![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
comickal: recently read, short books edition
So, this week, we look at a couple Minx books, a Hellboy Animated book, and a few other things.
So, let's get going, shall we?
Fables 62: OK, clearly I missed some critical clue last time, because the identity of the Knight came as a complete surprise, but I saw elsewhere when issue 61 came out that people seemed to have guessed. Anyway, despite being nothing but exposition and setup -- nothing actually happened until the last page -- this was just kind of awesome in how it worked with Flycatcher's character and transformed him, and how Frau Totenkinder managed to tell the literal truth without telling the actual truth when she was asked. Prince Charming is, once again, revealed to have hidden depths, and thoughts that don't involve seducing stray princesses, much to everyone's surprise. Seriously, just awesome.
Amory Wars 1 (Claudio Sanchez/Gus Vasquez; Image): ... ew.
- OK, I know I need to say more than that, but I really don't know how to do it without giving away the end, and it's really the last three pages that produce that "ew" reaction. Suffice to say that it ends with three people in jeopardy, with one of them possibly being threatened with rape and murder. Given the setup, one of two things most likely happens next issue: either all three die -- and I don't know how the series can recover from that, given the ways the deaths would take place -- or all three live, and I suspect the latter is more likely. The story is well written, and the art works very well with the story -- although why the Prise, who are "burdened eternally with the crucial responsibility of guarding the keywork", need to be drawn as winged naked women with nipple-free breasts and genital-free groins is somewhat beyond me. The characters are easily distinguished and the art stylized but interesting, and the story really is intriguing ... I'm just not sure it's going to be able to get past the "ew" factor for me, especially if all three people currently in danger wind up dying.
Black Diamond 1: "Shake Hands With Danger" (Larry Young/Jon Proctor, AIT-Planet Lar).
The Black Diamond Detective Agency (Eddie Campbell; First Second)
Because why can't we confuse people by issuing two comics with "Black Diamond" as a significant part of the title in consecutive weeks? However, I really liked this particular Black Diamond. Briefly, it's the story of a man being wrongly accused of mass murder by blowing up a train, and the journey he takes to clear his name. He winds up in disguise, working for the very agency trying to find him. Campbell adapted the story from a screenplay by C. Gaby Mitchell, and did a very good job with it. The artwork is lovely, although there are a couple of explanatory drawings in places where they're simply not needed and really not relevant -- guy holding a bunch of green paper with rectangular ends, we're likely to assume it's money absent other information. I've also seen it said that one section is confusing; when the man comes back in disguise, some people have been confused, because it takes a while to realize it's the same person. I didn't have that problem, but I can easily see how someone could. In any event, it's a beautifully illustrated, well-told story, highly recommended.
Hellboy Animated #2: The Judgement Bell (Jim Pascoe/Rick Lacy, Dark Horse): As with the animated series itself, takes place before the movie and before most of the other books. Professor Bruttenholm is still alive, and in fact has a key role in the first story in the book. The story is well written and works, and the artwork is an interesting balance between the cleaner line of the animated and the icky ewgy monsters of the regular comic. Recommended for fans of the comic or the movies. Curiously, this seems to be a book partly without a natural audience; it seems aimed at the same crowd as Marvel Adventures or Jonny DC, but it's kind of baffling without the main comic -- it really assumes you know who everyone is. (And at least in my regular comic book store, it gets shelved with the Hellboy stuff and not with the kiddie stuff.) The storyline also deals with children in danger, one of whom dies bloodily. (We don't see how she dies, we just see the corpse and a lot of blood.) Even if children would be perfectly fine with the subject, their parents might not be. (That said, despite all the blood and monsters, someone had to point out to me that Hellboy was supposed to be horror. He takes everything so phlegmatically that it's hard to get that sort of scared feeling, even when there are thousands of frogmonsters or things with tentacles causing havoc.) The backup story is a Li'l Hellboy tale called "Mechanical Monsters", by Tad Stones, wherein we see our hero's first encounter with Lobster Johnson and a very large robot -- sort of. Any road, highly recommended for Hellboy fans; anyone else may be kind of baffled.
