Saturday, July 04, 2009

Weekly Comic Reviews for July 2nd, 2009 -- SPOILERS

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #26 -- If you've been reading my blog for any length of time you'll know I'm a Joss fan, a Buffy fan, and a fan of this series (though I've felt some issues were stronger than others). This book felt mixed for me. The positives, the Twilight story is picking up steam after being dragged out for quite a while. Characters are coming together and acting in typical Joss fashion (witty and with plenty of issues). And we're seeing some of the previous stories (like Buffy's trip to the future) coming up again. The negatives, I felt like I was playing catch up right out of the gate here. After some length of time with slower issues I was left wondering "wait, what's happening now???" after only the first few pages. And this issue felt cramped with just too much going on. There was no time spent on what was going on, the story relied on the characters to tell you what was going on as there wasn't enough room for the art to do so and other times perhaps the art could have been stronger. Characters were jumping through emotions, seemingly rushed if the dialogue is to believed but not really rushing in the art, ... Overall, it just felt a little too rushed in several ways. And (SPOILERS HERE) I wouldn't have recognized the character at the end if he hadn't been put on the cover. In the end, I kinda liked the issue for the overall story but I think it could have been executed slightly better. I still recommend the series for Buffy fans out there.

USA Comics #1 70th Anniversary Special -- Picked this up on a whim, mostly because David Gallaher was promoting it due to the art being done by his High Moon artist, Steve Ellis (at least for the main/first part. Breaking it up in three parts, the first story was very good. It had a feel of the old stories and was well drawn by Ellis. It was definitely worth checking out. The second story was a reprint of an old Destroyer story. I find it always interesting to go back to see just how old school comics were done and how they hold up to today's comics. This one held up pretty well in my opinion but still has its share of campy/silly moments or panels. The last story was a short intro to another book which I generally dislike, and this one felt a little out of place here and didn't really get me all that interested in the series it was promoting. Overall though, the book is pretty solid and probably worth checking out.

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