Category: Reviews

Hellboy’s Buddies: Three volumes of Abe Sapien and one of a B.P.R.D. Vampire

This will be a bad review — not a negative one, since I enjoyed these books, and like the endlessly proliferating world of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy universe. No, this will be a poorly informed review, quick and slapdash and lazy, written more than two months after reading the books. But I’ve done a lot of them over the years — hey, I’m not getting paid here, so you get what you get — so I think I have a facility for doing quick superficial reviews that only mildly suck.

(And, if you really care what I think about the Hellboy universe, you can check out older posts on Hellboy in Hell , The Storm and the Fury , Being Human , Witchfinder , The Wild Hunt , The Midnight Circus ,  The Devil Does Not Jest , The Crooked Man , Lobster Johnson 3 and 4 , Hell on Earth 1-3 , Hell on Earth 4-10 , The Burning Hand , 1947 , 1948 , War on Frogs , and even further back from those if you follow some internal links.)

Abe Sapien: Dark and Terrible and the New Race of Man
Abe Sapien: The Shape of Things to Come
Abe Sapien: Sacred Places
(written by Mignola and Scott Allie, with one bit co-written by Mignola with John Arcudi; art by one or both of Sebastian Fiumara and Max Fiumara; colors by Dave Stewart)

These three volumes reprint the first year and a half (roughly) of the ongoing Abe Sapien comic, spinning off from B.P.R.D. when Abe himself cut loose from that joint, in the wake of another transformation and driven by a niggling worry that he might be an Apocalypse Beast himself. (For a different apocalypse than Hellboy himself, but this universe is well-stocked with potential and actual apocalypses to choose from.)

And they remind me of nothing so much as ’70s Hulk comics: the mysterious stranger with dangerous powers wanders across the Southwest, encountering both good people and monsters. Admittedly, the landscape Abe encounters is vastly changed: the Frog War might have been “won,” more or less, but there are massive alien monsters scattered around the world, entire cities have been destroyed, and normal life is basically over.

(Parenthetically, I’ll repeat again what I said in my review of the last clutch of B.P.R.D. stories: Mignola and his collaborators here are writing stories set after industrial civilization has collapsed, but they don’t quite seem to realize that. There’s no way any contemporary supply chains are still operating, and I’d estimate several billion people have already died — or been transformed into monsters — by this point. Just getting enough food to eat should be the primary worry of everyone in this world; not getting eaten by a monster is now a luxury.)

Meanwhile — because it wouldn’t be the Hellboy universe without subplots — a mostly dead B.P.R.D. agent has been brought back by a necromancer with a fiendish plot that we don’t entirely understand yet. And the B.P.R.D. is chasing Abe in a way that alternates between friendly and not-so-much.

And along the way a bunch of people die, and so do a bunch of monsters. This is a nastier world than the pre-apocalypse status quo, even if there does seem to be a somewhat functional government and occasional new consumer goods when there really shouldn’t be. Abe is mostly moping through all of this, worried that he is an Apocalypse Beast but pretty sure he isn’t, but still wanting to figure out how he fits into this world and what he should be doing.

It’s an interesting storyline, running somewhere through the territory between horror and superheroes: Abe is strong and knowledgeable, but he and his friends have already failed to stop the end of the world. Even if I do think these series must eventually show the extinction of the last humans on earth, there’s plenty of time and narrative space until that point.

B.P.R.D.: Vampire
(written by Mignola, Gabriel Ba, and Fabio Moon; art by Ba and Moon; colors by Stewart)


And this standalone story is a loose sequel to the 1946-1948 stories, focusing on one B.P.R.D. agent who was transformed into something more than human — and no prizes for guessing what.

I don’t think all of the middle has been filled in — this book covers a short time in the late ’40s, and that agent I don’t believe has showed up in any B.P.R.D. stories set any later in time than that — so I suspect this is Mignola throwing a ball up into the air and expecting to catch it much later, in some future B.P.R.D. story. (Or maybe there will be a direct sequel, which will end his story; it could go either way.)

So: moody, expressive art from Ba and Moon. Somewhat less dialogue than usual for a B.P.R.D. story, but still plenty of exposition. A conflicted hero and a mass of nasties. (I seem to be channeling Joe Bob Briggs here. I think there are a few breasts, actually. And plenty of blood.) This is a stylish, smart piece of a much larger story that pretty much stands on its own — if you want to sample Mignola without diving headfirst into the tangled mythology, this would be a very good choice.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

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Comics Reviews (September 2nd, 2015)

You know the drill; worst to best of what I bought.

