Dave's Comic Reviews 2/22/12

So, there are nights at work I'm stuck at the post for sometimes a few hours of absolute zero activity. Lots of people hate this part of the job, but I don't mind it. As long as you got some comics to read. Now that I have the Kindle Fire, I've been able to catch up on a lot of my comic book reading. I've probably read more comics in these past three weeks than I have in the past four years combined. (I do not believe that is exaggeration. And I'm not counting webcomics.)

So I decided to buy a group of comics at a time and read and review them here. A lot of people did this when DC launched the new 52, but they stopped after the first issue. I decided to buy the first five issues and read them. And since there's over 52 new books to read, I thought I'd give my opinions on each of them that I've read thus far. Now, I didn't bother reading any of the Superman, Batman, Green Lantern or Justice League books. I just felt that they're too "ingrained" and less likely to try anything new or different that people may or may not be familiar with. I mean, let's face it... It's less likely that Batman will be cancelled before something like Blackhawks, so I'm actually interested in what could potentially be a complete and interesting story.

Sadly, because doesn't cut the price of their older issues down to $1.99 after a month, I won't be reviewing a lot of Marvel books as I'm not getting much incentive to buy a lot of their books still. Which is sad, but how it goes.

So this is just my personal thoughts on the books. I'll do these up as I read them. Warning, some spoilers are abound...

____________________________________

CAPTAIN ATOM 
Issue read: 1-6

Thoughts: Captain Atom always was one of my favorites. As a kid, he formed a "Holy Quartet" of favorite comic characters, along with Firestorm, Power Girl and Blue Devil. And the last time the Captain got his own story was Captain Atom: Armageddon, and that was a favorite story of mine. So it was pretty natural that I'd give this book a shot at least.

Essentially everything you needed to know about Captain Atom is established right in the first story arc. The first issue didn't really impress me, but the second and third ones did. After saving New York from a silly volcano incident, Nathaniel has realized his powers are evolving, and he's becoming more and more powerful. In the second issue, he goes inside a cancer ridden child's brain to destroy the tumors. And he's successful. Now this idea of the superheroes playing God has been touched upon before, but not like this. Usually they come to some conclusion that it's not their place to decide who lives or who dies, that playing the divine is beyond their capabilities, and so on. But here, Captain Atom decides “I'm gonna do this” where we get to this very intriguing issue that takes place in the span of less than a fraction of a second, where Atom and the Flash carry a conversation at sub-light speeds, casually walking around, plucking fired bullets out of the air, to make sure they don't hit their targets. It's a really interesting story, conceptually.

But the book is not without it's flaws. To be honest, I could give a crap less about ANY of the supporting cast members. There's no real antagonists in this comic thus far. We've had General Eilings, who to be bluntly honest... While still an asshole, I have trouble calling him an outright villain. The next antagonist is a guy, who's the boyfriend of a girl that befriends Captain Atom. He believes that Nathaniel is just too dangerous to be around, and unfortunately, he ends up being right. And finally is the big bad in this comic, which is just a rat. Literally, it's a rat. A rat that was given Captain Atom's abilities. (He was the lab rat they used before testing the quantum experiments on Nathaniel.) And toward the story's conclusion, the climax of it just falls into that typical “I'll use an unknown energy force to defeat my enemy” trope, and I was less than wowed.

However the ramifications of the storyline has shown that Captain Atom can now create the inorganic into organic tissues. He's essentially becoming something like Dr. Manhattan. (But still in firm grasp of his humanity.) Now this intrigues me, because long term, this will make writing the guy really difficult. However, I'm under NO illusion that this comic will be around for years and years. I'll be surprised if it lasts to it's 25th issue. Why? Because it's not Batman, Green Lantern or Superman. So that means that this comic will eventually have a conclusion, and when it gets there, it has some serious potential to be impressively memorable. The art is really beautiful, not just with the covers by Artgerm, but the interior art by Freddie Williams II as well. And the dialogue is decent too, it's just the overall plotting and pacing... Well... I REALLY wanted to be blown away by this book, but as it is, while I did like it a lot, I wasn't floored. I like a lot of the ideas that the comic has come up with, and it has the serious potential to be a really great comic, but however conceptually engaging the book is, it's still in dire need of more interesting supporting cast members...

