[Raided] Grant Morrison’s Doctor Who Classic #1

Posted by Graig on October 17, 2008

(IDW)

Pulled from Dr. Who Magazine circa 1986 and ‘87, this reprint collection features two stories from Grant Morrison’s pre-Animal Man days as a little-known struggling writer in the UK. True to form, however, Morrison pulls off a pair of stories, which in the Who-pantheon at least, stray from the norm. Not being a huge Who fan myself (I’ve quite enjoyed the long-lived series over the years, but only sporadically), it’s only through a little research that I find out the Tardis-exploring “Changes”, wherein the Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher chase a dangerous changeling through the folded-space interiors of the time-jumping ship. Apparently, “they go further into the [Tardis] than has ever been visually depicted before or since, in any medium”, which, if you’re a who fan, must be something a bit mind blowing. At sixteen pages, “Changes” is slight, a Dr. Who vignette if you will but some decent art from John Ridgeway gives it an eventful feel that similar era Who’s production budget couldn’t handle. The follow-up story, “Culture Shock” (with art by a young Brian Hitch) finds the Doctor encountering a microscopic society on the brink of eradication at the hands of a virus. At eight pages, it whips by, but again, it’s typical Morrison, thinking outside the confines of what’s common for the show and using the medium to its fullest to bash out a sharp little story. Though neither reach the Morrison craziness that he’s become so revered for, it’s still an good display of how the man worked outside the box, even then. Great for Morrison completists and avid Doctor Who fans.

3 out of 5 Vikings

Galaxy Quest #1

Posted by Jeb on August 23, 2008

(IDW)

David Mamet has called Galaxy Quest “a perfect film,” and while he was principally referring to its structure, there’s no question that it’s an amazing once-in-a-lifetime movie that’s equal parts loving tribute to, and wicked satire of, the original Star Trek TV series. It’s a touchstone favorite film for several families that I know, and has proved endlessly rewatchable both for folks (like my wife and myself) who were young and impressionable tykes at the time of the series’ original airing, as well as those (like our daughter) who’d never seen (or expressed any interest in) Star Trek. If any film comedy of the last few years deserves to be considered a classic, it’s Galaxy Quest.

I’ve rarely been so surprised, then, as to have seen a review or two of this comic which revealed that the critics hadn’t actually seen the movie of Galaxy Quest: I’d have thought it was every bit as much essential viewing for the comic/genre fan as the Terminator or Star Wars films.

On the odd chance that any similar benighted fans are reading this, Galaxy Quest (the movie) is the story of the washed-up cast of a long-dead sci-fi TV series, whose lives are changed (and, incidentally, careers revived!) by their accidental involvement in a galactic war (a synopsis that doesn’t even begin to describe the wit and charm of the film).

The comic picks up some time after the movie ends, and fudges things a bit. While the end of the film [spoiler ahead!] seems to show us a revived “Galaxy Quest” series hitting TV, the comic opens with a classic “Star Trek” crisis moment, including the various analogues of Kirk, Spock, etc. Turns out, though, that what we’re seeing is not a “real” adventure, but a new pilot that the cast hopes will actually revive the still-dormant series, leaving the original film’s promise of a “happy ending” still very much up in the air.

Most of the rest of the issue introduces new readers to the “Galaxy Quest” cast, with little character moments to sketch out the key relationships and conflicts among these actors. Writer Scott Lobdell does a good job of covering key points for new readers (and he nicely captures the overblown Roddenberry-style melodrama and portentous dialogue in the introductory TV pilot segment), but fans of the movie more or less have to be content with this issue as a reunion with old friends, since the actual storyline (involving separate crises for their careers, and their planet) doesn’t really get moving till the last couple of pages. These days, though, I suppose that’s to be expected: in the extended trade-paperback story structure, first issues really do serve as little more than introductions.

