Category: Reviews

Review: This Week in ‘Trinity’ – Part 4

We’re up to week five of DC’s big weekly event, and I regret to inform you that I’ve already caught myself thinking "same old, same old."

What happened?

The fight with Konvikt continued, with all the heroes getting knocked around, including your Big Three. At least they took the fight away from civilians, but still, so far the main point seems to be that there’s nothing really special about Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman. They get their butts kicked by giant, purple aliens just like everyone else.

Quick tangent — I’m not sure if there are any other Weeds fans out there, but I find it impossible to read the name "Konvikt" and not immediately think "Dumb name" in Doug’s snarky voice.

Back to the issue, which was pretty breezy, it ends with Batman doing some detective work to take a new tack with Konvikt (dumb name), and then getting ambushed by another alien, Graak (really dumb name).

Meanwhile, villains Morgaine Le Fey and Enigma (who needs to just come out of the Two Face closet and admit to being  Harvey Dent) watch on their magic crystal ball and offer cryptic commentary.

Whoop-dee-doo.

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Review: ‘Madame Xanadu #1’ by Matt Wagner and Amy Reeder Hadley

Fresh off another successful Grendel run and two excellent Batman miniseries ([[[Monster Men and Mad Monk]]]), Matt Wagner is switching gears so hard he may have just shredded the transmission.

A revival of the occult heroine Madame Xanadu? Really?

Sure enough. Wagner is writing the Vertigo series, the first issue of which debuted this week. It’s, well, odd, for lack of a better word. The first chapter begins in Arthurian times as Xanadu tries to prevent Camelot’s bloody fall.

Wagner channels a bit of Shakespeare’s lyricism in Xanadu’s dreamy, esoteric narration. And much of the goal seems to be recasting the common legend in surprising ways, not the least of which is Merlin as an old horndog.

The art, by relative newcomer Amy Reeder Hadley, is as graceful and natural as the titular character. The slight manga influence further similarizes the book to Elf Quest, which it mirrors fairly closely in tone.

The only real problem so far is the lack of scope in the first issue. Not a whole lot happens, at least till the last page, and there’s almost nothing to hint that this series is going to be an epic love story between [[[Xanadu]]] and the Phantom Stranger that lasts through several ages. I had to check the PR cheat sheet for that info.

Van Jensen is a former crime reporter turned comic book journalist. Every Wednesday, he braves Atlanta traffic to visit Oxford Comics, where he reads a whole mess of books for his weekly reviews. Van’s blog can be found at graphicfiction.wordpress.com.

Publishers who would like their books to be reviewed at ComicMix should contact ComicMix through the usual channels or email Van Jensen directly at van (dot) jensen (at) gmail (dot) com.

Review: ‘Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War Vol. 2’

sinestro2-7811134This past weekend at Heroes Con, a panel of some of comics’ biggest stars weighed in on collaboration and, eventually, the art of the crossover.

Mostly, that meant griping about the impossible task of tying into a Final Crisis or Secret Invasion. Matt Fraction went so far as to say he opted out of some crossovers because the stress of it would take years off his life. Jimmy Palmiotti essentially acknowledged the failure of DC’s Countdown.

Clearly, it’s not that hard for a big superhero event to careen right off the tracks. Which means we should all pay attention when one works particularly well, as in Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War (Volume 2 is out now in hardcover at $24.99).

The story is simple enough: Sinestro breaks loose and raises the most terrifying army ever seen, including all of DC’s strongest villains except for Darkseid. And the Green Lanterns fight back.

In this second half of the story, we see the classic turning of the tide back in the heroes’ favor, although Geoff Johns and crew add enough wrinkles to make the inevitable victory quite shadowy, if not outright pyrrhic.

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Review: ‘Maps and Legends’ by Michael Chabon

mapslegends2-9137528Maps and Legends
By Michael Chabon
McSweeney’s Books, May 2008, $24.00
 
Michael Chabon has had the good luck to be writing in an era when it’s possible to both be a respected, bestselling literary writer and have a public, abiding love for some of the more disreputable genres. His best-known novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay, is not only a fictionalized story of the fledgling comic-book industry during World War II, but also has a very definite fantasy element. And his latest novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, is a detective story set in an alternate history – tying it into two types of genre fiction.

If he’d started writing twenty years earlier, or even ten, he probably wouldn’t have been able to do that; only in the last decade or so have writers like Chabon (and Jonathan Lethem, who transitioned from genre science fiction straight into the “literary novel”) been able to admit to their love of genre. Previously, literary writers could go slumming and use genre ideas once in a while – think Doris Lessing with the “Canopus in Argo” series, or The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – but they could never admit to reading or liking books actually published in that genre. Kurt Vonnegut, after all, was only taken seriously because he ritually denied being a SF writer every day before breakfast.

But Chabon goes even further than his pop-culture-loving compatriots do; he doesn’t just admit to liking science fiction and detective stories – he’s even willing to claim that comics can be pretty damn good, and that some of them have influence him.

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Doctor Who in Review: Season Four, Episode #8 – Silence in the Library

The hit BBC series Doctor Who is now in its fourth season on the Sci-Fi Channel, and since we’re all big fans here at ComicMix, we’ve decided to kick off an episode-by-episode analysis of the reinvigorated science-fiction classic.

Every week, I’ll do my best to go through the most recent episode with a fine-tooth comb (or whatever the "sonic screwdriver" equivalent might be) and call out the highlights, low points, continuity checks and storyline hints I can find to keep in mind for future episodes. I’ll post the review each Monday, so you have ample time to check out the episode once it airs each Friday at 9 PM EST on Sci-Fi Channel before I spoil anything.

Missed a week? Check out the "Doctor Who in Review" archive or check out any of the past editions of this column via the links at the end of this article.