But first, something I didn’t buy, because it’s free.

Electricomics

Out today for free for iPad, this is the digital comics platform Leah Moore and company have been working on, featuring, among other things, Alan Moore and Coleen Doran’s “Big Nemo.” Which is unsurprisingly the highlight of the package here, with a series of clever uses of the virtual page and its mutability that evoke the playful wonder of McCay’s work in a new medium. It feels like it ends on the title page of what should have been a much longer comic, though. The Garth Ennis strip is also neat, but the other two feel more interested in their own whizz-bang gimmicks than in actually being interesting, and the app is still a bit sluggish, resulting in frustrating reading experiences for both of them. Still, well worth the price, and they’re apparently still smoothing it out, so hopefully it’ll end up as a more functional package in a few weeks. Still hard to see this having much in the way of legs as a platform, but a fun little oddity of the world.

As for paid stuff…

18 Days #3

The art takes a turn towards abject mediocrity, the plot seems to wander off completely from anything it had been doing, and Grant Morrison’s not even in the credits as doing anything but “creating” a series that’s just a retelling of classical Hindu mythology. Wretched.

Daredevil #18

Fine, in the sense that there’s little wrong with it as such, and it’s nice that Waid was given leave to avoid there only being Secret Wars at the end of his run, but the truth of the matter is that he stayed on this book at least a year too long, and probably closer to two. It’s never been bad, but the energy had long since drained, and the denouement, despite bringing Kingpin in, did very little to change that. And the Shroud’s plot seems totally unresolved.

Doctor Who: Four Doctors #4

This lost rather a lot of pace for me, with an ending that’s much more “what’s happening” than “what’s going to happen” and the limitations of Neil Edwards’s art getting in the way of the story sometimes. (His Tennant and Smith can be very indistinguishable in the middle distance.) There are fun bits, but this event is starting to look like it’s going to underwhelm.

Silver Surfer #14

There’s really not such a thing as a Michael Allred comic that’s not fun to look at, but this has to be the most one note comic I’ve seen in a while; it starts with a tone, carries that same tone to the end of the comic, and then, well, ends, generally without doing much. Strange and lazy-feeling, frankly.

Miracleman #1

The best part of this comic is the edit to Neil Gaiman’s script to refer to “The Original Writer.” So nice to see the project still haunted by its past. In any case, following one of the biggest pieces of rank bullshit in recent comics memory when Marvel fucked up the printing in an iconic scene of their overpriced reprint comic and then didn’t issue replacements, thus screwing collectors who were already, shall we say, impatient with paying $5 for less than twenty pages of story, I’m back on the horse with this godforsaken money sink for the simple reason that I’ve never actually read the Gaiman material, so I’m curious. It’s… not Gaiman’s best work; the psychedelia in the lead-up feels strained, like he’s trying too hard to hit a style that’s just not natural for him. But it’s still a fascinating piece of work, and a pleasure to read a bit of 1990 Gaiman that most people haven’t. Man, though, Buckingham has improved as an artist in the past quarter century.

Thors #3

A fun Thor/Loki interrogation scene occupies the bulk of the issue, which moves along nicely as a result, but overall the degree to which Secret Wars is a millstone around Marvel’s neck right now is a real problem. It’s not this book’s fault at all, but the sour taste of Marvel in effect charging $4 extra for the series because it’s so late really does spoil things, as does a pretty flat ending. Still, the interrogation scene is fun.

Lazarus #19

Some good plot twists here, although for an arc with this high stakes, this is really feeling kind of… sedate. I like this issue – leaving Forever dead for most of it is a nice way to tell the story that doesn’t overstay its welcome. So I’m hopeful the end of the arc will spark a bit. But for the amount that’s happening, I’m finding myself strangely detached from this book.

The Dying and the Dead #3

In some ways, given how badly the schedule here is borked, a flashback issue that traces alternate history instead of following up on the apparent main characters is wise. It’s apparently going to be a while before #4, so something off in its own little corner is a good idea. Still, hope this book gets its act together, because while this is a good issue, it’s not a sustainable approach.