The script’s not as successful emulating the film’s ability to mine humor out of the improbable situation (and the prickly relationships among the cast members), with a few one-liners here and there, but the only really big laughs coming in the over-the-top excerpt of the TV pilot. Part of that, I think, is inherent in the nature of the translation: jokes that can be effectively conveyed with a raised eyebrow or smart line delivery in a film can appear flat and formulaic when simply laid out in a word balloon.

The art by Ilias Kyriazis is brisk and cartoony (not unlike Tony Moore’s work on Fear Agent), though I presume (hope?) that IDW didn’t pony up for the rights to use the actual faces of Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, and the rest, since the characters in this book look nothing like them. It’s serviceable, but unremarkable.

I’d have to say that, whether you’re a fan of the film, or a newcomer to the property, this might be one to trade-wait. If Lobdell and Kyriazis have a trick or two up their sleeves to kick the storytelling up a notch, there’s potential in Galaxy Quest. But if the level of mild amusement on display in this first issue is to be the tone from here on out, I’d probably give it a miss.

Two and a Half out of Five Vikings

Duostar Racers #1

Posted by Max on June 8, 2008

(IDW)

Before starting this review, I’d like to preface things a bit. I picked up Duostar Racers largely on a whim, without background information on its creator or any possible tie-ins. After doing a little research, I found out the comic is apparently related in some way to artist Ashley Wood’s other title, D’Airain Adventure, which in turn has ties to a bunch of other creator owned titles (Here’s the link to the article I found http://www.idwpublishing.com/news/dairain.shtml). How the two are related I don’t know, nor do I particularly care. The point I’m trying to make is that in the proper context, this comic may have earned a higher score (though I doubt it). In my opinion however, unless you slap a Vol. 2 on something or make it abundantly clear that knowledge of another title is a prerequisite for enjoying your book, there’s an expectation that it be accessible to new readers. As you may have guessed, Duostar Racers does not live up to that expectation, and while it has its merits, as the launching point for a new series (or even an introduction to an old one) it fails miserably.

I guess I’ll start by addressing T.P. Louise’s writing, because frankly, there’s not much to say. Some guy is looking for his brother, and two other guys are racing on the freeway. That’s it. There’s some dialog, but considering it’s largely without context (and pretty bland to boot), there’s never a chance to get a real feel for the characters.. The writing’s not particularly bad, and I wasn’t immediately put-off the way I was with, say, The Executioner. There’s simply not enough here to even make me curious about what’s going on, and the whole thing comes across as a series of disconnected scenes without unity or flow. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »

Transformers Movie Sequel: The Reign of Starscream #1

Posted by Max on May 19, 2008

(IDW)

As you may have noticed, in my last review (Episode 15: Max vs. Canada), there was a little bit of a debate about indie comics, and the fact that bourgeoisie dirt-bags like myself often overlook quality titles in favor of more mainstream fare, like The Avengers or The Super Friends. Anyway, in order to keep some of our more sensitive reviewers off my back, I decided to forgo my planned Moon Knight review (in short, it’s freakin’ awesome), and instead focus on a title from someone other than the big two. Enter IDW: Founded in 1999, Idea and Design Works is probably best known…wait, you know what? We’re gonna stop right here. That has to be one of the worst publisher names I’ve ever heard. Idea and Design Works? I guess Stuff and Things Incorporated was already taken. Seriously, if anyone can come up with a vaguer publisher name, I’ll personally come to your house and give you a nickel (Note: No I won’t). Anyway, IDW (Intercontinental Dancing Wombats) found success with a little comic called 30 Days of Night, and now publish everything from Star Trek to Doctor Who. Transformers Movie Sequel: The Reign of Starscream #1 continues that proud tradition of unnecessary comic tie-ins, as it’s apparently a license of some movie or something. I guess there’s robots?

