Archive for December, 2005
December 5, 2005 | Comics
Wimbledon Green
Seth
Drawn And Quarterly
$24.95 (Hardcover)
**** ½ (out of five)
Wimbledon Green seems eerily familiar.
He’s the world greatest comic book collector, you see. He’s the older man you see from time to time rummaging through boxes of old comics, or books, or coins, or whatever, at a rummage sale or flea market — always looking for some hidden gem.
Is he trying to make a profit off another’s ignorance of collectibles? Or is he simply trying to rediscover some long-lost connection to his childhood?
Seth, the gifted cartoonist behind such books as It’s A Good Life If You Don’t Weaken and Bannock, Beans And Black Tea, explains in the introduction to Wimbledon Green that most of his new release was whipped off at breakneck speed and was done primarily as a writing exercise.
While the result is a bit sloppy in appearance for those used to the wonderfully polished work of the Guelph, Ont., resident, it is also a surprisingly affecting book, filled with great insight into the mind of collectors and into that of the creator himself. It is a funny, melancholy and meaningful piece of work.
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December 5, 2005 | Trades
Justice League Elite Vol. 1
Joe Kelly, Doug Mahnke, John Byrne, Tom Nguyen
DC Comics
$26.99 (Paperback)
*** ½ (out of five)
The world of super-heroes is most often black and white.
It’s about good versus evil and righteous battling the wicked.
Or at that’s how it was in the past. But do today’s heroes increasingly live in a grey world, where what’s right and wrong isn’t a clear?
Writer Joe Kelly tries to answer this question in the first volume of Justice League Elite, which sees the Elite, a group of anti-heroes — those willing to kill, maim and destroy in the name of justice — battle Superman and his ideals of truth, justice and the American way: especially without killing anyone.
After proving the good fight can be fought cleanly, the remaining members of the Elite sign on as a special “don’t-ask-don’t tell” shadow team of the Justice League, designed to take out those threats that the world’s greatest heroes are too high profile to get involved in.
The only rule they’re asked to follow: no killing.
Kelly, along with artists Doug Mahnke, John Byrne and Tom Nguyen, do a very solid job with Justice League Elite of exploring the morality of traditional heroes contrasted against the more modern, while letting the reader make up their mind on their own as to what works best.
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December 5, 2005 | Trades
PVP Vol. 3: Rides Again
Scott Kurtz
Image Comics
$11.99 US (Paperback)
**** (out of five)
Ow! Ow! Ow!
My gut is actually busted after reading PVP Rides Again.
Scott Kurtz’s ongoing adventures of the staff of a video game magazine run the gamut from dry, subtle and subversive to blatant slapstick, but it all works.
Vol. 3 features every bachelor’s nightmare of cohabitation (and the inevitable discovery of your porn stash), driving lessons for a 16-year-old video game nut (ever roll a VW van?), the greatest fan film ever made (starring every sci-fi character ever), the dangers of online gaming (never play as a girl) and the rise of Scratch Fury, Destroyer Of Worlds (the office cat).
PVP’s daily online strips (www.pvponline.com) and monthly comics are classic and an absolute must for pop-culture vultures.
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December 5, 2005 | Trades
Concrete Vol. 2: Heights
Paul Chadwick
Dark Horse Books
$12.95 US (Paperback)
**** (out of five)
We can all learn something from Paul Chadwick.
Well, not from the writer/artist personally, but from his incredibly well researched and engrossing Concrete stories.
In this second recently repackaged collection of the adventures of Ron Lithgow, a man whose mind is trapped in a hulking stone body, readers are taken from the simplicity of a family farm to the top of the world.
Oh, and Concrete grows some really impressive horns (but that’s neither here nor there).
Strong characters and a thoughtful internal monologue by Concrete are two of the continuing strengths of this title, but learning a little bit about the hows and whys on a farm or the subtleties of an impressively detailed expedition through Nepal and up Mount Everest make it even more gripping.
Heights is truly a work with great depths.
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December 5, 2005 | Trades
The Authority: Revolution Vol. 1
Ed Brubaker, Dustin Nguyen, Richard Friend
Wildstorm/DC Comics
$19.99 (Paperback)
*** ½ (out of five)
If absolute power truly corrupts as they say, then the Authority was doomed from the start.
They are the Wildstorm Universe’s greatest heroes, banded together to fight for the betterment of humanity, with no regards for bureaucracy or often even laws. They have toppled dictators, crippled the corrupt and fought off God himself in defence of the people of Earth — but what happens when the coin is flipped?
Following the events of the crossover series, Coup D’Etat — which saw the president of the U.S. try to kill off the Authority, only fail and suffer its wrath — the super-group finds itself running the U.S. government. When a rival group of U.S.-patriotic themed metahumans begins rallying the nation against what they view as a dictatorship, the battle is on to win the hearts and minds of the masses. But will one of the Authority’s own members be the one to seal its fate?
Writer Ed Brubaker (Sleeper, Captain America) and artists Dustin Nguyen and Richard Friend (Batman), show perfectly how even the mightiest can fall in the first half of this revolutionary series.
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December 5, 2005 | Trades
The Walking Dead Vol. 4: The Heart’s Desire
Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Cliff Rathburn
Image Comics
$12.99 US (Paperback)
**** (out of five)
There’s a new player in The Walking Dead and she’s bringing a whole heap of trouble with her.
From the moment Michonne wanders out of the wilderness — in a world where the number of living dead vastly outnumber the living terrified — things begin to crumble in the world of the small group of survivors who have holed up in a (mostly) abandoned maximum-security prison.
Once the mysterious (and possibly crazy) sword-wielding woman turns up at their gates, having survived unknown horrors to get there, murder, infidelity, suicide and the death of a long-standing character follow.
Friendships fall, the dead live and the insular world of the survivors will never be the same in the riveting fourth collection of this zombie-tastic monthly series.
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December 5, 2005 | Trades
JLA Vol. 17: Syndicate Rules
Kurt Busiek, Ron Garney
DC Comics
$23.99 (Paperback)
** 1/2 (out of five)
It was hyped as a battle for the ages: the Justice League of America vs. The Crime Syndicate Of Amerika.
Too bad it never panned out.
This nine-issue collection from the monthly JLA series, has all the ingredients for something awesome: a team of great heroes from our earth, another of stupendous villains from earth-2, an awesome writer/artist team in Kurt Busiek and Ron Garney and yet it just gets bogged down in so much background, convoluted back-up characters and other tedium that it flops.
In 200 pages, there is about 20 that are awesome and the rest is making you ponder just how far down this series has come since the Grant Morrison days.
On the bright side, the next JLA trade, Crisis Of Conscience (available Jan. 25, 2006), is a fantastic story. Save your money. Buy that one.
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