Written by Robert Kirkman
Art by Charlie Adlard
32 pages, black and white
Published by Image Comics
I have a confession to make. I stopped reading The Walking Dead a few years ago. As much as I’d enjoyed the early storylines, the series started coming across a little too grim and unforgiving. That’s a slightly strange comment to make about a story where the world is taken over by zombies, but it just got to be too much. For better or for worse, Rick and company simply couldn’t catch a break at any time. Everything always went badly before too long, and it was an ongoing crawl through barbed wire. But when I heard that The Walking Dead was (at least temporarily) locating to Washington DC, I had to give it another shot. The lure of the book being set where I’ve lived for over 35 years was a little too hard to ignore.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Image | No Comments
By Svetlana Chmakova
192 pages, black and white
Published by Yen Press
A little over a year ago, I read the fifth Flight anthology and was enthralled by Svetlana Chmakova’s short story, "On the Importance of Space Travel." I’d promised myself since then that I’d give some of her other comics a try, and recently picked up and read the first two volumes of Nightschool. And while the idea of a school for the supernatural is something we’ve all seen before, it’s Chmakova’s style of how she tells the story that makes this series stand out and become memorable.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Manga, Other Publishers | 1 Comment
Original short story by Benjamin Percy
Screenplay by James Ponsoldt
Adapted by Danica Novgorodoff
144 pages, color
Published by First Second Books
A graphic novel based on a screenplay based on a short story? I suppose there are more circuitous routes out there for graphic novels, but none are immediately springing to mind. That’s the slightly thankless task that Danica Novgorodoff has with Refresh, Refresh, a story that gets traced back to a short story by Benjamin Percy. Reading the graphic novel, though, I ended up with a slightly disconcerting feeling that had I just picked up Percy’s short story that I would have ended up with a much stronger and more interesting experience.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in First Second | No Comments
By Mohiro Kitoh
200 pages, black and white
Published by Viz
Everyone who’s been reading comics for more than several years has at least one; a discontinued series that they wish would return. Sometimes the creators stop working on the book, other times it’s a problem at the publisher’s end. For me, one of those series is Mohiro Kitoh’s Shadow Star. Cancelled (along with the other series being initially serialized in Super Manga Blast!) by Dark Horse several years ago, the book had just gotten past the halfway point. Hopefully Kitoh’s new series to get translated into English, Bokurano: Ours, won’t fall to such a similar state. Because, in terms of story, it’s hard to ignore the obvious parallels between the two.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Manga, Viz | 2 Comments
Original novel by Stephen King and Peter Straub
Adapted by Robin Furth
Art by Tony Shasteen
32 pages, color
Published by Del Rey Comics
I remember reading The Talisman back in the ’80s. One (or both) of my parents had read the book, and the hardcover sat on the entertainment center bookshelves in our family room. A good friend of mine in high school was a rabid Stephen King fan, and since we had a copy of King and Peter Straub’s novel in the house, I thought it was as good a book as any to start with. Because it’s been over 20 years since I’ve read the book, some of my memories are a little hazy, but I do recall liking the book. I’m also pretty sure that my memories of the book are still strong enough that I can safely say that the original novel was not quite as disjointed as this comic adaptation is shaping up to be.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Del Rey | No Comments
Written by James Robinson
Layouts by Fernando Dagnino
Finished art by Bill Sienkiewicz
32 pages, color
Published by DC Comics
I was a big fan of James Robinson’s Starman since day one (or should that be issue #0?); his collaborations with Tony Harris and Peter Snejbjerg produced a gorgeous, memorable run of stories that weren’t just about the title character, but his friends and family, as well as the setting of Opal City. When DC announced that a handful of cancelled titles would have one additional issue each in January 2010 as part of the Blackest Night crossover, I found myself worried. Because while some of Robinson’s work on Superman in the past year or two has been all right, I’ve been underwhelmed with Justice League: Cry for Justice and Justice League of America, with their wallowing in death and destruction. It hasn’t felt like the Robinson whose Starman was at the top of my reading pile every month. So it was with great hesitation that I sat down with Starman #81.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in DC | No Comments
By Fumi Yoshinaga
208 pages, black and white
Published by Viz
It’s nice to see some creators getting pushed by their publishers. I think that’s the case with Fumi Yoshinaga; her new series Ooku: The Inner Chambers began translation into English last year, and now Viz has brought out All My Darling Daughters, a one-off collection of five stories revolving around relationships. And while I enjoyed Ooku and Antique Bakery, I think that All My Darling Daughters is my favorite comic from Yoshinaga to date.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Manga, Viz | 2 Comments
Just a quick note to apologize for the lack of updates, recently. What I thought would be a short break for the holidays stretched into much more thanks to work, travel, and other obligations.
The good news is that new reviews should return starting on January 25th. I’d hoped to get this moving sooner than that, but I’d rather get up and running at full strength again. Thanks for your patience!
Posted in Admin | 1 Comment
By Berkeley Breathed
288 pages, black and white, plus color
Published by IDW
In the 1980s, my two favorite newspaper comic strips were easy to identify: Peanuts and Bloom County. The funny thing is that especially at an early age, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of Bloom County went over my head. Even as I approached becoming a teenager, I didn’t get a lot of the political humor that Berkeley Breathed infused into Bloom County. So a joke about Cuba sailed right past me, to say nothing of references to various politicians. The thing is, even then, there was always something that would make me laugh. I might not know who was being parodied, but I got the punch line none the less. Now that I’m going back and re-reading Bloom County, though, it’s a very different experience.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in IDW | 1 Comment
By Natsume Ono
320 pages, black and white
Published by Viz
I think a lot of people have a fixed idea in their minds of what all manga looks like. Depending on the person’s age, it’s probably something like Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, or Akira Toriyama’s Dragonball Z. It’s almost certainly, though, not anything like Natsume Ono’s not simple. I think it was the incredibly distinctive look of not simple that initially attracted me to the book, but the more I read it, the deeper I was pulled into the book. For a book that starts at the conclusion and then jumps into the past to explain how everything got to that point, not simple manages to hold the reader’s interest quite well.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Manga, Viz | 1 Comment