Before we go any further, let’s get a few things straight. Yes, I was a fan of Transformers as a kid and yes, I did have a ton of the toys (My favorite was definitely Dreadwing, a bad-ass stealth bomber who shot missiles, usually at my cat. Now that was a toy!). I also saw the new Michael Bay flick, and while it certainly had its problems, overall I thought it was a fine successor to what was in all honesty a pretty goofy series. I was fine with the new spiky look of the bots, and while the new movie obviously couldn’t hold a candle to the original (You’ve got the touch! You’ve got the pow-er!), it was a decent action flick in its own right. The point I’m trying to make is that when pointing out what an epic failure this comic is, I’m doing so solely on its own merits (or lack thereof). WAIT! There is more to read… read on »

Don Pendleton’s The Executioner: The Devil’s Tools #1

Posted by Max on April 28, 2008

(IDW)

Fans of Don Pendleton’s Executioner series will likely remember them as competently written (if fairly generic) action titles. Essentially Harlequin novels for dudes, they delivered all the things most 12 year olds look for in a novel, namely guns, explosions and Schwarzenegger-esque body counts. Still, this particular series has always had a special place in my heart, thanks to its use as a template for my favorite comic creation, The Punisher. The star of the books, Mack Bolan (aka The Executioner) was essentially a proto-Frank Castle; an ex-solider turned vigilante, Bolan waged a one man war on crime after the death of his family at the hands of criminals. It’s a simple premise, and one the comic wisely avoids tampering with. The only questionable decision is choosing to maintain Bolan’s age, with the story’s various crime bosses talking about Bolan’s escapades during the 70’s and beyond. One even suggests that Bolan is actually a Korean war vet, which makes his current 30-something appearance a little hard to swallow. Normally this kind of thing isn’t a big deal in comics (Hell, Batman’s gotta be pushing 90 by now), but when you bring up the time element as part of your story, you should probably have a better explanation than “plastic surgery.” Chronological shenanigans aside though, how does the comic itself hold up? WAIT! There is more to read… read on »

Angel: After the Fall #1

Posted by Jeb on November 27, 2007

(IDW)

One of the surprise commercial, and artistic, successes of the past year in comics has been Joss Whedon“s “official” continuation of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer saga in the comic series he designated Buffy Season Eight. Though Buffy and her pals already have an impressive backlog of comics, from a couple of different companies, the new series was the first to become part of the official “canon,” through Whedon“s involvement, including writing the first arc of stories. And with Dark Horse filling their coffers from the marshaling of Whedon“s acolytes, IDW (current holder of the Angel license) has persuaded Whedon to try something similar with Buffy“s old boytoy. While he“s not actually planning to write the scripts (at least for the foreseeable future), Whedon has lent his assistance in plotting out the series, to tell the tales we“d have seen if the Angel TV series had continued.

Both the Buffy and Angel TV series came to their ends before Whedon had finished telling their stories (Firefly, too, come to that). In the case of Buffy, though, there was a strong sense during the penultimate season 6 that the natives were growing restless, and when Sarah Michelle Gellar made her announcement that she planned not to return to the role that made her a star, Whedon was able, with a bit of tweaking, to rush season seven through to a conclusion that, if somewhat abrupt, more or less took it where he“d always intended it to go.

With Angel, though, the plug was pulled midway through the final season by a network that figured it could get the same ratings it was getting from Angel at a fraction of the cost by putting on sitcoms and reality shows. As a consequence, Whedon crammed a season“s worth of development into the show“s last couple of months, and left an ending that was more cliffhanger than resolution.

And that“s more or less where After the Fall picks up. When last we saw our heroes, they were setting off against impossible odds to battle a demonic horde (and a dragon) about to overwhelm Los Angeles. I say “more or less,” though, because, while it would appear that most of them survived (some rather unexpectedly), issue #1 clearly jumps past that “last stand” into a world where Los Angeles has, literally, become hell on earth, but where Angel and his team are still trying to fight the good fight, this time in the very belly of the beast. And speaking of beasts, remember the dragon that Angel “always wanted to fight”? Well, let“s just say that Angel now has a super-sized version of Kitty Pryde“s Lockheed on his side. As for the other characters, some we know, some we thought we knew but aren“t sure now… and some are deliciously evil in that dry offhand way that Whedon manages so well. I won“t spoil the particulars, but any serious fan of the show is likely to have more than one “Ooooh!” of recognition as they read.

