Thanks, Sam, for starting th ball rolling! Here's the link to Sam's reviews...
http://www.statueforum.com/showthread.php?t=7225
...and, now, here are mine:
WKTF’s Reviews
I’m a Marvel guy. I really am. For some reason, though, there was nothing Marvel published this Wednesday out of their standard line of comics that appealed to me. So…
Nightwing #105
Written by: Scott Beatty & Chuck Dixon
Drawn by: Scott McDaniel
The “Nightwing: Year One” six-part story wraps up next issue and, in true serial format, what the creators give us at the end of this issue is a cliff hanger. This series started a little slow for me. Each issue was a self-contained story about Batman’s expulsion of D ick Grayson from the Batcave, and Grayson’s subsequent adventures as he adopts his new Nightwing identity and name. As I reported a couple of reviews ago, issue #104 finally really piqued my interest and this issue is a fun read as well.
Batman has enlisted Barbara Gordon to lure Nightwing to the same spot he’s also sent Jason Todd, the new Robin, to run a “Gauntlet” presumably to be administered by an unknowing Nightwing. The interaction between Nightwing, surprised to see a new Robin so shortly after his exile, and Jason is fun. Jason acts like a jerk and provokes Nightwing, unwilling at first, to put him through his paces. However, the really interesting part of this story is how the tables turn in a major way on the holier-than-thou, always-has-the-upper-hand Batman. He dresses poor Alfred up as Two-Face, disguises himself as hired muscle, but the two then are jumped due to mistaken identity by the gang of a particularly vicious new super villain (not new to long-time Bat-readers, but new in this retro-continuity), out to make a name for himself by offing Two-Face. Alfred’s kidnapped in his Two-Face guise, Batman’s seriously injured from the assault, and it’s now up to the old and new Robin to team up to save the day. It’s always a surprise to see Batman get his comeuppance and, since this is a historical story, we know Alfred will be alright (despite a very real and frightening menace). This story is a little light and moves pretty fast. McDaniel’s art looks like it’s finally not so rushed and creates a suitably heroic and gritty mood. Will Nightwing and Robin save the day? Tune in two weeks from now!
Superman #214
Written by: Brian Azzarello
Drawn by: Jim Lee & Scott Williams
I’m sorry, folks. I’ve been reading this run since its beginning, I’m eleven issues into it now, and I just can’t figure out what the hell’s going on. I was a literature major in college, too, so you’d think if I could handle the likes of James Joyce and John Milton that Azzarello wouldn’t be too much of a challenge. Problem is...I’m not even sure what to say about this book. We know that a disaster called “The Vanishing” has removed millions of people from Earth, Lois among them, and transported them…well, somewhere else. Superman agonized for roughly ten issues as to where they were and how to find them. In this issue we learn that the Vanishing is an occurrence of Superman’s own creation? That the new world, Metropia (oh, come on), to which these people have “vanished” is made out of the “clay” of the Phantom Zone? That it was fashioned in Superman’s own image, and has caused Big Blue to be disgusted by his own hubris? And that General Zod, whom Jor-El had banished to the Phantom Zone, is here to give Superman a major pounding (and it’s a serious pounding) for tampering with his Phantom Zone world? Oh, and which Zod is this anyway? The one Superman executed with Kryptonite back in the John Byrne days? The one created out of some Eastern European experiment that we saw in Superman’s titles a few years back? Someone new? I just don’t know. And, in addition, Superman’s priest-friend is being surgically enhanced by Mr. Orr’s associates to cure his cancer and turn him into some new agent using, among other things, the skeletal remains of a fallen angel’s wing...can someone else explain this to me? I may have to pick up the final installment just to see if it’s even possible to tie a bow around this run.
Gotham Central #29
Written by: Greg Rucka
Drawn by: Stefano Gaudiano
This book is my pick of the week. If you’re not reading this title, you should be. Excellent writing. Consistently moody, dark, and expressive art. Focus on the cops of Gotham Central living in their whack-out world of the Bat and his Freaks. Actually, what makes this so good is that the Batman rarely makes an appearance in this title and, when he does, is never really central to the story.
