Category: Reviews

Review: ‘X-O Manowar: Birth’

There’s something so gleefully ridiculous about the concept of X-O Manowar that you can’t help but smile while flipping through this paragon of 1990s comics.

Essentially Encino Man meets Battlefield Earth (though far better than such a comparison implies), [[[X-O Manowar: Birth]]] (Valiant, $24.95) collects the series’ beginnings as Aric, a fifth-century Visigoth, escapes from his alien captors with the aid of a miraculously powerful suit, then finds himself in the modern world.

The creative team — Bob Layton, Jim Shooter, Barry Windsor-Smith and Joe Quesada — push the fish-out-of-water story to the extreme, with the evil arachnid-like, laser-zapping aliens on a quest to enslave humanity and only the brutish, idiotic Aric standing in their way (actual sample of Aric’s dialogue: “But why I can… no… uh…”).

The story is completely over the top and doesn’t offer much to ponder over, but it’s also not striving for that. Screw pathos, this is a down-to-the-last-out laser battle with spider aliens! Aric bounces from one fight to another, and each comes through with a surprise or two.

Included are issues 0-6, with some scripts and original drawings for issue 0, and the original story “[[[The Rise of Lydia]]].” The collection is also recolored and remastered, and it’s an attractive hardcover volume. I’d recommend this primarily for those who either are long-time X-O fans, or for those who can’t pass up a good, messy fight with aliens.

Review: ‘Ayre Force’

The past few years have seen all sorts of graphic novels hit the market, but here’s a new one: Wealthy owner of online poker site commissions comic adventure starring souped-up incarnations of himself and his employees in a battle against deranged foes hell-bent on torturing animals.

The wealthy owner in this case is Calvin Ayre, founder of Bodog. And [[[Ayre Force]]] ($19.95) is the book, essentially an opportunity for Ayre to unleash his fantasies in illustrated form.

See muscle-bound Calvin battle his enemies, guns a-blazin’. See Calvin outsmart his foes. See Calvin walk around shirtless, showing off his chiseled features. (Ayre’s real-employees-turned-heroes get similar glamourous treatment.)

There’s a point when the villain confronts Calvin and says, “Look who’s talking, living out your fantasies and delusions of self-importance,” and he seems to be speaking as much to the real Calvin as the fictional one.

It’s a preposterous endeavor on its face, but that’s not to say there are no redeeming qualities. Ayre hired a quality crew to work on this book, including former [[[Batman]]] editor Joseph Phillip Illidge and artist Shawn Martinbrough. Their efforts are solid, if not quite enough to transcend the concept.

One seemingly bizarre inclusion is the involvement of the villains in “bear bile farming,” which sounds like something too absurd even for Doctor Evil. Turns out, it’s an actual practice, and bear bile is used for medicinal purposes (to the bear’s great discomfort). Ayre is putting the book’s profit toward ending that farming, so at least the book has good intentions behind it, even if it reads like a celebration of ego.

Review: ‘The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch’

Review: ‘The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch’

Neil Gaiman has been too busy lately to write much for comics unless it’s an event — like 1602 or his curiously pointless Eternals miniseries — but there’s still an audience for his stories in the direct market. So what’s a poor comics publisher to do? Well, if it’s Dark Horse, what you do is get various folks to adapt Gaiman stories into comics and publish them as slim trade-paperback-sized hardcovers. So far, Michael Zulli did Creatures of the Night, John Bolton adapted Harlequin Valentine, and P. Craig Russell tackled Murder Mysteries. And now Zullis is back again for:

The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch
By Neil Gaiman, Michael Zulli, and Todd Klein
Dark Horse Books, May 2008, $13.95

Now, for most writers, “[[[The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch]]]” would be by far their longest title ever, but Gaiman is not most writers. He’s also responsible for “[[[Being An Experiment Upon Strictly Scientific Lines Assisted By Unwins LTD, Wine Merchants (Uckfield)]]]” ” [[[Forbidden Brides Of The Faceless Slaves In The Nameless House Of The Night Of Dread Desire]]],” ” [[[I Cthulhu: Or What’s A Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing In A Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47º 9′ S, Longitude 126º 43′ W)?]]],” and ” [[[Pages From A Journal Found In A Shoebox Left In A Greyhound Bus Somewhere Between Tulsa, Oklahoma, And Louisville, Kentucky]]].” So “[[[Miss Finch]]]” may just be one of Gaiman’s more punchy and terse titles.

