The big news in the review this week is Marvel's brand new Star Wars series. Read on to see how it fared.
Third Place:
Futures End #37
Ryan Sook has been pure money on these covers. Eventually I expected a dud, and this week was the one. He broke away from his tight, sharp style to do something a little rougher. Compositionally its great, sure. But I like Sook's work nice and clean.
As for the story, We get a lot of Constantine seemingly being out of character. From what I understand, John Constantine doesn't fuck around. He tell it like it is. He spends this whole issue dropping clues and hints Phantom Stranger-style instead of just coming right out and telling people what the problem is. That's either contradictory to his nature, or I don't really know John Constantine.
A nice touch at the end of the issue is seeing Tim Drake lose his shit. Tim, generally a calm, cool and collected guy has been through a lot since the E2 War. He's fed up at the end of this issue and its nice seeing his humanity come through in a childish temper tantrum.
Second Place:
Star Wars #1
I made a statement on the podcast saying, quite definitively, if this Star Wars series doesn't absolutely hook me, then Star Wars on the printed page (novels, comics, etc.) just isn't for me. So there's a lot riding on these Marvel issues.
There's a lot of love about this first one. John Cassaday's pencils and character likenesses make a world of difference when you're reading about Han, Luke and Leia. He can't draw C-3PO to save his life, but we'll let that slide. Jason Aaron's dialog and characterizations seem to be pretty spot on so far. Its not hard to hear Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill in those word balloons.
My only concern is how important these stories are. How are Aaron and Cassaday going to hook me by making these stories entertaining enough that (in the weird world of meta-Star Wars biography) George Lucas didn't feel they needed to be movies?
I'll give issue #1 a B so far. I'm interested. Now keep it going.
First Place:
Superman Wonder Woman #15
Rarely, and I mean rarely does Doug Mahnke require a fill-in artist. So if you're going to get someone to lend a hand and draw half an issue, you can do a lot worse than Ed Benes.
Benes and Mahnke split the issue, and while I'd prefer Mahnke to handle the entire book, Benes is no slouch. There are a ton of great panels in this issue. So many it was hard to pick a Panel of the Week. It was almost like Mahnke and Benes were trying to out do each other.
This issue was lighter on the Superman/Wonder Woman romantic relationship dynamic than the previous couple, but focuses instead on how they work as teammates. It's interesting seeing these two interact in battle and imagining how that would relate to the rest of the team with a whole Justice League present.
Lastly, Magog is a dumb villain and I want Wonderstar back. But after all these years, I trust that Pete Tomasi knows what he's doing.
Panel of the Week
Lots of great stuff in this issue, but lets give colorists Tomeu Morey, Marcelo Maiolo and Pete Pantazis some love. This panel's colors aren't incredibly outstanding, but its the detail of the headlights on Magog that were a really nice touch. I almost didn't catch it at first. Those details go a long way toward making an issue great.
-Gint
No comments:
Post a Comment