Providence #4

It’s frankly not a good week when what’s a fairly middling issue of Providence is the only credible candidate for the top slot, but that’s how it is. This is a somewhat understated issue, with some interesting implications for the larger plot, but not a lot happening here. One also gets the sense that we’re setting up a more general shift in the comic – having plowed gamely through “Shadow Over Innsmouth” and “The Dunwich Horror,” the only real remaining top tier Lovecraft story is “Call of Cthulhu.” With eight issues left, then, we’re clearly going to have to veer towards some more obscure stuff, which suggests a change in tone and pace. So this feels a bit transitional. And yet it’s still denser, smarter, and longer on reread value than anything else in the pile, and the only thing that feels like it offers anything like value for its cover price.

Originally published on PhilipSandifer.com.

Box Office Democracy: American Ultra

American Ultra would have been the coolest movie in the world in 1996. It has the lovable loser slacker protagonist with a quirky hobby and a mundane job, it has plenty of sudden graphic violence, and it even has a plot that’s a metaphor for parental issues.

Unfortunately, the last 19 years haven’t been particularly kind to these tropes, and this movie that would have easily swept the Independent Spirit Awards two decades ago instead feels less special and more tired. It doesn’t sink the movie, it’s still frequently a blast and features one of the most best ensemble supporting cast I may have ever seen but this is a movie that in another era could have been a home run and it’s disappointing to see it just be a long double.

While not a fantastic reflection on the originality of the film, American Ultra lends itself very handily to mash-up comparisons. It’s Chasing Amy meets A History of Violence, it’s Slackers crossed with The Bourne Identity, it’s SubUrbia having a baby with The Transporter. Mike Howell (Jesse Eisenberg) is a stoner convenience store clerk who draws an ambitious if nonsensical comic book in his spare time. Unbeknownst to Mike he is an old CIA asset that due to a power struggle within the agency has been targeted for termination. When the CIA assassins come to kill him Mike discovers he’s an amazing killer. The ensuing chaotic escalation of this operation ends up bringing everyone in Mike’s life in to the orbit of this violent struggle especially his girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart) who is the cliché suspiciously-attractive girlfriend of a total loser. There are enough clever twists and fun tweaks to the formula here to make the film exciting but maybe they go a little too far as there are all these vestigial bits of plot hanging off the edges like threads that they forgot to weave in to the main fabric of the story.

While both Eisenberg and Stewart are quite good— in fact, both seem to be trying very hard to shake of the notion that they are budget-friendly versions of bigger stars— the real winning performances in American Ultra come from the supporting cast. Topher Grace chews scenery hard as the smarmy evil CIA supervisor and I’ve seen him do this douchebag performance so well so many times I’m beginning to wonder if he’s not like that in real life and that’s probably the mark of an exceptional performance (or an exceptional jerk in real life, but I hope not). Connie Britton usually acting across from Grace does a great job bringing a grounded energy to those scenes, but when she’s doing scenes with any other characters she switches gears and becomes the scene stealing performer we know she is. Walton Goggins is a terrifying presence as the CIA lunatic killer Laugher turning in a performance that is 100% chilling nightmare fodder. The cast is so embarrassingly deep that Tony Hale and John Leguizamo, both national treasures and utter delights in this film, feel criminally underused but there just isn’t room for more of them.

By the time I’m writing this it’s pretty apparent American Ultra didn’t find its audience. We’ve even gotten the 2015 signature move of the underperforming movie and someone involved in the production has taken to Twitter to complain about the results of their labors. It’s a shame, this movie deserves better and I hope that eventually people discover this movie on Netflix or wherever because it deserves to be seen and to be appreciated. Not because it’s screamingly original or clever but because it’s an example of exceptional execution and the good work a solid cast can do to carry a middling script. American Ultra is a film that deserves better than it got from America this weekend and better than it got from whoever came up with this terrible non-descriptive title.

Box Office Democracy: Straight Outta Compton

When I saw the first trailer for Straight Outta Compton I leaned over to my girlfriend and said, “Oh my God, are they making the story of N.W.A into a white savior movie?” and she looked back at me with fear in her eyes. It was a bad trailer, rather an unrepresentative one, which made it look like a movie about Jerry Heller trying to get the police and the music establishment to treat his clients with respect. That would have been a terrible movie, a tragic misrepresentation of the struggles that really took place. The movie we got is a powerful touchstone piece in documenting and dramatizing the rise of West Coast gangster rap.

