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knifeonmars · 3 years

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Capsule Reviews, February 2021

Here's some things I've been reading.

The Curse of Brimstone

DC's New Age of Heroes books, emerging from the beginning of Scott Snyder's creative-flameout-as-crossover-event Metal, mostly constituted riffs on Marvel heroes like the Fantastic Four (in The Terrifics) or the Hulk (in Damage). The Curse of Brimstone is a riff on Ghost Rider. It's... uneven. The first volume is generally pretty good, and when Phillip Tan is drawing it, as he does the first three and a half issues, it's gorgeous and unique, when he departs though, the quality takes a nose dive. None of the replacement artists, including the great Denis Cowan, can quite fill his shoes, and the story gets old fast. Guy makes a deal with the devil (or rather, a devil-like inhabitant of the "Dark Multiverse" as a not horribly handled tie-in to the conceits of Metal), realizes it's a raw deal, and rebels. The characters are flat, lots of time is spent with the main character's sister haranguing him to not use his powers (it is, in my humble opinion, something of a cardinal sin to have a character whose primary role is telling other characters to stop doing interesting things), too many potboiler "I know you're still in there!/I can feel this power consuming me!" exchanges, a couple of underwhelming guest spots (including a genuinely pointless appearance by the old, white, boring Doctor Fate) too many flashbacks, and not enough of the action. There's potential in the classic demonic hero rebelling plotline and its link to the liminal spaces of the DC universe, forgotten towns and economic depression, but the wheels come off this series pretty much as soon as Tan leaves. The really disappointing this is that the series is clearly built as an artistic showcase, so after Tan's shockingly early departure, the main appeal of the series is gone and there's nothing left but the playing out of an obviously threadbare story.

Star Wars - Boba Fett: Death, Lies, and Treachery

I don't care much about Star Wars these days, and I think that most of the old Expanded Universe was, as evidenced by Crimson Empire, pretty bad. Death, Lies, and Treachery, is that rare Star Wars EU comic which is actually good. John Wagner writes and he's in full-on 2000 AD mode, writing Boba Fett as a slightly more unpleasant Johnny Alpha (who is like a mercenary Judge Dredd, for those unfamiliar) right on down to the appearance of a funny alien sidekick for one of the characters. The main attraction is Cam Kennedy's art though, along with his inimitable colors: this might be the best looking Star Wars comic ever. The designs are all weird and chunky, with an almost kitbashed feeling that captures the lived in aesthetic of classic Star Wars, and the colors are one of a kind. Natural, neutral white light does not exist in this comic, everything is always bathed at all times in lurid greens or yellows, occasionally reds, and it looks incredible. In terms of "Expanded Universe" material for Star Wars, this hits the sweet spot of looking and feeling of a piece, but exploring the edges of the concept with a unique voice. It's great. I read this digitally, but I'd consider it a must-buy in print if I ever get the chance at a deal.

Zaroff

Zaroff is a French comic (novel? novella?). It's like 90 pages and it delivers exactly on its premise of "Die Hard starring the bad guy from The Most Dangerous Game." It's pretty good. Count Zaroff, he of the habitual hunting of humans, turns out to have killed a mafia don at some point, and after miraculously escaping his own seeming death at the end of the original story, finds himself hunted by the irate associates of this gangster, who have brought along Zaroff's sister and her kids to spice things up. Zaroff not only finds himself the hunt, but he also has to protect his estranged family as they struggle to survive. Nothing about this book or its twists and turns is likely to surprise you, but I don't think being surprised is always necessary for quality. Zaroff delivers on pulpy, early-20th century jungle action, is gorgeously rendered, and the fact that Zaroff himself is an unrepentant villain adds just enough of an unexpected element to the proceedings and character dynamics that it doesn't feel rote. There's a couple of points, ones typical of Eurocomics, which spark a slight sour note, such as some "period appropriate" racism and flashes of the male gaze, but for the most part these are relatively contained. It's good.

