Talking Comics 2

The great thing about being a comic book fan now is the fact that lots of comics are availably ten, twenty even seventy years after it first saw print thanks to trade paperback collections. There was a time when you’d have to scour long boxes to find the comic you wanted or that comic run that was from time gone by, ok not everything is collected, and there aren’t enough trees in the world for that task. But some of the important stuff from the past has been collected and most comic book companies will now reprint current runs after a few months (well DC is a bit fussy when it comes to that) in some instances having everything in one collected kinda works out cheaper than buying it in a single format and like I mentioned you can get stuff from years ago without going through musky old comics to find what you want, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Anyway there is a point to this, I’ve been getting more and more trade paperbacks (mostly old runs or completed runs that I didn’t start at the time for whatever reason) and I wanna write a quick thing about them.

Batman: Child of Dreams- it’s basically Batman as a manga, it’s very intriguing Kia Asamiya (who has worked on Martian Successor Nadesico as well as Uncanny X-Men) crafts a very basic Batman tale bringing a Japanese reporter over to Gotham to cover Batman while some of Batman’s best villains are acting strange. The story is basically about fandom and how it can lead to obsession. It’s a shame that the book has been flipped from the traditional Japanese manga style to the western way of reading a comic.

Batman Knightfall Part One: Broken Bat and Part Two: Who Rules The Night- during the 90’s DC replaced many of its core characters with newer characters Batman was no exception, but it’s the way they did it in part one of Knightfall which is fantastic, over the course of the book Batman is fighting one villain after another while new villain Bane watches and waits for the moment when physically and emotionally drained he delivers a crushing blow. Part two deals with the new and more violent Batman taking to the streets in an effort to make sure no one knows that the real Batman is now wheelchair bound both of these books just add excitement to the last chapter when the payoff is really worth it.

Captain Britain and MI13 Secret Invasion- A tie in to the latest Marvel event which is dull boring and has been done to death. This tie in is ten times more fun, interesting, exciting, brilliant and shocking than the event it tied itself into. Paul Cornell (writer of Father’s Day on Doctor Who) crafts a story of alien invasion while simultaneously instilling British pride and patriotism, making this an untypical superhero book. Plus John Lennon’s in it, ok he’s an alien who was originally supposed to replace the real Lennon but decided not to.

Green Lantern: In Brightest Day: The current writer of Green Lantern (Geoff Johns) picks some of his favourite tales from Green Lantern’s past, many of the stories focus on the Silver Age Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) but also looks at tales from the other earthbound Green Lanterns and some of the known alien Lanterns, most of the stories show the mythology of the characters some are just interesting tales, it’s a good read for someone who is interested in checking out Green Lantern.

Heroes: volume 2: every week NBC publishes a webcomic to accompany the TV series about 8 pages long, sometimes reading comics online is very easy because the formats designed that way but some don’t which is why I wait until these comics are collected. Some of the comics featured in this volume are good because they add to the story however some of them don’t and they can just feel out of place and there is one comic that is the end of a multi part story which doesn’t really make any sense.

Watchmen: Ok I haven’t only just read this I read it months ago but because the film is out I decided to reread it and I enjoyed it alot better the second time round and I think it’s because I knew what to expect from the narrative and the story within the story. I'll do a more indepth look at this book very soon

Wisdom- The Rudiments of Wisdom: Written by Paul Cornell this is a mature look at the British mutant known as Pete Wisdom, from shagging fairies (the Tinkerbelle kind) to getting abit frisky with a fellow agent while on a stakeout mission, the six issues in the mini feel pretty stand alone as well as feeding into a larger narrative but its affective, and the supporting cast help to make the stories enjoyable, from a geriatric version of Captain America to a Goth fairy. Still it’s the shape shifter John the Skrull who comes out with some cracking lines, such as referring to Liverpool on a Friday night as a collective unconscious which just made me laugh.

Y The Last Man- Deluxe Edition: Collecting the first 10 issues of this book with such an amazing concept; Imagine there was only one man left after every man and animal with a Y chromosome died along with every sperm cell leaving one man (and his male monkey Ampersand) and an entire planet of women. What I like about this is that you don’t know why all but one man died or why this one guy survived. The thing that also makes it interesting is that most of the women are quite content with a maleless world going back to Amazonian ways (i.e. removing their left breast) at the end of this book there is an interesting cliff-hanger which has got me intrigued to read on. This is probably one of the most interesting comics I’ve read and there are no superheroes involved.