Three books this week and I think I'll be able to keep spoilers to at least a minimum if not out altogether. This week had three books for me; Hulk, White Tiger, and American Splendor. So enough with the chit chat...
Hulk #101 -- Over all the story continues to be a good one but I don't find it being presented in the best possible way. For one thing I find the narrative choppy. There doesn't seem to be a flow to it and things just seem to happen abruptly throughout (stuff that shouldn't be happening abruptly that is). I like the regular artist on this book and he's consistent but the insertion of some Gary Frank pages seemed out of place. At first I thought those few pages weren't really well done but after looking more closely at them, it's not that they weren't well drawn but that they just didn't fit. Frank's Hulk looked more human-ish and more like his professor Hulk. The Hulk just prior to these pages (and afterwards) was more brutish looking, more of a monster, and bigger looking. If the Hulk appeared like that in two different comics I'd be okay with it. Having it in the same comic kinda took me out of it. And then there's the ship, the one the Hulk pulls out of the ground. It didn't look that big when Frank was drawing it but the next page it seemed huge. But I might have to double check that, I might have just missed a shot by Frank that showed how big it was. So all in all, it's a good story but it almost needs a cleanup to the storytelling.
White Tiger #2: The art is fairly solid in this book with a few little problems. Some times it's just that there seems to be a difference to the art from page to page. It's hard to explain but it's almost like there was more than one inker or something. Maybe there was, I didn't check the credits. Plus, twice now I've seen unexplained dangling feet. In the first issue there was a panel where she jumped down amongst a group of thugs and although you can see her amongst them you can also see someone from the waste down hanging from the top of the panel. Then in this book, it's the same thing. She drops down amongst the bad guys and you can see legs dangling above her. So I'm assuming it's the artist trying to draw multiples of her to show how quick she's moving but somewhere along the line the information is being missed because the legs don't match hers in colour and if you are doing that then you might want to make the snapshots of her faded (almost ghostly). The writing is pretty good as she explores her new powers and new costume and I'm starting to clue in a bit more about what's happening but there are still some hiccups. You could almost say that as a new superhero maybe that's the reason for it but there are times where the dialogue just seems to jump and I feel I missed something. As she jumps into the afore-mentioned fight she says something about the bad guy's driver (Cobra), then a few other people say stuff, then you have the bad guy say something about not needing "that Snake". As it's building to the fight I find I start to read a little faster but when I read that line I was wondering who he was talking to or about. Because the previous lines weren't really talking about anyone. I had to look further up to see what he was responding to. This kind of dialogue flow (or lack thereof) seemed to take me out of the moment. I think I said I was going to give this one more issue to test it out, I think it survived for another issue or two.
American Splendor #I don't know -- What can I say about this book that I haven't already said? It continues along the same lines of just telling simple stories from Harvey's life yet it's still addictive to read. Possibly because I see a lot of my own neurotic tendencies in Harvey. I think if I ever spent time with Harvey (which is weird for me to say) I'd probably go insane, feeding off his stress and how everything becomes an event until I snapped. Yet I enjoy reading about his life. I guess having that barrier helps. Yeah, not much else to say. The artists all bring their own personal touches to the story and it works. I really didn't think I'd be getting this much out of this series but I am.
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