According to the Neil Gaiman Visual Bibliography — and why should we mistrust it? — “Miss Finch” is one of Gaiman’s more obscure stories, showing up in the program book for the convention Tropicon XVII and a magazine called Tales of the Unanticipated before turning up in one of his collections — though in a different one depending on which side of the Atlantic you live on.

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Doctor Who in Review: Season Four, Episode #4 – Sontarans Strike Back!

Doctor Who in Review: Season Four, Episode #4 – Sontarans Strike Back!

The hit BBC series Doctor Who is now in its fourth season on the Sci-Fi Channel, and since we’re all big fans here at ComicMix, we’ve decided to kick off an episode-by-episode analysis of the reinvigorated science-fiction classic.

Every week, we’ll have our best Who-philes go through the most recent episode with a fine-tooth comb (or whatever the “sonic screwdriver” equivalent might be) and call out all of the continuity checks, names dropped and storyline hints we can find to keep in mind for future episodes. We’ll post our analysis each Monday, so you have ample time to check out the episode once it airs each Friday at 9 PM EST on Sci-Fi Channel before reading our review.

Missed a week? Check out our “Doctor Who in Review” archive or check out any of the past editions of this column via the links at the end of this article.

Keep in mind, we’re going to assume readers have already watched the episode when we put fingers to keyboard and come up with our roundup of important plot points. In other words, SPOILER ALERT!

Let’s begin now, shall we?

Season Four, Episode #4: “The Sontaran Strategem”

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Review: ‘The Question: Poisoned Ground’

After 20 years, DC is finally collecting Dennis O’Neil and Denys Cowan’s run on The Question, with the second volume, Poisoned Ground ($19.99) out now.

It’s a collection that’s well worth the wait, and I’m not just saying that because the author is one of ComicMix‘s own. While the first collection (Zen and Violence) was good, [[[Poisoned Ground]]] shows the creative team truly finding their voice — think tough and hardscrabble like The Spirit, but with a philosophic bent.

O’Neil explores not just the mind of his hero (who still has plenty of questions for himself), but those of his villains (who are always far more complex than first impressions indicate). The narrative slips between harsh reality and even harsher dreams, a paean to the ugliness of the world.

The book features three standalone stories and one three-issue story, each in turns bizarre, troubling and inspiring. The art is creative, highly detailed and evocative, and O’Neil’s scripts are every bit as inspired and poetic as those of Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman.

Especially now, with Vic Sage having been killed off in the current DCU, these collections are a must-have for fans of The Question, or anyone who likes their comics with plenty of depth.

Review: ‘The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard’

Review: ‘The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard’

Eddie Campbell has always done comics his way, without worrying about other people’s expectations or preferences — one of his two major series has been a fictionalization of his own life as a comics creator, and the other, a superficially more populist sequence about Greek gods in the modern world, was itself about storytelling more often than not. So it’s no surprise that his latest graphic novel — co-written with Dan Best — is more about telling its story than it is the story being told.

The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard
By Eddie Campbell and Dan Best
First Second, August 2008, $18.95

[[[Monsieur Leotard]]] will be published by First Second — who published Campbell’s last book, The Black Diamond Detective Agency, and have been putting together an impressive list of graphic novels for adults and younger readers for the past few years — in August, and the first thing to note is that it’s not the story the reader expects.

You see, the famous acrobat Jules Leotard lies dying of smallpox on page 12. So, we think, the book will be a series of flashbacks showing his life? No, he’s dead by the bottom of page 13, and the story moves on. So far, so very Campbell.

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Review: ‘Too Cool To Be Forgotten’ by Alex Robinson

Review: ‘Too Cool To Be Forgotten’ by Alex Robinson

We’ve all occasionally wanted to go back in time — to fix something we screwed up the first time, to relive some particular time in our lives, or just to do something differently. But would we be able to do better the second time around? Alex Robinson’s new graphic novel — coming up in July from Top Shelf — asks exactly those questions.

Too Cool To Be Forgotten
By Alex Robinson
Top Shelf, July 2008, $14,95

In 2010, Andy Wicks is coming up on his fortieth birthday — he’s married with two daughters and working as a computer technician. And, to finally stop smoking, he agrees to his wife’s suggestion to get himself hypnotized.

He closes his eyes, listens to the doctor…and wakes up in his 15-year-old body, back in 1985. He soon decides that some kind of hypnotic construct — though he never internalizes that thought, or really acts as if it’s true — and that the whole scenario is designed to make him decide not to have his first cigarette, and thus stop smoking back up in his own time.