The fact that it would have been just about impossible to pull this off on a TV series budget has both its good and bad points. Certainly, Whedon“s vision of hell and its denizens, is visually striking (if a bit conventional for him, at least so far), and I“d rather see it lavishly illustrated on a comic page than cheaply realized on a TV series budget. At the same time, though, After the Fall thus loses a lot of what made the Buffyverse work so well: the sense that it“s grounded in a reality where the fantastic is only a slight step beyond what we see around us every day, and that evil can be not only mundane, but downright droll. Part of that was always the convention that, no matter how weird things got in Sunnydale, the truly bizarre stuff would escape the attention of all but our heroes and those in their circle (an idea that goes double for the self-absorbed citizens of Los Angeles). Here, though, Whedon“s given us such a radical change in the status quo that we can“t help but wonder just what“s happening in the world outside L.A. (particularly in a comic, where the strictures of TV broadcast don“t force the pacing). I shouldn“t be asking myself, as I read, just how and where this fits with the Buffy Season Eight series, but Whedon“s made his hell on earth so spectacular that the reader can“t help it—it“s distracting.

The actual writing and drawing of the book reunites writer Bryan Lynch and artist Franco Urru, the team from the Spike—Shadow Puppets miniseries. I had mixed feelings about that series: while the character voices usually rang true, that was largely due to the story being a sequel to one of the most popular episodes of the TV series, and it has the same retread feel that so often plagues sequels. It“s not hard to get Spike“s offhand cynicism down when you“re just riffing on the previous story. But this first issue breaks enough new ground for the characters that it feels much fresher than their previous effort, and the wisecracks and weirdness flow much more smoothly.

Urru“s art is at its strongest in the scenes of demons, monsters, and this Southern California circle of hell; it“s not so sharp with the individual members of the team. Angel appears fairly stiff, and his face, like that of many of the others, is often indistinct and inexpressive. While they“re not as outright wrong as some of Georges Jeanty“s depictions in the Buffy series, they“re bland enough to be forgettable: in several cases, only the dialogue makes it clear who some of them are supposed to be. As I say, though, he“s got his A-game on where hell is concerned.

If After the Fall it“s not off to quite as assured a start as Buffy Season Eight was, it is suffused with Whedon“s familiar blend of the fantastic and the funny. I don“t know that it would win many converts to the Whedonverse, but I“d say the same thing about the Buffy series. Both work best if you“re already invested in the characters, but if you need more than one dose of the Buffyverse per month, this“ll certainly do. The rating below assumes you“re just a comic fan; If you“re already a Whedon fanatic, add one full Viking.

[Trade Winds] Black Cherry OGN/ Therefore Repent! OGN

Posted by Graig on November 3, 2007

(Image/ No Media Kings/IDW)

It’s 10 A.M. and I’m in bed with the laptop, my wife beside me sleeping, my stepson in the living room watching cartoons. There’s a knock at the door. I haul myself out of bed, put on my robe and head towards the door, my stepson circling around me telling me he heard a knock. I open the door, and it’s as I feared: Jehovah’s Witnesses. They look me up and down through the barely opened door and apologize for waking me up so early. Then they proceed to tell me they’d like to talk about the Bible, that it’s a “good book written many years ago”. I tell them I’m not interested in the same partially annoyed tone I usually reserve for the faceless telemarketing peons. An you know, it’s the truth. I’m not interested.

