Friday, July 18, 2008

Weekly Comic Reviews for July 16th, 2008

Only two books this week, Mice Templar #5 and Spike: After the Fall #1.

Mice Templar #5 -- I think this series has a great story and some great art but for some reason, I find it missing the mark for me. I think there are a few issues I have when reading it. One is that I'm having a hard time keeping things straight. Perhaps this is due to the gaps between issues, I forget what was happening previously. Or perhaps it's the character designs, I still find it hard to identify who's who at times. They show a group of mice and I have no idea who they are or if I should even know them. And perhaps it's the ever shifting story which is good but in combination to the above makes me start to wonder "wait, who's the good guy now?" I know this can be a good thing but right now I'm just feeling more and more lost. Now a lot of this probably just has to do with me and my own issues, so it might be a great book for you. For me, I may be better off waiting for the story to finish (with the next issue) and read it all at once. I still think this series is good and definitely worth checking out, I just don't know if I'll be picking it up after next issue. I may wait to see if there are TPBs forthcoming.

Spike: After the Fall #1 -- Considering I haven't been the biggest fan of the Angel series, I didn't have high hopes for this one. I found the art a little better here, some of that may be due to the series centering on Spike and Ilyria/Fred (fewer characters to keep track of and such). But I still don't like the flow of the book. Too choppy and hard to follow with narrative telling us that should be shown. There were a few bright spots in the dialogue with Spike but one thing I didn't really like was having him narrate. I don't know, I kinda like not knowing what Spike is thinking and trying to infer from his body language and such. So far, I didn't find all that much to the story that I didn't already know but I guess that's good for people who aren't reading the Angel series (though I highly doubt there are many people picking this up who aren't already reading Angel). I'm still a little curious about the Ilyria/Fred thing and that's my main reason for picking up this series. I hope I'm not disappointed. As for recommending this book, I'm on the fence. I may have to wait and see how it plays out and recommend (or not) the TPB.

So that's it for the monthlies. I started reading Volume 10 of Fables and I'm really glad I read the 1001 Nights of Snowfall just prior to this. I think this one might be a tough book for me to get through as a fan of a particular character. But I won't spoil anything (and I hope nobody decides to spoil it for me with bad comments).

And one last thing, I won a sketch of the Araknid Kid by Josh Alves. I rock! Okay, all I did was sign up for his newsletter so I don't really rock but it's a cool sketch so I'm happy. And remember to vote for the Zuda Invitational.

No comments: