Articles tagged with: Comic Book

Book: Dune: The Graphic Novel Book 3

This will be a brief review. I just picked up the third and last book, and the same that I mentioned for the two previous titles apply to this one too. Visual style from David Lynch's film, close book adaptation, and still not fully my liking of the drawing. But I think this volume does a better use of color, or at least it felt nice in that regard.

I would rather not spoil anything, but plenty of things happen, so if you're new to the Dune lore, you're in for an action-packed ride.

At least no surprises, which is good if you're searching for continuity. If you enjoyed the past volumes, you'll like this one.

Posted on 2024-08-22

Comic Book: The Strain, The Strain: The Fall & The Strain: The Night Eternal

I very much enjoyed the first season of The Strain TV series: A fresh and less common take on vampires, with a great initial suspense and events unrolling. But then, the remaining seasons went a bit sideways, feeling almost boring at times, and leaving me not too satisfied with what looked as a promising script from Guillermo del Toro.

I know that, based on the initial TV script rejection, there are some books, but I haven't read them. But when I found that there are also comics, based on the books (not on the TV series), I had to read them. Spoiler alert: I am happy that I did.

I will review comparing the comics with the TV adaptation. The three comic books correspond to the three textbooks, meanwhile the TV series had 4 seasons, partially because they expanded some characters, invented others, and modified a non-trivial amount of content. At times, the comic felt advancing quite fast, maybe too much if it's your first landing on The Strain. A few characters are given much less attention, but the comics are darker, crueller, and less optimistic. It's difficult to avoid spoilers, so I'll just say that it surprised me a few times, even knowing the basic story (or at least, the adapted story).

The drawings are excellent, colourful, gory, and explicit. There is abundant text (entire chunks must come from the books because as far as I can remember, the TV series say them too almost the same), and the pacing is very rapid; There's almost always something happening, if not multiple things in different places at once.

A highly recommended comic compilation.

Posted on 2024-07-16

Comic Book: Mad Max: Fury Road

I love Mad Max: Fury Road, the movie. It is not only the best film in the series, but also amazingly well done. I've also seen recently Mad Max: Furiosa, and I'm sad it even exists; Such a disappointment in every aspect, from the bad script and worse humour, to the abuse of computer-generated effects. So I needed something to wash out that bad taste... And I found that there are some comics that act as a decent prequel to Fury Road. Here is my small review, spoiler free so not telling too much.

There are 5 comics, 4 main ones telling three stories (actually four, what a numbering mess!) and an extra one about the War Rig:

• Issue 1: Nux and Immortan Joe
• Issue 2: Furiosa
• Issues 3 & 4: Mad Max
• Extra Issue: The War Rig

The first one is quite unrealistic, but interesting to learn about Immortan Joe.

The comic about Furiosa gives a much-needed context on why the movie events happen, and I disagree that it is bad, as many say. It is at times disgusting, it involves non-consensual sex, but it sets the stage for Fury Road, and I found them way softer than the Crossed comics.

The double issue about Max summarizes the first 3 movies, and then narrates a story of what happened until the beginning of Fury Road. I did not enjoy it too much, it felt less interesting than the other stories.

Finally, the War Rig special issue explains the origins of different pieces of the big trailer. Some are sad, others have a dark sense of humour, and in general I liked them. A good way of narrating mini-stories about objects.

Posted on 2024-07-14

Books: Dune: The Graphic Novel Book 1 & Dune: The Graphic Novel Book 2

Continuing my desire for more Dune content, after the first two books and watching the movies (and now going to watch 2024's Dune Part Two), I recently discovered that there were some graphic novels based on the books; Two already published, and a third one coming mid 2024. What I did not know is that each graphic novel covers one third of the book... so be aware of that detail.

The writing is mostly directly taken from the book, so many dialogues are 1:1 matches. It sticks very close to the original content, so excepting a tiny change here and there, most of it has been ported entirely. Brian Herbert is listed as one of the authors, so that's probably why it is so accurate.

Where you will see some differences is in the visual style. After having two movies, many videogames and concept art/drawings, I at least have my image formed of certain aspects, like the Ornithopters, the Harvesters, even how the Harkonnen look (pale, bigger than normal humans, with dark clothing...). The style adopted by the illustrators is not bad, but reminds me more of the 1984 David Lynch's film than the other pre-existing materials, and sometimes feels not too elaborated; for example the Harkonnens look the same as the Atreides, and even the Baron is not very imposing. Don't get me wrong, it is not bad, just that the visual style didn't click with me.

Interesting additional material, but I'd go read the book instead. In any case, I will grab the third and last graphic novel book when comes out, and see how the more action-packed part is depicted.

Posted on 2024-04-07

I wanted to read some "Star Wars Legends" lore (the now non-cannon fiction), but I also wanted to read more about Admiral Thrawn because reading an article about SW: Tie Fighter PC game I recalled he appears on it and always wondered "who was that blue-skin baddie". The Thrawn Trilogy looked like a good entry point, consisting on 3 comics drawn in the early nineties, and set a few years after the original Star Wars Trilogy and depicting the Admiral as the main antagonist.

Well, I don't know if it's just me having different expectations, or the way the story was written didn't appealed to as much as I was hoping for, but they felt... dull; very slow paced sometimes, other times over-complicated and a bit silly, the plot and its unrolling doesn't convinces me.

The drawing is nice (specially the main characters, really nice resemblance of the movie actors), the ships, the main arc by itself are all good, but the execution didn't attracted me. I sometimes read through omnibus collections in a few days, meanwhile here for around 400 comic pages took me a substantial effort.

Posted on 2021-12-24