Batman: Gothic

Long before Grant Morrison did their Bat-epic, they wrote Batman: Gothic, an entirely different, but then again maybe not so different, kind of thing. It starts off with what must be called a riff on Fritz Lang's film, M, only where that story ends with a crew of gangsters deciding they cannot pass moral judgment on a deranged child-murderer, in Morrison's story they go ahead and kill him, only for the killer to return years later to rather horribly murder all of them as a warmup for a grandiose scheme involving unleashing a weaponized form of the bubonic plague on Gotham City as an offering to Satan. Along the way it turns out that said villain, one Mr. Whisper, is a former schoolmaster of Bruce Wayne's, who terrified the young Batman in the days before his parent's deaths. It's an earlier Morrison story and it shows. Certain elements presage their later Batman work; Mr. Whisper as a satanic enemy recalls the later Doctor Hurt, and the cathedral Mr. Whisper built to harvest souls recalls what writers like Morrison, Milligan, and Snyder would do concerning Gotham as a whole years later.The art, by Klaus Janson, is spectacular. If you're familiar at all with his work collaborating with Frank Miller you'll see him continuing in a similar vein and it's all quite good, even when he stretches beyond the street milieu which most readers might know him from. There's one particular sequence where Janson renders a needlessly complicated Rube Goldberg machine in motion that manages to work despite being static images. The writing by Morrison though, is not their finest. The M riff doesn't last as long as it could, and Mr. Whisper's turn in the latter half of the story from delicious creepy wraith to a cackling mass murderer who puts Batman in an easily escaped death trap feels like something of a letdown from the promise of the first half of the book. Gothic is good, but not, in my opinion, great. It's certainly worth checking out for Morrison fans however, and I imagine that someone well-versed in his latter Batman stuff might be able to find some real resonance between the two.

Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters

For a long, long time, Longbow Hunters was THE Green Arrow story. It is to Green Arrow as TDKR is to Batman, deliberately so. Mike Grell wrote and drew the reinvention of the character from his role as the Justice League's resident limousine liberal to a gritty urban vigilante operating in Seattle over the course of these three issues, which he'd follow up with a subsequent ongoing. Going back to it, it certainly merits its reputation, but its far from timeless. Grell's art is unimpeachable absolutely incredible, with great splashes and spreads, subtle colors, and really great figure work. The narrative is almost so 80's it hurts though, revolving around West Coast serial killers, cocaine, the CIA and the Iran-Contra scandal, and the Yakuza, and it's hard to look back at some of this stuff without smirking. The story begins with a teenager strung out on tainted coke sprinting through a window in a scene that's right out of Reefer Madness. In the cold light of a day 30+ years later, parts of it look more than a little silly. The 80's-ness of it all doesn't stop with that stuff though, even the superhero elements smack of it. Green Arrow realizes that he's lost a step and has be to be shown a way forward by an Asian woman skilled in the martial arts (recalling Vic Sage's reinvention in the pages of The Question), and Black Canary gets captured and torture off-panel for the sake of showing that this is real crime now, not the superhero silliness they've dealt with before. The treatment of Black Canary here is pretty markedly heinous, it's a classic fridging and Grell's claims that he didn't intentionally imply sexual assault in his depiction of her torture is probably true, but still feels more than a little weak considering how he chose to render it.The final analysis is that this book is good, but it exists strictly in the frame of the 1980's. If you're a fan of Green Arrow, there are worse books to pick up, or if you're interested in that era of DC Comics it's more than worth it, but as a matter of general interest I wouldn't recommend it very highly.

