Friday, June 06, 2008

Weekly Comic Reviews for June 4th, 2008 -- SPOILERS!!!

Just when I say I'm buying fewer monthly books I get hit with a big week. Well, big for me. Though most of them are a limitted series or books I'm just checking out. So here goes...

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #15 -- This book continued on a low note for me. As I expressed in my last review, it just seemed to be playing into an all too common story element for Joss. But after that I found it picked up. The dialogue was good and even the over the top elements of the story (ie. large robotic Dawn) seemed well executed. In some ways it seems the major threat seems to have been resolved rather quickly and almost as an afterthought yet the story leaves many ramifications to the characters. It was a solid issue and storyline to a series that I already recommend but I really do hope this is the last of the "let's get two characters together and happy in a relationship only to kill one off" for Joss for a little while.

American Splendor #3 -- I haven't read too much of Harvey Pekar's work but this one comes off as the most political of what I have read. It's only a few pages of the book but it could be offputting if you don't share his political views. But then again, Harvey Pekar has never been one to hide his opinion on anything has he? :) So this issue features another solid line up of artists portraying stories from Harvey's life. The jazz discussion one wasn't really my cup of tea but I still enjoy Harvey's work.

Ultimate Origins #1 -- I didn't plan on picking up this book but I eventually broke down due to the hype I've heard. And in the end, I was actually rather disappointed. I can't really say the book is bad or anything, the writing is good and the art is okay (I say "okay" because I thought they could have done a better job of making the young Fisk, James Howlett, and Nick Fury a little more recognizable), but I was less than impressed with the overall story. I just don't like the idea of trying to merge all the superheroes in the Ultimate Universe to one single super soldier/mutant making experiment. It seems to take away from the diversity of the characters and their situations. And making Logan mutant 0 just made me shake my head. Do we really need more of a push for this character? Oh no, we need to make him even more important. *sigh* For those who are really into the Ultimate Universe they may really enjoy this. For me, someone who just dabbles here and there, it just didn't work. So I won't be adding this to my reading list.

House of Mystery #2 -- I decided to give this series another try. I found with this issue that I was starting to get more into the main story of the house and the latest visitor, Fig. But the side story presented here just wasn't for me. I didn't find it as jarring (from a reader's standpoint) as the first issue but I was still tempted to just kinda skip over that part. But I have to say that it was written and drawn well so I think a lot of this has to do with personal preference. I'm still not sold on this series but this issue may have been strong enough to make me consider issue 3. I may wait and see what else I pick up that week.

The Dark Tower: The Long Road Home #4 -- The artwork continues to work and not work at the same time for me. Throughout the book you had some beautiful shots but they didn't really seem to tell the story at times. And some scenes seem to go on for a while as an excuse to give us more and more big artistic shots. But having said that (and coming across as very negative) I actually enjoyed this issue more than some of the other Dark Tower issues. I still think issue 5 will be the last for me though. But I think fans of the series will enjoy this issue.

I guess that's it for this week's books. Thanks to my cold I've gotten quite a bit of TPB reading done though. I ended up finishing off Jeff Smith's series, Bone. (I had to be very careful how I said that) I really enjoyed it and couldn't put it down. Though I also slipped in volume 5 of Fables and the two Whiteout books somewhere in there. All were really good.

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