...Which if I recall correctly, was the problem of the original Captain Atom series from the 80s.

Future purchases: I'll buy it as it comes out. However, if it doesn't start to improve, I might end up letting it fall behind a bit and build up some issues and read them at a cheaper price.

Rating: C+ (Potential to be higher though, and I'm a huge fan of potential.)

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VOODOO
Issues read: 1-5

Thoughts: You know how when you see a movie or read a comic, and you know it's going to be stupid crap... And you're totally expecting it, but you're thinking it'll be some stupid-fun. It's totally dumb, but entertainingly fun. And then you see it, and you're surprised it takes itself too seriously. That's Voodoo. I had zero expectations with this book. Honestly, I was basically expecting a comic that is a guilty pleasure book. Some silly 1990's type of story, with some cheesy dialogue and tons of unneeded fanservice. I mean, we open to a couple of special agents working for the Black Razors (who I'm glad they brought over from the Wildstorm universe) as they're on stakeout, observing Priscilla Kitean, AKA Voodoo. I should mention the stakeout is in an upscale strip joint, and that one of the agents is a lecherous jerk. And you'd think that with that kind of set up, it's all perfect of a stupid and fun sort of sleazy kind of comic. What I got was a comic story that read a little too fast and seemed to think it was more than what it really deserved to be...

...It also gave me an completely unlikable main character.

Now, I'm not saying “Oh no, how dare they ruin Voodoo!” It's flippin' Voodoo. There's nothing there to ruin in the first place. The last time she was written with dignity, Captain Atom was mopping the floor with the WildC.A.T.s' asses. But I read these comics and just kept wondering how this comic got made. You see, the character of Voodoo is a scout for an alien invasion of Daemonites, who's wanting to find out information on Earth's heroes. So as a result, she's an alien who shows no mercy in killing completely innocent people. (Seriously, you could make an argument for when she killed some of the Black Razors or military guard, in that it was a form of self defense or something. But when she's killing truck drivers and harmless computer data entry people, there's not a whole hell of a lot to make her all that damn endearing. In issue #5, Voodoo gets into a fight for her life against a full blooded Daemonite, who also was running around killing indiscriminately. So the concern was “Will this unlikeable character be killed by this other unlikable character?” My answer was ultimately: Who cares?

The bigger problem here is that the supporting characters in this comic, you can tell are SUPPOSED to be the bad guys, but they're SOOO much more likable. Agent Fallon and 'Black Jack' Bolton (who reminds me a lot of Major Force) are so much more interesting to read about, and I find myself wishing this was their book instead. Now it's only been five issues, and we've already had a new writer come on board here, which tells me that they have no idea what the hell to do with this book either. The end of the fifth issue revealed that Voodoo is a clone is that the real Voodoo was captured sometime ago, which makes me wonder if the new writer thought the same thing I did, and wanted to salvage this book and character by giving it a more likable main protagonist. But that's just speculation. (And I don't blame the writer, Ron Marz. He has written good stuff before. I just suspect he was given something he just didn't know how to make it work. And I'm not familiar enough with the new writer to have an opinion yet.)

On the bright side, the idea of an alien scout, doing research for an invasion, but slowly finding herself to be more human is an appealing story... And there are lots of characters who have done this “what makes these humans worth saving?” angles. Hell, Mera in Aquaman is going through one now. (Except, that's, y'know... Good.) But the first four issues have done nothing but make me hope the main character buys it. The fifth issue gives me a little hope for the future, but not a whole hell of a lot. The art however, by Sami Basri and Jessica Kholinne is actually very pretty to look at. They're wonderful storytellers, and might make this turd shine.

All in all, I'm not impressed. I really wasn't expecting much, but when my expectations was already lowered, and it didn't even meet those... We got a problem there. Like I said, maybe the new direction might salvage this.