SHIELD by Steranko

Jim Steranko is sort of the prodigy of the early Marvel years, a young guy who came up through the system, blossomed into an incredible talent, and then left the company, and by and large the industry, behind. He would go on to dabble in publishing, work in other mediums, and generally kick around as the prodigal son of Marvel Comics. This collection, of both his Nick Fury shorts in the pages of Strange Tales and the four issues he drew of the original Nick Fury solo series, charts Steranko's growth as an artist. The book starts off with Steranko working from Jack Kirby's layouts with Stan Lee's dialogue and writing, and Steranko might be the one guy in history for whom working off of Kirby's blueprints is clearly holding him back. The first third or so of this collection really isn't much to write home about, as Steranko is obviously constrained by someone else's style, and at the end of the day those early stories still read as somewhat uninspired pulp compared to the highlights of early Marvel. There are flashes though, of techniques and ideas, which foreshadow what Steranko is capable of, and when he finally takes over as solo writer/artist it's like he's been unleashed. He immediately has Nick Fury tear off his shirt and start throwing guys around over psychedelic effects. He writes out most of Kirby and Lee's frankly uninspired boys' club supporting cast, he makes Fury visibly older, wearier, but also so much cooler. It's the birth of Nick Fury as a distinctly comic book super spy.By the time he finishes wrapping up the previous writers' plotline with Hydra and Baron von Strucker, Steranko is firing on all cylinders. By the time it gets to Steranko's Fury solo series, he's somehow surpassed himself, turning in effects, panel structures, and weird stories which make the earlier installment about a suit-wearing Man from UNCLE knockoff and its strict six-panel layouts look absolutely fossilized.I can't recommend this collection highly enough for any fan of the artform, even if the stories themselves might not be everyone's cup of tear. It's truly incredible to watch Steranko emerge as an artist over the course of this single collection. The book itself has a few problems, it's not the most elegantly designed in its supporting materials and index, but the content of it more than outweighs that. It's great stuff.

#capsule reviews #comics

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thesaintking · 7 years

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On the telly, so far... (Part 1)

Fair warning: this is going to be a long post and there may be spoilers

RATINGS: (all scores out of 10)

Bates Motel - 9.5

Gotham - 9.5

The Flash - 4

DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow - 6

Grimm - 7

Lucifer - 8.5

Arrow - 7.5

Supergirl - 5.5

BATES MOTEL: SEASON FIVE

Bates Motel has been an incredible show from the beginning. The creepiness, the disgust, the drama, the madness are always turned up to the max. Freddie Highmore's acting is an absolute delight to watch; needless to say, he steals the show. The rest of the cast bring their best as well, especially Vera Farmiga and Max Thieriot. The acting on the show is so good that you just cannot help but feel everything those characters are feeling along with them - and if a show is capable of doing that, it is a brilliant show.

Till the season finale, the Bates Motel served as a precursor to Psycho (the movie), but the finale makes it clear that show is a reimagining of the original with characters of the same name and a slightly different story.

Season 5, like all the prior seasons had me on the edge of my seat througout. The ending was both daring and heartbreaking, but it was perfect! Kudos to the makers of the show and the brilliant cast without whom the show wouldn't have been as engaging as it was.

I would love to see Vera, Freddie and Max together in another psychological horror show/movie.

GOTHAM: SEASON THREE

Gotham has an amazing cast. I don't know how the makers of the show picked these perfect actors - I honestly cannot think of anyone better suited to those roles than the actors playing those roles. I've gotten so used to seeing these characters that the animated characters look wrong now. If a show is capable of that, then you already know its a great show. One might think I'm biased towards the show because I loved the Dark Knight movies (who didn't?) and I've really liked the Batman cartoons and animated movies; but that’s not true. Batman wasn't even my favourite superhero when I was younger.

After the first season, the writers began to split the show into two parts - the second season had "Rise Of The Villains" and "Wrath Of The Villains"; the third had "Mad City" and "Heroes Rise". Each episode brings its own little story and connects it to the next one; each part of the season feels like one big movie, with disparate events converging to one big cliffhanger. The writers make us wait a little while before the second part comes along and sweeps us off our feet with even better stories, character sketches, action and whatnot. The show is packed suspense, action, drama, romance and even some dark humour.