In my teenage years I was a solidified Athiest, if only for sheer rebellion’s sake. These days I’m a fast and firm Agnostic believing simultaneously that anything and nothing is possible. Do I have a spiritual side? Perhaps, but do I believe in a singular God or that any of the religions have it right? Nope. Plus, there’s something about organized religions, as much as governments and big business, that bothers me. They do have their place in our world and society, but I’m not sure any of the good they do really counterbalances the harm en masse (my opinion only and not that of this site or its other writers). So when it comes to entertainment that has distinctive Christian (or any other religious) overtone do I shy away?

Nope.

In fact I love them.

Stories that use the mythos of religions often end up telling pretty good stories, since most of the mythos are just stories to begin with, much as the fables of Greek or Norse gods were. Films like The Prophecy (with Christopher Walken brilliantly cast as the rogue angel Gabriel) or The Rapture are fascinating. I’m sure there are the highly religious that see the use of Christian symbols for entertainment purposes as blasphemy, but often films and stories such as these have to do with faith, which I think is what most people get out of religion anyway. As an agnostic I think having faith, in whatever you wish to believe, is fine, as long as you don’t become blind in the process.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »

Tank Girl: The Gifting #1

Posted by Graig on June 15, 2007

(IDW)

If there’s one thing I know, it’s that Tank Girl has cred. The hipster crowd loves her, the punk crowd respects her, counter-culturists would still worship her (if she hadn’t come generated a sort of culture of her own) and there’s a vast and strange cross-section of admirers from across different cliques that all feel pangs of inadequacy looking upon her. Tank Girl is what we call a ball-buster, in that she’ll just as quickly kick you in the nuts as she’ll tell you a joke. As a boy, you’re either drawn to that, or you flee in terror ’cause your mommy told you to stay away from girls like that. If you’re a girl, you’ll either admire her down and dirty approach to life or you’ll wonder why she can’t just wear a nice dress and behave.

The last time either of the Tank Girl creators, Alan Martin or Jamie Hewlett, really touched the character was during the scripting process of the film, and their comics work ended well over a decade ago. Hewlett’s rolling his dough as a founding father of the avant-garde pop band Gorillaz, while Martin, well, he’s been pretty much M.I.A. for some time… but he’s back, and he’s brought his lady-friend with him.

The girls behind the cash at my LCS (”local comics shoppe”) were agog over the first new Tank Girl comic since Vertigo published some derivative Tank Girl stories (written by either Alan Grant or Pete Milligan, “capitalizing” off the abysmal failure that was the Tank Girl movie) in the mid-90’s. They were flipping through the book and their concerns echoed my own: can Tank Girl exist without the aesthetic we’ve all come to know and love (and fear)? “Modern illustrator” Ashley Wood takes up the art chores, last handled by Martin’s cohort Philip Bond, who worked relatively flawlessly as pinch-hitter for Hewlett on the Vertigo books. But Wood’s style is about as close to Hewlitt’s as a beer store is to the center of the Sahara, the hyper-kinetic movement, the hyperactive detail, the hyper-emotive characters… not really Ashley Wood’s thing, and a quick look through The Gifting shows sparse backdrops, a dash of muted color, some zip-a-tone, and a lot of scratchy lines. The LCS girls’ reservations met mine for sure… (one stated “Love Tank Girl. Love Ashley Wood. Together… I’m not so sure”).

I’m not a fan of Wood’s art. I don’t hate it, but it doesn’t give me the same amount of pleasure as some of the more unconventional comic artists like Mike Mignola or Paul Pope. Wood fits into the mold of Kent Williams, Ted McKeever, Dave McKean, or Bill Sienkiewicz, where there’s little obsession over accuracy, and loose lines and splotchy inks sub for detail. There’s nothing wrong with the style, some work it better than others, but at the same time I’ve never felt that Wood has the passion for sequential storytelling from what work of his I’ve read. But, surprisingly, although he’s no Jamie Hewlett when it comes to Tank Girl, his work here actually grew on me.

