I posted a review at the ComicBookBin (which has free smart phone apps and comics).
Monday, March 24, 2014
March Story: The Final Battle III
I read March Story, Vol. 5
I posted a review at the ComicBookBin (which has free smart phone apps and comics).
I posted a review at the ComicBookBin (which has free smart phone apps and comics).
Sunday, March 23, 2014
I Reads You Review: SCOOBY-DOO, Where are You? #42
DC COMICS – @DCComics
STORY: Heather Nuhfer, Terrance Griep
PENCILS: Eduardo Garcia, Leo Batic
INKS: Eduardo Garcia, Horacio Ottolini
COLORS: Heroic Age
LETTERS: Deron Bennett, Travis Lanham
COVER: Eduardo Garcia
28pp, Color, $2.99 U.S. (April 2014)
Rated “E” for Everyone
I have a subscription to DC Comics’ most recent Scooby-Doo comic book series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? (which launched in 2010). I bought the subscription through a fundraising drive for the school which my nephew attends, and I recently received the fourth issue of my subscription.
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? #42 opens with “Viral Villain” (written by Heather Nuhfer and drawn by Eduardo Garcia). The story finds Mystery Inc. on a short break to relax from all the mysteries they have been working. Shaggy and Scooby, however, are bored, so they visit a local video game story, looking for something with which to entertain themselves. They find a copy of the hot new game, Celestial Edge, but the store owner warns them that the game has been making some of the people who have played it act crazy. That may explain why Shag and Scoob are seeing the game’s villain, Lord Vicious, walking around in the real world.
In “Sleeper’s Peepers” (written by Terrance Griep and drawn by Leo Batic), the gang visits the lake that is the site of a wakeboarding tournament. They are helping Tad Laurent, the top-rated wake-boarder, get ready for the tournament. However, the “Scaled Sleeper,” a monster that looks like the creature from the Black Lagoon, wants an end to the tournament so that he can keep sleeping. Of course, the Mystery Inc. gang sees his threat as the start of a new mystery to be solved.
Once again, an issue of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? offers two stories that would work better as one issue-length story. Ten and 12 pages, respectively, don’t do justice to the stories, especially the 10-page, “Viral Villain.”
I must admit that that I am impressed with the artist of “Viral Villian,” Eduardo Garcia. You could mistake him for an animator drawing cel art for an actual Scooby-Doo cartoon. He is a true Scooby-Doo artist, and his illustrations, combined with Heroic Age’s coloring, make “Viral Villain,” seem like true-blue Doo.
B-
Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux
The text is copyright © 2014 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for syndication rights and fees.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Friday, March 21, 2014
I Reads You Review: HELLBOY: Seed of Destruction #1
DARK HORSE COMICS – @DarkHorseComics
STORY/ART: Mike Mignola
SCRIPT: John Byrne
COLORS: Mark Chiarello
COVER: Mike Mignola
32pp, Color, $2.50 U.S. $3.40 CAN (March 1994)
Hellboy is a superhero and horror comic book character created by writer-artist Mike Mignola. The character first appeared in San Diego Comic-Con Comics #2 (cover date: August 1993). My how time has passed, because it is now the 20th anniversary of the first Hellboy comic book series, Hellboy: Seed of Destruction. This four-issue miniseries is plotted and drawn by Mignola and scripted by John Byrne (who would script all four issues of Seed of Destruction).
Hellboy: Seed of Destruction #1 opens on December 23, 1944 in East Bromwich, England. The story is first narrated by 1st Sgt. George Whitman. He is part of a special Ranger unit waiting out what is supposed to be a paranormal event related to the Nazi’s “Project Ragna Rok.” Besides the military, World War II-era American superhero, the Torch of Liberty, is present. Probably the three most important people in attendance are Professor Malcolm Frost, Lady Cynthia Eden-Jones (England’s top medium), and Trevor Bruttenholm (pronounced “Broom”).
Meanwhile, far to the north, on a tiny island just off the Scottish coast, a special group of Nazis are invoking and conjuring. The result is Hellboy. Fifty years later, Bruttenholm senses impending Doom, and Hellboy ain’t a boy anymore.
I have not read Hellboy: Seed of Destruction #1 since I read it in trade paperback form ages ago. When I was reminded that this was a Hellboy anniversary, I decided to dig up my copy (which is surprisingly signed by John Byrne). It is still a blast. Hellboy: Seed of Destruction may not ever make any “greatest comic books of all time” lists, but it should. This was and remains an exceptional and unique comic book. I feel positively giddy about it.
