This is the format of the book: 60-ish pages, about half are blank (to signify memory gaps – geddit? ART!) and there are about 15 vignettes of “characters” who have memory problems. One page has a small picture of the “character” with their name underneath, the next page has two, three, sometimes four sentences describing their memory problem, then the third page is a full page illustration. These three pages repeat for each of the “characters” and then the book ends with a quote from Jorge Luis Borges – ART!
And we are done!
That’s it, the last Dragon Ball book – finished.
Boohoohoo!! What am I going to read now – Marvel and DC superheroes seem crappier in comparison!
Ahh… but what a great ending! It went out with a bang in the best possible way. I am totally satisfied.
Going into this book, you know Son Goku is going to beat Boo and I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that he does – what, he was going to lose, everyone would die and Boo would fly off, ready to destroy everything else in the universe? But there’s absolutely no way in knowing how it gets to that point, and I loved that unpredictability.
Oh Superman, here you are again in another crappy book. Why’s it so durn tricky to write you a good storyline, eh?
Well, “storyline” isn’t quite the word for Superman: The Journey, the subtitle ironically being a mockery of the concept of a narrative. Because The Journey isn’t a story - it’s a mish-mash of random Superman issues from the Identity/Infinite Crisis era with no connection or point to any of it. It should be called Superman: The Stalled Journey That Ended Up in a Ditch.
I’ll just say it: I’m not a fan of Kelly Sue DeConnick’s writing. I tried her Captain Marvel and didn’t like it; Pretty Deadly was full of unrealised potential that divulged into a turgid mess; and one issue of Ghost was enough. So I was REALLY surprised when I picked up her Avengers book and found myself laughing at the banter and enjoying the book. She surprised me in the best possible way and made me want to give her Captain Marvel another shot.
Here’s what I’ve noticed about modern superhero comics - they split into two camps. You either get a good character story or you get a well-plotted story. The great books are the ones that have both but the good ones usually do one or the other, while the weaker ones do crap versions of those types while the awful ones achieve neither.
This past summer’s Valiant event Armor Hunters was pretty light on the Hunters’ backgrounds (the villains of the series) and centred mostly on Aric, the hero of XO Manowar. Ironically, this XO Manowar book features the Armor Hunters prominently with but a brief appearance from Aric at the end.
This is the book that should’ve led up to Armor Hunters. What the event lacked was any grounding in the villains of the story – we didn’t really know who they were, we just knew that they travelled the galaxy destroying Manowar armors. This book takes a look at Reebo, the leader of the Armor Hunters, and Malgam, the man with the deformed Manowar armor who attacked Aric in volume 6, and reveals how they met/became Hunters, etc.
George Romero’s first three zombie movies are classics of the genre: Night/Dawn/Day of the Living Dead are great films (the latter is more of a stretch but it’s still very decent). But Romero’s last three zombie films - Land/Diary/Survival of the Dead? Turdtacular movies. It’s like Romero is trying to do everything he can to dismantle his legacy with those bad zombie movies!
And with Empire of the Dead, Act One (which I’m guessing every movie studio he pitched it to turned down so he sold it to Marvel as a comic because The Walking Dead sells, eh?), I just wish he’d retire and let the Dead series die.
Every 90 years the gods are resurrected as young people. They live for 2 years and then they disappear. This time around they’ve come back as rock gods, pop and rap stars. Except somebody wants them dead. After a thwarted assassination attempt, Lucifer is taken to the dock for the deaths of the would-be killers - and seemingly makes the judge’s head go SPLAT! Did she do it - or is Luci being framed? It’s up to mega-fangirl Laura to find out!
The Young Avengers creative team of Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie and Matthew Wilson (Mike Norton joined another band) reunite for The Wicked + The Divine, an epic fantasy/music murder mystery with a cast of gods! Like Young Avengers, Wicked is a very current comic for 2014 audiences, referencing a lot of what’s happening now and incorporating it into its structure. It’s also rather good!
SPOILERS
Yes yes YES to all of this!
