What Did You Read - November 2012

[dancj]

Big catch-up for me:

The Flash #0 - Okay issue storywise. It was great Manupal back on the art though. spoilers:

I'm sure his dad's innocent.

end of spoilers

Books of Magick: Life During Wartime v1 and #6-#15 - I enjoyed this book and its different alternative reality versions of the characters. Dean Ormston is one of the most underrated artists in comics.

Ultimate Comics X-Men by Nick Spencer v1 - Mmm.... not convinced.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (graphic novel adaptation) - I read about a third of this before giving up. I don't really like old Merchant Ivory productions and I hoped this would start off with the trappings of one and then go completely insane when the zombies turn up. Instead the zombies are just there as a backdrop to an otherwise pretty standard period M+A type story. Not necessarily bad, but not my cup of tea.

Stray Dogs - I'm obviously a quitter at the moment because I only made it two thirds of the way through before giving up on this one. Daniel Zezelj is a very good artist, but the stories had no interest for me - and for the most part didn't seem to have much to do with the art.

Ultimatum - People often accuse writers like Mark Millar and Garth Ennis of using shock value to carry their stories and I disagree because they at least manage to keep it entertaining. This on the other hand.... A plotless slaughter of characters - often by other characters who just turn up at random with no apparent connection to the story. I'm totally up for this kiind of wholesale slaughter if they could make it entertaining. They should have got Mark Millar in to do the job. Oh and I normally don't mind David Finch's art, but here he was full of bad 90s excess - including times where you have to turn the book sideways to read a page for no good reason other than the artist was too lazy to come up with a composition that works the right way up.

Lullabies From Hell - Good selection of creepy horror stories.

Fight for Tomorrow - Not as bad as I'd heard. Not as good as Brian Wood's better work.

[dancj]

Just me this month? Ah well, I'll carry on...

The Annotated Mantooth - Meh. Matt Fraction's humour just doesn't work for me.

Tank Girl: The Gifting - Fun stuff. Ashley Wood was a good choice to take over from Jamie Hewlett.

Marvel Team-Up v1: The Golden Child and v2: Master of the Ring - A well-woven together collection of stories from Robert Kirkman, Scott Kolins and another artist whose name escapes me. Robert Kirkman is perfect for this book. He does a great job keeping the whole thing full of funny snappy dialogue and little in-jokes. (I'm guessing one of the characters used to be older than Spider-Man and is now younger going by a couple of the exchanges). Good stuff. Scott Kolins is on good form here too.

Green Lantern: Rebirth - Decent enough as a story - nothing special - and I'm not a particular fan of Ethan Van Schiver. The real achievement here though is the way Goeff Johns manages to set up a whole new status quo for the Green Lanterns along with a Hall Jordan who was innocent all along - is alive and doesn't have grey temples and a Guy who isn't part alien and explaining the old weakness to yellow - oh and he also chucked in a throwaway line that set the seed for Brightest Day. Very clever - and it means I can now go on to read the ongoing green lantern book with a nice clean start.

[pmpknface]

I'm up on all GL stuff, but I still have yet to read Rebirth. I want it in the standard HC format and I can't find it! Drives me crazy....

The only non-issue things I read were:

Cinderella v2 - Which was good! I could kinda see parts of the end coming, but it was a fun Fables story.
The Hive - I love Charles Burns' stuff!!! Glad I got the signed bookplate ed.
The Shadow's Treasure by Alexandro Jodorowsky, Francois Boucq - I haven't finished this but I'm enjoying it a lot! It's a bunch of 1 page text stories with a splash page of art. Very fun.

I also flipped through and read some of the Wally Wood Artist's Edition. MAN that was one talented dude....

[dancj]

Yeah - I've been tempted by a couple of Wally Wood books I've seen here and there. I have a low tolerance for old-school stories though so I suspect I'd find them unreadable.

[pmpknface]

Yeah - I've been tempted by a couple of Wally Wood books I've seen here and there. I have a low tolerance for old-school stories though so I suspect I'd find them unreadable.

Yeah, but this is the artists' editon in golden age size. Even if you just enjoyed it for the art you'd have a good time enjoying it.

[dancj]

Blimey, that's a whopper!!

Unfortunately I'm a story first, art second guy so no matter how good the art is it won't make me enjoy the story.