Sunday, August 20, 2006

Do not open until...

...I say so Dammit!

As I mentioned, I will be moving from British Columbia back to Prince Edward Island to start living in the "real world" (whatever that is). I will still be purchasing many of my comics from Elfsar here in Vancouver through their very convenient mail-order program. Due to logistics, the comics will only be sent once a month, thus henceforth "New Comic Day" will change to "New Comic Month" with posts appearing (obviously) every month when new product arrives.

To not leave my faithful readers (all 2 of them) without content, I will endeavor to give reviews on original graphic novels and trade paperbacks (which I will be purchasing through Amazon) periodically throughout the month. As well, if I happen to pull something out of the collection that seems interesting enough to chat about, I might do so, but I'm not making any promises.

Check back during the third week in September for new content! (hopefully)

Thursday, August 17, 2006

New Comic Day August 16

Once again I get comics very near my birthday (tomorrow) which is always a nice treat. This will be the last update in terms of new comics for a while as I am moving and will only be getting comics about once a month.

Boys #1


I liked Preacher a heckuva lot and when I saw the solicitation for this ("We're going to out-Preacher Preacher), I figured I'd pick it up. The story is basically about a group of government sponsored toughs that take down super heroes if they get out of line. At least that what the story will be about once the standard recruitment phase is overwith. This issue introduces us to Butch who is the leader and seems to have heightened levels of perception. The first recruit joins the team because his girlfriend was very brutally killed as collateral damage from a super hero fight. In short, she was between a wall and a villain of Juggernaught like size as said villain was moving at high speed. It wasn't pretty, though it seemed to be thrown in for the sake of goriness. I enjoyed it, but I don't know if I enjoyed it enough to get monthly.

Casanova #3


This was a neat issue that structured around a theme seen in the classic Star Trek: TNG episode where they're stuck in a time loop and only Riker's plan will save them. Data figures out that the occurance of the number three in everyday events is the clue and the say is saved...What were we talking about? Oh yeah, Casanova #3. Here we see the ramifications of Cass's mission from last issue in three different peroids of time: the present (a), 7 days ago (b), and 97 days ago (right after the mission)(c). The pages switch from a to b to c and back for the whole of the issue and it makes for an interesting read. We get the sense that Cass wants to be in control of his own life and to not be such of a bad guy. It's not the best series I've ever read, but it's definately something different and worth the low price point.

Phonogram #1 (of 6)

I didn't order this when it came out in previews, but since then I've read interviews with the creators and saw the sample pages so I decided to pick it up. The central idea with this is that music is magic and people that can use music are phonomancers. It's a cool idea and the book is "hip" (if that's the right term for it), but here's the problem: I don't listen to a lot of music and whatever message the authors are trying to project will likely be lost on me. When I listen to music, I don't pay attention to the lyrics. I don't know what (insert song here) is "about". If I like it, I like it for the sound and that's probably it. I think that if I was a music freak like Jon Ben, the comic would speak to me a bit more. As such, it was a good comic, not super-duper.

However, the main character, David Khol looks a helluva lot like a good friend of mine and thus I present:
Neil Moore as a comic character (albeit somewhat cockier - if that's possible):



Ultimate Fantastic Four #32


This is the end of the zombie FF storyline and the end of Mark Millar and Greg Land's run on the title. Doom in Reed's body does a spell to exorcise the demon from Johnny, but makes a "mistake" and instead of transporting it directly to the N-Zone, it just pops out onto his chest, thus endangering all life on Earth. I think this was intentional on Doom's part because once the demon is out, it looks for the most powerful being to posess next. Instead of it being Thor though, it's Reed in Doom's body. This gives Doom the opportunity to switch back to his body and perform a selfless act to appear heroic. I would have liked to see a longer story of how Reed deals with being in Doom's body. I'm glad that Land is not the artist anymore. Man he stinks.