Mignola’s moody gothic art would have made H.P. Lovecraft shiver with ecstasy. This is Lovecraft’s fiction brought to life in way that honors the original and simultaneously takes it new places. Mark Chiarello’s coloring does wonders creating horror comics art that is, simply put, pretty. The coloring on the cover is garish, but in a kitschy beautiful way. John Byrne’s script makes everything clear, informing the reader without spoiling the mystery or the sense of mystery.
Wow! I had forgotten how good Hellboy: Seed of Destruction is.
[This comic book contains a back-up comic, “Who Are Monkeyman and O’Brien?” written and drawn by Art Adams, lettered by L. Lois Buhalis, and colored by Matt Hollingsworth.]
A+
Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux
The text is copyright © 2014 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for syndication rights and fees.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
I Reads You Review: STRAY BULLETS Free Comics Day Books
EL CAPITAN BOOKS
CARTOONIST: David Lapham
COVER: David Lapham with Janet Jackson
48pp, B&W, Free
I have never attended Free Comic Book Day (FCBD). This is the annual event in which comic book stores welcome potential new customers by offering free comics that have been specifically created for that day. Sometimes, I have visited the two comic book stories that I usually frequent close enough to FCBD to pick up some leftover FCBD comic books.
Sometimes, I get a few leftovers from Mile High Comics if I make an order close to FCBD. That may be how I received Stray Bullets Free Comics Day Book from the 2002 installment of FCBD. Stray Bullets Free Comics Day Book reprints Stray Bullets #2 (April 1995).
Stray Bullets is an independent American comic book series written and drawn by David Lapham. The series is published in black and white with color covers by El Capitan Books, an independent publishing firm founded by Lapham and his wife, Maria Lapham.
The first issue of Stray Bullets was published with a March 1995 cover date, the beginning of an irregular publishing schedule through the publication of its 40th in 2005 (November 2005 cover date). After a hiatus, Stray Bullets recently returned with a 41st issue, a new miniseries (Stray Bullets: The Killers), and an omnibus paperback collecting issues #1 to 40 (Stray Bullets Uber Alles Edition).
Each issue of Stray Bullets features a self-contained story that takes place in a time period ranging from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. The stories deal with the criminal and sometimes tragic misadventures of a large cast of characters or, as Lapham writes, “the lost lives of people who are savagely torn apart by events beyond their control.”
Stray Bullets #2 opens in Baltimore, Maryland during the summer of 1977. At a theatre showing Star Wars, two hood-types, Manny and “Spanish” Scott, wait for Georgie. What results is shocking, sudden, and brutal. Witnessing it all is Virginia “Ginny” Applejack, and what Ginny sees changes her. Her altered attitude or personality fully reveals itself at school, leaving her parents, Tom and Celia Applejack, confused. But the “stray bullet” that altered Ginny’s life is not through with her.
This is the first time that I have ever read Stray Bullets, but not the first time that I’ve read comics produced by David Lapham. As much as I’ve enjoyed Lapham’s work, I simply never got around to reading Stray Bullets, although, over the past two decades or so, I have noticed the acclaim that the series has received and how popular it has been with readers. Now, I am a fan.
I like Stray Bullets’ concept or conceit – the idea that people can be hurt, wounded, and even destroyed by events that have nothing to do with them or were not meant to involve them. The characters are essentially collateral damage or are the victims of metaphorical stray bullets – bad things not intended for them.
What makes this concept stick is Lapham’s character writing. He has a knack for using small amounts of dialogue and action to make us care about the characters’ actions, even if we ultimately know very little about them. The sudden violence is not gratuitous; rather, it is powerful.
I always wondered if Stray Bullets was merely a comic book rip-off of the ensemble crime film, Pulp Fiction. Instead, Stray Bullets is its own ensemble crime fiction. So getting Stray Bullets Free Comics Day Book was a good thing.
But that’s not all, folks. Stray Bullets Free Comics Day Book is a flip book. Turn this comic book over, and there is another story. “There Are No Flowers in the Real World” is a comic book short story set in the universe of the film, The Matrix (1999). Lapham produced the comic for the website, www.whatisthematrix.com. The story is trademark Lapham, with its string of unintended consequences, random bad luck, and a gut-wrenching/gut-check ending.
A
Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux
The text is copyright © 2014 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for syndication rights and fees.
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