I wish Straight Outta Compton felt as old as it is. That we could look at the events of this movie, now a quarter of a century gone, and think of them as the past when instead it feels like the present. The world they show us to contextualize the writing of “Fuck tha Police” feels very much like the world we see so very often on the news or in our own communities. The anger and the despair and the hopelessness of the situation feels so current and relevant and it only magnifies these feelings to know we’ve accomplished so little in the intervening years when it comes to policing minority populations. These are powerful scenes, the most affecting ones that I can remember seeing on the topic and if this movie does nothing but inspire this feeling of discontent in a few more people it will be a remarkable success.

Luckily, it does a few more things very well. The acting is generally superb; especially O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s work pretending to be his own father, a task that I have to imagine is one of the strangest tasks an actor would ever have to attempt. Corey Hawkins does a good job of playing Dr. Dre with the quiet rage I’ve always associated with him and showing it build, ebb, and flow in a natural manner. It’s an inexperienced cast and that inexperience sometimes shines through but they generally do great work. I was quite impressed with the scope of the picture, it starts as an N.W.A piece but then branches out through everyone’s respective solo careers and it helps to illustrate how influential these men were in launching other enterprises and helping along the careers of so many others. It stops short of getting into Ice Cube playing a police captain in the 21 Jump Street franchise and the irony therein but I suppose it was already a long film. Straight Outta Compton also does its part in establishing that Suge Knight is a real-life cartoon supervillain and I think that is an important detail to share with future generations that might watch this movie.

There’s a problem with the way Straight Outta Compton handles its female characters. Most of the women on screen in this film are some manner of groupie, party girl, or otherwise objectified woman with barely any lines. The exceptions are wives and mothers and while it’s nice to have that change of pace that isn’t really a less sexist depiction. Every woman is either a Madonna or a whore with nowhere in between. This is an accurate reflection of how bad the gangster rap movement was for the status of black women but one would hope that time and perspective might lend itself to a more nuanced look back. I don’t need the characters in the film to say or do things differently than they really happened but it would have been nice to get some indication that the filmmakers know this kind of conduct is wrong or damaging.

The music biopic is a genre that feels perpetually stale, and Straight Outta Compton is definitely not a stale film. It has all the little issues that biographical films will always have, character and event compression makes for some moments that feel as fantastical as people commanding ants through a metal helmet but there’s a passion and an energy I haven’t felt in one of these films in a long time, maybe ever. This is an important band who did important things at an important time and it’s important to remember their struggle and try to contextualize it for people who weren’t there or who couldn’t pay it the proper attention. If not for this movie there was a real danger that Ice Cube and Dr. Dre would be remembered by the next generation as an actor and a headphone mogul and if this movie keeps their other work in our collective consciousness it is doing our culture a great service.

REVIEW: Mad Max: Fury Road

mad-max-fury-road-box-art_2d-e1440964977118-2514210Before post-apocalyptic fiction became in vogue, there was always a work or two that captured the imagination. From Cormac McCarthy’s The Road to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaiden’s Tale there have been stories to challenge society. But few packed the visceral punch of the visuals Australian director George Miller brought to his bleak world in 1979’s Mad Max. It set a standard rarely surpassed and introduced us to the talent of Mel Gibson. The modest film found an international audience so Miller was able to revisit the world on a somewhat larger scale in 1982’s The Road Warrior. And that found an even more eager audience so Hollywood threw money at him and we got the somewhat over-the-top Beyond Thunderdome.

Miller has wanted to look back at that society and has spent the last three decades attempting to mount such a production but fate was unkind to him. Meanwhile, contemporary fiction and filmed entertainment caught up to him so dystopia is as common as the soap opera. Audiences were therefore a little cautious when they settled into their seats to see Mad Max: Fury Road. As you may have seen for yourself or heard, he was more than up for the challenge, as was Thomas Hardy, the new Max.

