Sunday, February 27, 2011
Um... Are These Zombies Too???
Following Blackest Night, this week comes Brightest Day. After several dead heroes have returned from the dead (spoiler alert), peace has returned to the DC universe. But alas, peace is fleeting (since it would mean the unemployment of many writers and artists and the abundance of disposable income for nerds such as myself) as those who have been resurrected by the white light of creation must deal with their personal issues associated with their rebirth.
Among those are Aquaman, and his strange ability to only summon dead sea creatures; Firestorm, who can no longer split apart into his separate personalities; and Deadman, who now wears the white ring as it guides him to its true bearer. All these stories and more are interlaced throughout this year long, twenty-six issue arc.
Naturally, the main flaw with this is since these stories are often unrelated (especially in the beginning), some stories are the focus for an issue than completely ignored for another issue or so. This makes keeping track of the story difficult as the reader is required to remember several small threads that the recap fails to consistently cover. Not to mention that the cliffhangers are a real bummer seeing as it’s anyone’s guess when that particular storyline will be continued.
Furthermore, as more characters are introduced, more separate stories intertwine with the rest, making it extremely complicated for the weekly reader. I find myself feeling as I read that this is a story that needs to be read in one sitting to truly appreciate everything that is going on.
Another issue is that as a person who is unfamiliar with the DC universe (I prefer Marvel and some independent publishers. I was only in this for Green lantern who sadly was mostly absent) Many of the character’s backgrounds were of vague knowledge to me. This made it difficult as each character went on a soul searching journey that involved them digging far back into the continuity as DC tends to do in their larger stories. Thus becomes confusing to newer readers that don’t follow multiple books at once.
What was good about Brightest Day is that it does keep the suspense rolling from Blackest Night. With the white light in lantern form, I find myself eager to find out what roll it will now play in the DC universe if any. With Deadman running around with the ring, and the ring itself giving cryptic messages to “fight” or “live” (which was discovered to mean go get a hamburger for those of you who were wondering about how cryptic that can really be), I want to know how such a powerful tool will mainly affect the other lanterns.
Overall, I felt Brightest Day fell short after the spectacular Blackest Night. Despite this being somewhat expected as an aftermath piece that deals with many character issues resulting from Blackest Night, it definitely could have been handled better to avoid confusion.
Among those are Aquaman, and his strange ability to only summon dead sea creatures; Firestorm, who can no longer split apart into his separate personalities; and Deadman, who now wears the white ring as it guides him to its true bearer. All these stories and more are interlaced throughout this year long, twenty-six issue arc.
Naturally, the main flaw with this is since these stories are often unrelated (especially in the beginning), some stories are the focus for an issue than completely ignored for another issue or so. This makes keeping track of the story difficult as the reader is required to remember several small threads that the recap fails to consistently cover. Not to mention that the cliffhangers are a real bummer seeing as it’s anyone’s guess when that particular storyline will be continued.
Furthermore, as more characters are introduced, more separate stories intertwine with the rest, making it extremely complicated for the weekly reader. I find myself feeling as I read that this is a story that needs to be read in one sitting to truly appreciate everything that is going on.
Another issue is that as a person who is unfamiliar with the DC universe (I prefer Marvel and some independent publishers. I was only in this for Green lantern who sadly was mostly absent) Many of the character’s backgrounds were of vague knowledge to me. This made it difficult as each character went on a soul searching journey that involved them digging far back into the continuity as DC tends to do in their larger stories. Thus becomes confusing to newer readers that don’t follow multiple books at once.
What was good about Brightest Day is that it does keep the suspense rolling from Blackest Night. With the white light in lantern form, I find myself eager to find out what roll it will now play in the DC universe if any. With Deadman running around with the ring, and the ring itself giving cryptic messages to “fight” or “live” (which was discovered to mean go get a hamburger for those of you who were wondering about how cryptic that can really be), I want to know how such a powerful tool will mainly affect the other lanterns.
Overall, I felt Brightest Day fell short after the spectacular Blackest Night. Despite this being somewhat expected as an aftermath piece that deals with many character issues resulting from Blackest Night, it definitely could have been handled better to avoid confusion.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Zombies!
This week’s blog is part one of two, DC Comic’s Blackest Night. This is a crossover title, which means that it is the main ongoing story within the universe, and most of the company titles interact and expand on it in some way. In this case it is a Green Lantern story that involves a series of black rings raising the heroes who have died over the years (and there have been a lot) and using them to destroy all life.
For the sake of consistency, I will only focus on the main eight issues and the eight issues of Green Lantern that make up the core of the series.
What is interesting about Blackest Night is despite it having been building up for several years like most major crossovers, this one can be clearly rooted in the origins of Green Lantern (seeing as their oath begins “In blackest night. In brightest day.”) since we see characters like Abin Sur, who gave Hal Jordan the ring in issue one.