In this issue, Batman does briefly show up. And his exit is pretty dramatic, too. One of Gotham’s finest is the victim of a booby trap laid by Dr. Alchemy, a Flash villain currently imprisoned in the city of Keystone. Officer Kelley was exposed last issue to a fiery explosion of chemicals that now is mutating him into a large, disfigured, gray monster. This one element makes this arc feel more like a superhero story rather than the more typical cop story feel of this series to-date…despite prior memorable GCPD encounters in this title with the Joker, Two-Face, the Mad Hatter, and Mr. Freeze. Detectives Montoya and Allen go to Flash-territory to interrogate Alchemy in hopes of his giving them a cure for their stricken comrade. Turns out, though, Alchemy has a Hannibal Lecter complex and likes to manipulate others from his glass cell into doing his bidding. It’s Batman who’ll have to contend with the mutated monster Kelley next issue but, as is always the case in this series, it’s the detectives of Gotham Central who must do the hard work to solve the case and save him.
DC put this title’s very first arc in tpb form a few months ago and “Half a Life,” the incredible story in which Montoya is outed as a l_esbian, is coming out soon. You should pick these up. You won’t regret it. “Half a Life” will also give perspective to this issue’s tender and surprisingly graphic love scene between Montoya and Dee as well as the tension between Renee and her father.
This is seriously great stuff.
Stoker’s Dracula # 1-4
Written by: Roy Thomas
Drawn by: D ick Giordano
The story behind this story is just amazing. In 1974 I was a 14 year old kid and already had read Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” twice. I would go on to read it several more times after that, including as part of a Gothic Literature course in college. I liked the Legosi and Christopher Lee “Dracula” movies just fine but I never understood why they deviated so much from the original source material. All other “Dracula” movies would deviate from this material as well. Back in the 1970s I also was a huge fan of Marvel’s “Tomb of Dracula” and when Marvel came out with “Dracula Lives!” and their other Black & White monster magazines I gobbled them up too.
Then something truly amazing happened in “Dracula Lives!” #5 and, remember, this still was 1974. Roy Thomas and D ick Giordano produced the first chapter of a serialization of Stoker’s book! And it was WONDERFUL! Thomas’ writing was faithful to the book, right down to Dr. Van Helsing’s strange dialect (we’d get to that in subsequent chapters), and Giordano’s inks and washes produced dark, mysterious and foreboding illustrations. Not comic book art, but illustrations. This serial ran in separate chapters from “Dracula Lives!” #5-8, 10-11 and the final (but not the last) chapter was published in “Legion of Monsters #1 before it met its premature end for want of a platform in which to be published. I was crushed. I had dreams of this story’s being collected in one big magazine or book which I would keep and treasure forever. The one faithful rendition of Stoker’s novel in the entire world. Oh, well. Such was not to be. Life had to go on.
Fast forward 30 years. Yes, no kidding, 30 years. The stars align. Fate lends a hand. Just when Thomas and Giordano, who had been talking for years about finishing their wonderful series, were about to finally give up on completing it, Marvel actually contacts them to make this very request. It was announced on fan web sites and I, for one, practically had a fangasm. Marvel reprinted all their prior work in the first issue of “Stoker’s Dracula,” which came out October 2004, and the rest of it in the first half of the second issue. The rest of the second, third and fourth issues would be all new material. The fourth and final issue was published this week. The first issue contains commentary by Thomas; the last has commentary by Giordano.
Thomas writes in his introduction to the first issue, “Now – or at least, after all four issues of ‘Stoker’s Dracula’ have been published at six-week intervals – it’s for readers to judge whether D ick and I have succeeded in what was always our ambition: to draw and script the most faithful adaptation ever done, in any medium, of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula.’” Roy, you guys definitely succeeded. I must confess that, after 30 years, D ick did lose some of his drawing chops, the newer segments appear more two-dimensional, and the visual tone isn’t as mysterious and terrifying as the earlier ones. But this is a wonderful piece of work, a must-have for any Dracula fan and, clearly, a labor of love for you two creators. I couldn’t be happier, having waited 30 years to see it happen, for this series’ completion. Thank you, from a die-hard fan.