Since Martin has eschewed, even further than before, direct or cohesive narrative, the loose art style of Wood fits rather nicely. Instead of story, Martin has dropped three short sketches, teetering on the verge of some punk-inspired version of Mad TV as shown on Cinemax and produced by John Waters. Playful and distasteful, there’s an essence of Tank Girl here, but it’s a more “now” Tank Girl (I was about to say “mature” but that’s certainly not correct). Wood has updated the look, and from Martin the attitude of the character has a verging-on-30-last-grasp-at-youth feel to it. It has it’s moments but overall it’s still empty calories. Without the visual filling that Hewlett (or even Philip Bond) provided, this one basically passes through you like a Taco Bell meal. I can’t say I want more of The Gifting right now, but I probably will be tempted again. Fans will be mildly disappointed, and newcomers will be evenly split between awe and repulsion.

2 and a half out of 5 Viking

[Trade Winds] The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy: Volume 1

Posted by Elgin on March 15, 2007

(IDW Publishing)

Today it is virtually impossible to turn the television on without seeing a program that involves the actual use of police procedures or the dramatization of those same procedures. Novels and true crime books abound concerning this same theme and movies follow close behind. This flood of information and popular cultural use of police procedures had to begin somewhere and that somewhere was on the comic pages of America’s newspapers. In 1931 Chester Gould created a character and strip he first entitled “Plain Clothes Tracy,” a man thrown into the fight against crime by personal circumstances during an era when the real world was rife with crooked cops and out of control organized crime. Almost instantly renamed Dick Tracy, this comic strip was a seismic event in popular culture of such importance and so dramatically altering the landscape that it disguises it’s own importance. Today young movie goers can watch John Ford’s “Stagecoach” and see a movie that is full of cliches. Their lack of perspective denies them the information that all those western movie “cliches” began with this movie. Virtually everything you see in the popular culture about police and the never ending war on crime, began on October 12th, 1931. Watch movies like “Heat” or “L.A. Confidential” and you are basically watching a cinematic version of Dick Tracy. Read Hillerman or other such excellent writers and Gould deserves part of the credit they receive.

While Al Capone literally ran the city of Chicago, Chester Gould created an honest cop in an unnamed city clearly intended to be that same metropolis. This volume is the first of a series intended to encompass the entire five decades that he personally created the strip. (As an aside, the strip is still going as strongly as any comic strip these days, but under different if equally capable hands.) Two years of the daily strip are in this first volume along with the non-continuity Sunday strips published up to May 29, 1932. After that the Sunday strips continued the daily story. Once we reach that point, the Sundays are interspersed chronologically.

New readers may find the opening episode, of how Tracy becomes part of the police force a little far fetched, and that point will not be argued. But Gould was trying to get his feet under himself in something never seen before, and once the reader gets past that point little trouble will be had conceptually. Here begins a graphic novel that should stretch to 25 volumes and something close to 11,000 pages when fully published. It is a continuous unfolding of the life of a policeman, an honest man, facing a continuous flow of evil. He grows. He matures in his profession and his personal life. Not just in this first book, but over the life of this strip. The growth is slow as in real life. One must also understand that this was written for adults. It may be hard for the adolescent comic book reader to enjoy at first. What these comic book readers take for adult material demonstrates how far adolescence now stretches into the adult years. (Consider for example the huge three volume exploration of the sexual adventures of three young women in “Lost Girls” by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie. The tumult of praise and adoration for a puerile self indulgent comic porno extravaganza shows only that comic book fans are children that still get the giggles when they see somebody else’s pee-pee. These readers must be adults with jobs or else they could not afford this over priced drek.)

Dick Tracy came in a daily newspaper. Day by day the strip built an image and a story that looked closer and closer at an individual and at evil. It explores what constitutes evil. Where it comes from and how a civilized culture deals with it. Some readers might think that this means a namby-pamby approach. Far from it. Here a good man recognizes that evil begets evil. Remove the cancer as quickly and as efficiently as possible from the body politic so that health can be maintained. He suffers physically and mentally. Yet he struggles on. This slow growth, this gradual and continual expansion of our views into what constitutes this man’s makeup is as gripping and as demonstrative of place and culture as anything Dickens ever developed. Batman is the comic book version of Tracy and suffers in comparison.

