Archive for September, 2006
September 25, 2006 | Comics
Sam Noir: Samurai Detective #1 (of 3)
Manny Trembley & Eric A. Anderson
Image Comics
$3.40/$2.99 US
**** (out of five)
“Why does every sad story have to start with a dame?”
With that line we are introduced to Sam Noir: Samurai Detective and get instantly swept up in the case of his life: Who killed the girl he loves and why?
After Jasmine, the girl Sam has been anonymously hired to shadow (and whom he has fallen for) is shurikened down in cold blood right in front of him, the man in him seeks revenge, while the detective in him tries to find out who did it and why.
The first chapter is so vivid you’ll swear you can see the red blood spray — and it’s a black-and-white book!
With an unusual, but seamless, combining of genres, creators Manny Trembley & Eric A. Anderson have fused Sam Spade and Lone Wolf into a sword-swinging gumshoe with an attitude and placed him in a story that’ll have you turning pages faster than a katana through a bad guy’s gut.
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September 25, 2006 | Comics
Cross Bronx #1, 2 (of 4)
Michael Avon Oeming & Ivan Brandon
Image Comics
$3.35/$2.99 US
**** (out of five)
Rafael Aponte is having a crisis of faith.
It’s not that his faith in God is gone, he lost that ages ago having seen the darkness of humanity firsthand as a New York City police detective.
What’s troubling Rafael now is his faith in himself and in his own sanity.
After getting called in to investigate the brutal slaughter of a bunch of gangbangers, Rafael and his partner Tico Velez locate the murder weapon and track it back to a long dead cop. When they track down the cop’s widow, Rafael discovers that she has suffered another family trauma. Her daughter, 19-year-old Marta Ortiz, was drugged, raped and hurled from a moving car out onto the Cross Bronx Expressway. Marta is now comatose and paraplegic, while her mother is cagey and appears to be dabbling with black magic.
Meanwhile, the same killer — revealed to be an athletic young woman — guns down another group of gangbangers and in turn nearly gets Rafael and Tico killed.
Michael Avon Oeming (Powers, Thor) and Ivan Brandon (NYC Mech, Ruule) weave a complex and compelling crime story together with characters of substance and come out with a superb miniseries.
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September 25, 2006 | Comics
Mystery In Space #1 (of 8)
DC Comics
$5.50/$3.99 US
*** 1/2 (out of five)
Captain Comet is dead… isn’t that Weird?
I suppose more correctly that should be The Weird.
As the late Captain’s love interest, the warrior referred to simply as Eye, and his bulldog Tyrone reminisce about Comet’s life and adventures (conveniently getting readers up to speed), the man himself is describing his gruesome death. In the fallout of the Rann-Thanagar War and Infinite Crisis miniseries, the space-faring superhero is roasted alive by a blast of immense heat, only to find he’s not quite finished. Instead he reaches out with his last efforts and merges ever so briefly with a nearby energy being, the creature once known as The Weird.
The result is both dead men regaining corporeal form with a lot of explaining to do and a lot of lingering mysteries — delivering on this book title’s promise.
Industry legend Jim Starlin (Infinity Gauntlet, Cosmic Odyssey) delves back into the deepest parts of the DC Universe as both a writer and artist — along with Shane Davis, Matt Banning and Al Milgrom — in this solid foundation issue.
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September 25, 2006 | Comics
True Story, Swear To God #1
Tom Beland
Image Comics
$3.35/$2.99 US
*** 1/2 (out of five)
Tom Beland is a stranger in a strange land — and he’s never been so happy.
This ongoing autobiographical love story, about how California-native Beland moved to Puerto Rico to be with the woman of his dreams, starts off with a little summation and segues into how he copes with being a ‘gringo’ and an occasionally starving artist.
After daring all and moving in with Lily, Beland decides to break some other boundaries in his life — starting with collecting on a bunch of long-overdue paycheques. With an almost-perverse glee, Beland devises diverse strategies to guilt, harass and generally nuisance those who owe him. The result is a little more cash in his pockets and a chance to impress Lily with a home-cooked meal.
Beland’s work is wonderfully heartfelt and genuine. It’s nice to read a story about someone who isn’t angst ridden about finding the right person and losing them, or worse, never even finding them. True Story’s stranger in a strange land is not only happy, he’s funny and off to a fine start in his monthly debut.
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September 25, 2006 | Comics
The Trials Of Shazam #1 (of 12)
DC Comics
$4/$2.99 US
*** (out of five)
It’s time for a new Captain Marvel.
Hot on the heels of the Day Of Vengeance and Infinite Crisis crossover miniseries, Earth’s mightiest mortal is getting used to his new role as the keeper of the Rock of Eternity.
