Archive for October, 2006
October 23, 2006 | Trades
Zombee
Miles Gunter, Victor Santos
Image Comics
$12.99 US (Paperback)
*** (out of five)
A samurai, a ninja and a Zen Monk walk into a zombie-filled brothel…
Sounds like the opening line to an interesting joke, but this gory combination is the premise for Zombee, a fun “Night Of The Living Dead meets The Seven Samurai” kind of thing from the twisted minds of Miles Gunter and Victor Santos.
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October 23, 2006 | Trades
Batman And The Monster Men
Matt Wagner
DC Comics
$19.99/$14.99 US (Paperback)
*** (out of five)
Something nasty is turning up in Gotham City — body parts with bite marks in them.
This quaint retro tale sees a young and decidedly less Dark Knight trying to figure out what kind of monster(s) could be doing this to people, while precariously balancing something even scarier — hiding his secret life as a vigilante from his girlfriend.
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October 23, 2006 | Trades
The Wicked West II: Abomination & Other Tales
Todd Livingston, Robert Tinnell, Neil Vokes
Image Comics
$15.99 US (Paperback)
*** (out of five)
Vampires, zombies, ghosts, monsters and more: It’s all par for the course in The Wicked West.
Cotton Coleridge is out for revenge on 13 men who wronged him and he’s not going to let any of the numerous things that go bump in the Wild West night from finding them.
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October 9, 2006 | Trades
Cancer Vixen
Marisa Acocella Marchetto
Knopf Canada
$29.95 (Hardcover)
**** (out of five)
It’s the most gripping episode of Sex And The City that never was.
Amid the shoe shopping, the obsessing about men and the excessive downing of trendy drinks in a never-ending quest to find the “it” things in New York City, doctors find a malignant tumour in Carrie Bradshaw’s left breast.
That’s essentially the premise of Marisa Acocella Marchetto’s autobiographical comic Cancer Vixen, with the minor addendums that she is an illustrator instead of a sex columnist and she seems a hell of a lot brighter than Ms. Bradshaw (though the shoe fetish is eerily similar).
With painstaking detail and a raw emotional tone, Marisa takes readers on a roller-coaster ride with her from the time of her diagnosis (just three weeks before her wedding) to surgery, chemotherapy and, thankfully, recovery.
Blended into this story are an insightful remembrance of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and a sweet love story involving Marisa and her now-husband Silvano.
Cancer Vixen, released in conjunction with Breast Cancer Awareness Month, is a harsh dose of reality, but told with a mix of humour, insight, love and hope that is hard to overlook.
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October 9, 2006 | Trades
Shenzhen
Guy Delisle
Drawn & Quarterly
$24.95/$19.95 US (Hardcover)
*** 1/2 (out of five)
If Guy Delisle has many more “fish-out-of-water” trips to Asia, he may just turn up floating at the top of the bowl.
This Quebecois artist, now living in France and working for an animation company that outsources work to foreign markets, delighted readers with his wistful and perceptive illustrated journey to North Korea’s capital with his critically acclaimed book, Pyongyang.
This time, Delisle is dispatched on a months-long stint in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. While things aren’t exactly rosy in this neo-communist metropolis (the edges of the city are blocked off with guard towers and electrified fences), it’s a heck of a lot less messed up than the artist’s portrayal of life in North Korea and it makes for a bit of a letdown. Sure things are odd there, but aren’t things odd in any foreign city where you don’t speak the language or know all the customs?
Still, Delisle does have a knack for painting himself as a likeable everyman in a strange land that makes Shenzhen very much worth a try.
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October 9, 2006 | Trades
Infinite Crisis
Geoff Johns & Phil Jimenez w/Andy Lanning, George Perez, Jerry Ordway, Ivan Reis
DC Comics
$33.99/$24.99 US (Hardcover)
**** (out of five)
“Heroes will live, heroes will die and the DC Universe will never be the same again.”
That’s a quite a billing to live up to, but darned if Infinite Crisis didn’t do it (whether that’s an entirely good thing is a debate for another day).
After years of hints and teases, months of lead-in tales and countless dozens of issues, Infinite Crisis arrived — from the first electric issue featuring the dramatic split of DC’s holy triumvirate of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman to the stunning return of the original superhero, the revelation of just who was behind all the chaos gripping the DCU and the culminating battles that cost many a hero — including a couple with an “S” on their chest — their lives.
The result was the most ground-shaking series the DCU has felt since 1985’s original Crisis On Infinite Earths and an absolute must-own for every comic fan.
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October 9, 2006 | Trades
The Walking Dead Vol. 5: The Best Defense
Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Cliff Rathburn
Image Comics
$12.99 US (Paperback)
**** (out of five)
It never ceases to amaze me how Robert Kirkman can take a nightmarish situation and make it worse — month after month after month.
He’s already got his group of survivors holed up in an abandoned prison, eking out an existence and surrounded by the spectre of death after the world is overrun with the zombies, but as this fifth paperback collection begins there is a new twist: After months of not meeting another living person, a helicopter is spotted in the sky. Where did it come from? Where is it going? Are they finally saved?
Oh wait, it just crashed.
When three of our heroes go looking for survivors they end up finding a lot more than they bargained for and the result is rape, torture, cannibalism and mutilation, not necessarily in that order.
Kirkman, along with artists Charlie Adlard and Cliff Rathburn, continues to up the ante in this gripping horror masterpiece.
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