The New 52 Review: VOODOO #1

"...the Voodoo she do...:

VOODOO #1
DC COMICS

WRITER: Ron Marz
ART: Sami Basri
COLORS: Jessica Kholinne
LETTERS: Jared K. Fletcher
COVER: Sami Basri and Sunny Gho
32pp, Color, $2.99 U.S.

Voodoo is a female superhero character created by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi. She first appeared in WildC.A.T.s #1 (cover date August 1992), which was published by Image Comics. Voodoo is an alien Daemonite; she lives as Priscilla Kitaen. An exotic dancer, she uses telepathy and shapeshifting to gain information on human and metahumans.

With the re-launch of DC Comics’ superhero line, “The New 52,” Voodoo headlines her own self-titled comic book series. As Voodoo #1 (“Keeping Secrets”) opens, Voodoo is shaking her ass and working hard on a stripper pole at the Voodoo Lounge in New Orleans. Not only are horny men watching her, but also two special agents. One of them, Tyler Evans, decides to make a move on Voodoo, but she makes a bigger move on him.

The always reliable comic book scribe, Ron Marz, delivers on Voodoo #1. If I remember correctly, this is not the first time the character has had a solo series or miniseries, but Marz takes just 22 pages to maker her more interesting than she ever was as a Wildstorm pinup girl. Plus, Marz builds this story on a slow simmer until he finishes with a darn good explosive ending.

Marz’s clever script is turned into dazzling comic book art and graphic storytelling by Sami Basri (pencils/inks) and Jessica Kholinne (colors). Basri’s smooth line work shapes and forms tight compositions that offer superb figure drawing and simple but evocative backgrounds. Kholinne’s coloring gives depth and texture to the art, anchoring Basri’s slick line to the story and giving everything weight and substance.

I want another dance from Voodoo.

A-

September 28th
AQUAMAN #1
http://ireadsyou.blogspot.com/2011/10/aquaman-1.html
BATMAN THE DARK KNIGHT #1
http://ireadsyou.blogspot.com/2011/10/batman-dark-knight-1.html
BLACKHAWKS #1
http://ireadsyou.blogspot.com/2011/10/blackhawks-1.html
FLASH #1
http://ireadsyou.blogspot.com/2011/10/flash-1.html
JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #1
http://ireadsyou.blogspot.com/2011/10/justice-league-dark-1.html

Leroy Douresseaux on THE ART OF VAMPIRE KNIGHT: MATSURI HINO ILLUSTRATIONS

THE ART OF VAMPIRE KNIGHT: MATSURI HINO ILLUSTRATIONS
VIZ MEDIA

CARTOONIST: Matsuri Hino
TRANSLATION & ENGLISH ADAPTATION: Tetsuichiro Miyaki
ISBN: 978-1-4215-4005-4; hardcover; Rated “T+” for “Older Teen”
94pp, Color, $24.99 U.S., $28.99 CAN, £16.99 UK

Matsuri Hino is a Japanese manga artist or mangaka. She made her debut in 1995 with a one-shot manga. Her first series, Captive Hearts, which began publication in 1999, was about a young man bound to a teenaged girl via a family curse. Hino is now most famous as the creator of Vampire Knight.

Vampire Knight is a popular shojo manga that first appeared in January 2005 in LaLa magazine, a Japanese manga publication. Vampire Knight became a media franchise with the publication of light novels, video games, and two 13-episode anime series, among other things.

VIZ Media is Vampire Knight’s English-language publisher, releasing the series in a graphic novel format, beginning in 2006. The company recently published the 13th English volume of Vampire Knight (October 4th). VIZ Media published an English-language edition of the Vampire Knight Official Fanbook, a guide to the manga that is filled with illustrations, trivia, and general information.

VIZ Media also recently published The Art of Vampire Knight: Matsuri Hino Illustrations. Originally published in Japan in 2010, this hardcover, full-color book is exactly what the title declares on the cover: the art of Vampire Knight as presented through illustrations by Hino depicting characters from the Vampire Knight manga.

Vampire Knight is set at the private boarding school, Cross Academy, where there are two classes – the Day Class and the Night Class. The Day Class students are humans. When they return to their dorms at twilight, the Day Class doesn’t know that the Night Class students that are on their way to school are actually vampires. Vampire Knight’s main character is Yuki Cross, the adopted daughter of Headmaster Kainen Cross. Yuki’s earliest memory is of being attacked by a vampire.

There are two co-leads. One is Zero Kiryu, a human suffering the curse of the vampire. Yuki and Zero are Guardians at Cross Academy; they patrol the hallways and school grounds to protect the students of the Day Class from the vampires. The other co-lead is Kaname Kuran, a pureblood vampire who is the leader of the Night Class. Yuki is attracted to Kaname, and the two actually have a connection revealed later in the series.

Quite a bit of the movie Underworld (2003) takes place at the mansion of a vampire coven. Most of the vampires in the film are sleek and sexy; hair is cool platinum blonde or dark and sexy dangerous. They lounge around their posh estate, with its Gothic flourishes, in icy luxury.

The Art of Vampire Knight is a catalog of similar images. There are vampires in tuxedos, Goth-Loli girls, Victorian fashions, Pre-Raphaelite touches, etc. Actually, much of what Matsuri Hino presents is a blending of many styles, but an artist must take her influences and create something that is uniquely her own, even with its familiar elements. Hino has certainly done that.

The two-page spread on pp 40-41 is oddly familiar, with its wings-as-drapery, but Hino fans know this can only be Hino. Illustration meets fashion design, and the art of Vampire Knight is born. Vampire Knight fans, get this book. Clutch it to your bosoms. You might even want to… get down with it… so to speak.

A

The New 52 Review: FLASH #1

"Fast and Furious"

FLASH #1
DC COMICS

WRITERS: Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato
ARTIST: Francis Manapul
COLORS: Brian Buccellato
LETTERS: Sal Cipriano
32pp, Color, $2.99 U.S.

The Flash is a comic book superhero created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Harry Lampert. Flash’s power is super-speed, which includes the ability to run, move extremely fast, and use superhuman reflexes. The original Flash (or Golden Age Flash, as the character is known) first appeared in Flash Comics #1 (cover date January 1940). He was Jay Garrick, a college student who gained his speed through the inhalation of hard water vapors.

The best known Flash, “the Silver Age Flash,” first appeared in Showcase #4 (cover date October 1956). He is police scientist Barry Allen, who gained super-speed when bathed by chemicals after a shelf of them was struck by lightning. Allen took the name of The Flash after reading a comic book featuring the Golden Age Flash, whom he’d later meet.

As Flash #1 opens, it seems as if everyone is at the Central City Technology Symposium. Barry Allen is in attendance with his colleague and close friend, Patty Spivot. When armed men crash the symposium, Barry springs into action as Flash only to discover the involvement of an old friend – an old friend with a perplexing problem.

This new Flash title stands as one of my favorite of The New 52. Once upon a time, I was a huge fan of The Flash, but I never thought that I could love it as I once did. Co-writer/artist Francis Manapul and co-writer/colorist Brian Buccellato have turned in a gem of a comic book that is at once familiar as a Flash comic book, but also reads as something new. To me, it perfectly captures what The New 52 is supposed to be about, something accessible to new readers that is true to the character and its past.

As good as they are as a writing team, Manapul and Buccellato make an even better art team. Manapul has a pretty visual style built on solid compositions and the ability to draw just about anything. He has a clean, simple style that harks back to the Silver Age, but is thoroughly modern. Buccellato creates colors that seem right out of a Walt Disney animated feature (pre-CAPS); some pages of this comic book look like watercolors. Buccellato gives the art texture and even life.

I have to have more of this Flash.

A+

September 28th
AQUAMAN #1
http://ireadsyou.blogspot.com/2011/10/aquaman-1.html
BATMAN THE DARK KNIGHT #1
http://ireadsyou.blogspot.com/2011/10/batman-dark-knight-1.html
BLACKHAWKS #1
http://ireadsyou.blogspot.com/2011/10/blackhawks-1.html
JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #1
http://ireadsyou.blogspot.com/2011/10/justice-league-dark-1.html

Leroy Douresseaux on HABIBI (OGN)

"A thousand and one..."

HABIBI
PANTHEON BOOKS

CARTOONIST: Craig Thompson
ISBN: 978-0-375-42414-4; hardcover
672pp, B&W, $35.00 U.S., $40.00 CAN

Craig Thompson is the Michigan-born, Wisconsin-bred graphic novelist who began his comics career as a graphic artist for Dark Horse Comics. However, it was his 1999 semi-autobiographical graphic novel, Good-bye, Chunky Rice, that brought him to readers’ attentions. Four years later, his 600-page, autobiographical graphic novel, Blankets, made him a sensation.

Eight years later, he returns with another 600-plus-page monster of a graphic novel, Habibi. At almost 700 pages in length, Habibi (apparently Arabic for “my beloved”) is a massive tome containing a blockbuster of a comic. It is a sprawling epic that spans time while being surprisingly contemporary in places. It addresses the modern world, but is timeless and is steeped in past times.

At alternate places in the narrative, Habibi is set deep in Arabic deserts, right in the middle of slums and mind-boggling squalor, inside lavish palaces and harems, and finally in modern industrial centers. Habibi is the story of two refugee child slaves that are bound to each other by chance, circumstance, and need, but mostly by love. There is the older one, Dodola, an Arabic girl sold as a child bride and later sold into slavery. The younger is Zam, a black child that Dodola rescues and takes as her own.

Dodola and Zam become like mother and child, but they are eventually ripped apart, when Dodola is kidnapped. She is taken to Wanatolia, where she enters the great estate of the Sultan. He is a fat, lustful man who is always looking for something new in pleasure and gratification. Past the Gates of Felicity, Dodola is carried into the Sultan’s harem, where she becomes his greatest turn-on and most aggravating lover.