Ultimate Fantastic Four Annual #2


This was a good issue and I liked it better than last week's Ultimate Spider-man annual. It told a fun super hero story without seeming like random events thrown together to try to make a story. It features the Moleman as the villain, who sinks a lab full of brilliant youngsters in order to recreate a sub-terranean utopia. The FF show up an try to stop him and FAIL! The smart kids whip together some cool weapons and take MM down. A cool twist is that the smart kids want to stay underground because they are sick of building weapons for the government. All in all a good issue with lots of action and a great story. Definately something to pick up if you're even a passing fan of the FF.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

New Comic Day August 9

Fables #52


So this looks like the beginning of the end for our friendly fables. In retribution for Bigby burning down the sacred grove, the leaders for the Adversary get together to plot the final invasion and destruction of Fabletown and our mundy world. In addition, we get to see more of the Red Riding Hood subplot and a neat backstory about Rapunzel illustrated by Gene Ha. In addition to that, we get introduced to a few new faces in the Adversary's army: the Nome King from the Oz lands and Hansel, the Inquisitor General for the entire imperium, to name a few. All this adds up to another excellent issue in an excellent series.

Emissary #3


Wow! Two issues of this in two weeks = awesome. We see the Emissary exhibit more powers (teleportaion of himself + healing powers) and tell the mob to stop being so mobbish. He struggles to understand why people are acting the way they do and the female FBI agent (forget her name) does a good job of trying to explain it. Though I can see why Cronin thinks it's boring, I really like the premise of showing how people would react to this type of event for the first time. There's still not a lot of characterization from the supporting cast which is too bad since issue #1 made it look like that would be the main focus of the book. Next issue should be interesting as the Emissary takes on the Pope.

Ultimate Spider-man Annual #2


I can't decide if I liked this annual or not. Even though it's a self contained story and we get to see Spidey interact with some ultimate characters we haven't seen in a while (Daredevil, the Punisher, and Moon Knight) with some decent fight scenese, the story seems to exist solely so that Captain Jean DeWolff can take a cue from her regular Marvel Universe counterpart. I didn't care for the lack of explanation for how both Moon Knight and the Punisher escaped custody either. This wasn't nearly as good as last years annual which focused on Peter starting to go out with Kitty Pryde of the X-men.

Ultimate X-men #73


This is the second part of the "Magical" storyline where the shite hits the fan. Here is is revealed that the Magician has been using his powers to mess with the heads of the rest of the X-men, making them do/say/beleive things they normally wouldn't do/say/beleive. There are some theories that the Magician is an illusionist similar to Proteus from the regular marvel universe which makes sense because he seems uber powerful enough to hold his own against the entire X-men team. The last page reveal of Jean phoenixing up and confronting the Magician was cool so I look forward to next issue. The art isn't the best which is a surprise as this is one of Marvel's big titles so you'd think they'd have some stellar talent on it.

Friday, August 04, 2006

New Comic Day August 3 because comics were a day late...@$$holes

Wow, there certainly is a buttload of comics this week, which makes up for the fact I had to wait a whole extra day to get them. Without further ado...

Detective Comics #822


I liked the idea behind this issue. Some girl is killed and her father hires the Riddler to figure out the mystery behind her death. Batman gets involved too, propting an unlikely teamup between the dark knight and the riddling rapscallion. I also liked the fun way Batman shows up the Riddler in the end by figuring out who the real killer was. Dini provides good dialouge throughout and seems to really "get" the Riddler.

That being said, it seemed a little too easy and the finale was kind of just thrown at the reader from left field. Maybe that's the drawback with a done-in-one issue - there's just not enough space to provide a bit of (IMO needed) filler. It was still an enjoyable issue despite that reservation.


Ex Machina #22


Yay! A non-colourform cover! The creepy cover aside, this was a good second installment for this latest arc. We get to see some backstory with the Great Machine, some interesting politiking, a guy getting a hummer from a fireman respirator, and a guy get blown in half from a shotgun. This issue also sees a style change from Tony Harris. Here he does an ink wash over his inked pencils. I'm not sure what it means, but it's different. Not sure if it's good, but it's definately different. The only thing I didn't care for was Mitchell referring to homosexuals as "your kind". Seems out of character, but he was agitated at the time, so it might have been a slip of the tongue.


