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A (very) few reviews, to get my hand back in. But first, a cheesy science fiction television mention.
So apparently Stargate: Universe will effectively be recycling the Starlost or Star Trek: Voyager concepts. (And for those of you -- i.e., everyone -- who is thinking "Starlost? What the heck is that?", try this. and also maybe the videos here. I swear, for a long time, I used to wonder if I'd imagined the Starlost; nobody I knew had ever seen or remembered it. And then I saw this announcement.)
Max Headroom is now available on AOL's In2TV. Huzzah! And also, people who were in Chicago at the right time will remember watching our very own TV channels get zapped, maybe a week or two after the Max Headroom episode on the very same topic.
Cleopatra 2525 and Jack of All Trades -- one of Bruce Campbell's few attempts as a regular on series television before Burn Notice, I believe -- are now available at Hulu. This makes me very happy. (It seems that the entire audience for Cleopatra 2525 consisted of gay men. No, I do not know why. All I can think is that possibly watching Gina Torres kick ass in skimpy clothing made us all really happy. Plus, it was also one of those shows where the men were frequently in skimpy clothing, which helped. But still. Weird audience composition.)
OK, then! On to the reviews!
Superman and Batman vs Vampires and Werewolves 1 of 6 (Kevin VanHook/Tom Mandrake; DC): Um ... yeah. Well, the first thing to note is that it would appear to be slightly mistitled; according to what you actually get on the inside, it should be Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman vs Vampires and Werewolves. I can only think that they decided that since it was coming out at the same time as Trinity, they didn't want to muddy the waters. In any event, it's OK, I guess, at the story level; hard to tell, since it's only just getting underway, and since what's needed early on are detective skills, Batman dominates the story. At that level, it's actually a very good take on Batman as detective -- although Batman being surprised by vampires ignores the fact that he's run into them before. The characterization of Diana is terrible -- seriously, trash talking and mild sexual innuendo during a fight? Diana? Really? -- and the art in that section is oddly uneven; not only is she doing the superheroine twist here and there, but everything just seems off, somehow, in a way that it isn't in the rest of the book. (And yet, there's one really very good close-up side shot of Diana's face as she's fighting, intent on what she's doing.) Mind, given the title, it's not meant to be taken all that seriously. It feels like it's aiming for cheesy Saturday horror movie, the sort of thing that Elvira or the gang on Mystery Science Theater 3000 would be picking apart. Not recommended, if only because the price isn't quite justified by the pulpy pulpiness of the concept, but maybe a worthwhile pickup in trade, as long as it doesn't cost too much.
Aetheric Mechanics (Warren Ellis/Gianluca Pagliarani; Avatar):
Invincible #54 (Kirkman/Ottley): an unusual done in one, in which Mark visits the future, does something spectacularly out of character, hears information that he probably really shouldn't hear, and finally gets his romance with Eve off the ground. OK, nice, but mostly setup. (Also, I have a sneaky suspicion -- based on nothing at all, to be sure -- that Eve shall shortly be toast.)
Top Ten: Season Two #1 (Zander Cannon, Kevin Cannon, Gene Ha/DC-Wildstorm)
So apparently Stargate: Universe will effectively be recycling the Starlost or Star Trek: Voyager concepts. (And for those of you -- i.e., everyone -- who is thinking "Starlost? What the heck is that?", try this. and also maybe the videos here. I swear, for a long time, I used to wonder if I'd imagined the Starlost; nobody I knew had ever seen or remembered it. And then I saw this announcement.)
Max Headroom is now available on AOL's In2TV. Huzzah! And also, people who were in Chicago at the right time will remember watching our very own TV channels get zapped, maybe a week or two after the Max Headroom episode on the very same topic.
Cleopatra 2525 and Jack of All Trades -- one of Bruce Campbell's few attempts as a regular on series television before Burn Notice, I believe -- are now available at Hulu. This makes me very happy. (It seems that the entire audience for Cleopatra 2525 consisted of gay men. No, I do not know why. All I can think is that possibly watching Gina Torres kick ass in skimpy clothing made us all really happy. Plus, it was also one of those shows where the men were frequently in skimpy clothing, which helped. But still. Weird audience composition.)
OK, then! On to the reviews!
