Friday, July 28, 2006

Weekly comic reviews, The Colbert Report, and a sketch

Another small week of comics for me. We had Civil War: Frontline and Wizard Magazine so only one review to do.

Civil War: Frontline #4 (SPOILERS) -- Well I'm getting more used to the format of this book and it's a little less of a shock when you're thrown from one story to the next now. The art was solid and the raid on the "unregistered combatants" came across very well (you really got a sense of just how much firepower Iron Man and SHIELD were coming in with and using the old "Shock and Awe" approach to disorient these wannabe heroes). Storywise you're still left jumping around. Each story is interesting on its own but don't really seem to flow together sometimes (again, I blame the format of the book for this). Iron Man continues to come across as a ... not so nice guy, and now it's hinted that he (and/or SHIELD) is monitoring reporters (so much for freedom of the press). And the hint that they purposely got the hero from the last issue killed (by moving the tanker into place) is a bad thought. The "sleeper agent" of Namor puts a little twist on things. My only gripe with the book is the Green Goblin's appearance. Last we saw him he was being released by SHIELD to do some work for them. In this issue he goes after Ben Eurich for the stories he wrote about him. Well either this is part of SHIELD's plan (to go after Eurich for some reason) or Osborn was pretty quick in evading whatever monitoring SHIELD must have put on him before releasing him. Otherwise I can't see how SHIELD would release him only to have him take off to settle some personal issues instead of doing what they had wanted him to do (which would reveal to the world that he somehow "escaped" from SHIELD custody... kinda hurts them when they're trying to muster public support).

And as for the Colbert Report, I love this show but I try to refrain from getting political here (I'll leave that to those who know more about it than I do). I only bring it up because Joe Quesada made an appearance last night. Well, in between kissing Colbert's butt he actually did a decent job of selling Civil War. And Colbert actually seemed to show comics some respect. I was actually impressed when he made a joke Quesada being upset about him talking to that woman from "DC" (she was from Washington DC, not DC comics). I just wonder how many non-comic fans either tuned out or rolled their eyes at a comic book guy trying to discuss the significance of comic books (something a lot of people relate to the Archie and Jugghead format of kiddy humour). As for Eleanor Holmes Norton (the delegate from Washington that he interviewed) she really didn't come across too well. Her attack on Colbert for not pronouncing the 't' in his name made me wonder. But enough of the politics.

Last but not least, the sketch. I had been thinking about posting a few sketches from time to time so here goes. This one probably isn't a good one to start with as the pencil lines are still noticeable and make it messy looking and the big guy's proportions are really wrong (holy long legs Batman!) but oh well, c'est la vie. The sketch is part of my brainstorming for chapter 2 of my online comic, Divine Leap (link to the right). A chapter which I've decided not to do (the book will be ending when I finally get around to finishing issue 7 of chapter 1).



Quick update: Joe Quesada discusses his Colbert Report experience and shows off his "Rampaging Colbert" art here:
Newsarama -- New Joe Fridays: Week 7

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