Post by Dizzy D on Sept 20, 2020 16:27:17 GMT -5
I was going to do a post on the recent Image Humble Bundle 2020, which included the following titles:
Battlechasers, Black Science Vol. 1-5, Blackbird Vol. 1, Buzzkill, Copra Vol. 1-5, Criminal Vol. 1-5, Curse Words Vol. 1-5, Farmhand Vol. 1-2, God Country,
Hack Slash Omnibus 1-6, Heavy Liquid, Ice Cream Man Vol. 1-2, Invincible Vol. 1-3, Kill or Be Killed Vol 1-2, Little Bird: The Fight For Elder's Hope, Low Vol. 1-2, Monstress Vol. 1-4, My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies, Nailbiter Vol. 1-6, Nowhere Men Vol. 1, Oblivion Song Vol. 1-2, Outcast Vol 1-2, Plutona,
Pretty Deadly Vol. 1-3, Redlands Vol. 1-2, Redlands Vol. 1-4, Savage Town OGN, Sex Criminals Big Hard Vol. 1-2, Snotgirl Vol. 1-2, Stray Bullets Vol. 1-6,
Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses Vol. 1-4, The Ghost Fleet, They're Not Like Us Vol. 1-2, Unnatural Vol. 1-3 and We Stand On Guard.
Quite list, even skipping the things I've read before (Battlechasers, Criminal Vol. 1-5, Curse Words Vol. 1-5, God Country, Invincible Vol. 1-3, Kill or Be Killed Vol 1-2, Monstress Vol. 1-4, My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies, Nowhere Men Vol. 1, Oblivion Song Vol. 1-2, Sex Criminals Big Hard Vol. 1-2, Stray Bullets Vol. 1, They're Not Like Us Vol. 1-2), enough remained to get the bundle and do a short review on it. Still didn't have the time to read everything, but I just finished up a series I really wanted to talk about, so mid-readthrough post it is.
Read so far:
Blackbird Vol. 1: Young girl has an encounter with magic as a child and chases clues for the existence of magic while wasting her life. As an adult, she actually encounters magic again (because I don't think there are any titles that will ever go the other way) and discovers some things about herself in the process. Storywise, it's pretty standard young adult stuff, the main eyecatch for this series seems to be the fashion the main characters will wear, reminding me a bit of Wicked and the Divine. Overall not bad, but I'm so not the intended audience for it.
Buzzkill: A superhero who gets powers from doing different drugs (including alcohol and tobacco) tries to go clean. As a concept it works, but it's also not my thing. It's very much in the hyperviolent superhero deconstruction, which I usually am not into.
Copra Vol. 1-5: I saw covers of it before and thought, mmmm... that guy looks a lot like Deadshot. A few pages in and it's clear that all references are intended and obvious. I pretty much recognized the whole of Suicide Squad or Copra as they are called here, except for WIR, who is apparently based on Haywire (and who ever read Haywire? I can't find almost nothing on the series on the internet except for some covers on DC fandom and even they don't seem to have write-up for the character himself). A bit further in and we see the Marvel characters come in (Dr. Strange, Clea (who pretty much takes the role of Enchantress), the Reavers (a group I didn't expect) and the Punisher are the first couple that appear). It's very heavily inspired by the 80s comics from both DC and Marvel (specifically Ostrander's Suicide Squad obviously, but also all things Steve Ditko, between a lot of attention on Rax (Shade the Changing Man) and Vincent and Xania (Strange and Clea).
I was too late for Suicide Squad to really hit with me, by the time I read the reprints, other writers had done the same thing, so I never was around for the original impact the series had made on comic readers. The stories here are not retellings, but more a spiritual successor to Ostrander and Yale's Suicide Squad with some differences (some larger than others). It took me a few chapters to really get into it, but I loved some of the really bizarre designs for the more cosmic/alien characters, the storytelling of the art is great and the story drew me in completely. By the end of the fifth trade, I was annoyed by two things: the digital file for the 5th trade had the entire story duplicated by accident, so while the regular trade had about 170 pages, the digital file had nearly 350 pages and then you hit page 175 or so and see that we're repeating the same story and now I have to wait till I can buy the new issues. Second annoying thing: Trade 6 should have come out a couple of weeks ago, but it's apparently delayed, because I can't find anywhere to buy it or what the new release date is.) So annoyance in both cases that I wanted more than the Bundle could give me for now, which is not a bad thing. I saw that Cheeks had read the series over here, but did not really like it, but for the rest I saw no talk about it. The creator Michel Fiffe originally self-published the first 30+ issues, before switching to Image last year, so it's all reprints of older material in this bundle, but he has continued the series at Image (switching to a series of mini-series like Hellboy, Criminal etc. a bit later).
Farmhand Vol. 1-2: From the artist that did Chew, the same weird combo of body-horror and cartoony art didn't work for me there and it's not working for me here. If you like Chew, you might want to check this out.
Heavy Liquid: I didn't get this. The art is good, the writing I couldn't get into and I think this is the first time that I have been actually put off when reading a comic by the lettering, something which I usually don't notice.