Superman and Batman vs Vampires and Werewolves 1 of 6 (Kevin VanHook/Tom Mandrake; DC): Um ... yeah. Well, the first thing to note is that it would appear to be slightly mistitled; according to what you actually get on the inside, it should be Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman vs Vampires and Werewolves. I can only think that they decided that since it was coming out at the same time as Trinity, they didn't want to muddy the waters. In any event, it's OK, I guess, at the story level; hard to tell, since it's only just getting underway, and since what's needed early on are detective skills, Batman dominates the story. At that level, it's actually a very good take on Batman as detective -- although Batman being surprised by vampires ignores the fact that he's run into them before. The characterization of Diana is terrible -- seriously, trash talking and mild sexual innuendo during a fight? Diana? Really? -- and the art in that section is oddly uneven; not only is she doing the superheroine twist here and there, but everything just seems off, somehow, in a way that it isn't in the rest of the book. (And yet, there's one really very good close-up side shot of Diana's face as she's fighting, intent on what she's doing.) Mind, given the title, it's not meant to be taken all that seriously. It feels like it's aiming for cheesy Saturday horror movie, the sort of thing that Elvira or the gang on Mystery Science Theater 3000 would be picking apart. Not recommended, if only because the price isn't quite justified by the pulpy pulpiness of the concept, but maybe a worthwhile pickup in trade, as long as it doesn't cost too much.
Aetheric Mechanics (Warren Ellis/Gianluca Pagliarani; Avatar):
The latest entry in Ellis' Apparat imprint for Avatar. The theme for the current group of Apparat books appears to be British history, real (Crecy, for certain values of real) and alternate.
A soldier returns to London from the frontlines in a war in 1905 (what war, you might be asking), headed for his home. He gets into this thing that looks like nothing so much as a teapot with the top cut off, and the thing putt-putts into the air and sails gracefully off over London, passing by a battleship moored well above ground. Thus we are notified that, yes, this is alternate and not real history. More than that I don't really want to say; it's kind of difficult to say much without giving away the engine.
What I did note at the start was that it seemed to be a mashup of a few different things, Victorian steampunk and detective stories among them, and it turns out there's a reason why it felt that way. I also noted that the art felt oddly insubstantial at the start, but then settled down a few pages in, and the same reason probably applies to that, as well. It does have a bit fewer of the normal Ellis twitches -- it's considerably less foul mouthed, for one, even if one character apparently tells another to do something antatomically improbable at one point. The conclusion, I have to say, made me snicker, because I keep seeing stories written about the event at the end, and I was simply not expecting to see it in that context. Overall a very well written, enjoyable story. Even if I can't tell you what it's about.
Invincible #54 (Kirkman/Ottley): an unusual done in one, in which Mark visits the future, does something spectacularly out of character, hears information that he probably really shouldn't hear, and finally gets his romance with Eve off the ground. OK, nice, but mostly setup. (Also, I have a sneaky suspicion -- based on nothing at all, to be sure -- that Eve shall shortly be toast.)
Top Ten: Season Two #1 (Zander Cannon, Kevin Cannon, Gene Ha/DC-Wildstorm)
Season Two takes place directly after Season One (that is, Books One and Two of the trades) and well before "Beyond the Farthest Precinct". Captain Traynor/Jetman still commands the precinct, and Smax and Toybox are off having a vacation on Smax' homeworld (see Smax). The case under investigation involves several bodies that appeared suddenly in the reflecting pool outside the precinct station itself. The new Commissioner, replacing drug-pusher Ultima, has the entire precinct on edge, since he's insisting that they wear the standard issue uniforms and not their own, and looks to be a much more by the books person than the one he replaced. Slipstream Phoenix, the new officer and apparently the commissioner's man, is having a hard time getting the officers to trust him. And Leni, whom I hadn't even realized was married, has discovered something disquieting about her husband. (NB: I do wish it was more clear just exactly what Leni was objecting to in that situation. There are two or three things that could have been going on, or maybe all of them at the same time, and it's really impossible to tell at this point.)
Alan Moore said he constructed his America's Best Comics line so that anyone could take over, in theory. In practice, nobody else has for any title but this one. Moore himself closed out Promethea and Tom Strong in ways that prevented anyone else from tackling them, and took League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to another publisher as soon as his contractual obligation with DC was complete. Terra Obscura and Tomorrow Stories remain available, and Rick Veitch did write the Greyshirt series in the Tomorrow Stories set, but other than that nobody seems interested; it's only Top Ten that's pulled other writers in. There's just something about a superhero police procedural that appeals, I suppose. In any event, the story is first rate and very interesting, and all the characters feel like those we've come to know through the past five volumes. Ha's artwork looks drastically different; it's as though he and the colorist are trying to find a midpoint between the more open, vividly colored look of the original series and "Beyond the Farthest Precinct" and the more painterly look of "The Forty-Niners", and not quite getting that. Mind, it's still pretty good; it just looks very odd, compared to the old serieses.
Any road, Highly Recommended for those who have read the old series. Recommended for those who haven't; I think it's a reasonable jumping-on point.