Now, I am a former science fiction editor, so I probably think about this stuff more than most people, but Andy never seems to really think through his situation, or quite decide how old he is. He never really thinks of himself as a 15-year-old; his self-image stays solidly middle-aged. But he also doesn’t think through the consequences of that — he thinks of other high-school students, who are exactly the same age he is, as “kids.”

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Review: ‘Ghost Stories’ by Jeff Lemire

Review: ‘Ghost Stories’ by Jeff Lemire

Lemire is in the middle of an impressive thematically-related trilogy of stories about a rural bit of Ontario, Canada – the first book was Tales from the Farm, in early 2007, and the third, [[[The Country Nurse]]], will be along in October of this year. [[[Ghost Stories]]] is the middle book, but it’s a completely independent story – you don’t need to know anything about Tales to read it.

Ghost Stories: Essex County, Vol. 2
By Jeff Lemire
Top Shelf, September 2007, $14.95

Lou Lebeuf is an old, alcoholic, deaf man, living alone on the farm that was his younger brother’s and their father’s before him. He’s also either going senile or just doesn’t care about his current life – and who would? there’s not much to it – so he ignores his new home-care nurse and instead wanders through the memories of his younger days. At first he remembers growing up on that farm, playing hockey with his younger, bigger brother Vince, but he soon moves into the main plot of Ghost Stories.

Lou came up to Toronto to play semi-pro hockey for the Grizzlies around 1950, and Vince followed him up in 1951 — Lou was a solid, smart player, but Vince was a giant bull of a man, dominating the ice once he got angry enough. But, unfortunately for both of them, accompanying Vince on that trip in 1951 was his fiancee, Beth Morgan. Lou was strongly attracted to Beth, and, once — the night after the Grizzlies made the playoffs that March — Lou and Beth had quick, secret sex on a rooftop.

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Doctor Who in Review: Season Four, Episode #3 – Ood Get Even

Doctor Who in Review: Season Four, Episode #3 – Ood Get Even

The hit BBC series Doctor Who is now in its fourth season on the Sci-Fi Channel, and since we’re all big fans here at ComicMix, we’ve decided to kick off an episode-by-episode analysis of the reinvigorated science-fiction classic.

Every week, we’ll have our best Who-philes go through the most recent episode with a fine-tooth comb (or whatever the "sonic screwdriver" equivalent might be) and call out all of the continuity checks, names dropped and storyline hints we can find to keep in mind for future episodes. We’ll post our analysis each Monday, so you have ample time to check out the episode once it airs each Friday at 9 PM EST on Sci-Fi Channel before reading our review.

Missed a week? Readers can view past "Doctor Who in Review" features via the links at the end of this article.

Keep in mind, we’re going to assume readers have already watched the episode when we put fingers to keyboard and come up with our roundup of important plot points. In other words, SPOILER ALERT!

Let’s begin now, shall we?

Season Four, Episode #3: "Planet of the Ood"

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Review: ‘Speed Racer’ – Emile Hirsch Gets Behind the Wheel

Review: ‘Speed Racer’ – Emile Hirsch Gets Behind the Wheel

So here we are, a mere two weeks into the Blockbuster Season and the veil of bedazzlement has already been lifted. If you are a fan of the original [[[Speed Racer]]] franchise, animated films, or even decent films in general, you will more than likely be disappointed with the film that should’ve been more accurately named [[[Speed Raver]]]. From start to finish, this film is very much like what an 8-year-old would do if he were given a crate of Pixie Stix and free run of a CGI studio, with no knowledge whatsoever about pesky details like story structure, character development or any shred of realism.

For those not in the loop, the story of Speed Racer surrounds not just the titular character (played by possibly one of the better actors of his generation, Emile Hirsch), but his über-supportive family. Pops and Mom Racer, played by John Goodman and Susan Sarandon, respectively. Balancing out the cast was Speed’s girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci), his obnoxious and extraneous little brother and pet chimp, and by far the MVP of the film, in Matthew Fox as Racer X.

The plot, or at least what one can gather about it after two hours in the theater, takes place in a world where car racing is king and the car-building Racer family takes aim at the allegedly fixed world of professional racing with their prodigal son, Speed. The plot is almost beaten into our heads for the first hour, with cartoonish performances and poorly rendered backdrops aiding along the way.

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