Max has lost everything and like many a good protagonist, he wanders the wasteland, a restless spirit. His chance encounters ignite the stories much as the orphaned children took him to Thunderdome, here his capture by a savage society led him to Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron). For all the heroics Max display here, this is truly Furiosa’s film and she has made an indelible impression on audiences around the world.

landscape-1431367093-mad-max-e1440965221380-8593305The film, out now on Digital HD and coming to disc Tuesday from Warner Home Entertainment, is well worth a look. While there isn’t an overly complex story don’t think there isn’t a story or a message in this high-octane chase. By the time Max finds her, she has stolen five women known as the Breeders, from Immortal Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), who has kept them in sexual bondage, seeking to generate male heirs to inherit his brutal control over the masses. She has The Splendid Angharad (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), Toast the Knowing (Zoë Kravitz), Capable (Riley Keough), Cheedo the Fragile (Courtney Eaton) and The Dag (Abbey Lee) aboard an amazing machine and is taking them to the only safe place she knows, the land where she was raised.

mad-max-fury-road-20-e1440965253578-7161290While it’s her story, we see it from Max’s point of view, and are privy only to his thoughts. Still, Furiosa ignites the story and is active rather than reactive, something that has been debated online since the film opened in June. She has been savaged and has lost an arm, but has not lost her wits and when the opportunity presented itself, she took the women, robbing Joe of his destiny. He wants them back and the chase is on as one truck is followed by dozens of the most imaginative motor vehicles captured onscreen.

Max has been taken by Nux (Nicholas Hoult), one of the white-painted war boys, the Citadel’s armed forces. He’s strapped to the front of Nux’s vehicle and over the course of the story, once Max gets free, he exerts a quiet influence over Nux, who finds his soul, and first love, while risking his life to eventually protect the Breeders.

Miller co-wrote the film with Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris and touch on many aspects of heroes, villains, sacrifice, and the greater good. Although little of their writing is found in the finished film, you can learn from the extras how every character and vehicle had a name and distinctive background. Miller can tell you more about Immortal Joe or Coma Doof Warrior (the flame throwing guitar guy) than you can infer from onscreen, but it certainly helped inform the performances. And it clearly helped Margaret Sixel (Miller’s wife) edit the reported 450 hours of footage into an entertaining story.

Fmad-max-fury-road-1-e1440965283399-2295506uriosa wants the women safe in The Green Place, even if it costs her her life. Max and Furiosa find themselves reluctant allies and little personal is shared between them, but there are volumes said between glances from Hardy and Theron. As they come to trust their lives and their precious cargo with one another, we get new glimpses of how harsh life on Earth has become, with rival factions, fragile alliances, and few places that can be considered safe refuges. There’s little hope here, but you find yourself rooting for their success regardless.

The action rarely slips out of third gear and the visuals are an unending array of imaginative devices, big explosions, loud thrumming noise from the Doof mobile, and Max’s careworn gaze. The cast makes the most of their meager lines, letting their physicality convey much of the story.

mad_max_teaser_trailer_still-e1440965311242-5495629The flawless 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer means you can enjoy the visuals from home and study the machinery or terrain with ease. Matched with the Dolby TrueHD 7.1 surround sound, the film sounds strong and you hear everything from the whisper wind-swept sand to the revving of an engine in the distance.

The combo pack comes with the Blu-ray, DVD<,and Digital HD along with a handful of extras that elaborate on the amazing world Miller has successfully revisited and we hope will bring us back for another look. The special features start with  Maximum Fury: Filming Fury Road (29:00); Fury on Four Wheels (23:00), a detailed look at the incredible war machines; The Road Warriors: Max and Furiosa (11:00), Hardy and Theron discuss their alter egos;  The Tools of the Wasteland (14:00), a look at the props and more on the production design; The Five Wives: So Shiny, So Chrome (11:00), Huntington-Whiteley, Keough, Kravitz, Lee, and Eaton fill us in on their characters, filming in the chill of Namibia, and how the rehearsal and skimpy outfits led to  a sisterly bond; Deleted Scenes (4:00), a mere three scenes; Crash & Smash (4:00), a selection of pre-production tests before CGI, which shows you how much was real.

I cannot recommend the film enough, whether you’ve seen the first three or not because there’s a lot to enjoy and think about.

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Comics Reviews (August 26th, 2015)

Secret Wars to get an extra issue and continue into December, two months after the Marvel relaunch. DC reportedly cutting page rates to creators, eyeing price increases, and cutting back on innovation in favor of the New 52 house style. What a great time to be a comics fan, eh?

From worst to best of what I bought, which wasn’t much this week.

Old Man Logan #4

Actually a really solid comic; the Logan/She-Hulk scenes are great. Except that they’re a great She-Hulk story, and the comic is a Wolverine comic, so instead of staying with the interesting character we just watch Wolverine hurled to another location. It turns out a character whose only motivation is grudgingly surviving in a story with no visible overall plot is kind of unsatisfying. Who knew? Apparently not Bendis.

