{"id":139,"date":"2007-04-15T21:56:33","date_gmt":"2007-04-16T05:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=139"},"modified":"2007-04-15T21:56:33","modified_gmt":"2007-04-16T05:56:33","slug":"comics-capsules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=139","title":{"rendered":"Comics Capsules"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I&#8217;m sitting down to file the comics I&#8217;ve bought this week, I thought it might be worthwhile to throw up some capsule reviews.\u00c2\u00a0 From least enjoyable to most:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00c2\u00a0Sandman Mystery Theater 5 of 5 (John Ney Rieber &amp; Eric Nguyen)\n<ul>\n<li>This series seems to be setting the stage for a new <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sandman_%28Wesley_Dodds%29\">Sandman<\/a> series.\u00c2\u00a0 I was a big fan of Wagner and Seagle&#8217;s Sandman Mystery Theater and the book being on my pull list got this pulled for me.\u00c2\u00a0 I wasn&#8217;t really blown away.\u00c2\u00a0 The characters didn&#8217;t compel me particularly strongly and the art was muddy in places that made it difficult to follow the action.\u00c2\u00a0 It was atmospheric though. Wagner and Seagle&#8217;s work took a while to grow on me too.\u00c2\u00a0 Origins are always difficult to get right.\u00c2\u00a0 I&#8217;d stick around for another series, probably.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Jonah Hex #18 (Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Val Semieks)\n<ul>\n<li>Heh.\u00c2\u00a0 Hex.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, it&#8217;s not Lansdale\/Truman, but I&#8217;ve been enjoying this incarnation of Jonah Hex.\u00c2\u00a0 Not undying literature, but good pulp western fun with an almost completely irredeemable &#8220;hero.&#8221;\u00c2\u00a0 Almost always worth it, with a few gems.\u00c2\u00a0 This one was worth it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The Spirit (Darwyn Cooke, J. Bone &amp; Dave Stewart)\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;ve been enjoying Cooke and company&#8217;s take on The Spirit.\u00c2\u00a0 I&#8217;m a little surprised by that.\u00c2\u00a0 I hold The Spirit in high regard and I&#8217;d be pretty perturbed to see a bad version on the shelves.\u00c2\u00a0 This team&#8217;s doing a good job keeping the spirit of the classic stories without being tied to the history slavishly.\u00c2\u00a0 They&#8217;ve moved the characters into the 21st century but kept their heart.\u00c2\u00a0 This issue seems to be the beginning of moving the characters along a real dramatic arc, where the first two (an introductory and fairly generic Spirit tale and a P&#8217;gell rewrite) were more taking them out for a spin to make sure they handled OK.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;ll be interesting to see if they can maintain their sure hand as they set out to take more ownership of the story.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>All Star Superman #7 (Grant Morrison, Frank Quietly)\n<ul>\n<li>For my money, All-Star Superman has done a great job at capturing the feel of Silver Age Superman stories without making you feel stupid for reading them.\u00c2\u00a0 Considering how goofy some of those stories are, this is a feat in itself.\u00c2\u00a0 Beyond just working the plot kinks and restoring a sense of wonder for the universe that Superman inhabits, Morrison and Quietly have been showing that these characters deserve to be the enduring touchstones they are.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s been a long time since I&#8217;ve seen Jimmy Olsen portrayed as someone who deserves to be &#8220;Superman&#8217;s Pal&#8221; because he&#8217;s gutsy, competent, and selflessly brave rather than the relation being deus ex machina.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, that issue wasn&#8217;t this issue, which is one of the weaker ones of the run &#8211; I&#8217;ve never liked Bizarro.\u00c2\u00a0 Still the series is fantastic.\u00c2\u00a0 Worth riding the dip.\u00c2\u00a0 The trade hardback for the first 6 issues is out this week as well.\u00c2\u00a0 Treat yourself.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Fell #8 (Warren Ellis, Ben Templesmith)\n<ul>\n<li>Yum, Fell.\u00c2\u00a0 Ellis and Templesmith&#8217;s regular trip to the PD of the worst place on Earth is as good as usual.\u00c2\u00a0 The series is a series of one-off books with a very loose continuity, much more Dragnet than Hill Street Blues, but each story has some wonderful hook.\u00c2\u00a0 Intended as a simple comic for people who just want a good story and don&#8217;t want to follow any kind of continuity, it delivers a pop every issue.\u00c2\u00a0 And, as one of my comic shop guys said &#8211; it&#8217;s cheaper than anything on the shelf with no ads.\u00c2\u00a0 Buy it.\u00c2\u00a0 (Not for kids, though)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I&#8217;m sitting down to file the comics I&#8217;ve bought this week, I thought it might be worthwhile to throw up some capsule reviews.\u00c2\u00a0 From least enjoyable to most: \u00c2\u00a0Sandman Mystery Theater 5 of 5 (John Ney Rieber &amp; Eric Nguyen) This series seems to be setting the stage for a new Sandman series.\u00c2\u00a0 I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}