|
|
| Friday, January 19, 2007 09:56 PM |
| Graphic Novels Galore, Part 2 |
 by Fëanor |
The second part of my reviews of all the graphic novels I got out of the library.
Nexus Archives Volume 2 - I actually enjoyed this book much more than Volume 1, partially because of the "recognition factor," which, I'm thinking more and more, is a large part of why people enjoy things in general. Maybe I should work out my theory on that in a different post. But anyway, it was nice to settle in with the characters I'd already gotten to know, and I loved the idea of Nexus going out on an intergalactic tavern crawl with Judah - that's funny stuff. The book really took off, however, with the introduction of a character called The Badger, who I believe is actually a character created by the writer in a different book, appearing here as part of a cross-over. Regardless, he was totally hilarious - a kind of psychopathic good guy, who never killed, but only maimed - and how! He also has a habit of calling people Larry for no reason. When he said, "Hey guys, did you see how I maimed Larry back there?" I pretty much cracked up all over the place.
This volume was also better, I think, because it stopped taking itself so seriously all the time and kind of settled and started to have fun. Volume One had set up this odd and fascinating universe, and now in Volume Two they were just playing around with that universe and seeing what they could do with it - and it turns out they could do some cool and funny things with it, including vaguely creepy lesbian/furry sexual escapades. I would definitely read more Nexus now if it came my way. And not because of the furry lesbians, I swear.
The Chronicles of Conan: Volume 1 - Tower of the Elephant and Other Stories - Like the Astro Boy book, this is another Dark Horse reprint of a collection of older comics, this time the original Marvel Comics Conan series, 1970-71. Supposedly the text has been restored and the color remastered; not really sure how you do that with a comic, but whatever. The art is generally pretty generic and kind of dull, but the dialogue is the same crazy, florid, high-Old-English type stuff that Robert E. Howard himself might have used (and indeed a number of the comics are adaptations of specific Howard stories). There's lots of magic and ancient monsters and powerful gods and fighting and stealing and treasure and deserted cities and brutal violence and beautiful women and dangerous adventures. In other words: fantastic. I liked this book the best of all the ones from this haul, I think. It gets corny in parts, but it's also really fun, and even occasionally Lovecraftian.
JLA: Secret Origins - A giant, over-sized, carefully hand-painted book detailing the superhero origin stories of the most popular, most important members of the Justice League - Batman, Superman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, etc. It's a recent book written by Paul Dini with art by Alex Ross. I like Dini for what he's done to help put comics in cartoons, but his writing is...well, not the best. It's really melodramatic and unsubtle and, in this case at least, quite bland. I mean, admittedly I'm already pretty familiar with these stories, but he just tells them in such a boring way. There's nothing exciting or new here at all. And Alex Ross's painting, while certainly detailed and realistic, is also kind of bland in its own way, and depicts all the superheroes as the sort of giant football player/frat boy type, in the case of the men (with the big chiseled jaws and vacant faces - the kind of guys that really needs a good cock-punching), and giant cheerleaders in the case of the women. So yeah, didn't like this book too much.
---
My review of the Superman book got so long, I decided to give it its own entry. Look for it soon! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
