Only the one book came out for me this week.
Son of Hulk #17 -- I haven't been a big fan of this series but I was hoping for a good finale. Unfortunately I was left pretty disappointed. I found myself just struggling to make it through the issue as I really didn't care about the characters or what was happening. Every character seemed to be a throw away character. Even one of the "main" characters is listed as "MIA" at the beginning of the book which led me to believe there would be more to her story, there wasn't... So why should I have cared? I really should have stopped collecting this series a while back and I don't recommend it.
I'll be away next week for a conference (work related) so there won't be much happening on here for a little while.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Weekly Comic Reviews for November 18, 2009 -- SPOILERS
Two books to review this week and I'll have to make them short.
Dr Horrible One Shot -- Good art, decent story, but not a great book. I felt the character's voices were there and it was interesting to see Dr Horrible's start but this book felt a little light on story. Some parts seemed to be dragged out over too many pages/panels and by the end I thought that it could have potentially been reduced to fewer pages and either put online or maybe had the other Dr Horrible online comics included in this print version. If you're a Dr Horrible fan you're probably going to pick it up no matter what anyone says and as a fan, I'd say check it out but don't expect something that great.
Incredible Hulk #604 -- My first thought was "When did Rick take over A-Bomb? And if he has, why hasn't he revealed to everyone who the Red Hulk is?" But I quickly figured it happened in Loeb's Hulk series (or not) and moved on. I do like both artists who work on this book and again, the two artists wasn't really as distracting as I've seen it in the past. The overall story is interesting, we get to see a lot more of Banner's thinking and current personality/state of mind, but parts felt a little quick/convenient/rushed. The Harpy/Marlo thing for instance, where did that come from so suddenly? And it disappeared as quickly as it started. I really want to like this book and I don't think it's bad, but I think the story could be told a bit better.
Dr Horrible One Shot -- Good art, decent story, but not a great book. I felt the character's voices were there and it was interesting to see Dr Horrible's start but this book felt a little light on story. Some parts seemed to be dragged out over too many pages/panels and by the end I thought that it could have potentially been reduced to fewer pages and either put online or maybe had the other Dr Horrible online comics included in this print version. If you're a Dr Horrible fan you're probably going to pick it up no matter what anyone says and as a fan, I'd say check it out but don't expect something that great.
Incredible Hulk #604 -- My first thought was "When did Rick take over A-Bomb? And if he has, why hasn't he revealed to everyone who the Red Hulk is?" But I quickly figured it happened in Loeb's Hulk series (or not) and moved on. I do like both artists who work on this book and again, the two artists wasn't really as distracting as I've seen it in the past. The overall story is interesting, we get to see a lot more of Banner's thinking and current personality/state of mind, but parts felt a little quick/convenient/rushed. The Harpy/Marlo thing for instance, where did that come from so suddenly? And it disappeared as quickly as it started. I really want to like this book and I don't think it's bad, but I think the story could be told a bit better.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Weekly Comic Reviews for November 11th, 2009
I got nothing. No books came out for me this week which really isn't too surprising. I'm not really too sure what I'm going to blog about when I switch to TPBs. I don't normally like reviewing those and they are months apart. Perhaps I'll try to post more about other comic news and webcomic stuff.
But if you're really desperate for some reviews I did read "I Kill Giants" and "Stitches: A Memoir" recently. And looking back, I wish I had separated them with a few more light hearted books instead of reading them one after the other.
I found with I Kill Giants that it took a few pages before I felt comfortable reading it. It's a little different visually than what I'm used to but it was the word balloons that I found a little challenging, always looking for the little line that indicated who was saying what. Either I adapted or it got better as the book went on. But overall, an extremely moving and compelling story and the art really fit and told the story well. Definitely worth checking out.
Stitches: A Memoir didn't have the dynamic art and layouts of I Kill Giants but told a very personal story in a more straight forward style. The art was more along the lines of storybook illustrations though it did flow rather well. I think this style worked here and anything more "dynamic" just wouldn't have fit. When I was done reading it I had mixed feelings about some things such as wanting to explore certain parts of the story more but I think David Small says it best in the write ups at the end, this is his story. He could have gone more into his mother's story or his father's but I think he's right not to and just leave it to the reader to think about. It's definitely a touching story that plays on many emotions. I'd say this one is worth checking out as well.
I also finally checked out an episode of "Ink: Alter Egos Exposed" and it was interesting. It was about politics in comics. The downside is that there is so much that could be talked about that you only get snippets in the 30 minutes they boil it down to and so much is missed. But on the other hand, they do talk about some interesting stuff that I hadn't heard about (such as Joe Sacco, a journalist who uses comics to report on what's happening). I really want to see the other 9 episodes they did for this show but then again, I can always stand to listen to people talk comics so that's no surprise.
But if you're really desperate for some reviews I did read "I Kill Giants" and "Stitches: A Memoir" recently. And looking back, I wish I had separated them with a few more light hearted books instead of reading them one after the other.
