Reviews of books, comics, movies, and other random stuff.
Quick reviews of comics I read last week, rated 0 to 5 stars.Black Panther #7 (Marvel; $2.99)Um...damn, Hudlin is really making it hard to keep up my defense of his work here. On the heels of the his first arc's hasty and inconclusive wrapup - he never really did get to the heart of "Who is the Black Panther?" - comes an awkward House of M tie-in which, despite the pagelong intro, will likely leave any brand new readers he brought in sitting in the dark. About the only good thing I can say is that it comes the closest…
Here's what I covered for Buzzscope this week. Tomorrow, I'll have quickee reviews of everything else I read.Ant, Vol. 2 #1Ant is a sufficiently entertaining superhero comic book, admirably featuring a heroine of color without going out its way to hype that fact, and Mario Gully seems to have wisely discarded some of his first volume’s ill-conceived pretensions in favor of simply telling a fun story.Batman #644What exactly do you say about a comic book like this? One so aggressively bad, and so obviously constructed according to an editorially mandated outline, that it defies critique.Monkey in a Wagon vs. Lemur…
The jury's still out on CBC v2.0, but some recent developments have added a couple of unexpected twists to the plot, so this is sort of an update/brain-dump for future reference when real life isn't quite so hectic.Development #1: Out of the blue, about a month ago, Erech Overaker asked me to contribute a script to a comic anthology he's putting together, and after some initial hesitation, I figured what the hell. "Those who can, do..." sort of thing that I decided to approach as a challenge; a preemptive strike on thin-skinned creators who respond to negative reviews with variations…
Roger Ebert on Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.Ha!
A light week, partly due to not much new of interest on the shelves, plus the fact that I was busy working on my script! Have I officially crossed the line from objective pundit to subjective peer? The latter, of course, in the loosest sense imaginable.Runners: Bad Goods TPBSomeone needs to sign Sean Wang and let him devote 70 hours/week to telling this story, because Dark Horse's Star Wars comics shouldn't be the best-selling sci-fi on the shelves.Superhero HCFrom the mouths of babes: "It's not a comic book. It's a book!" A worthy addition to any child's bookshelf, sitting alongside…
Just emailed the first draft of my comic book story to Erech, the artist putting the aforementioned anthology together. Second draft actually, as I handwrote (!) the first draft during lunch last Thursday and did a lot of revising while typing it up. I like what I'm trying to do with it, but have no idea if I pulled it off, what with this being such foreign territory. In the immortal words of Charlie Huston: "I'm not fucking Joss Whedon! This is my first fucking comic book, motherfucker!"Seriously, though, I was way more confident - though admittedly, wrongly so -…
Wherein I talk about Women in Refrigerators, give away FREE comics, and use the phrase "balls-to-the-wall!"El Arsenal: Unknown Enemy #1 (of 3)El Arsenal has the kinetic energy and bombast of Robert Rodriguez’ earliest films, and as introductory issues go, it wisely opts for a few hard jabs straight to the eye instead of the drawn-out, rope-a-dope approach that plagues most mainstream comics these days.Son of Vulcan #3 (of 6)Screw Jason Todd, and Hal Jordan, and Bucky Barnes, et al. Make mine Mikey!Karma Incorporated #1 (of 3)Imagine David Fincher’s The Game played for laughs, and you wouldn’t be too far off…