Re-Gifters (Mike Carey, Sonny Liew and Marc Hempel; Minx/DC)
Second book in the Minx line, and a much more unconflictedly enjoyable read than the first. Dik Seong Jen (Dixie to her classmates, Jen to her family), our heroine, is trying to navigate the hazards of high school, including being a nationally ranked hapkido artist in her age class, being madly in love with a boy who doesn't deserve it, and the pitfalls of her family's expectations. Carey handles the story with a nice, light, deft touch. Re-Gifters is clearly more directly manga-influenced than The PLAIN Janes (see next review -- although note that Carey himself feels that it isn't manga-influenced, so ... YMMV), both in storytelling and in art; in one sequence, Jen breaks the fourth wall to talk to the reader, showing awareness that she's a character in a comic when she says to her best friend Avril, "Is that your voice in the caption box? Doesn't look like it to me!" (Jen has something of a temper.) The art has the same sort of looseness and expression present in a lot of manga. It's a better contained story than Plain Janes, with an entirely satisfying ending. There may be sequels, if it sells well and people like it, but there's nothing in the story that particularly demands it. Highly recommended for age 10 and up. (Yes, yes, grownups will like it, too, I promise.)
PLAIN Janes (Cecil Castellucci/Jim Rugg; Minx/DC)
So, let's get going, shall we?
Fables 62: OK, clearly I missed some critical clue last time, because the identity of the Knight came as a complete surprise, but I saw elsewhere when issue 61 came out that people seemed to have guessed. Anyway, despite being nothing but exposition and setup -- nothing actually happened until the last page -- this was just kind of awesome in how it worked with Flycatcher's character and transformed him, and how Frau Totenkinder managed to tell the literal truth without telling the actual truth when she was asked. Prince Charming is, once again, revealed to have hidden depths, and thoughts that don't involve seducing stray princesses, much to everyone's surprise. Seriously, just awesome.
Amory Wars 1 (Claudio Sanchez/Gus Vasquez; Image): ... ew.
- OK, I know I need to say more than that, but I really don't know how to do it without giving away the end, and it's really the last three pages that produce that "ew" reaction. Suffice to say that it ends with three people in jeopardy, with one of them possibly being threatened with rape and murder. Given the setup, one of two things most likely happens next issue: either all three die -- and I don't know how the series can recover from that, given the ways the deaths would take place -- or all three live, and I suspect the latter is more likely. The story is well written, and the art works very well with the story -- although why the Prise, who are "burdened eternally with the crucial responsibility of guarding the keywork", need to be drawn as winged naked women with nipple-free breasts and genital-free groins is somewhat beyond me. The characters are easily distinguished and the art stylized but interesting, and the story really is intriguing ... I'm just not sure it's going to be able to get past the "ew" factor for me, especially if all three people currently in danger wind up dying.
Black Diamond 1: "Shake Hands With Danger" (Larry Young/Jon Proctor, AIT-Planet Lar).
The idea is that, in a dystopian/utopian near future, the president has ordered built a mighty and high road that runs from Washington to San Francisco, soaring high into the sky. It's an ultra-high-speed freeway, and for reasons unclear, all of the country's criminal element has gravitated to the highway. The general public's only contact with crime comes when a car fails to make the turn and falls to earth, squishing some innocent bystander. THAT is the series' starting god-point. Um ... yeah, OK. Anyway, Don McLaughlin, dentist, is at work one day when his brother in-law comes to tell him that Kate, his wife and daughter of the architect who built the Black Diamond, has been kidnapped. It seems that the government is, for no apparent reason, using the army to clean up the crime on the Black Diamond with malice aforethought, simply throwing people over the edge. (You'd think the people on the ground would object, wouldn't you?) Someone -- we know not who -- has kidnapped Kate to make the government stop, apparently thinking that holding the daughter of the Black Diamond's creator will be worth something.