Meanwhile, Zam goes on his own journey, one that involves magical desert snakes and drought. His journey takes him from the most depressing slums to a house of sly and conniving eunuchs. Dodola and Zam’s lives will always unfold together, even when they are apart, but will they ever be reunited for good?

Habibi is magical storytelling. Symbolic and metaphoric, Habibi is also a parable and a fairy tale. Craig Thompson does so much in this graphic novel, both literally and figuratively. Habibi tries to bridge the first and third worlds, and in that attempt, it addresses racism in such a bold and blunt way that this graphic novel could find a place on the African and Black interests bookshelves. Thompson also unveils the common heritage of Christianity and Islam share, which is Judaism, in a matter-of-fact way that readers will be either offended or shocked, or perhaps delightfully surprised. Thompson transforms passages from the Koran into exquisite and enchanting graphical storytelling, composed of words, pictures, and graphics that come together like a striking piece of music.

Habibi is certainly a remarkable feat, but it is so big that sometimes I found myself getting lost. It seems to be about everything, but is really a long and winding love story of which the reader must keep track over 600+ pages. Habibi shifts in time so much and offers so many dream sequences and side stories that it is easy to see where one might get lost in all that black ink.

Also, some of the story seems to shift from the Middle East to the American Midwest, which is odd. Still, I could see Habibi being the best comic book of the year simply because it is so ambitious. I look at this whirling dervish of a tale and see it as a book that attempts to capture or to depict the complexity of humanity itself. Habibi is magical in its narrative and beautiful in its breath. Craig Thompson has given those who love the comics medium a treasure.

A

Slam Dunk: The Feeling of Falling

I read Slam Dunk, Vol. 18

I posted a review at the Comic Book Bin.

Vampire Knight: Distant Memories

I read Vampire Knight, Vol. 13.

I posted a review at the Comic Book Bin.

The New 52 Review: BLACKHAWKS #1

"Not your grandfather's or father's Blackhawks"

BLACKHAWKS #1
DC COMICS

WRITER: Mike Costa
LAYOUTS: Graham Nolan
FINISHES: Ken Lashley
COLORS: Guy Major
LETTERS: Rob Leigh
COVERS: Ken Lashley
32pp, Color, $2.99 U.S.

The Blackhawks debuted in Military Comics #1 (cover date August 1941), published by Quality Comics. The Blackhawk Squadron, usually called the Blackhawks, were a small team of World War II-era ace pilots of varied nationalities, who were led by an American named Blackhawk (his nationality and ethnicity changed over the years).

The Blackhawks’ long-running comic book series was known as Blackhawk, both in Military Comics (eventually Modern Comics) and, later, a self-titled series. Blackhawk was created by Will Eisner, Chuck Cuidera, and Bob Powell, although Reed Crandall is the artist most associated with the series. Future Justice League of America artist, Dick Dillin, drew the series for 18 years. In 1987, Howard Chaykin of American Flagg! fame revamped the series in the three-issue, prestige format comic book, Blackhawk.

With the re-launch of DC Comics’ superhero line, “The New 52,” the Blackhawks are reborn. However, the new series apparently will have no connection to the previous incarnations and also will share the post-Flashpoint, rebooted DC Universe continuity.

Blackhawks #1 opens in Ayaguz, Kazakhstan with the Blackhawks on a rescue mission and doing a takedown of hostage takers. The operation goes well, but not without a hitch. Kunoichi has a big problem that starts out small, and the Blackhawks’ cover is blown.

If you are a fan of everything Blackhawk before Chaykin’s miniseries, you will need to accept that this new Blackhawks is exactly that – something new. Even if you accepted the changes Chaykin made, you will still have to make another leap of faith. Other than the logo, this is, for all intents and purposes, something called Blackhawks that is not the Blackhawk that debuted in 1941. That said…

This is neither really good nor deplorably bad. At least to me, Blackhawks is essentially a comic book about special ops on steroids with elements of military science fiction and superheroes mixed into the concept. Writer Mike Costa brings his script together nicely. Readers will have questions, like who are these characters; what are they about, what do they want; and who are their adversaries, among others? Still, what is in the first issue is easy to understand.

The art by Ken Lashley, from layouts by Graham Nolan, looks like a scratchy version of Trevor Von Eeden’s art on the 1980s cult series, Thriller. Lashley’s is not a pretty style, but it grew on me.

Will I try this comic book again? Yes, I’m curious, but I also hope it gets better.

B-

September 28th
AQUAMAN #1
http://ireadsyou.blogspot.com/2011/10/aquaman-1.html
BATMAN THE DARK KNIGHT #1
http://ireadsyou.blogspot.com/2011/10/batman-dark-knight-1.html
JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #1
http://ireadsyou.blogspot.com/2011/10/justice-league-dark-1.html