Ice Cream Man Vol. 1-2: A kinda Tales from the Crypt style series, with individual issues telling standalone horror stories with some recurring characters (though in TPB 2, some overarching narrative starts to appear). Usually the lives of normal people are influenced for the worse by the demonic Ice Cream Man (it somehow had me humming Tripod's "The Hot Dog Man" throughout both trades, a song which had a similar idea). I like some good short horror stories, but didn't love this series either.
Little Bird: The Fight For Elder's Hope: This one I did love. Artwise I'm reminded of Moebius' Incal. Writing wise, again the Incal comes to mind. I love the Incal, so it's a good place to start.
Nailbiter Vol. 1-6: Again one I was not enamoured by, I like horror, but the slasher genre never appealed to me, so a series about multiple slasher villains in a small town was a tough sell for me. The conclusion left me unsatisfied.
Savage Town OGN: Another one I liked, it helped that I saw Derry Girls not too long ago, so I could easily read the dialogue here. The semi-historical story of a small-time criminal family rise to power in the town of Limerick, Ireland. It seems that our main character mostly succeeded to having just enough luck to not get caught in the crossfire he engineered.
The Ghost Fleet: Originally published at Dark Horse, it was a completely over the top action series that turned into an Apocalyptic event, by Donny Cates and Daniel Warren Johnson before they were famous. Sad to say, the series was cancelled before it's time because nobody knew who they were and what this was and therefore the two had to quickly wrap this series up, leaving a lot of plotpoints unexplored. The Ghost Fleet is a secret government organisation tasked with the transport of the most dangerous and secret materials. During one of their missions, a veteran agent gets a look at exactly what they are transporting and is left for dead by his partner. Fueled by a thirst of revenge, he becomes a near unstoppable power. It's a lot of fun if you can enjoy a series that does not take itself too serious and goes crazy.
Unnatural Vol. 1-3: Apparently originally a European series, the story of a pig-girl who receives visions of her having a sexual relationship with a wolf-man. This is problematic for two reasons: 1. all sexual interacton between different species in this world is forbidden and 2. many of the visions end in her death. It's not quite Blacksad (a "funny animal" comic I love aimed at an adult audience), but it's not bad. I was interested in the politics of this world (obviously a thinly-veiled metaphor for real-life issues) and less so in the more mystical aspects of the story.
Overall: Not too bad, most of the things I didn't like I can see an audience for that will like it and there were a couple of things that I really loved (Copra, Savage Town and Little Bird).
Rest will follow (maybe)
Battlechasers, Black Science Vol. 1-5, Blackbird Vol. 1, Buzzkill, Copra Vol. 1-5, Criminal Vol. 1-5, Curse Words Vol. 1-5, Farmhand Vol. 1-2, God Country,
Hack Slash Omnibus 1-6, Heavy Liquid, Ice Cream Man Vol. 1-2, Invincible Vol. 1-3, Kill or Be Killed Vol 1-2, Little Bird: The Fight For Elder's Hope, Low Vol. 1-2, Monstress Vol. 1-4, My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies, Nailbiter Vol. 1-6, Nowhere Men Vol. 1, Oblivion Song Vol. 1-2, Outcast Vol 1-2, Plutona,
Pretty Deadly Vol. 1-3, Redlands Vol. 1-2, Redlands Vol. 1-4, Savage Town OGN, Sex Criminals Big Hard Vol. 1-2, Snotgirl Vol. 1-2, Stray Bullets Vol. 1-6,
Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses Vol. 1-4, The Ghost Fleet, They're Not Like Us Vol. 1-2, Unnatural Vol. 1-3 and We Stand On Guard.
Quite list, even skipping the things I've read before (Battlechasers, Criminal Vol. 1-5, Curse Words Vol. 1-5, God Country, Invincible Vol. 1-3, Kill or Be Killed Vol 1-2, Monstress Vol. 1-4, My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies, Nowhere Men Vol. 1, Oblivion Song Vol. 1-2, Sex Criminals Big Hard Vol. 1-2, Stray Bullets Vol. 1, They're Not Like Us Vol. 1-2), enough remained to get the bundle and do a short review on it. Still didn't have the time to read everything, but I just finished up a series I really wanted to talk about, so mid-readthrough post it is.
Read so far:
Blackbird Vol. 1: Young girl has an encounter with magic as a child and chases clues for the existence of magic while wasting her life. As an adult, she actually encounters magic again (because I don't think there are any titles that will ever go the other way) and discovers some things about herself in the process. Storywise, it's pretty standard young adult stuff, the main eyecatch for this series seems to be the fashion the main characters will wear, reminding me a bit of Wicked and the Divine. Overall not bad, but I'm so not the intended audience for it.
Buzzkill: A superhero who gets powers from doing different drugs (including alcohol and tobacco) tries to go clean. As a concept it works, but it's also not my thing. It's very much in the hyperviolent superhero deconstruction, which I usually am not into.