The purpose of Blackest Night clearly is a resurrection story, which allows many major characters who have died to come back, such as Martian Manhunter and Flash. What is nice though is that DC didn’t overdo it and only kept ten heroes (several of which were recent deaths) alive once everything was all said and done. This helped readers from being overwhelmed by the number of old characters being reintroduced.
But this also introduces Blackest Night’s major flaw: it is rooted deeply in comic book continuity. For casual readers, the hundreds of old characters coming back are overwhelming and often have a meaningless impact since the reader doesn’t know who the character is. While some characters like Bruce Wayne coming back are easily recognizable, many people don’t realize there are more than one Superman, or who Terra is for example. This severely crippled the series ability to respond with new readers.
On the other hand, the strongest point of Blackest Night obviously falls in the court of Green Lantern fans. This is where all the different corps (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet) unite for the first time put aside their differences for a full color spectrum beat down (for those who don’t know, each color is based on an emotion based in the visible light spectrum, green being the emotion will that powers the ring).
Since for the longest time, green and yellow were the only two colors in the series, the other five are new and therefore relevant to readers new and old. Being a fairly new reader to DC comics myself, it was easy for me to catch up and understand the characters motivations and plots that culminated in Blackest Night.
Overall, Blackest Night was an extremely successful crossover and provided enough answers with enough new questions to keep me wanting more. Despite not understanding most of the character’s reaction within the tie in stories, the main story was straightforward enough that I had no trouble following it.
For the sake of consistency, I will only focus on the main eight issues and the eight issues of Green Lantern that make up the core of the series.
What is interesting about Blackest Night is despite it having been building up for several years like most major crossovers, this one can be clearly rooted in the origins of Green Lantern (seeing as their oath begins “In blackest night. In brightest day.”) since we see characters like Abin Sur, who gave Hal Jordan the ring in issue one.
The purpose of Blackest Night clearly is a resurrection story, which allows many major characters who have died to come back, such as Martian Manhunter and Flash. What is nice though is that DC didn’t overdo it and only kept ten heroes (several of which were recent deaths) alive once everything was all said and done. This helped readers from being overwhelmed by the number of old characters being reintroduced.
But this also introduces Blackest Night’s major flaw: it is rooted deeply in comic book continuity. For casual readers, the hundreds of old characters coming back are overwhelming and often have a meaningless impact since the reader doesn’t know who the character is. While some characters like Bruce Wayne coming back are easily recognizable, many people don’t realize there are more than one Superman, or who Terra is for example. This severely crippled the series ability to respond with new readers.
On the other hand, the strongest point of Blackest Night obviously falls in the court of Green Lantern fans. This is where all the different corps (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet) unite for the first time put aside their differences for a full color spectrum beat down (for those who don’t know, each color is based on an emotion based in the visible light spectrum, green being the emotion will that powers the ring).
Since for the longest time, green and yellow were the only two colors in the series, the other five are new and therefore relevant to readers new and old. Being a fairly new reader to DC comics myself, it was easy for me to catch up and understand the characters motivations and plots that culminated in Blackest Night.
Overall, Blackest Night was an extremely successful crossover and provided enough answers with enough new questions to keep me wanting more. Despite not understanding most of the character’s reaction within the tie in stories, the main story was straightforward enough that I had no trouble following it.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Revenge of the Clone Menace
So this week I’m covering Star Wars Empire.
This series is easy for the occasional reader since many of the stories are only a single or a few issues total, instead of arcs that encompass a larger arc. This is kind of nice since it allows for the series to focus on small characters or tell minor stories that really doesn’t affect the Star Wars Universe all that much.
What fans will really appreciate is the story of Biggs and Hobbie (those of you who don’t know, Biggs was the guy who got killed attacking the Death Star in the first movie and Hobbie was Wedge’s copilot in the second). This series really manages to flesh these characters out and follows them for the longer stories.
The main issue I have with this series though is that the longer stories get interrupted often. Bigg’s story was broken up into three or so parts, each at inappropriate times. Literally the comic book says, we’re going to take a break midway through this story and tell this one instead. So for months Hobbie is laying in bed dying of some strange disease or Biggs is floating in space without oxygen and I’m getting told a story about a storm trooper uncovering a plot on the Death Star that doesn’t really matter since it literally gets blown up two seconds later. This makes the series fall short in my book.
What worked well for Star Wars Empire is that it fills in many of the gaps left in the movies and Expanded Universe. For those who aren’t nerds like myself, one of the deleted scenes in the first movie had Biggs return home to say a final farewell to Luke before joining the rebellion. In Star Wars Empire they tell this story, although they change it so that it makes sense in the established continuity. Another story is what happened to Darth Vader after his tie fighter flew off into space when the Death Star blew up.