Batgirl #43

A perfectly good issue of Batgirl that doesn’t necessarily do much to impress so much as faithfully deliver what people enjoying this book are paying for.

Doctor Who: Four Doctors #3

Some distinctly dodgy plot logic on why the Macguffin affects individual regenerations of the Doctor with specificity, and an outright unrecognizable River Song in her two panel silent cameo, but for the most part the strongest issue yet, with a reasonably fun twist on the backside. Not entirely convinced by Cornell’s Twelfth Doctor, but his Eleventh is strong and his Tenth is probably the best take on the character after Davies’s. This remains fun and frothy.

Where Monsters Dwell #4

This has had a really interesting drift as Karl becomes increasingly less funny and more depraved. Ennis in his sharpest comedic mode, basically. Not a classic of Ennis’s oeuvre, but very much fun. Also, a well handled trans character, especially given that the only issue made out of it is the fact that Karl’s too stupid to realize it.

Originally published on PhilipSandifer.com.

Emily S. Whitten: Entertainment Earth GOTG Action Figure Review

553e4fa12bfb3-550x310-6505773Yesterday in the mail I was excited to receive Entertainment Earth’s exclusive Guardians of the Galaxy action figure set by Hasbro. As you may have noted from previous columns, I’m a big fan of the Guardians of the Galaxy movie and have always liked what I’ve seen of the team in the comics as well, so I was super-excited to get such a cool item!

There are some times when a picture is worth a thousand words, so most of my review is best seen in my video unboxing of the set and <a href=”

 on my Instagram where I’ve got individual photos of Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax the Destroyer, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot. But here I will say that I was very impressed with the detail, articulation, and accessories (particularly baby Groot and the Tesseract/Cosmic Cube!) of this set. I really love both the design and detail.

This is definitely a quality set of figures with fun accessories and cool comic-book-accurate designs for any fan of Guardians of the Galaxy. I recommend you check out my video for my full review, and then pick up a set for yourself!

And until next time, Servo Lectio!

REVIEW: Space Dumplins

Space Dumplins
By Craig Thompson
320 pages, Scholastic Graphix, $14.99

GRX050 Silver Six COV TEMPLATECraig Thompson’s versatility is to be admired as he goes from Coming of Age romance with his Harvey award-winning Blankets, and then his more adult and fanciful Habibi. Now he is taking aim at the young adult market with his first offering for Scholastic’s Graphix imprint. Space Dumplins is an imaginative work about a plucky young girl and a band of misfit alien lifeforms trying to survive in a sector of space plagued by whale poop.

You see, there are creatures that exist in the vacuum of space, the largest of which are the space whales with their energy-rich excrement. The problem is that too much in a concentrated portion of space messes up the traffic, communications, and their hermetically sealed way of life. The economy is a rough one. We may have achieved the stars and found other races out there, coexisting to one degree or another, but people still struggle to keep jobs, do right by their families, and eke out an existence.

This is where we meet the Marlockes. Dad’s a lumberjack, plying the spaceways, collecting the poop, cutting it down to size, and transporting it. Mom is a talented fashion designer who is fortunate to be selected to work with the premier designer Adam Arnold on Shell-Tarr, the main space station in the region. They are fighting over money and the time apart. When a space whale attack destroys her school, Violet tries to transfer to the school on the station but is rejected because of her dad’s criminal past. More stress.

Then dad goes missing and things get murky. Thompson implies more than he ever reveals about the space station and the governing body of the region. Still, we get the sense the job dad went on is extralegal and they disavow knowledge of him and restrain mom from going in search. (And yes, if there’s a space whale, we will have our Jonah, not Jo-Nah, moment.) Of course, Violet is overlooked and she flies off to rescue him, accompanied by Elliot, a brilliant, sentient chicken suffering from abandonment issues and the amorphous, comic relief Zacchaeus. Each deal with issues of rejection and loss but clearly, we’re rooting for them to succeed.

Thompson switches tones often and sometimes propels the story at such a breakneck pace that keep track of who, what, where and why is a little obscured. But he makes up for that with humor and heart. Visually, the book is stunning thanks to filling every square inch of the page with details, reminiscent of Wally Wood’s EC SF stories. Dave Stewart’s color is a wonderful match for the visuals making this one of the most satisfying titles coming from the Graphix imprint in a long time.