But you'll forgive me if I don't hold my breath.

Future Purchases: I'll give it one more issue, but I'm waiting until the price goes down. If issue #6 sucks too, then I'll just wait and see what new projects the art team of Basri and Kholinne goes to, and give that a shot instead.

Rating: D+ (Saved from failure due to the beautiful art.)

Not much to babble about.

One of the problems with updating a blog on a regular basis is that occasionally from time to time, you just don't have anything important to say. I would love to give you all an update about the comic, but it's not progressed any farther than when we last left off. I'm still fleshing out the script, it's coming along great, and I'll probably have more artwork for it soon, but other than that... There's not much else new to say. I haven't really watched a lot of stupid movies to do a write up about... I've mainly been watching either good old fashion classic movies that are the farthest thing from “stupid”, or stupid movies that I think are awesome, but they're pretty obvious ones. Like Transformers: Dark of the Moon... It made a billion dollars, and since it was better than the second movie, and you all know I LIKED the second movie... It really would be wasting time to sit here and tell you my obvious opinions about the film. (At least with the second one, there could be some reading entertainment in watching me try and justify liking an awful movie.) I have been watching with great zeal though, the Discovery Channel's documentary “When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions” which basically talks about the history of the United States Space Program from the Mercury Program in the 1960s, all the way to the mid 2000s. It's pretty in-depth, and extremely fascinating for me. You really get a true sense of the ingenuity that the NASA engineers put into the whole program. Oh yeah, ingenuity and duct tape. Lots and lots of duct tape. I've always been a huge fan of space travel and to be bluntly honest... NASA's current standing pisses me off like you wouldn't believe. (For those curious, the NASA documentary is actually a bit of research as well, as Marica from Firecracker is a big space buff.)

I did recently buy a Kindle Fire and I've caught up on my comic reading like you would not believe. Sure it can do a lot more like movie watching, MP3, and so on... But I mainly use it for comic book reading, and I've probably read more comics in this past week than I have in the entirety of 2011. It's probably the best $200 I've spent in a long time. I know a lot of people have told me that if I'm going to get one I might as well get an iPad... But I got to be honest: I don't need THAT much. I mean, if I'm going to type up a large amount of text, like an email, blog or forum post, I'll use this computer. I'm not going to do artwork on it, nor am I going to do be listening to music on it either. (That's what I got a MP3 player for.) I use it for reading comics, books, and the occasional websites. That's it. I'm not doing online banking, or stock trading. I'm not chatting or posting on Twitter. I'm just wanted to read. And seriously, I really have to give it a lot of praise. My only complaint is that I do wish the screen was bigger, and there are times that my gigantic gorilla fingers have trouble hitting the not all that sensitive touchscreen buttons. It's far from perfect, but for being a first generation table from Amazon, it's well worth the $200 I think. And at about $300 less than an iPad or the Samsung Galaxy to boot! (Also it's given me a lot to think about when it comes to comic book distribution. Like having the webcomic, and then offering the issue for digital download for a small price with extra content. Like exclusive pages.)

Anyway, the picture of Max to the side there is me just working with some redesigns of some recurring characters Shadowgirls that will be popping up in Firecracker. (Not as main characters, but as occasional guests.) Since Firecracker will take place five years after SG, I figured some of those characters were due for a redesign, and I figured I'd start with Max here since she's in the first story.

I'll have more soon.

Reboots suck.

It was this or a picture of Enzo.

I've talked about this a long time ago, about respecting the rules of the franchise's universe you're working in. Whether it be sparkling vampires or not understanding that robots can have brothers, you always need to read up a bit and learn a little bit about the story you're working on. It never hurts to at least acknowledge that you're familiar with what came before, even if you're not fond of it... Because that way, you avoid reboots. Honestly, I am a huge opponent of reboots. In fact, I often find a reboot to be the lazy coward's way out of a complex problem. When DC comics relaunched last September, like a lot of people, I wasn't too hot about it. I mean, while there are some books I absolutely love, like Aquaman. (And I gotta admit, I've developed a bit of guilty pleasure for 'My Greatest Adventures') But I'm not too sure if it was worth losing a married Lois and Clark, as well as Stephanie Brown's well deserved graduation to the pointy eared cowl.