Y: The Last Man #48


This is another one of those issues where it is dedicated to telling the backstory of one of the major players in the series. This time around it's about the Israli commando chick. While interesting, I don't really care too much about her character and it seemed to be a weak issue this late in the series (it's ending at #60). Art by Goran Sudzuka is great though and he captures emotion really well.


Emissary #2


I'm glad I am getting this series because it centres on an idea that I think is pretty interesting: what would it be like if people with powers existed in real life? A notable example is the Authority. And this is another. I think the writer, Jason Rand, nails how lots of people would react: with fear, hostility, violence, etc. Though, from last issue, I thought we'd be seeing more of the reactions from the supporting cast members than we do in this issue and its much more about the city's response. I hope Rand doesn't lose the focus of the book and make the characters cardboard cutouts.

As well the Emissary shows a new power which is damn cool. He can apparently teleport things, without seeing them, to wherever he is. The example in the comic is that to overcome the apparent language barrier between himself and the FBI agents, he teleports a case file out of an unseen officer's hands to his own. He does it again for several books. Very cool.


Invincible #34


Ah, the white wine spritzer of the comic book month. Exceptionally refreshing and leaves you wanting more. Here we see that Mark is very shaken up about killing Angstrom Levy last issue and is very morally torn about whether or not he did the right thing. You don't often see that in comics. Usually it's just a shoot-em-up adventure where killing is the norm. It's nice to see something different.

Before I tell you what bugged me about this issue I need to recap a bit. When Mark (Invincible) was fighting Angstrom, they travelled through different dimensions and once Angstrom was killed, it left Mark stranded. This issue sees the Guardians of the Globe rescue Invincible. However, they are from the future as it took many years to figure out which dimension Mark was trapped in. My problem is thus: it seems like the GotG are from the future of Mark's home reality which is fine, but for some reason Invincible asks what happened to the Invincible that was present in the current dimension that he's trapped in. (1) why would he care and (2) if the GotG are from his home dimension, then how would they even know about an Invincible in that dimension? Maybe it will be clear with a re-read, but with alternate realities and time travel, it seems unlikely.


Agents of Atlas #1 (of 6)


This is a neat idea for a comic though it's been done before I'm sure. A group of heroes who fought decades ago against EEEEVVVIIILLLLL, disbands and then is brought back together under unusal circumstances. In this case, said unusual circumstances being ex-group leader Jimmy Woo leading a band of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents on an off-the-books mission that results in death and destruction. Life hanging by a thread, Woo is taken from the S.H.I.E.L.D. hospital by his former comrades. It was a good issue and the dichotomy in the artwork between the past events and current ones proved effective. And hey, who can say no to a comic with an uzi-toting gorilla?


Ultimate Spider-man #98


Part two of the clone saga! This wasn't as great an issue as the last one becuase it basically consists of Peter FREAKING OUT and getting his ass kicked by (obviously) a female version of himself. The cameo by the fantastic four was cool though as well as the revelation that the cloning business has something to do with Oscorp (suprise!) and that Mary Jane has been relocated to the abandoned Oscorp facility. Bagley continues to be great with the art chores as we near the penultimate #100 issue. I can't believe I didn't like his art when he was on Amazing Spider-man in the mid 90s.


Mouse Guard #4 (of 6)


Mice fighting! Cute! This is an excellent series and I can't wait for more. Bravo Mr. Peterson. This issue sees Lieam being found out by members of the Axe who take him to their mysterious leader (foreshadowing!) who isn't revealed, but is referred to as a male and whose voice Lieam seems to recognize. Saxon and Kenzie are found by a legendary member of the guard, Celanawe who agrees to help them stop the Axe, but not until after he and Saxon lay into each other in a pretty brutal fight. Good stuff. Go buy it. Now...right now. Why are you still reading this? Buy Mouse Guard god damn it!