In the penultimate Dragon Ball Z book, Akira Toriyama decides, “Hey, I’m not coming back after this series is done so let’s just go CRAZY!” - and he does! Everyone except maybe 10 people on the entire planet are killed by Boo, including almost everyone in the DBZ cast - I mean, why not, right? Then heaven starts getting irreparably smashed up!
Boo is the most awesome bad guy. He’s transformed from the cute pudgy weirdo into this lean, mean psychotic machine. He’s so freakin’ evil he not only killed his master but he killed himself - and came back even more evil! I love how menacing and powerful he is.
A bloke wakes up in a field in the middle of the night in his underpants – who hasn’t been there, amirite fellas? And then a coked-up Bible salesman hustles him into his car - woaaah! And then bikers and Trekkie cosplayers are chasing them - wooooooooooooaaaaaaaahhh! What it could all woaaaaaaah!
Yeah, The Field is a bit nutty. It’s surreality reminds me of The Twilight Zone, until we get to the third act and the whole thing falls apart. Up until then though it’s not bad, even if you have no idea what’s going on - in fact, I’d say the confusion is what I liked best about this book!
The synopsis on the back of Dead Body Road is simply: “The men involved in his wife’s death must now die. All of them.” and yet I think even that seems to be over-explaining things. It should read instead “Guns go bang bang car hits people die die die fuck!”. That’s the level of superficiality we’re dealing with in Dead Body Road.
This is the type of action story that even Nic Cage, who accepts every job offer thanks to his massive tax bill, would baulk at. From the first page, it’s non-stop action without any preamble. Some people rob a bank, some people die. Then one guy decides to kill a bunch of other guys. A woman decides to kill some people too, as do some bikers. They spend the entire book shooting guns at each other until enough of them die.
Francesco Francavilla’s variant cover for Life with Archie #23 depicted zombified versions of Archie’s pals shuffling towards him and led the way to this spinoff series, Afterlife with Archie: Escape from Riverdale.
After a car accident involving Jughead’s pet, Hot Dog, and a spell from Sabrina the teenage witch goes awry, the zombie apocalypse comes to Riverdale on the night of the Halloween dance. Archie and his friends must battle loved ones who have turned and somehow escape from their beloved town - but who will survive?
Bakuman is about the universal story of artistic creation, as experienced through two high school boys trying to become manga successes. Like every high school student, Moritaka Mashiro and Akito Takagi are under enormous pressure to achieve high grades to get into a “good” university then onto a “good” job – but both are uneasy with the prospect of becoming faceless, miserable salarymen.
Mashiro loves to draw and his uncle was a moderately successful manga artist with a gag comic, while Takagi has dreams of becoming a famous manga writer, but he can’t draw. The two eventually team up and set about feverishly creating manga.
As a much younger man, Duke McQueen saved an alien world called Tantalus from the baddies and became their hero. Then he returned to Earth and no-one believed him, not even his own family. Today, Duke’s a grandfather whose wife has passed away and his kids have grown up and started families of their own. Then a spaceship arrives on his front lawn and a young boy from Tantalus steps out – they need Duke McQueen to help them again.
I quite like the setup, which is a twist on the adventure pulps of the early 20th century but, wow, Mark Millar’s script is pure faecal matter! He completely trashes what could’ve been a half-decent story with his lazy horseshit writing.
Remember Jason Aaron’s Punisher MAX run a few years ago? That series killed off the classic Punisher, the Vietnam vet Frank Castle, and subsequently resurrected him as a thirtysomething vet of an unnamed war (so as not to date him). But the way Aaron killed off Frank was glorious: a heavily beaten Frank managed to kill his way through his greatest enemies before finally falling himself. It was so perfect it remains my favourite character death storyline ever.
So now it’s Charles Soule’s turn to kill off an iconic Marvel character: Wolverine. And… it was unfortunately very underwhelming. To be fair to Soule, he didn’t have three books to build up to his finale he just wrote a four issue story where Wolverine died at the end. Even so, for such a famous character, I think Soule gave him short shrift.
