Radiant Comics

So I haven’t hit the comic shop yet this week. I won’t make it there until Saturday but I thought I’d post my reviews of recent purchases anyway.

Last week I got a comic called “Books with Pictures”. It was an autobiographical tale of a girl who works in a comic shop. The art and lettering were strictly amateur hour but that’s okay in a slice of life book like this. It won’t light the world on fire but I find it interesting when someone wants to share their story with the world so much that they take the time and energy to make a comic about it. If you like that sort of thing too then look this book up.

I also want to complain about the first really bad issue of Jonah Hex so far in this run. The previous three issues had the “origin” of Jonah Hex. Not very interesting because he has the typical revenge origin we’ve all seen a thousand times before but at least the art was nice. So what do we get in the new issue? Number 16 gives us another origin story of a female version of Jonah Hex. What’s her origin? The same typical revenge origin. And the art isn’t even as good. Sigh… I don’t want to have to give up on this book but I think I will. It’s drifted away from it’s tightly plotted done in one stories to cliched nonsense. Oh well.

Week Nine of my reviews of recent DC Comics.

Hawkgirl 57, 59 – The Walt Simonson written story is interesting. It has to do with some Rann (Adam Strange’s planet) vs.Thanagar (Hawkgirl’s planet) war stuff. I know nothing of the Rann Thanagar war but a quick two paragraph recap gave me what I needed to know. But the art is a letdown. Issue 57 is by Joe Bennet and 59 by Renato Arlem. Both are good illustrators but not good storytellers. The script even has to describe some of the scenes that the artist is supposed to set but he doesn’t do well. Renato’s art appears like it was printed straight from the pencils and looks unfinished in places. The side of the pencil shading over large areas instead of solid blacks left me cold. I found it distracting. Check it out only for the writing.

Justice League of America 4-5 – Anyone who reads my reviews knows how much I hate bad first person narrative. It’s been the comic book writer’s crutch for two decades now. JLA 4 has seven, that’s right, seven different first person narratives going on. All with different font and caption colors. I dare you to try and follow the story. Plus Batman (the super scientist JLA Batman of course), Superman, and Wonder Woman are away from the rest of the team otherwise the story would be over in two pages. But don’t worry, Green Lantern is with the rest of the team. Except GL is ineffectual as some guy (the brother of Mr. Miracle) is running right at GL but is moving “too fast” for GL to put a cage around him. What? He’s right in front of him! Just punch him. At the end of both issues we also get full page shots of the JLA looking like bad asses ready to kick some tail but they never do. Stay away from this mess.

Sandman Mystery Theatre: Sleep of Reason 1-2: This book is very hard to review because it’s ruined by the coloring. It is hard to tell what is going in in almost all the panels because it is drawn in a thin, grey, sketchy line with almost no distinction between foreground, middle ground, and background. This could have been overcome by good coloring but instead we get monochrome coloring with lots of grey to muddle things up. It is nearly impossible to follow the storytelling. The art is such a mess I don’t even care what the book is about. Stay away.