Without the aid of the rock’s former keeper, the wizard Shazam, Billy Batson is charged with both keeping a watchful eye for magical dangers that threaten the planet, and with stopping them.
But in this new era of magic, things don’t always work out that way they should and Billy finds himself transformed not just from a tween boy to Captain Marvel and back, but in a dramatic twist, into someone unfamiliar.
Writer Judd Winick and artist Howard Porter begin to set the stage for the future this DC Comics stalwart, but they’ve cut their work cut out for them to make the character once aptly dubbed “Captain Whitebread” relevant again.
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September 13, 2006 | Trades
Absolute Kingdom Come
Mark Waid, Alex Ross
DC Comics
$100/$75 US (Hardcover)
**** 1/2 (out of five)
To kill or not to kill?
That was the question on the minds of many a comic book creator in the mid-1990s, the height of the “grim ‘n’ gritty” era, where characters like The Punisher, Wolverine and Lobo were gleefully gunning down or carving up their enemies.
But some creators, notably writer Mark Waid and artist Alex Ross, questioned where the über-violent path led, and with a wistful eye to the Golden Age of comics wondered what characters like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and other DC Comics stalwarts would do in the face of this escalating, and often callous, brutality.
The result is Kingdom Come, one of the most influential and impressive miniseries of that decade — a perfect pairing of Waid’s shameless love for all things DC and Ross’ breathtaking true-to-life comic book paintings.
The series follows doubting Pastor Norman McCay as he is taken on an Ebenezer Scrooge-esque journey to bear witness to the inevitable conflict that is coming between the older heroes and the new.
On the 10th anniversary of the series’ release, DC gives readers an Absolute treat with a glorious over-sized edition packed to the brim with over 100 pages of sketches, drafts, notes and more to get inside this epic tale and its creation.
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September 13, 2006 | Trades
Kickback
David Lloyd
Dark Horse Books
$12.95 US (Hardcover)
****
The first time I flipped through Kickback it didn’t make much sense to me.
Of course, creator David Lloyd (V For Vendetta) was showing me the original French edition, so I guess I’ll just have to be forgiven for forgetting so much of my high school education.
On that April day, the earnest and very likable Lloyd told me that his latest work would be given the English edition he’d originally intended by the end of the summer and asked me to tell everyone about it.
So here goes: Joe Canelli is a police detective with a couple of big mysteries to solve. The first is to figure out who slaughtered a local drug czar and his gang, a move that has sparked panic in all areas of the underworld. The second is a recurring dream, possibly of something from his long-forgotten childhood.
With beautiful use of colours and inks, Lloyd takes Canelli on a high-speed trip through the filthiest tenements and the darkest recesses of his mind in an effort that reminds us why this creator is one of the greats.
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September 13, 2006 | Trades
Night Trippers
Mark Ricketts & Micah Farritor
Image Comics
$16.99 US
*** 1/2 (out of five)
Sex, blood and rock ‘n’ roll — that’s what England was all about in Night Trippers’ swingin’ 60s.
The vampire set secretly rule the cities, not so much in that ancient cult of evil kind of way, more in a corporate sense.
Darien Pendragon, a very old bloodsucker indeed, controls the way people look, the way they dress and even the music they listen to — and he thinks he may have just found the next big thing.
Enter Dorothy “Dot” Pryce, a full-time nurse who gets caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, but rather than ending up as a snack, becomes England’s new “It” girl.
Meanwhile, a rock lyric-quoting vampire slayer, dubbed the Chelsea Killer, is slashing his way towards a showdown with Pendragon.
So whose side will the seemingly innocent Dot be on when the final conflict comes?
Writer Mark Ricketts and artist Micah Farritor have a smashing time mixing laughs and gore in this inventive new book.
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September 13, 2006 | Trades
Concrete Vol. 6: Strange Armor
Paul Chadwick
Dark Horse Books
$12.95 US (Paperback)
*** 1/2 (out of five)
It is the great Concrete movie that never was.
While the tale of how speechwriter Ron Lithgow was kidnapped by aliens and had his brain inserted into a hulking, gray rock body had been told before, creator Paul Chadwick was never entirely happy with it.
So in the grand tradition of many comic books (and most notably in Hollywood films), Chadwick went back 10 years later and retold the story the way he felt it should be told.
The inspiration? — The creator’s screenplay for the aborted Concrete feature film.
Some changes are more dramatic than others (and it’s up to the individual reader to decide which you prefer), but either way, Strange Armor now stands as the definitive Concrete origin story and an essential in modern post-superhero comics.
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Mike Mignola has got quite the little empire going.
