Articles tagged with: Comic Book

When I found Escape from New York Vol. 1: Escape from Florida I thought "great! one of my all-time favourite movies has a comic sequel!". After reading this first volume, I'm quite dissapointed and will just ignore everything except the two movies.

A comic with weak characters, cheap winks and references to the movies, a bland plot that mostly tries to recreate the badass attitude of Pliskin by placing him in another dystopic scenario, but only this time is sometimes boring, sometimes plainly dull, and in general doesn't makes me want to keep reading. I just finished it to leave the review.

Maybe I had different expectations (more alike to the movies), but it is a significant departure in scenarios and plot and just reusing the main character doesn't makes it the same.

Posted on 2017-03-10

Disclaimer: I haven't read the original Neverwhere so I can't compare.

Neverwhere is a comic about a normal guy, with a normal, boring life, that by chance meets Door, a girl trying to escape from two killers who have assassinated her family and are searching for her, and that is able to open doors between the "normal" world and other in which other rules are at play. Their life will never be the same again as they try to find who and why is trying to kill Door, gathering some help.

A curious reading, the drawing is ok, the story has some twists and (quite some) violence, but in general it didn't "clicked" on me enough to feel it was a pleasure reading. I'll be passing it to some friend because is not a comic I'll go back anytime soon.

Posted on 2016-10-19

I finished reading Ronin, 6 issues miniseries from 1984 written by Frank Miller. The story begins with a samurai who fails to save his master from being killed by the demon Agat, who desires a magical sword carried by the samurai master that, once "consumes" blood, can kill almost every being, including the demon itself. After a fight the samurai will become a ronin and gets cursed to be held inside the sword alongside the demon.

In the future, in a wasteland New York, the Aquarius company has a biocircuitry complex in which it is developing tools and machinery that could save the world from wars. Billy is a limbless boy that is instead very powerful in telekinetic powers, being taken care about by Virgo, the artificial intelligence that manages the Aquarius "building". Billy starts reviving in nightmares the ronin events and... the spirits of both the ronin and the demon get loose in the world again.

I don't want to spoil more of the plot but just with the previous paragraphs you can glimpse it. Cyborgs, demons, samurais and shootings, all mixed in a pretty good drawing and interesting story, with of course lots of gore and action. Another "I don't know what I'm going to find out but I trust Miller" case that had a happy ending. Recommended if you like sci-fi action comics.

Posted on 2016-08-13

I had the Hard Boiled comic stacked in my pending reading items since years. With my new policy at home of not adding new books or comics until something goes out (usually gifted to my close friends), I keep now lowering that stack of "pending reads". On to the comic itself, we're presented with 128 pages with the story of Nixon, an apparent tax collector that seems to be two things: a) a badass tought guy, and b) seemingly prone to have jobs that tend to go really bad and violent. After one of such incidents, he wakes up recalling it as a dream, but something just doesn't fits in place in reality...

The world presented is a highly depressive, polluted, sex-and-drugs driven dystopian future where cities are overpopulated, cars move from city jam to city jam, and polices have a dozen guns per person and move in huge tank-like vehicles. The story is as gory as you can imagine, and then some more, combined with an hyper-detailed drawing where each scene has so many tiny details, so many mechanical pieces or so many people (sometimes dead) that you need to take your time to properly examine it after reading the texts or grasping the general action. I recall from when I was younger some comics with similar almost excessive amount of detail, and it makes sense as the original comics were printed between 1990 and 1992.

While the story is nothing impressive, the amount of tiny details and jokes in the backgrounds, papers, soldier helmets and even candy boxes is staggering so I really recommend the reading.

Posted on 2016-06-03

Batman: Haunted Gotham is a 4 issues miniseries that sets Gotham in an alternate reality, a victorian 20th century with cars but also witches and magic, where the city has a curse and nobody can leave it, no matter if alive or dead. Bruce Wayne lives with his parents and has spent his whole life training physically and mentally, but he's not sure for what. When a werewolf kills his parents and he finds a cave behind the Wayne mansion with the Batman outfit, he decides to seek revenge.

A curious comic, the unnatural twist is decent and it makes for different enemies: a frankenstein joker, a werewolf, and others I won't spoil. It has some black humor and the drawings are nice, although sometimes batman is too deformed (with a huge chest). Also as the setting is different, so are some of the dark knight weapons, having silver batarangs and a flamethrower. Enjoyable.

Posted on 2016-05-02