He's basically be the same character from
TF: Animated, but I have to admit, I'm
very glad he returned in TF: Prime.

One of the biggest problems I believe that hurts franchises like you wouldn't believe is the constant rebooting. Transformers actually suffers from this to a degree that the fans probably don't realize. Because we know any time now, a reboot WILL happen, it makes it really hard to become emotionally attached to any version of a story. One of the reasons the Generation One universe was so prominent for Transformers Fans is because it was so long lived. That universe was ongoing from 1984 all the way until 2000. Since then, there's been three universe reboots with that franchise. (Robots in Disguise, the Unicron Trilogy, and Animated. Only the Movie and Aligned universe are still intact... For now.) And because of this, if we mention Bulkhead, we now have to specify WHICH Bulkhead we're talking about. And the fact that the team line-up of the Autobots from Animated to Prime are almost virtually identical, outside of swapping out a brooding ninja badboy motorcycle with a brooding ninja badgirl motorcycle, I'm not sure if it makes it better or worse. And it's not just the toy robots. We have a new Spider-Man movie coming out this summer, which is in turn a reboot, from a franchise that didn't really NEED a reboot. Whether you liked Spider-Man 3 or not, other than Venom, nothing was so screwed up that a reboot was necessary. I mean, unless you just laid a 'Batman and Robin' onto the public, a reboot should be the absolute last resort. And even then, I'm not too sure a reboot was needed. (I'm glad they did it, but you could have worked around it.)

If Frank can overcome
THIS, then everyone
else has no excuse.

And that's one of the problems I've noticed with out entertainment culture. We're too eager to scrap what came before and start over again. It's almost like if we have one bad story in the series, we think the entire thing is tainted, and needs to be “re-done right” which is just crazy. If James Bond scrapped the entire series every time he had a crappy movie... Hell, we would have never gotten out of the Roger Moore films. Part of a long established history of a franchise is the bad crap too. The Punisher's had some great stories told over the years by Chuck Dixon, Mike Baron, and Garth Ennis. He's also had some horribly stupid pieces of crap that you cannot believe got approved, such as 'Punisher dies and becomes a vigilante angel' (which just wears off), and 'Punisher gets a surgery to make him a black man' (which wears off in three issues), and 'Punisher gets turned into a Frankenstein monster' (which he's magically healed from.) Every franchise that's worth a crap has these stories. For every 'Wrath of Khan', there's a 'Final Frontier'. We're human. No matter how good people like to think we can be, eventually, we all tell an Episode II. Unless you have severely screwed things up so badly that you can't even ignore it like Highlander 2, the answer is never to restart it over. I'm a firm believer in the theory of “Make that piece of shit shine.”

If you tell a crappy story, just counter it with a good one. And that's how you do it. Some people believe it's just easier to just trash it or start over again, and while it's true it's easier... It's not better. Because no one really likes sitting through the origin story over and over again. And unless you have screwed things up to a level of giving Superman a bastard child and making him a deadbeat father, it really is better to just move on and tell a better story. 2008's Hulk movie was one of the best ways I've seen this done. It didn't contradict the 2003 movie and still served as a sequel to it, but at the same time, it didn't dwell on it either, making it a decent movie that stood alone. Just don't dwell on the garbage... Move on and tell better. I think it's why the current issues of the Transformers comics are so amazing. Yes, it's following up on a massive cataclysm that came at the conclusion of a rather lackluster run of stories, but they're not dwelling upon it. They're just telling good stories. They even made Drift cool. (Imagine my surprise at that!) Yeah, that almost two and a half year run of lukewarm stories still exists, but it's in the past now, and if they had rebooted the universe again, we wouldn't have the stories we got now. It's like the old phrase of “why is there evil?”

“Why are there bad stories?” So we can appreciate the good ones.