The creator of Hellboy has not only reached legendary status in the comics world, but his character’s leap to the big screen with 2004’s theatrical success and an upcoming Hellboy animated special have helped land him the status of pop-culture icon.
Ahead of his appearance as a guest at the 11th annual Fan Expo Canada (www.fanexpocanada.com) in Toronto from Sept. 1-3, Mignola took some time to talk all things Hellboy and beyond with JPK.
JPK: What do you think about having Hellboy as an animated character?
MM: “I think it’s great. It’s certainly nothing I ever expected, but then that’s the case of so much with Hellboy.
“It was fun to create sort of a third version of Hellboy. If you think of the live-action version as being the second version, this is the third.
“In a way, the animated version falls in between the other two. It’s pretty faithful to the comic, but there are a couple of subtle differences that separate it from both the movie and the comic.
“I’m really happy with what I’ve seen, so far.”
JPK: How is work progressing on Hellboy 2?
MM: “It has bounced around a bit, but it seems like it’s settled down into Universal doing it. I expect we’ll be starting pre-production her e in the next month or so.”
JPK: What kind of involvement are you going to have with this project?
MM: “On both the animated thing and on the movies, I’ve had kind of the same role where I kind of co-plotted the stories. Shortly after Hellboy 1 came out, Guillermo and I sat down and came up with an original story for Hellboy 2 and then he went and wrote the screenplay.
“Once we start pre-production I’ve be involved in doing some of the design stuff and working with other designers — very much what I did in the first picture.”
JPK: How excited are you about seeing Hellboy back on the big screen?
MM: “I would love it. The animation thing is fun, but the live action is just such an interesting process. Animation is kind of like drawing and I think ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand that.’ The live-action thing, the idea of designing these characters and designing these things that then actually have to be built and you have to use actors — it’s so different than anything I usually do. It’s really a fun process.”
JPK: Are there going to be any ties from the plot of your books to the second movie?
MM: “The second film kind of reflects the direction the comic is going now, while the first film covered Hellboy’s origin story which has the Nazis and Rasputin and the Lovecraftian creature stuff.
“One thing that’s always been a feature in Hellboy is the kind of fairy-tale, folklore, old-world mythology stuff — none of which was in the first film. This film has all that stuff.”
JPK: When can readers expect your next Hellboy comic: Darkness Calls?
MM: “Darkness Calls has actually been bumped back. I think right now it’s looking like February.
“We had a changeover with artists and that put us back to square one.”
JPK: What’s the experience like for you to hand over the art duties for the first time on a main Hellboy project?
MM: “I’ve got to say it’s a little awkward because Hellboy, unlike B.P.R.D. and other things, is so close to my heart.
“I originally thought up this story, thinking I would draw it. By the time I actually got down to writing it, I knew that someone else would be drawing it. But it’s still dealing with images and ideas that I’ve had banging around for a lot of years. It’s strange to hand over certain things to other people and say “I was going to draw it this way.’ I can either drive this guy crazy trying to get him to read my mind or I can step back and say ‘I trust you’, which in the case of Duncan (Fegredo), I do.
“For the most part I think Duncan is doing a better job then I ever would have done with the material. You get a richness and a detail in Duncan’s work that just isn’t what I do anymore.”
JPK: Your next Hellboy art project is set for this fall’s Dark Horse Book Of Monsters. Do you have any Hellboy art projects planned for after that?
MM: “I will draw things in the future. I think because I’m trying to do so many different things, at least for the foreseeable future, my art involvement will be small.
“At the end of the latest B.P.R.D. series, I stepped in and drew the last five pages of the series. It was a special moment in the book. I think as Hellboy goes on there will be places where I’ll want to step in and do some special moments.
“There are a couple of stories I do want to do someday, but right now my focus is on keeping the Hellboy stuff going with Duncan, keeping the B.P.R.D. stuff going with John Arcudi and Guy Davis and I’m also writing an Abe Sapien miniseries and a Lobster Johnson miniseries and I’m co-writing a novel right now that I’m also illustrating — I’ve got a lot of stuff.
“I’ve also got a lot of non-Hellboy stories and art projects that I want to do.
“I’ve got a billion things to do. If I sat down and tried to draw a Hellboy thing of any length, it would just never get done and I don’t want to get in the way of expanding all this stuff.”
JPK: You’ve just finished up a three-issue writing arc on Conan. Do you have any appetite to work with any other company’s established characters?
MM: “Not at all. There are a couple of characters it would be fun to draw once, but I can’t imagine doing that stuff because now I’m so used to doing my own thing.”
JPK: Looking ahead to Fan Expo Canada 2006, do you enjoy getting out and meeting your ...
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