Fans of the X-Wing novels will also notice that many of the stories fill in the gaps the books left open by expanding on the cast of the series and explaining just how they came to meet. This is great for those that love the Expanded Universe storylines.
Overall, Star Wars Empire is good for those who want quick, but mildly entertaining episodic Star Wars stories. They don’t really add anything to the universe story wise, but they do characterize many of the small character never before explored in the universe. For me this is adds more to the other material than the books themselves since I feel more emotional when they die or succeed in their missions within the movies and other materials. As a result, I guess Empire is successful in adding to the story in that way.
This series is easy for the occasional reader since many of the stories are only a single or a few issues total, instead of arcs that encompass a larger arc. This is kind of nice since it allows for the series to focus on small characters or tell minor stories that really doesn’t affect the Star Wars Universe all that much.
What fans will really appreciate is the story of Biggs and Hobbie (those of you who don’t know, Biggs was the guy who got killed attacking the Death Star in the first movie and Hobbie was Wedge’s copilot in the second). This series really manages to flesh these characters out and follows them for the longer stories.
The main issue I have with this series though is that the longer stories get interrupted often. Bigg’s story was broken up into three or so parts, each at inappropriate times. Literally the comic book says, we’re going to take a break midway through this story and tell this one instead. So for months Hobbie is laying in bed dying of some strange disease or Biggs is floating in space without oxygen and I’m getting told a story about a storm trooper uncovering a plot on the Death Star that doesn’t really matter since it literally gets blown up two seconds later. This makes the series fall short in my book.
What worked well for Star Wars Empire is that it fills in many of the gaps left in the movies and Expanded Universe. For those who aren’t nerds like myself, one of the deleted scenes in the first movie had Biggs return home to say a final farewell to Luke before joining the rebellion. In Star Wars Empire they tell this story, although they change it so that it makes sense in the established continuity. Another story is what happened to Darth Vader after his tie fighter flew off into space when the Death Star blew up.
Fans of the X-Wing novels will also notice that many of the stories fill in the gaps the books left open by expanding on the cast of the series and explaining just how they came to meet. This is great for those that love the Expanded Universe storylines.
Overall, Star Wars Empire is good for those who want quick, but mildly entertaining episodic Star Wars stories. They don’t really add anything to the universe story wise, but they do characterize many of the small character never before explored in the universe. For me this is adds more to the other material than the books themselves since I feel more emotional when they die or succeed in their missions within the movies and other materials. As a result, I guess Empire is successful in adding to the story in that way.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
A Little Bit of Fun
So this week’s books are Zenescope’s Grimm Fairy Tales. As the name implies, it is a fairy tale based comic series.
Each book tells two stories, that of events happening within the storyline, and then a reflection of the events within a dark version of our favorite children’s tales that is extremely loosely based on the original. This is often done by Sela as a means of teaching the subject of the story a life lesson that often goes ignored. As a result, the books end depressingly for the most part.
What’s odd about Grimm Fairy Tales is that it took them sixteen issues to establish an overarching plot to the series. Despite the individual issues being overall entertaining enough for a quick read, I’m still confused on what is actually happening within the universe. Even at issue sixteen, all that was established was that there is another person like Sela running around doing evil (I’m serious. That’s it).
But four years worth of books into the series, I have to say it is getting quite interesting. Considering Zenescope is a small time publisher in the greater comic book community, I like the fact that all their books are interconnected. Although you don’t have to read the other books, you often want to understand completely the overall story and buy into their whole marketing ploy.
I do have to admit though; it is nice to see a sort of freaking horror comic able to stand on its two feet in such a competitive community.
My one major annoyance with Grimm Fairy Tales is the cheesy writing. While the story is entertaining enough to want to read, each time it open an issue it feels like I’m watching one of those old horror movie classic that you can see the strings attached to the monster, but you are so charmed by it you continue to watch. Everyone in the book comes off as dimwitted, which takes away from the series.
Personally, I think it is due to the series episodic nature, with two female characters (one good and one evil and that’s all that’s really explained) running around with other two dimensional punk characters who get killed in the end. Not enough time to form some actual characters.
This might also be once again due to the fact that they print extra material to pass out at conventions and in the trade paperback collections that are unavailable to the monthly issue collectors such as myself. So instead of buying the expensive hardback collections, I feel like I’m missing the back stories to the main character.
Overall I like Grimm Fairy Tales for what it was: mindless reads, with stories that are wrapped up within the issue itself. It allows for inconsistent reading, which was nice for someone who is as busy as me, but in the end left me wanting more. I guess next week I’ll have to find something more filling.
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