The artwork is as distinctive as that of Goya and as minimal as Picasso. Profiles are the norm and the bad guys easy to discern. Heavy areas of black ink and no more detail than absolutely necessary make this one of the most distinctive pieces of art of the 20th Century. It is as distinctive a piece of literature as any work by Hemingway. Better. This is one of the great treasures of American culture, written and published as an ephemeral discard. We may all be thankful that this is the beginning of a rescue that Americans of the 22nd Century will be grateful for.

5 out of 5 Vikings

[Trade Winds] Fallen Angel Vol. 2: Down to Earth

Posted by Graig on January 30, 2007

(DC Comics)

What“s almost more interesting than the characters and stories contained within this “second” collected volume of Fallen Angel from DC is the behind the scenes shift that the title has gone through. The book, an original creation from Peter David, was a “Suggested for Mature Readers” title but not held under the Vertigo imprint, perhaps where it belonged. As such, it was unsure during it“s 20-issue run at DC whether the character and the city of Bete Noir (an analog of New Orleans) were a part of the DC Universe. Though well received by critics, the title didn“t do the numbers DC was hoping and the book was cancelled a few months after the first trade hit the shelves. Not long thereafter IDW stepped in and offered to publish it, which they continue to do, quickly putting out a trade collection after the wrap of the first storyline. The title, while not setting records, still sells incredibly well for a creator-owned book, which means there“s a market still out there for it, and DC, I suppose, recognizes this. Thus we have “Down to Earth”, the second DC trade collecting issues 7 – 12.

For people who may have missed out on the first trade, this one catches you up to speed fairly quickly. Though the first chapter operates in a confusing non-linear fashion, the rest of the book further expands upon Lee, the Fallen Angel, without revealing too much. The title and the character gain a lot of mileage from enigmatic characters and storytelling. David uses the character to explore good and evil and the grey areas in between, as Lee winds up in bed with Bete Noir“s kinpin, and sees another enemy in a totally different light. In my first assessment of the book I though of it as a seedier sister to Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, and it still holds true, though there“s no Scooby gang.

You can bet religion and authority are challenged in this book, and David does well in pushing buttons, but it“s not an attack on the reader, instead an invitation to think and decide for one“s self. If only certain news media were as fair and balanced. The art by David Lopez and Fernando Blanco is serviceable, reminding me of Jesus Saiz (Checkmate) or Javier Pina (Manhunter) in that it“s well composed if not remarkably distinctive.

3 and a half out of 5 Vikings

[Raided] Fallen Angel # 10

Posted by Russell on November 6, 2006

(IDW Publishing)

Moreso than other, more recent issues of Peter David’s opus, the latest Fallen Angel has a sort of, as the French would say, “I don’t know what” that makes it satisfying. It might be, again more than in recent months, David’s throughline on the issue is pretty straightforward — Lee, the titular angel, is hired by a blind tenor to help him restore his sight. Simple enough — and their quest leads them through several exotic locales until, finally, the blind singer meets his inevitable fate. A lot of what works about the issue, though, is David’s choice of framing the whole thing with Lee telling the story to Black Mariah and Jude — and it’s in this framing that David undercuts Lee’s reliability as a narrator. It’s here, and repeatedly over the course of the run, that Lee’s characterization is compelling, and draws you back month-after-month. J.K. Woodward’s artwork — which vacillates between absolutely gorgeous, and generally awkward — has taken a turn away from the fully painted work of earlier issues, for expediency’s sake, I’d guess, to a more brushed-ink-and-pen look that bolsters his strenghts, and downplays his weaknesses.

All in all, I’d say if you were curious about the title, this would be an excellent jumping-on point — or, even better, a dip-in-to-see-what-it’s-all-about issue. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »