Thursday, June 05, 2008

Snap Judgments: Reviews for Trinity #1, Ultimate Origins #1, Buffy #15 and More

Short comic reviews based on initial, lizard-brain opinions. Arranged from BEST to WORST.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 8 #15 gets an A from AHR
Oh noes! Here endeth the Buffy/Satsu storyline, aka the ship that launched a thousand fics. I'll certainly miss the lesbian jokes, but this issue wraps up with excellent action sequences, heartwarming and heartwrenching drama, and a satisfying resolution that still opens up a few doors. Also lots of lesbian jokes.

Detective Comics #845 gets an A from AHR
Too much fun. Batman and Detective Chimp sitting at their computers IMing each other may top out some people's tolerance for silliness, but i found it delightful.

Reviews for H.P. Lovecraft's Haunt of Horrors #1, Omega: The Unknown #9, Secret Invasion #3, Trinity #1, Ultimate Origins #1 and House of Mystery #2 after the jump...

H.P. Lovecraft's Haunt of Horrors #1 gets an A from Albo
Kind of a weird idea. Celebrated underground artist Richard Corben does graphic adaptations (and expansions) of H.P. Lovecraft short stories and poems, and includes the original source text after each story. This works really well when the source is a vague poem that he has built an interesting narrative around, but when the source is a short story with more evocative imagery than the adaptation, things become a little less satisfying. He did the same thing with Poe, but I haven't gotten the chance to read those. All told, a cool experiment and a welcome serving of Corben's unique art.

Omega: The Unknown #9 gets a B from Albo
This book is so consistently good that for some reason it hardly excites me anymore. That sounds cynical, right? But I'm sitting here flipping through it and thinking "that's great, that's great, that's good too" but I know that when I was reading it I was a little bored. What's the deal? Well, in my heart I know this is a classic story that I'll be re-reading for years to come. The end is near!

Secret Invasion #3 gets a B from Albo
Ho hum. Very skeletal storytelling. Feels like an outline for tie-in issues to elaborate on, a very Marvel storytelling method I strongly disapprove of. Yu's art is still amazing, though, and the confrontation between Skrullica Drew and Tony Stark is pretty exciting though I'm pretty sure it's just some Skrullian mind games.

Trinity #1 gets an A+F=C+ from AHR
Wow. The first half of this book, in which Bruce, Diana, and Clark meet up for lunch and talk about a spooky dream they had, is awesome. I love any time attention is drawn to how insane Batman's "Bruce Wayne" persona is, and here Wondy actually calls him on it. But the second part of this book is a droning mish-mash of expository detritus featuring characters and situations that I have zero interest in, and after spending a fun lunch with my oldest DC pals I have no desire to jump into a red and green space land full of proselytizing god/alien creatures. Perhaps the writers are trying to set up two bands of alien/god creatures, since that description extends to the titular trinity, with the intention of showing us how much more interesting the group who act like humans are. These two very segmented stories are perfect examples of what I love and hate about DC.

Ultimate Origins #1 gets a C from Albo
There's nothing outright bad about the first issue of this major Ultimate event, but it just doesn't make enough of a statement right off the bat to justify its existence. You can hardly blame Bendis, though. I mean, how many universes can he be expected to turn upside down at once?

House of Mystery #2 gets a C- from AHR
Bleh. Reads like second rate Neil Gaiman, with really self-conscious and over-stated fantastical dialogue. It's brightened up by some fun touches (lady pirate bouncer) and a few pages of Jill Thompson's moody cartoon art, but what a let down after such a gripping and disturbing first issue.

2 comments:

krys said...

I just don't know how I feel about Secret Invasion anymore. I went from disinterested, to really psyched, back to disinterested in the span of three issues.

Albo said...

Yeah, I know how you feel krys. It just seems like we're still waiting for the real event to start.