’s a cute issue. It’s set during the black costume period, when Spidey was with the Black Cat. I sort of remember reading these comics as a kid and, from just the Secret Wars II crossovers I more recently read, they aren’t cute. It’s a strange approach for Slott to make–it’s an all humor issue.… 📖
-
Spider-Man/Human Torch (2005) #3
And the coloring problems return. Not quite as bad, but whoever’s doing it–there’s no name just Sotocolor–thought adding three dimensions with color shading was a good idea. And is wrong. But it’s hard to care, because the series just gets better issue to issue. Here, Slott marries two very disparate elements of Spider-Man history–he relieves… 📖
-
Spider-Man / Human Torch 5 (July 2005)
I read this series when it came out, but I barely remembered anything about it besides it being really good–I didn’t, for example, remember the crimes against the comic book medium the colorists perpetrated. Suffice to say, I didn’t remember this issue. This perfect issue. I mean, it’s a perfect close to this limited series,… 📖
-
Spider-Man / Human Torch 4 (June 2005)
It’s a cute issue. It’s set during the black costume period, when Spidey was with the Black Cat. I sort of remember reading these comics as a kid and, from just the Secret Wars II crossovers I more recently read, they aren’t cute. It’s a strange approach for Slott to make–it’s an all humor issue.… 📖
-
Spider-Man / Human Torch 3 (May 2005)
And the coloring problems return. Not quite as bad, but whoever’s doing it–there’s no name just Sotocolor–thought adding three dimensions with color shading was a good idea. And is wrong. But it’s hard to care, because the series just gets better issue to issue. Here, Slott marries two very disparate elements of Spider-Man history–he relieves… 📖
-
Speed Racer (2008, The Wachowskis)
I may be a little naive, but I think one of the aspects of adapting materials between mediums is to encourage (or at least tacitly imply) someone to look at the original material. I find it particularly odd in the case of Speed Racer. Being somewhat aware of the cartoon but never having seen it,… 📖
-
Speed Racer (2008, Lana and Lilly Wachowski)
I may be a little naive, but I think one of the aspects of adapting materials between mediums is to encourage (or at least tacitly imply) someone to look at the original material. I find it particularly odd in the case of Speed Racer. Being somewhat aware of the cartoon but never having seen it,… 📖
-
Spider-Man/Human Torch (2005) #2
Now, this issue doesn’t have the same coloring problems as the first. It has different ones, but they’re far less garish, thank goodness. This issue, for the most part, is a Human Torch issue. He and Spidey swap jobs for the day. Spidey messes up the Fantastic Four’s scientific exploration while the Torch takes on… 📖
-
Spider-Man / Human Torch 2 (April 2005)
Now, this issue doesn’t have the same coloring problems as the first. It has different ones, but they’re far less garish, thank goodness. This issue, for the most part, is a Human Torch issue. He and Spidey swap jobs for the day. Spidey messes up the Fantastic Four’s scientific exploration while the Torch takes on… 📖
-
Spider-Man/Human Torch (2005) #1
Who let this comic out with these colors? I don’t usually go nuts, in support or against, over colors. I doubt I even know a single colorist’s name. But Felix Serrano is a criminal. He took Ty Templeton’s lovely retro-artwork–it’s supposed to be in the Silver Age style–and added this glossy Photoshop slime to it.… 📖
-
Spider-Man / Human Torch 1 (March 2005)
Who let this comic out with these colors? I don’t usually go nuts, in support or against, over colors. I doubt I even know a single colorist’s name. But Felix Serrano is a criminal. He took Ty Templeton’s lovely retro-artwork–it’s supposed to be in the Silver Age style–and added this glossy Photoshop slime to it.… 📖
-
The Expendables (2010, Sylvester Stallone)
The Expendables is surprisingly good. I’m not sure Stallone would admit it, but it owes more to Soderbergh’s Ocean’s series than it does any of Stallone’s popular action movies. Apparently, following Rocky Balboa and Rambo, Stallone decided to direct actors, something I’m not sure he’s ever done before. But he gets some shockingly good performances… 📖
-
Palookaville (1991) #6
I think this must be the first issue where Seth doesn’t feel the need to show his protagonist nude from the waist down. He did it in every previous issue at some point or another. Honestly, I can’t remember anything from this issue and I just finished reading it a minute ago. It ends with… 📖
-
Palookaville (1991) #5
This issue continues the story started in the previous one. Well, no, it doesn’t. Not exactly. Seth seems incapable of resolving a cliffhanger, so this issue spends about half its pages just being another story about Seth, the character, following the last issue. There’s nothing to make it a chapter in the same story. Even… 📖
-
Palookaville (1991) #4
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… 📖
-
Palookaville (1991) #3
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.… 📖
-
Palookaville (1991) #2
Seth’s second issue isn’t as clearly intended to be autobiographical as the first. The protagonist this issue is Greg. Interestingly, he and the other “cool” male character–there’s a few uncool male characters–both have long, girly hair. The character’s so asexual in his narration, it’s sort of impossible to gauge the gender until someone refers to… 📖
-
Palookaville (1991) #1
For the first issue, Seth does something kind of strange–where most series use the first issue to invite the reader, Seth uses it to distance him or her. Unless the reader was an eighties art school hipster, there’s going to be an immediate disconnect as Seth, the protagonist, isn’t the standard lead. The story, introduced… 📖
-
Palookaville 6 (November 1994)
I think this must be the first issue where Seth doesn’t feel the need to show his protagonist nude from the waist down. He did it in every previous issue at some point or another. Honestly, I can’t remember anything from this issue and I just finished reading it a minute ago. It ends with… 📖
-
Palookaville 5 (May 1994)
This issue continues the story started in the previous one. Well, no, it doesn’t. Not exactly. Seth seems incapable of resolving a cliffhanger, so this issue spends about half its pages just being another story about Seth, the character, following the last issue. There’s nothing to make it a chapter in the same story. Even… 📖