blogging by Andrew Wickliffe
Where to start…. Miller opens the issue with sort of a “ha ha, you can’t say it’s misogynistic because it’s intentional” Lance Blastoff! story. Killing dinosaurs, eating meat, those are the things women really need whether they know it or not. The writing’s crap—no shock—but Miller at least draws the dinosaurs. Bennett and Guinan’s Heartbreakers […]
MoreThis oversized issue opens and closes with an Aliens two-parter. Loose art from Guinan and Akins doesn’t help Arcudi’s script. It’s absolutely incomprehensible if you don’t read the Aliens series. Byrne finally produces a Next Men I’m not interested in. It’s two government guys revealing all. The art’s really, really mediocre. It’s like even Byrne […]
MoreThe Bacchus story is a really upsetting story of Simpson, Bacchus’s sidekick, and his journey through hell. I’m not up on my Dante, but it seems like it follows Inferno a little bit. It’s a good story, but it’s a real downer and very different from the other Bacchus entries so far. The Heartbreakers story […]
MoreI’m having trouble figuring out the big deal with Sin City. I mean, it looks cool and all, but isn’t Marv on the run from the cops a lot like that issue of “Batman: Year One” with the Batman running from the cops. The narration’s overbearing and all… but it’s fine as a stupid diversion. […]
MoreHeartbreakers is a little better this issue. Bennett and Guinan still don’t have a good sense of what makes a story interesting. This one implies it had potential to be interesting on the second to last page. Hughes and Story do a few pages, riffing on the idea of pin-up pages. The writing’s far from […]
MoreThis special is far from an accurate representation of Dark Horse Presents. Everything looks very professional. The Aerialist and Heartbreakers installments are both long needed establishments of the series’ ground situation. I even liked the Heartbreakers one (Bennett’s writing is far stronger from the clones’ perspective, versus their creator). There’s also lots of disposable stuff–Concrete, […]
MoreGuinan’s Aliens finish is incredibly weak, featuring not just an Alien reference but some guy in the future running around in an Indiana Jones outfit. The plotting is so weak, it might be construed as a spoof… But I think Guinan’s serious. He’s got some very profound-sounding exposition. Davis does a one page riff on […]
MoreSo Guinan’s approach to the Aliens mythology is astonishingly unenthusiastic. By some accounts his Heartbreakers collaborator Anina Bennett assisted on the writing, so maybe some of it is her fault. Guinan sets the story on a planet full of pyramids, with zero wonderment about this awesome alien civilization. Then he does some silly stuff with […]
MoreThank goodness there’s a Bacchus in here because otherwise it’d be a complete loss. Guinan’s art continues to be acceptable on Heartbreakers, while he and Bennett’s writing just gets worse and worse. Some of the issue is with them trying to do too much in such a short amount of pages… But mostly they just […]
MoreThe Aliens vs. Predator story is most impressive for Norwood’s illustration… but not of aliens or Predators. The story opens on some alien world and it’s just breathtaking. Once the actual story starts (Stradley’s two conversationalists talking about hunting experiences while Predators hunt aliens), it can’t compete with those visuals. Still, for what amounts to […]
MoreThe Predator story opening the comic gets it off to a good start (it’s really just part of the prologue to the first Aliens vs. Predator series). Stradley writes an excellent conversation about social Darwinism between these two pilots, which Norwood then adapts into something featuring Predators fighting for dominance. Well, it was probably the […]
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