I found with I Kill Giants that it took a few pages before I felt comfortable reading it. It's a little different visually than what I'm used to but it was the word balloons that I found a little challenging, always looking for the little line that indicated who was saying what. Either I adapted or it got better as the book went on. But overall, an extremely moving and compelling story and the art really fit and told the story well. Definitely worth checking out.
Stitches: A Memoir didn't have the dynamic art and layouts of I Kill Giants but told a very personal story in a more straight forward style. The art was more along the lines of storybook illustrations though it did flow rather well. I think this style worked here and anything more "dynamic" just wouldn't have fit. When I was done reading it I had mixed feelings about some things such as wanting to explore certain parts of the story more but I think David Small says it best in the write ups at the end, this is his story. He could have gone more into his mother's story or his father's but I think he's right not to and just leave it to the reader to think about. It's definitely a touching story that plays on many emotions. I'd say this one is worth checking out as well.
I also finally checked out an episode of "Ink: Alter Egos Exposed" and it was interesting. It was about politics in comics. The downside is that there is so much that could be talked about that you only get snippets in the 30 minutes they boil it down to and so much is missed. But on the other hand, they do talk about some interesting stuff that I hadn't heard about (such as Joe Sacco, a journalist who uses comics to report on what's happening). I really want to see the other 9 episodes they did for this show but then again, I can always stand to listen to people talk comics so that's no surprise.
Friday, November 06, 2009
V -- SPOILERS
Finally got around to watching the first episode of V and was pretty disappointed. I thought the acting was good but that was about it. The story didn't really hook me and it felt like they were trying way too hard with the whole "secret terrorist cell" to be relevant to the real world or something. And I found it extremely predictable. All the plot twists (really, how many do you need to throw into the first episode) were pretty transparent early on. Also, how many worm's eye views do you really need? They really seemed to be pushing the whole "Hey, crazy camera angles, that creates drama right?" thing. I really hope it gets better soon but if this what they thought would hook people as their initial episode I'll probably be dropping this show from my watch list pretty quickly.
Weekly Comic Reviews for November 4th, 2009
At home sick today. Nothing serious, I think it's just a combination of several things.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer #30 -- Again, not really too thrilled with this issue. And it's the same things, the storytelling aspect just doesn't seem to be executed well. Sometimes it's confusing what's going on, who's talking, and their is just weird times where I'm trying to figure out if I'm missing something. I'm wondering about Twilight mentioning a god almost killing Buffy and her friends only it's not shown until half way through the next page. Can he see the future or something? Overall I've just found this series to be going downhill recently. I'm still hoping things get turned around but we'll see.
One other thing, once Buffy season 8 is over that'll most likely be it for my weekly comic purchasing. If I do decide to buy season 9 it will be through the TPBs so I'd be down to two monthly books at that point (Incredible Hulk and Elephantmen) and I was thinking of going with TPBs on Elephantmen anyways so that would just leave the Incredible Hulk. So long story short, there's no point and I'll be going all TPBs. Perhaps I'll drop by a store to pick up the odd one-shot (though if companies start selling online through Longbox or something else then I won't even do that) but that's about it.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer #30 -- Again, not really too thrilled with this issue. And it's the same things, the storytelling aspect just doesn't seem to be executed well. Sometimes it's confusing what's going on, who's talking, and their is just weird times where I'm trying to figure out if I'm missing something. I'm wondering about Twilight mentioning a god almost killing Buffy and her friends only it's not shown until half way through the next page. Can he see the future or something? Overall I've just found this series to be going downhill recently. I'm still hoping things get turned around but we'll see.
One other thing, once Buffy season 8 is over that'll most likely be it for my weekly comic purchasing. If I do decide to buy season 9 it will be through the TPBs so I'd be down to two monthly books at that point (Incredible Hulk and Elephantmen) and I was thinking of going with TPBs on Elephantmen anyways so that would just leave the Incredible Hulk. So long story short, there's no point and I'll be going all TPBs. Perhaps I'll drop by a store to pick up the odd one-shot (though if companies start selling online through Longbox or something else then I won't even do that) but that's about it.
Monday, November 02, 2009
Weekly Comic Reviews for October 28th, 2009 -- SPOILERS
I know, I'm really late with this review. And even now I have to make it quick.
Son of Hulk #16 -- I said in my last review that we seem to be getting dragged very slowly to the final confrontation (or whatever) with Galactus and here we have yet another issue supposedly building up to that. I'm really not into this series at all any more. Characters that I kinda cared about are dead and they just seem to be throwing random characters with no identities into the mix and killing them off. There really doesn't seem to be a strong pull for me to get into the story. If the next issue wasn't the last I would have dropped this series already.
Son of Hulk #16 -- I said in my last review that we seem to be getting dragged very slowly to the final confrontation (or whatever) with Galactus and here we have yet another issue supposedly building up to that. I'm really not into this series at all any more. Characters that I kinda cared about are dead and they just seem to be throwing random characters with no identities into the mix and killing them off. There really doesn't seem to be a strong pull for me to get into the story. If the next issue wasn't the last I would have dropped this series already.
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