Caught up and ready.

Lord, it's been a long couple of weeks...

Long story short, if you remember that new job I started... Well, they've been pushing to get my immediate traiing out of the way as soon as possible. So I've been working schedule shifts all over the place, third shift one day, followed by first shift the second, and some days, both first and third shift in the same day. My legs have murdering me like a crazy Victorian lady with a hatchet. The good news to that is that I've lost some weight because of it. Bad news is that I have been able to do jack shit as far as productivity goes for this last few weeks. I still got one more day or training this Saturday, which is a dual shift day, but after that... It'll stabilize. (Hey, I'm still just happy to be working.) It didn't help that last week, my modem burnt out and I realized just how much of my life was tied into the internet, which I must admit... Disturbed me a touch. Realizing how much simple little things, like checking the web for my bank account status, movie times and info, news, weather, and even silly flash games. (And that's not even getting into the big things like reading webcomics, checking email, forums and good old fashioned pornography.) Obviously, as you're reading this now, we got a new modem... But the fact it went out right as I was starting to work those hectic and overwhelming work schedules... It's an understatement to say that I was rather impatient and very irritable during that time.

Now to be bluntly honest, I haven't had a real chance to break loose and do half the crap I've been wanting to do for the last few months due to the job and commissions. I mean, my friend Jen got me a new computer I haven't had a lot of opportunities to get really experimental with, and my friend James got me these really neat 'crow quill' like pens, I've been really dying to break out and try new things with. But with the completion of that, I've able to actually get to work on comic book work, finally. It seems like I've been talking about it forever, but it's been a road with quite a few obstacles that's now passed. The commission above was the last of the commissions I had to get taken care of. I've been playing a bit with coloring techniques.

A few weeks ago, I read a really fascinating article (that, of course, I cannot find the link to) about market branding for comic creators. Now, even during the production of Shadowgirls, these were ideas I had in mind to do, and it was really neat to see that other people had the same ideas and implemented them with success. So after reviewing everything, Black Banshee, which I had been planning on doing next... Has been shelved for the time being, so I can focus 100% on Firecracker. I know the kind of comic I want to produce, and I got a feeling I know the kind of comic the people reading this blog wants to read.

I've been giving a lot of thought about this, for well over a year now. (Ask my friend Silphy. She can verify this.) When to comes to comics, there's a certain kind of comic I've been wanting to read again for years. There's been a few of these over the years, but far too often, they're the exception instead of the rule. (I've talked about the Captain America: Fighting Avenger comic, as well as Batman: Mad Love.) Pasty Walker: Hellcat is another, almost any of the 2002-on-up Power Pack miniseries, as well as the Marvel Adventures: Avengers comic. (Seriously, there was an issue where all the Avengers turned into M.O.D.O.Ks. It was freakin' awesome.) But a large majority of the books tend to be overly dramatic and needlessly dark and depressing books that are supposed to invoke the feelings of gothic noir, despite the fact it's freakin' people in tights. It shouldn't be silly and insulting, but it should be freakin' fun. That's the comics I want to do and that's the comics I'm going to do. So, now that I'm caught up with commissions and outside obligations, I plan to begin major production, right now. And since there's only like seventy or so people reading this blog, you're going to be privy to inside character concepts, and semi-spoilers about what to expect from Firecracker. So far, what I've written, I'm happy with, and I hope I can excite you all with what I got in mind.

(By the way, the Transformers Mosaics are still happening. Just there's no rush on those.)

Transformers: Mosaics... At least the ones I did.

Well, I thought I'd talk a bit about my upcoming plans a bit. I've mentioned I've been doing some scripting, and I am. But I still want to keep drawing while I'm working the script out. (I'm a lot less polished of a writer than you may think.) In the meanwhile, I plan to do a few more Transformers: Mosaics. If you're not familiar with Mosaics, it's really simple. They're one page fancomics. There's a lot of fan artists and writers in the Transformers fanbase, and quite frankly... This is a really wonderful addition to the fanbase, allowing for some real true creativity, not to mention, discovering of some amazing new talent that people aren't even aware of... Yet. Some have been very good. (Aaaaand some have been EXTREMELY bad. Goes with the territory of fanfiction, I suppose.) You can read the archives here.

