June 13, 2007
March 07, 2007
Graphic Novels for People Who Hate Comics
I know, I know, these aren't Shitty (K)omics, but work with me.
Bibliophillic | Graphic Novels for People Who Hate Comics
Did you notice how the good graphic novels plumbed teen angst and autobiography for material? Did you further notice how the great graphic novels covered bigger subjects: the Holocaust, the Islamic Revolution, the Trojan War? Coincidence? I don’t think so.
Continue reading "Graphic Novels for People Who Hate Comics" »
January 17, 2007
The Soxaholix on Why They Hate Us
December 13, 2006
Like, I-felt-like-I-was-reading- this-book-in-the-backseat- of-a-moving-car shaky.
The Savage Critic(s) | The Ghost of a Post: Jeff [Lester]'s Reviews of 11/29 Books.
GUY GARDNER COLLATERAL DAMAGE #1: ...seems to me Howard Chaykin is kinda trying, like late period Kirby, to create a standardized, simplified layout strong enough in its innate dynamism to allow the artist to skimp on detail and keep the pages coming quickly. Unfortunately, Chaykin has always downplayed the thinness of his line by the accumulation of detail and, without it, his work looks shaky. Like, mighty shaky. Like, I-felt-like-I-was-reading-this-book-in-the-backseat-of-a-moving-car shaky. Mix in a high price and a cavalier disregard for previous continuity (which, on the one hand, who cares, and, on the other, why not make this Gus Gooferson Collateral Damage then?) and you've got sub-Eh, as far as I'm concerned. Chaykin in his prime was a revelation and the man's got a right to make a living, but I can't endorse helping him pay the rent with this one.
December 04, 2006
The Savage Critic(s) - Graeme McMillan passes out the coal and switches
The Savage Critic(s) | Thank God November is done: Graeme's reviews of the 11/29 books.
ONSLAUGHTREBORN #1: There's a page in here, with a close-up of Franklin Richards as he's holding some kind of magic ball that's never explained, where you can see Rob Liefeld really trying as an artist. I'm not being sarcastic at all; the close-up is not a traditional Liefeldian face at all - there's clearly been an attempt at observation into what people actually look like. Sadly, the same can't be said of the rest of the book, which is full of exactly what you'd expect from a book that's aimed directly at readers who thought that it was time to revisit Marvel's creative lowest point.... It's an Awful mess, albeit a brightly-colored one that's probably exactly what the target audience wanted.
ULTIMATE POWER #2: It's Generic Marvel Plot #1: Heroes met, have a misunderstanding and fight. The problem is in the executionwhich shows up just how mismatched Brian Michael Bendis and Greg Land are; Bendis's thing is all about the dialogue, and even more than that, about the asides within the dialogue... It requires someone who can handle subtlety and body language well, and Greg Land, um, isn't that guy. Much has been made about Land's use of the photo reference, but his bigger fault to me is that he really can't do anything other than melodramatic overacting - His characters never speak, they shout (especially his women, who more often than not, have their mouths wide open in full-on screaming mode), and that plays especially oddly when given Bendis dialogue. Characters don't quip anymore, they kind of yell lines while women stand in the background with mouths agape and chests pushed out. It makes for bizarrely uncomfortable reading, as if The West Wing was performed by pornstars or something. Awful.
November 25, 2006
OMAC #5: Sexually-transmitted super powers? More like O-CRAP, if you ask me.
Yeah, that's the entire review. AWESOME! Here's s'more!:
The Savage Critic(s) | [Biran] Hibbs and 11/55
DAREDEVIL FATHER #6: It had a OCT05 code, so I cut my rack order to 2 whole copies and said "fuck it, if MARVEL doesn't care, why should I?" I mean, the LEAST they could have done is resolicited the fucker, rather than leaving a hanging chad of an old ship date like that. I'm say bullshit! Didn't read it, didn't care, very INCOMPLETE.
DEADMAN #4: This is incomprehensible gobbeldy-gook, but you put the lead in the Bostom Brand costume, and at least a few more people are going to pick it off the rack out of curiousity. Don't think they'll be back for #5, however, as it was AWFUL. Even the art by John Watkiss (who I generally like [and I know I am in the minority]) seemed majorly phoned in.
HELLBLAZER #226: I don't like John as a "real" Magus, with lots of real magic running around. I've generally dilkied this "Empathy" storyline, especially since it doesn't seem like it is ever going to end. And, while in prose you can end a chapter with "What the hell is THAT?!", it doesn't work in COMICS because there's at least a one month gap between installments. Feh. AWFUL.
