The Comics Super Blog!
Carla, Tom, Shane and JK assemble to discuss Marvel’s latest comics event.
We’re back with our second installment of the Heroes Reborn roundtable, where we break down the latest Marvel crossover issue by issue. This week Shane Bailey, Tom Bondurant, Carla Hoffman and I talk about Heroes Reborn #2, as well as the two tie-ins from last week, Peter Parker, The Amazing Shutterbug and Hyperion and the Imperial Guard.
You can read part one here.
So grab your copies and let’s jump in …
Continue reading “Earth’s Mightiest Megastar: The Heroes Reborn roundtable, week two”Carla, Tom, Shane and JK assemble to discuss Marvel’s latest comics event.
Marvel kicked off a new Heroes Reborn miniseries/event last Wednesday, the first of eight issues (and several tie-ins) that tell the story of a Marvel Universe where the Avengers never assembled. Instead, the Squadron Supreme, which takes its direction from a Phil Coulson who is much more menacing than Clark Gregg ever was, is now the MU’s primary super team.
With the first issue by Jason Aaron, Ed McGuinness, Mark Morales and Matthew Wilson now out in the wild, Shane Bailey, Tom Bondurant, Carla Hoffman and I thought we’d discuss the event each week, roundtable style, like we did with Future State earlier this year.
So grab your copy of the first issue and let’s get to it …
Continue reading “Magpies and rats: The Heroes Reborn roundtable, week one”A new era begins in ‘Justice League’ #59, which ‘includes a number of familiar, welcome elements, all deftly executed.’
[Note: This post contains spoilers for the lead story in Justice League #59. The issue also includes a Justice League Dark installment, which was creepy and suspenseful, but won’t be discussed here.]
Last year’s trip through the Justice League’s 60-year history got as far as the start of the “Snyder Era.” (No, not that Snyder — Scott Snyder.) Because some of us still have a slight Death Metal hangover, a post on those years is still TBA. Regardless, the “Bendis Era” began this week with May 2021’s Justice League #59. Written by Brian Michael Bendis, drawn by David Marquez and colored by Tamra Bonvillain, it includes a number of familiar, welcome elements, all deftly executed.
Chief among them is the notion that the Leaguers have lives outside this book. At the risk of being redundant, the point of an all-star team is the interaction of characters who can each carry their own features. Sure, you can craft a perfectly entertaining adventure by dropping a handful of heroes into a standalone story, but the best League runs have incorporated larger DC continuity to one degree or another. (Somewhat ironically, the Bendis Era begins just as DC has decided to have free-range continuity.)
Continue reading “Bendis and Marquez jump-start the Justice League”Ibrahim Moustafa’s new graphic novel from Humanoids adapts ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ into a science fiction story, but ‘the magic is in what Moustafa and team add to it.’
When I was in school I was asked to read a lot of books deemed “classics.” Some I thought were okay, some I had to pull myself through even though I hated them, some I grew to love over time, but there was one book that had me hooked from the very first chapter. That book is The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas.
I absolutely adored it. It had an interesting hero, wrongly accused and searching for revenge, it had a daring escape from prison, and an interesting message. I had the pleasure of reading an adaptation of this wonderful story, this time with it turned into a science fiction tale. To say I was ecstatic to read this is an understatement, and this book lived up to that excitement.
Retitled simply Count, it’s written and drawn by Ibrahim Moustafa (High Crimes, Mother Panic) along with Brad Simpson as colorist and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou as letterer. And they all brought their “A” game here. It’s a faithful retelling of the story with a new skin to all the characters and settings.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Count’ puts a science fiction spin on a classic novel”Scott Snyder and Tony S. Daniel’s new series from Image Comics begins with an impressive debut.
Nocterra, the new title by Scott Snyder and Tony S. Daniel, began life as a Kickstarter project last year that raised more than $200,000, thanks to more than 4,000 backers. The plan, though, was to always publish it through Image Comics at some point, and this week the first issue arrives like a burst of light in a dark world.
I have to say I went into this book a little skeptical, as the creators involved have been hit and miss with me the past few years with their DC projects. But I’m a fan of both creators, and their independent projects resonated with me in the past. I’m happy to say this is one of those hits.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Nocterra’ #1 brings an ‘explosive, exciting’ start to the new series”Carla Hoffman reviews ‘The New Mutants,’ the film based on the classic comics by Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz.
I was terrified, you know. Despite having it marked in my digital calendar (a few times, really), despite my overblown excitement at seeing a lobby poster at the end of last year (‘this time, for sure!’ listed as the date), sitting on my couch in excitement through an online SDCC panel, I still couldn’t find myself to be excited, let alone relieved, that The New Mutants was finally going to be viewable to the public and streaming online.
Repetitive disappointment can do that to a person; the constant backstage chatter, the infinite new release dates, the literal fall of Fox Studios as an independent movie production company, mergers and major misspeaks by the director regarding casting, this movie felt destined to fail. It was Schrodinger’s Movie: as long as we didn’t see it, the film was either a hit or bust and for a long time, it was just better not to know.