I've done a couple of these in past years. None recently, at least not since I moved back up to Michigan in '08, but now I planning on doing a few more. I have a few stories I'd like to tell, and since they're just one page long... Why not? (Not to mention, it keeps me drawing, and that's something I need to keep doing.) So I thought I'd post the three Mosaic's I've done. The first two are entirely done by me, but the last one I only just colored. Thing to remember though is that they are fan works, so a lot of them are not all too accessible by the average reader. So apologies ahead of time for it. (By the way, with the future comic scripts, like Firecracker and Black Banshee, this is something I'm trying to avoid doing.)

The first one was done around early Winter of '08, I think? (Can't have been sooner.) It was a story involving the thoughts behind Megatron of the Beast Era of shows. (That would be the 90's Beast Wars and Beast Machines. He's not the same Megatron that's popularly known in Generation One or the movies.) One of the issues brought up by the fandom at the time was that it was never relly explained why Megatron went from a revolutionary terrorist to a guy who basically imprisoned the sparks of the entire population and repopulated the planet with mindless automatons he controlled. I thought it might be an interesting challenge to explain that. Now one of the problems that occurred was that this Megatron had a habit of talking in long rambling and somewhat interesting Machiavellian speeches... And I kinda overdid the wordiness and made a few misuses of tense. The script probably could have used another pass to tighten up the words. However, I did like the art in this one, especially the coloring in the first panel. I was actually rather proud of myself for using the BM Megatron toy as a reference as opposed to the cartoon show or the Transmetal 2 Megatron toy. (I actually don't mind the toy, despite it's flaws.)

This second one was done around late Summer of '08. Occasionally with Transformers, Hasbro (the company that makes the toys) will occasionally lose the rights to a name. Either they'll have to add a qualifier to the name (such as 'Turbo Tracks' or 'Autobot Jazz') and other times they'll have to call them something else all together. (Such as Trailbreaker now being 'Trailcutter' and Outback having to go by the name 'Fallback'.) Generally this sucks, but what can you do? Other than Hot Rod, Bluestreak to Silverstreak was probably the most well known example of the name changing. And I thought that considering Bluestreak's irrational and talkative nature, it might be kinda fun to explain why he changed his name. This one was really well-received, which is funny because it's wordier than the first one... But I think it's got more to do with the fact it's an exchange of dialogues as opposed to an internal monologue. Also, the sheer amounts of in-jokes probably helped. And I'll be honest... I liked how I colored it, but I thought my lineart was especially weak in this. It was also the last major Transformers comic I personally drew. I was happy to draw Smokescreen as his Alternators toy for this one, as opposed to his traditional look... I always thought it was a better looking toy. (And for those curious, Hasbro regained the rights to the name Bluestreak again.)

I wanted to do another one, but obligations to Shadowgirls understandably prevented that. But during this time I did a shitload of them for Martin Fisher where I just lettered. You can find them in the link above. By the way, as a side note, I'm currently lettering a comic that he and Mark Miller wrote called Luna: Order of theWerewolf. It's in comic stores now. (A lot of people don't realize but I actually do quite a bit of lettering.) However, one of the Mosaics I colored last summer. It was written by Fisher and drawn by Jeremy Tiongson... I only colored it, but the combination of the Jeremy's lineart and my colors... I think it turned out exceptionally beautiful. I was really proud how I did the lighting effects in this one. And the story, it's really accessible so there isn't much you need to know... It's Drag Strip, and he's a dick.

So yeah, while I'm writing Firecracker, I got a few of these short stories written out. Like I mentioned before with Robots in Disguise, I'm really feeling nostalgic lately, and I'd like to revisit some old stomping grounds. Even if it is just for a short little visit...

...Because how else are you going to find out why Megatron hasn't killed Starscream yet?