Keep in mind, I’m going to assume readers have already watched the episode when I put fingers to keyboard and come up with the roundup of important plot points. In other words, SPOILER ALERT!

Let’s begin now, shall we?

Season Four, Episode #8: "Silence in the Library" (more…)

Review: ‘MuZz, Vol. 1’ by FSc

MuZz, Vol. 1
By FSc (Foo Swee Chin)
SLG Publishing, May 2008, $14.95

There’s a train that runs to MuZz – or, at least, it’s supposed to – carrying ideas and thoughts whose creators have lost interest in them. They’re all pretty odd and motley, as you might expect: a black whale, a phantom cat, and things I couldn’t even begin to describe.

But, on this particular train, there’s also a figure that looks like a teenage girl missing an eye. She’s Modorelin Farllee, she’s an actual human, and she’s not even dead. (Well, I don’t think she’s dead, but I don’t want to be too definite about any plot points concerning [[[MuZz]]].)

Farllee remembers nothing of her past, and wakes up on the train in such a frantic, grouchy mood that she shakes her elf guide to death and has to rely on the standard pamphlet and the advice of her fellow passengers to figure out what’s going on.

And so she quickly learns what I’ve just told you – she doesn’t believe that she’s actually a figment of someone else’s imagination, but she can’t prove that, and drops the subject. None of them are precisely sure what will happen to them in MuZz, but, for nearly all of them, it has to be better than their previous lives.

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Review: Futurama – The Beast with a Billion Backs

futurama_billionbacks1-1455062

Coming up behind their first direct-to-DVD film, “[[[Bender’s Big Score]]],” Futurama’s next title certainly fills the void that series junkies need but can’t get from running their season DVDs bare. And while “[[[Beast with a Billion Backs]]]” is certainly not as deep or emotional as “Bender’s Big Score,” there is definitely enough to keep you entertained for 90 minutes.

The premise of the “movie” (which is technically four interwoven episodes) begins up with a tear in the sky, seemingly to another universe. When panic ensues and the world’s two smartest minds battle it out to figure out who gets to explore it first, our hapless hero, Fry, jumps in the hole and stumbles across something Earth-shattering. There are several other subplots that all come together in the end a la [[[Seinfeld]]], but the main focal point is this interdimensional “beast.”

Each of these films seems to have a central theme, and if the theme of “Big Score” was time travel and friendship, the theme here must be love and jealousy. Even stated by Bender in the film: “You can’t have complete love without complete jealousy,” which may be poetic, but is still hilarious. The structure follows that of a cheesy romantic comedy, while still mocking itself by having the “romance” occur between the titular beast and every being in existence. (It’s your typical “beast meets everybody, they fall in love, everybody feels betrayed, they break up, then try to fix the relationship” story… but with robot pirates.)

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Review: This Week in ‘Trinity’ – Part 3

trinity3-6010381It’s time we talked about Kurt Busiek.

He’s the brain behind this weekly operation and, in case you’re new to comics, he’s one hell of a writer. And there’s one particular quality that sets him apart.

His comics matter.

I don’t mean this in the sense that he does event comics (although Trinity certainly qualifies as such). What distinguishes a Kurt Busiek comic book has always been that he immediately instills the material with a sense of importance.

His big projects, like Marvels and Astro City, are perfect examples, but even in his post-Infinite Crisis take on Aquaman Busiek quickly remade that book into one that had to be read, and had to be taken seriously.

I say all this because, for a few reasons, I don’t get that sense from Trinity. So far, DC’s latest weekly series does not feel important. So far, it doesn’t matter. 

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Review: ‘The Joker: The Greatest Stories Ever Told’

This summer is a big one for Batman’s deadliest foe, the Joker, with the deceased Heath Ledger giving an apparently mesmerizing take on the clown prince of crime in [[[The Dark Knight]]].

And just in time comes the latest printing from DC of The Joker: The Greatest Stories Ever Told ($19.99), which offers some of the character’s legendary moments from his debut in 1940 in Batman #1 to last year’s macabre Christmas tale from Paul Dini.

First, lets dispense with the hyperbole of the title. There are some great Joker moments here, but several of the character’s biggest aren’t included. There’s nothing from [[[The Killing Joke]]],[[[ A Death in the Family]]] or [[[Dark Knight Returns]]], for example.

More than anything, this is a great primer on the Joker, charting his characterizations over his six-plus decades of existence as he became quite likely the most recognizable evil-doer in comics.

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Review: In Odd We Trust by Dean Koontz & Queenie Chan

In Odd We Trust
Created by Dean Koontz; Written by Queenie Chan & Dean Koontz; Illustrations by Queenie Chan
Del Rey, July 2008, $10.95

Odd Thomas, in a series of (so far) four novels from Dean Koontz, is a twenty-year-old fry cook in the small desert town of Pico Mundo, California. He has a tough girlfriend – Stormy Llewellyn, orphan and gun-slinging amateur detective – a great way with pancakes, many friends in town, and a secret: he can see the dead. The dead never talk, but they do find ways to communicate with Odd, and to get him to help them.

[[[In Odd We Trust]]] takes place when Odd is nineteen; it’s a prequel to the novels. Very early on, in a scene reminiscent of the great amateur “consulting detectives” stretching back to Sherlock, the local police chief, Wyatt Porter, comes to ask Odd for help. Joey Gordon, a seven-year-old, was killed brutally in a home invasion during the fifteen minutes between being dropped off after school by a neighbor and the arrival of his housekeeper/nanny. The killer left a cryptic note, made up of letters cut out of magazines, but no normal clues.

The police are baffled, as they so often are in stories like this. Sometimes I think the police exist in fiction merely to be baffled while the much smarter and more skilled amateurs do their legwork for them, and then sweep in at the end to do the actual arresting.

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