IRON MAN #13: Instead of a "What the hell is up with Tony" as you'd hope you'd get from the finally-we're-synching-up-with-CIVIL-WAR issue, there's instead a lot of blah blah with Spymaster. SPYMASTER? C'mon, he's not even in the top 20 of Most Threatning IM Villians. Foo. AWFUL.
November 17, 2006
What do you think of the Onion's editorial cartoons?
Editorial Cartoon - November 15, 2006 | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
Yes, this is from The Onion. Is it supposed to be a joke? because it's so close to a republican cartoon that is indistinguishable from one, if it is.
Here is what Wikipedia says:
A deliberately inane, preachy and melodramatic editorial cartoon, which began running on October 5, 2006 and is updated once a week. The cartoon is drawn by "Kelly", who draws himself at the bottom right corner of each strip, spouting a small extra comment to add to the conservative message of each cartoon.
Hmm. Not really very helpful there, Mr. Wiki.
I'm turning on Comments, please let us know what you think of this.
* Thanks to Emma for the tip *
November 15, 2006
it read as if it'd been plotted by Grant Morrison when he was five years old
The Savage Critic(s) | The ghost of Rick Witter: Graeme McMillan tries to concentrate on 11/8 books.
BATMAN #658: Um... what? There are some nice touches in this conclusion to Grant Morrison's first arc - the rocket part and Robin's first words being "...s'okay... I stopped the bleeding..." being the main ones, for me - but did Grant forget to write a story for this issue or something? Nothing really felt organic, and the story just kind of stopped at the end without any attempt at resolution; it read as if it'd been plotted by Grant when he was five years old ("And then Batman finds the bad guy and flies there in a rocket and then they fight and then they blow up! The end"). Really, depressingly, unsatisfying, even if it's not actively bad or anything. Eh.
November 08, 2006
What makes a superhero comic suck? "fight scenes punctuated by overly-sentimental schmaltz"
The Savage Critic(s) | For all I know, this may be unreadable: Graeme's reviews of the 11/1 books.
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #3: There are so many reasons that I should really enjoy this, not least of which is that it has in some sense a Grant Morrison-esque ambition (The bad guys so far feature Starro, Amazo, Professor Ivo, and the brand-new brother of Mr. Miracle, Dr. Impossible, and we've seen an army of Red Tornadoes, which have different elemental powers depending on what color they've been painted). But it's just not working; the narration is uniformly awful - and, for that matter, awfully uniform; Black Lightning, Arsenal and Red Tornado all have the same voice - and the plot has taken three issues (four, if you include the Zero issue) to get started. The scale feels wrong, too, with Meltzer trying to simultaneously go for the massive action epic and small emotional story without hitting either point properly, leaving us with fight scenes punctuated by overly-sentimental schmaltz (Red Tornado's adopted daughter asking if he's going to die) or attempts at cryptic ("What I know, John Smith, is that by tampering with you - - they tamper with the balance... What you are right now is human. And in that is the greatest potential of all."). This is better than last issue, if only because something actually happened this issue, but still, it's pretty Crap.
For fuck's sake, Harvey's been sick! Pick on a sick, crazy old man, why don't you?!
The Savage Critic(s) | Vite, vite, vite: Jeff's Really Quick Reviews of 11/1 Books & Stuff....
AMERICAN SPLENDOR #3: A lot of last issue's charm doesn't stick around--or maybe I was just irritable last Friday. Either way, this seemed like Pekar at his laziest, just pages of kvetching. Includes a piece on community renewal so ineptly structured you'd think Joyce Brabner wrote it. Sub-Eh.
October 28, 2006
The Savage Critic(s) locate shitty comics
 | WETWORKS #2: Whilce Portacio's work is the stuff of migraines for me--I can't look at it for too long without getting nauseous and seeing odd visual haloes in my vision. So you'll have to turn elsewhere to find out if this vampires-versus-werewolves-versus- cybernetically-augmented-soldiers story is proceeding along nicely or isn't. I've got to go lie in a dark room for a few hours and not think about it. No rating. |
 | CIVIL WARDROBE: Ouch. I'm a fan of Rich Johnston's writing (I have the first two issues of Holed Up somewhere, although I can barely remember reading them) but this really stank. I thought the first three pages were kinda funny as Johnston does a parody of the opening of Civil War #1, but that's just a set-up for unamusing single-page riffs on Marvel characters--imagine Not Brand Ecchh as a pin-up book and that's Civil Wardrobe. I wanted to like this, I really did, but it was Awful |