I've said this before and I'll say it again - its great to see all the characters grow in the show - both the villains and the good guys. The third season ended with young Bruce ready to take justice into his hands like a vigilante. I wonder where the show will go from here. I don't want the show to start focusing on Batman just yet. There are plenty more villains to rise and I'd like to see all those characters first.

Kudos to the makers and the cast - this is one of the best shows on TV!

THE FLASH: SEASON THREE

Here's my problem with The Flash: do all his villains have to be speedsters? Season 1 was amazing, because:

Tom Cavanagh is a brilliant actor and he saved the show;

Tom Cavanagh is a brilliant actor and he saved the show; and

The almost Avengers-like ending was great.

And then we had Zoom in Season 2. That was boring! They brought back Tom Cavanagh in a different role too, which was a little difficult to digest. Overall, the season didn't really bring anything that wasn't already done before (Flash beats evil speedster and saves the day, yay!)

Season 3 had a promising start. We saw a new type of villain, one who wasn't a speedster. But then the show's writers went on to make him a speedster too. The monstrous looking creature was still a nice little twist, but then it turned out to be a suit. CRINGE! Oh and guess who was in the suit? CRINGE! Why make it so obvious? And all the melodrama just brought the show further down. The final nail in the coffin was Tom Cavanagh; what the hell were the writers thinking? You can't make a lovable goof out of a sinister-supervillain-from-the-future-rebadged-as-an-overprotective-father-from-another-dimension. I mean, seriously, what the fuck!

DC’S LEGENDS OF TOMORROW: SEASON TWO

DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow is always going to be slightly more cartoonish than the rest of the DC shows on TV. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it and nothing outstanding that makes you want to watch it. The stories that the writers come up with are definitely entertaining, the cast do a great job with it too, but you can’t seem to shake off the feeling that this show is more like bonus content on an Arrow or Flash DVD, put together with all the actors who were written off from the main shows.

Having said that, the action sequences are great, all the cliffhangers throughout the show are excellent and how the writers built the story after the end of the first season was impressive! I really wish the show started taking on charge and being its own independent thing with its own villains; I will never say no to the crossovers that they have between Arrow, Flash, Supergirl and Legends...but maybe its time to stop borrowing failed villains from the other shows.

GRIMM: SEASON SIX

Grimm was a great show. I'm a little disappointed that it ended even though 6 seasons is an impressive run. But I genuinely wanted more from the show. Perhaps my disappointment has more to do with how quickly things were wound up in the final season. The first five seasons were great - it was a "new day, new case" type of show with a whole lot of supernatural stuff to keep it from becoming your standard cop procedural; and the bigger story running in the background over the first five seasons kept me hooked onto the show.

I feel like the writers didn't know where to go after Season 5 ended. What they did get right is with the season was telling us about the keys and the treasure and bringing a new side to every character. The finale was daring - killing off all the main characters was a bold move; but then the writers sort of chickened out and brought them all back with a happy ending. Its not that I have a problem with happy endings, its just the way they did it - the whole thing was rushed. I don't know why season 6 was the shortest season in the series but that explains why things were rushed in. If not for that, this would have gotten a 9/10.

The cast were great; David Giuntoli and Silas Weir Mitchell obviously stole the show right from the beginning, but all the main characters did a great job on the show.

LUCIFER: SEASON TWO

Season two was better than season one - and that’s a good thing. The overall story is getting better, the weekly cases aren’t boring; and while Tom Ellis continues to steal the show, all the other actors are performing better than they did on the first season. Special shout out to Rachael Harris (Dr. Linda) who has upped her game so much since the first season. Tricia Helfer (Charlotte Richards / Mum) was brilliant throughout the series as well. I sincerely hope we get to see her again sometime in the show.