So what was The New Mutants? Is the cat alive or dead? Is this the secret savior of the Fox-X Franchise or an ugly cousin they had every right to keep hidden from prying eyes? Keep reading and let’s see what we can make of it.
(SPOILERS: to discuss the movie means that we have to talk about the movie and all the twists and turns it takes. Find your own online digital copy and watch and read along!)
Continue reading “‘The New Mutants’: The kids are alright”The indy comics festival MoCCA took place last weekend, and as usual, it was a glorious event, with lots of great people and great comics. Here are three minicomics that I picked up that I particularly enjoyed. You can view or purchase each one at the link in the title.
Continue reading “Make Mine Mini: Kraftwerk saves the world”
Whether they’re being Rebirthed or Young Animaled, DC’s various superhero series may be getting all the attention; but they’re not all the publisher is putting out these days. Deadman: Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love isn’t really a relaunch, and — somewhat refreshingly — it’s not a hip new take on a couple of decades-old concepts. Instead, writer Sarah Vaughn, artist Lan Medina, and colorist José Villarrubia have given a good old-fashioned ghost story a few tweaks and a superhero component, and produced one of the most entertaining first issues I’ve read in a while.
Continue reading “‘Deadman: Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love’ has the right spirit”
The Bozz Chronicles
By David Michelinie, Bret Blevins, and John Ridgway
Foreword by Brandon Graham
The Bozz Chronicles, which writer David Michelinie described to CBR as “sort of like Sherlock Holmes meets The X-Files,” is a double period piece: It’s set in Victorian London, so there’s that, but it’s also very noticeably a comic from the 1980s, in both style and sensibility.
In fact, you can’t get much more 1980s than this: Michelinie says, in the introduction to the Dover edition, that his initial inspiration for the comic was the movie ET. That was just the initial spark, though. Michelinie’s Bozz is a space alien who crashed to earth and can never return to his home, but that’s where the resemblance ends.
For one thing, Bozz (that’s a human approximation of his unpronounceable alien name) is suicidal. He’s a highly evolved being trapped in a world filled with inferior beings, and he’s never going back. When we first meet him, the noose is already around his neck, but he is rescued by working girl Amanda Flynn. Amanda is bringing a reluctant customer up to what she thinks is an abandoned loft when she finds Bozz; the john flees in terror, but Amanda, displaying that heart of gold that prostitutes are famous for, takes charge of Bozz and saves his life.
Somehow (details are kept to a minimum), Amanda and Bozz set up a detective agency which serves the dual purpose of making money (thus relieving Amanda of her former obligations) and keeping Bozz supplied with mysteries to solve. Boredom is deadly to him, and Amanda worries when the work runs dry, not because of the cash flow (well, maybe a little because of that) but because Bozz becomes despondent and suicidal without the distraction of solving mysteries.
Don’t bother thinking you can sleuth along with Bozz, though. These are not “fair play” mysteries where the reader knows as much as the detective; they all involve supernatural elements, often caused by humans meddling with the occult, and Bozz uses his rather eclectic powers (talking to animals, dowsing for electricity) to solve them.
Bozz is an almost perfect personification of depression. He’s huge, dominating the space around him, yet smooth and passive. He looks at the world through half-lidded eyes, only coming to life when presented with a puzzle to solve or a desperate situation to get out of. The other characters, by contrast, crackle with energy, and they are as over-the-top as Bozz is subdued. Amanda, whose spaghetti straps and low-cut dresses are not really true to the period, is the one who pushes the story along, getting the jobs, making the arrangements, and doing most of the talking (although her lower-class accent would be a much bigger impediment in the real Victorian London than it is in these stories). The third member of the team is Salem Hawkshaw, a consonant-droppin’, chili-cookin’ American who supplies the brawn, if very little brains. There’s also a sort of adjunct member, Inspector Colin Fitzroy, a wealthy member of the gentry who went to work at Scotland Yard, to his family’s dismay, so he could make a difference in the world.
Indeed, the idle and evil rich vs. the industrious and more-or-less virtuous poor is a theme that pops up in various ways in these stories, which fits in with their Dickensian setting; Michelinie even throws in some orphans for good measure. And there are plenty of surprises, including (not to spoil things too much) a Jimmy Hoffa reference and a 19th-century hippie commune.
Artists Bret Blevins (who drew five of the six stories) and John Ridgway (who illustrated the fourth story) do a splendid job of bringing the characters to life, including the supernatural aspects. Nonetheless, as I mentioned at the beginning of this review, this comic has a very 1980s look and feel, in the character designs, the paneling, and the coloring. That doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of reading it, but it does look very different from a modern graphic novel.
The Bozz Chronicles was intended to be an ongoing series, with each issue a complete story. It came out bimonthly, but there were only six issues (one year’s worth) before the project came to an untimely end. This collection throws in a few extras, including a foreword by Brandon Graham, new introductions by Michelinie and Blevins, an afterword by Ridgway, and some bonus cover art. With this collected edition, Dover has done a great job of making these stories accessible to a new audience, as well as longtime fans.
Forbidden Planet has some background and a preview here.