Aimed at all ages, this book is a treat and well worth your time and attention.

REVIEW: Slappy’s Tales of Horror

Goosebumps Graphix: Slappy’s Tales of Horror
By R.L. Stine
176 pages, Scholastic Graphix, $12.99

Slappy's Tales of HorrorOriginally released in black and white nearly a decade ago, the resurrection of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps franchise has prompted Scholastic Graphix to collect the stories once more at Goosebumps Graphix. The first of these, Slappy’s Tales of Horror, are comic book adaptations of YA novels written in the early 1990s.

Dave Roman, the most cartoony of the quartet of artists, provides the interstitial pages as Slappy, the living dummy, acts as host because every horror anthology needs a host (thank you Bill Gaines). The stories offer up a variety of terrors from the possessed dummy to the werewolf but in keeping with Stine’s template, each comes with a few twists to keep people guessing.

There is some genuine terror hidden within each story but being a graphic adaptation of prose, and given a more limited page count, things fall to the wayside, notably any semblance of characterization.

Vertigo veteran Jamie Tolagson kicks things off with “A  Shocker on Shock Street”, that mixes amusement park thrills with filmed entertainment as two kids experience an unforgettable evening.

Gabriel Hernandez follows with “The Werewolf of Fever Swamp”, a family tale where man and beast are examined. His art is sketchy but works to set the mood, notably in the woods.

“Ghost Beach” comes courtesy of Ted Naifeh and deals with ghosts and ancestors and ghastly doings.

Finally, Roman offers up “Night of the Living Dummy” which is about rivalry, sibling and wooden alike. His style feels out of place compared with the others but he does an admirable job with the hoary material.

All four come freshly colored by Jose Garibaldi who uses a rich palette without getting garish.

If you like the series and can’t wait for the film, this should help.

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Belated Comics Reviews (August 19th, 2015)

Happy to say that my comics have made it to the correct shop, and then out of the shop and to my home, where I have read them and ranked them from worst to best of what I was foolish enough to pay for. (Though strangely, Loki didn’t make it home, and I don’t think I saw it in the shops. Will follow up and review it next week one way or another.)

Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #4

A great issue #2.

Guardians of Knowhere #3

For most of this, it runs along without any of Bendis’s most infuriating writing tics. The Angela/Gamora confrontation is excellent character work with added punching. The plot moves off of Yotat and towards things recognizable as characters we care about. Mike Deodato draws gorgeous lightning. It’s a solid comic. And then it does a cliffhanger that amounts to “a person appears.” No explanation of this person. Maybe she is identifiable, but she’s not identifiable in a way that I can identify, and I’m nearing a quarter-century of reading Marvel comics. It’s not a cliffhanger in any useful sense; there’s no excitement. There’s a question, sure, namely “who is that,” but there’s no reason for me to be invested in the answer to it.

Doctor Who: Four Doctors #2

It’s a bit longer on action sequences than plot, in a way that’s not entirely satisfying, but that’s probably going to come out in the wash given that it’s a weekly event. All the same, this is mostly reapers chasing people as opposed to actually moving forward. But there’s enough charming and funny bits to make it an enjoyable trip.

Secret Wars: Secret Love #1

A fun anthology one-shot. The Daredevil story’s a bit off the boil for me, but the others are varying shades of delightful, with the Ms. Marvel/Ghost Rider story probably being the highlight from any serious perspective, and the Squirrel Girl/Thor story being the highlight from any moral one. Nice way to get some oddball talent into Marvel, and it’s always nice to see an odd genre like the romance comic get a revival.

Captain Britain and the Mighty Defenders #2

The only possible complaint to have about this book is that it deserved more than two issues to tell its story. Still, it’s an enormously compelling case for Faiza Hussain as a character. Really, she needs an ongoing role in the Marvel Universe. Preferably as Captain Britain.

Trees #12

Admittedly, I found time to reread #1-11 since the last issue came out, so I’m actually in the position to understand this. That said, this seems to continue the beautiful clarity of this second arc; the stripped down setting to two stories does this book favors, and this is flat out a better run than the first arc was. Here it kicks into gear, with some real and gripping tension, especially with the cliffhanger. Ellis remains one of the few writers to consistently turn out comics worth their cover price.

Originally published on PhilipSandifer.com.

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