Will Lucifer ever tell Chloe everything? Did Amenadiel become divine again? And most of all (HUGE SPOILER AHEAD):

OH MY GOD! I can’t wait for the next season to start!

ARROW: SEASON FIVE

I've always said this (and my friends know it well because I always stress on this): a hero will only be appreciated when the villain brings his best. Everyone loved Season 2 of Arrow - and that's because it was the only season with an amazing villain (Slade Wilson a.k.a Deathstroke). Season 3 was a mess and Season 4 was struggling to redeem the show's quality. So, it came as no surprise when the makers of the show took things back to the drawing board with Season 5... and in the end, it really paid off. Prometheus is the best villain we've seen on Arrow since Deathstroke. Having said that, Season 5 came nowhere close to the overall greatness of the first two seasons. And here's why:

The makers of the show were still experimenting with the cast well into the season - first they introduced a whole new bunch of characters into Team Arrow (Rag Man, Artemis and Wild Dog); then they re-branded Curtis as Mister Terrific and then for no apparent reason, they wrote off Rag Man only to introduce a new character to take Laurel's place as the new Black Canary. MESS!

It seemed like the makers of the show were still trying to figure out what they wanted from the new villain. Tobias Church seemed like the main bad guy until Prometheus came along and stole the show. It's tragic and simultaneously funny that I had no recollection of Tobias Church until I re-watched the season before writing this review. That is how pointless his role was in the series, even though he took up a good amount of screen-time. MESS!

"Oli-city" becoming a thing again was imminent - but the way they makers of the show made it happen was cringe-worthy! I think the writers were taking the piss at viewers with their relationship. The writers threw that budding affair out the window for no bloody reason and then wasted precious screen-time with an obvious dead-end relationship. Out of nowhere, there's one secret night of passion in the recent past that nobody knew about, which is used as the introduction to Oli-city Part II. CRINGE-WORTHY!

The chopped pieces of Oliver's apparent time on Lian Yu were forced. Up until Season 3, those excerpts of the past were refreshing and added so much to the show - it almost felt like we were watching two different shows in one. However, those past scenes were so short and pointless in this season - it was clear that the writers were running out of ideas for Year 5 and they were pressured to write something meaningful and link it to the first episode. That said, I liked excerpts in the last few episodes with Oliver reaching Lian Yu and finally escaping. While it didn't bring much of its own, it added a dark subtext to the show's current story-line.

Thea and Diggle's roles seemed somewhat disposable throughout the series. Not that its a bad thing, but it just seemed off, a little bit.

With all its shortcomings, the season was still so much better than the last two. The writers let the supporting character's grow a little - the budding friendship between Quentin and Rene; Felicity working with the sinister group of hackers - both were nice little additions to the story. Stephen Amell's acting was much better this time around, possibly because he felt challenged by Josh Segarra's role and acting. All said and done, the show owes everything to Josh Segarra's and his character, Adrian Chase for bringing it back on track with Seasons 1 and 2.

Prometheus was a brilliant psychopath and his personal vendetta with the Green Arrow made the series genuinely watchable again. The writers did an amazing job with his story and Josh performed incredibly! It was almost romantic - the growing hatred between Oliver and Adrian, the brilliantly devised evil ways of personal torture that Adrian employed over and over, the pity and disgust that Adrian felt for Oliver, the fear and the weakening of the Green Arrow... Romantic might not be the best word to describe the struggle between Adrian and Oliver, but it seemed sort of satirical - Adrian wouldn't give up on Oliver and Oliver would go to any extent when it came to Adrian - that's almost like love, even though its quite the opposite in this case.

Oh and the cliffhanger at the end - MY GOD! I really hope Season 6 picks up where this one left off and takes the show back to its amazing heights.

SUPERGIRL: SEASON TWO

I find that this show is still struggling. I really wish the makers give us something to keep us hooked to the show. The crossover episode with The Flash, called “Duet”, was a refreshing change from the overall nothingness of this show.

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