Sunday, January 29, 2012

Comic book review roundup

1. Batman: The Black Mirror by Scott Snyder, Jock, and Francesco Francavilla: Jock's covers and Francavilla's interior illustrations (especially his colors!) are terrific. But the story's a lackluster rehash of Batman stories I've read many times before, and if all of the issues had been drawn by Jock (he drew about half of the issues), I wouldn't have even bothered finishing it. Certainly not bad, but it's been grossly overpraised by critics (or the praise reflects how terrible the vast majority of comics were in 2011).

2. Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba: Why are all the good non-super hero comics emotionally devastating? If that's what you're looking for, you'll enjoy this. I'm not looking for misery in my recreational reading.

3. Ultimate Comics Avengers: Blade vs. the Avengers by Mark Millar and Steve Dillon: I love everything by Steve Dillon, and this was no exception. Really fun.

4. Hellboy Volume 11: The Bride of Hell and Others: Just the latest solid collection of Hellboy short stories illustrated by various all-stars. Hellboy in Mexico, illustrated by Richard Corben and starring a battle between Hellboy and a demonic luchador, is the standout.

5. X-Force: Sex and Violence, Deathlok Nation, and The Dark Angel Saga, Book 1: I loved, loved, loved The Apocalypse Solution, so I went and bought every other collection I could find. These were all fine, but none were great. I found Deathlok Nation to be more confusing than fun, and I never cared for the Age of Apocalypse storyline or character designs (Wolverine especially looks like an idiot), so it was tough to enjoy The Dark Angel Saga too much.

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