As Greg Rucka was writing two Wonder Woman storylines simultaneously, probably to keep the same artist for the duration of each arc, allowing them extra time to draw the issues while also sticking to DC’s double-shipping schedule, his second Wonder Woman Rebirth book doesn’t follow on from the first - instead it’s a retelling of her origin. For the umpteenth time. Sigh. While the title “Year One” references the classic Batman book of the same name, Wonder Woman: Year One is unfortunately nowhere near the same quality.
Set in pre-war South England, a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman called Fanshawe is asked by his mate to look after his wife Sukie while he’s away at sea. The naiveté of some folk, eh? Fanshawe and Sukie end up having an affair, but, with the ever-encroaching spectre of war and the uptight morals of 1930s British society, what will become of their love?
Marvel meets Agatha Christie in Deadpool: Too Soon? A group of Marvel characters are invited to a secluded country mansion and then one of them is murdered. It’s up to Wade to do his best Miss Marple impression and find out whodunit!
A long time ago (65 million years to be precise) in a galaxy not too far away… on Earth in fact! A sophisticated, yet deeply violent, space empire existed during the time of the dinosaurs led by Darkseid rip-off #576. His wife gets sick of his barbaric ways, takes their kids and runs – Darkseid-wannabe gives chase. And that’s Empress!
The first issue of the four-part miniseries Loose Ends was published in 2007 and the fourth issue was finally published this week, ten years later! Was it worth the wait? Sorta…
Billed as a “Southern crime romance”, Loose Ends is about a drug runner and a waitress who hit the road ahead of gangsters the drug runner ripped off who want them dead.
Rachel hasn’t had the best life: her dad left when she was a baby and her manipulative, cruel mother took his identity with her to the grave. Her cold husband divorced her after she had a mental breakdown covering the Haiti earthquake, the trauma causing her to lose her job as a journalist as well as turning her into a shut-in. By chance she meets her future second husband and the love of her life, Brian, who slowly helps turn things around for her. Until she realises he’s been lying to her since Day 1 about who he is and what he does. So who is “Brian” really and what does he do? Deadly consequences await Rachel as she begins to look into her beloved husband’s secret life…!
Hear that? That’s the sound of DC scraping the bottom of the Rebirth barrel with a title no-one was looking for: Blue Beetle! Just the name itself conjures up the lazy hackery that superhero comics can too often be. And, yes, Blue Beetle Rebirth is pure hack comics.
So this was terrible!
Bruce is trying to buy an island from another rich guy for reasons. Some French doofus wants to buy the island instead. Two-Face has gathered together some carnival freaks, whom he feels an affinity for because of his deformed face, and wants to put them on a zeppelin to somewhere - maybe the island? Apparently this is a story - and it completely sucks!
The art looks like a bad David Mazzucchelli wannabe’s efforts. Even by Matt Wagner’s standards - the hack who gave us Monster Men and The Mad Monk - this is an awful Batman book. Don’t bother with Batman: Feces.
America is DOOMED! So argues Pulitzer Prize-winning author Chris Hedges convincingly in Empire of Illusion which critically examines 21st century American culture (or lack thereof!) and how things got this point.
Marvel cash in on election fever with miniseries Vote Loki where the God of Mischief decides to run for US President (which he can do through some contrived bullshit), er, just to fuck with people? I suppose that is mischievous. Shame it’s not at all entertaining or worth reading!
I guess the commentary here is that Loki’s surprising popularity by being brazenly immoral shows the voting public as fickle and easily misled by a power-hungry villain (hint: TRUMP) as well as being fed up with politics as usual; ie. obvious observations. Except, regarding the ending, Christopher Hastings gave the voting public too much credit in believing they actually care about substance in this day and age!
It might sound like a fun concept on paper but Vote Loki was a tedious bore, like most campaign literature!
Originally The Wrath was conceived as a version of Bruce Wayne that chose a darker path - someone who allowed hate to consume him and who grew up as a similarly-costumed figure, deciding to gun down cops in misguided revenge for his parents’ deaths. He was actually a compelling character and I’d highly recommend Batman: The Wrath to any Batman fans to find out why for themselves as well as for an entertaining read.
For Dragon Ball alone, Akira Toriyama is one of my favourite comics creators ever but, having recently read the first volume of Dr Slump and now Sand Land, he unfortunately doesn’t seem to have made any great books outside of Dragon Ball!
A young student called Clay returns to Los Angeles for Christmas break to see friends and family. His visit reads something like this: “We’re rich kids in LA! Let’s do drugs and have sex – we’re soooo hedonistic and transgressive! Ooo, let’s have sex again and do MORE drugs!” Repeat for 200 pages and you’ve got Bret Easton Ellis’ debut novel Less Than Zero!
Rarely he’ll surprise with a decent book but I usually find that Greg Pak writes near-unreadable comics and, yup, he does it again with Silver Surfpants: Drivel-ution!
While Galactus takes a bath in our Sun for some reason, Surfpants hangs out on Earth. The High Evolutionary takes his Power Cosmic because whatever and then the fucking retard tries to terraform the moon! Also, Future Foundation because blah.
This one’s the whole package: bad action, dull characters, crap story, bland art, arbitrary love interest you couldn’t possibly give a shit about and an all-pervasive crushing sense of immense boredom. Greg Hack strikes again!
If you want to quash the urge to ever read Silver Surfpants comics again, check out the crapitude that is this book. What a load of bollocks!