Now, let's review, shall we? The government, having deliberately established a freeway that, for no apparent reason, attracts almost all criminals to it, decides that it's been too successful and needs to be cleaned up. To do so, they use the army, and throw people and things over the side, not caring that they're killing those people, or the ones on the ground getting squished. So, I ask: what sort of nimrod would think that this government would care that they've kidnapped one person, unless it was the president himself?
The main story, from my point of view, has two clear problems. First, we barely get to meet the main character before he's thrown into this crisis, and it's kind of hard to care, because we don't know him or his wife. Second ... the criminals seem desperately stupid in a way that they simply would not be. (Also, how do they know who Kate is?) There's also the problem that we haven't met Kate yet, which implies that she's either pure Maguffin, or she's a villain of the piece. The artwork is interesting, if kind of odd; it looks very much like the artwork for "A Scanner Darkly", with that same kind of rotoscope/overlay/processing feel. "Odd" because it feels like it has less dimension, somehow, and the perspective is off in a few frames.
The one truly puzzling question that, from today's point of view, hangs over the entire story is: what the hell happened to airplanes and airports? McLaughlin plans to drive the Diamond from San Francisco to Baltimore in a car; this can't possibly be faster than going to the airport, catching a plane to DC or Baltimore, or even Richmond, and then driving to where he needs to be -- days faster, for heaven's sake. There needs to be much more setup before this makes any sense.
There's also a backup story, in a dark humor ha-ha vein, which is a terrible match for the lead story. The tone is a jarring break; the artwork is terribly simplistic by comparison. It's not that it's a bad story; it simply doesn't fit at all well with the main one.
Overall, can't say I liked it, but your mileage may vary.
The Black Diamond Detective Agency (Eddie Campbell; First Second)
Because why can't we confuse people by issuing two comics with "Black Diamond" as a significant part of the title in consecutive weeks? However, I really liked this particular Black Diamond. Briefly, it's the story of a man being wrongly accused of mass murder by blowing up a train, and the journey he takes to clear his name. He winds up in disguise, working for the very agency trying to find him. Campbell adapted the story from a screenplay by C. Gaby Mitchell, and did a very good job with it. The artwork is lovely, although there are a couple of explanatory drawings in places where they're simply not needed and really not relevant -- guy holding a bunch of green paper with rectangular ends, we're likely to assume it's money absent other information. I've also seen it said that one section is confusing; when the man comes back in disguise, some people have been confused, because it takes a while to realize it's the same person. I didn't have that problem, but I can easily see how someone could. In any event, it's a beautifully illustrated, well-told story, highly recommended.
Hellboy Animated #2: The Judgement Bell (Jim Pascoe/Rick Lacy, Dark Horse): As with the animated series itself, takes place before the movie and before most of the other books. Professor Bruttenholm is still alive, and in fact has a key role in the first story in the book. The story is well written and works, and the artwork is an interesting balance between the cleaner line of the animated and the icky ewgy monsters of the regular comic. Recommended for fans of the comic or the movies. Curiously, this seems to be a book partly without a natural audience; it seems aimed at the same crowd as Marvel Adventures or Jonny DC, but it's kind of baffling without the main comic -- it really assumes you know who everyone is. (And at least in my regular comic book store, it gets shelved with the Hellboy stuff and not with the kiddie stuff.) The storyline also deals with children in danger, one of whom dies bloodily. (We don't see how she dies, we just see the corpse and a lot of blood.) Even if children would be perfectly fine with the subject, their parents might not be. (That said, despite all the blood and monsters, someone had to point out to me that Hellboy was supposed to be horror. He takes everything so phlegmatically that it's hard to get that sort of scared feeling, even when there are thousands of frogmonsters or things with tentacles causing havoc.) The backup story is a Li'l Hellboy tale called "Mechanical Monsters", by Tad Stones, wherein we see our hero's first encounter with Lobster Johnson and a very large robot -- sort of. Any road, highly recommended for Hellboy fans; anyone else may be kind of baffled.
Re-Gifters (Mike Carey, Sonny Liew and Marc Hempel; Minx/DC)
Second book in the Minx line, and a much more unconflictedly enjoyable read than the first. Dik Seong Jen (Dixie to her classmates, Jen to her family), our heroine, is trying to navigate the hazards of high school, including being a nationally ranked hapkido artist in her age class, being madly in love with a boy who doesn't deserve it, and the pitfalls of her family's expectations. Carey handles the story with a nice, light, deft touch. Re-Gifters is clearly more directly manga-influenced than The PLAIN Janes (see next review -- although note that Carey himself feels that it isn't manga-influenced, so ... YMMV), both in storytelling and in art; in one sequence, Jen breaks the fourth wall to talk to the reader, showing awareness that she's a character in a comic when she says to her best friend Avril, "Is that your voice in the caption box? Doesn't look like it to me!" (Jen has something of a temper.) The art has the same sort of looseness and expression present in a lot of manga. It's a better contained story than Plain Janes, with an entirely satisfying ending. There may be sequels, if it sells well and people like it, but there's nothing in the story that particularly demands it. Highly recommended for age 10 and up. (Yes, yes, grownups will like it, too, I promise.)
PLAIN Janes (Cecil Castellucci/Jim Rugg; Minx/DC)
Yeah ... so I've been sitting on this particular review for a month, because I cannot decide what I think of this.
PLAIN Janes tells the story of Jane. Injured in a terrorist attack in Metro City, her parents move out to the suburbs, where they feel safer. She, not surprisingly, hates it, as all teenagers hate drastic change that they have no say in. On her first day at the new school, after a few false starts, she falls in with a group of outcasts and misfits: Jane, Jayne and Polly Jane. The girls wind up committing acts of public art, trying to get people to open their minds and think again. Not surprisingly, the adults consider all this random art to be defacement and terrorism (of an exceedingly mild sort).
The base story is interesting and pulls people in. It's well drawn, and, for the most part, the art works well with the story. To be sure, the ending is problematic; it's wrapped up too quickly, with loose ends dangling madly here and there. That said, Castellucci has said that she had a strict page limit, and the manuscript she delivered was five pages over that, so it's likely that she just ran out of time to wrap up the story properly, especially since she'd never written a comic before. Additionally, if the title sells well enough, Minx/DC may turn it into a series, of the sort that appeal to teenagers, whether manga or prose books. (And, in fact, a sequel has already been sort of unofficially announced.)
So why have I been hesitating?
Well ... there's whole James thing.
To be fair, I don't agree that the story as a whole is bland, trite or poorly constructed. As I've said, I think the base story works, and, for the most part the art works. I think where the art fails is that James really is drawn distinctly differently. And I think where the story fails is that I just don't know how to react to James. On the one hand, part of me goes "Whee! Gay guy in a story for teens! At least he's there!" On the other hand ... he's very very stereotypically gay. (THAT said ... pretty much everyone in this story is defined in terms of stereotypes, at least at this point, except main Jane herself. Who is the arty, almost but not quite goth one.) James asks Jane if she's gay, for no apparent reason, on her first day, when she doesn't know him or anyone else; most people would react quite badly to that. And frankly, I have a terribly difficult time believing that any guy could be quite that flamboyant in a large high school without getting beat up quite a lot; certainly few freshmen could get away with it. It's not impossible, of course; after all, they all know him. But still. Oh, and he's a hairdresser, or at least he's good enough at it that the Janes ask him to help with their hair and makeup. In high school.
All that said, it would take a hell of a lot of courage to be that out; either that, or having been brutalized until you just don't care any more, and figure you might as well be yourself anyway. Given that, as far as we can tell, James isn't a giant wound, I think they were aiming for the former.
I think I will settle on ... Recommended, with significant reservations. And I hope those get cleared up with the second story, where they'll have more opportunities for character development. And doing better with the art.