Copra Vol. 1-5: I saw covers of it before and thought, mmmm... that guy looks a lot like Deadshot. A few pages in and it's clear that all references are intended and obvious. I pretty much recognized the whole of Suicide Squad or Copra as they are called here, except for WIR, who is apparently based on Haywire (and who ever read Haywire? I can't find almost nothing on the series on the internet except for some covers on DC fandom and even they don't seem to have write-up for the character himself). A bit further in and we see the Marvel characters come in (Dr. Strange, Clea (who pretty much takes the role of Enchantress), the Reavers (a group I didn't expect) and the Punisher are the first couple that appear). It's very heavily inspired by the 80s comics from both DC and Marvel (specifically Ostrander's Suicide Squad obviously, but also all things Steve Ditko, between a lot of attention on Rax (Shade the Changing Man) and Vincent and Xania (Strange and Clea).
I was too late for Suicide Squad to really hit with me, by the time I read the reprints, other writers had done the same thing, so I never was around for the original impact the series had made on comic readers. The stories here are not retellings, but more a spiritual successor to Ostrander and Yale's Suicide Squad with some differences (some larger than others). It took me a few chapters to really get into it, but I loved some of the really bizarre designs for the more cosmic/alien characters, the storytelling of the art is great and the story drew me in completely. By the end of the fifth trade, I was annoyed by two things: the digital file for the 5th trade had the entire story duplicated by accident, so while the regular trade had about 170 pages, the digital file had nearly 350 pages and then you hit page 175 or so and see that we're repeating the same story and now I have to wait till I can buy the new issues. Second annoying thing: Trade 6 should have come out a couple of weeks ago, but it's apparently delayed, because I can't find anywhere to buy it or what the new release date is.) So annoyance in both cases that I wanted more than the Bundle could give me for now, which is not a bad thing. I saw that Cheeks had read the series over here, but did not really like it, but for the rest I saw no talk about it. The creator Michel Fiffe originally self-published the first 30+ issues, before switching to Image last year, so it's all reprints of older material in this bundle, but he has continued the series at Image (switching to a series of mini-series like Hellboy, Criminal etc. a bit later).
Farmhand Vol. 1-2: From the artist that did Chew, the same weird combo of body-horror and cartoony art didn't work for me there and it's not working for me here. If you like Chew, you might want to check this out.
Heavy Liquid: I didn't get this. The art is good, the writing I couldn't get into and I think this is the first time that I have been actually put off when reading a comic by the lettering, something which I usually don't notice.
Ice Cream Man Vol. 1-2: A kinda Tales from the Crypt style series, with individual issues telling standalone horror stories with some recurring characters (though in TPB 2, some overarching narrative starts to appear). Usually the lives of normal people are influenced for the worse by the demonic Ice Cream Man (it somehow had me humming Tripod's "The Hot Dog Man" throughout both trades, a song which had a similar idea). I like some good short horror stories, but didn't love this series either.
Little Bird: The Fight For Elder's Hope: This one I did love. Artwise I'm reminded of Moebius' Incal. Writing wise, again the Incal comes to mind. I love the Incal, so it's a good place to start.
Nailbiter Vol. 1-6: Again one I was not enamoured by, I like horror, but the slasher genre never appealed to me, so a series about multiple slasher villains in a small town was a tough sell for me. The conclusion left me unsatisfied.
Savage Town OGN: Another one I liked, it helped that I saw Derry Girls not too long ago, so I could easily read the dialogue here. The semi-historical story of a small-time criminal family rise to power in the town of Limerick, Ireland. It seems that our main character mostly succeeded to having just enough luck to not get caught in the crossfire he engineered.
The Ghost Fleet: Originally published at Dark Horse, it was a completely over the top action series that turned into an Apocalyptic event, by Donny Cates and Daniel Warren Johnson before they were famous. Sad to say, the series was cancelled before it's time because nobody knew who they were and what this was and therefore the two had to quickly wrap this series up, leaving a lot of plotpoints unexplored. The Ghost Fleet is a secret government organisation tasked with the transport of the most dangerous and secret materials. During one of their missions, a veteran agent gets a look at exactly what they are transporting and is left for dead by his partner. Fueled by a thirst of revenge, he becomes a near unstoppable power. It's a lot of fun if you can enjoy a series that does not take itself too serious and goes crazy.
Unnatural Vol. 1-3: Apparently originally a European series, the story of a pig-girl who receives visions of her having a sexual relationship with a wolf-man. This is problematic for two reasons: 1. all sexual interacton between different species in this world is forbidden and 2. many of the visions end in her death. It's not quite Blacksad (a "funny animal" comic I love aimed at an adult audience), but it's not bad. I was interested in the politics of this world (obviously a thinly-veiled metaphor for real-life issues) and less so in the more mystical aspects of the story.
Overall: Not too bad, most of the things I didn't like I can see an audience for that will like it and there were a couple of things that I really loved (Copra, Savage Town and Little Bird).
Rest will follow (maybe)
