More graphic goodness …<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Exiles: A World Apart <\/i>TPB (Marvel)<\/b>
\nThe concept is “X-Men Meets Quantum Leap,” but the idea is really “Marvel Lets Judd Winnick (Barry Ween<\/i>, Green Lantern<\/i>, Pedro & Me<\/i>) Screw Around with the Marvel Universe.”<\/p>\n
Running a bunch of parallel universe X-types through a bunch of other parallel worlds probably works best if you’re a Marvel wonk, but even if you’ve never picked up another comic before, I think Judd’s writing is still strong. Sure, you miss a lot of the insider jokes (and Judd’s as good at this as Peter David is in Capt. Marvel<\/i>), but Judd’s writing and interpersonal bits are strong enough to carry you through. Ultimately, this isn’t a book about a bunch of X-types, but a book about a bunch of people, and Judd does people Real Good.<\/p>\n
This volume collects issues 5-11, including the Hulk arc, the Skrull\/Galactus arc, the ‘Nuff Said issue and the Mariko\/Morph issue. Really good stuff.<\/p>\n
Private Beach: Fun & Perils in the Trudyverse <\/i>TPB (Slave Labor)<\/b>
\nThis is the original, early run of the the “Trudy” stories. The art is more crude, the characters more slacky, but there’s still a sort of fun, off-beat slice-o’-off-kilter-life by David Hahn. It’s not going to take the world by storm, and but there’s sort of a sweet, innocent fun about it that … well, makes me glad that I bought it, dagnabbit.<\/p>\n
Dork Tower Vol. III: Heart of Dorkness<\/i> TPB (Dork Storm)<\/b>
\nJohn Kovalic’s comic (here collecting issues #13-17) is just two frelling funny for anyone who games, reads comics, games, enjoys sci-fi or fantasy, or games. Did I mention gaming? Funny Stuff. Really.<\/p>\n
Goddess <\/i>TPB (Vertigo)<\/b>
\nBefore Garth Ennis mixed gratuitous violence with religion in Preacher<\/i>, he did the same (only moreso) in Goddess<\/i>, telling the tale of a woman with strange powers, the renegades running with her, the maniacal CIA agent after her, and the psychopathic police constable after the CIA agent. Or perhaps it’s a tale of maimings, torture, dismemberment, and exploding heads (exploding due to gunshots, exploding due to magic, exploding due to … well, you get the idea).<\/p>\n
Phil Winslade’s art is alternately sweet and, well head-explodingly bloody. Ennis’ story is sort of thin in places (and, when in doubt, throw in some gratuitous finger crushing), but you can see the genesis (so to speak) of Preacher <\/i>here, and, as such, it’s a worthwhile read. At least on an empty stomach.<\/p>\n
Ruse: Enter the Detective <\/i>TPB (CrossGen)<\/b>
\nMark Waid on the story and Jackson Guice on the art do a marvelous Sherlock Holmes pastiche, with a smattering of supernatural and a mysterious, liberated blonde as Watson. Great stuff, and this collection (issues #1-6) is a great intro to the annoying ego and his irked assistant. Fun.<\/p>\n
Too bad Waid’s leaving the book in a few issues, citing “creative differences.” Which is sort of weird, given the whole CrossGen “creator-oriented” thang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More graphic goodness ……<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-comics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":155237,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2021\/09\/04\/marvellous.html","url_meta":{"origin":2224,"position":0},"title":"Marvellous","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 4-Sep-21 11:31pm","format":"aside","excerpt":"Some vocal bros sure seem to be constantly threatened by strong female heroes.","rel":"","context":"In "~Tweets"","block_context":{"text":"~Tweets","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/tweets"},"img":{"alt_text":"Ms Marvel and Captain Marvel uniforms","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Ms-Marvel-and-Captain-Marvel-uniforms.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Ms-Marvel-and-Captain-Marvel-uniforms.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Ms-Marvel-and-Captain-Marvel-uniforms.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Ms-Marvel-and-Captain-Marvel-uniforms.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Ms-Marvel-and-Captain-Marvel-uniforms.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":51272,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/05\/26\/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-marvel-ultimate-universe.html","url_meta":{"origin":2224,"position":1},"title":"The Rise and Fall of the Marvel Ultimate Universe","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 26-May-15 10:50pm","format":false,"excerpt":"There are a number aesthetic points I disagree with in the article, but overall a decent history of the creation, rise, and apparently inevitable fall of the Ultimate Universe at Marvel.I'll confess I was never a huge UU fan -- I read most of the Ultimates, and some Ultimate Thor,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2044,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/03\/21\/comics_galore.html","url_meta":{"origin":2224,"position":2},"title":"Comics Galore!","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 21-Mar-02 7:38am","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been remiss. Reviews a-plenty below ......","rel":"","context":"In "Comics & Comic Books"","block_context":{"text":"Comics & Comic Books","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-comics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":45980,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/16\/playing-hardball-in-the-marvel-cinematic-universe.html","url_meta":{"origin":2224,"position":3},"title":"Playing Hardball in the Marvel Cinematic Universe","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 16-Oct-14 3:21pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Crikey. Yeah, this has Isaac Perlmutter (the guy intimately involved in Marvel's bankruptcy back in the 90s) written all over it.The sense of some of these items seems to depend on how you think causality works. Does a Fantastic Four comic actually increase Fantastic Four movie sales? Or is it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":135656,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/14\/marvel-universes-collide.html","url_meta":{"origin":2224,"position":4},"title":"When Marvel Universes Collide!","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 14-Dec-17 10:50am","format":false,"excerpt":"This article gets a little breathlessly geeky in places, but there's no doubt that the folk running Marvel Pictures right now are salivating over finally getting their hands on the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises -- heroes and villains alike. If they follow their pattern, we'll see stand-alone films there\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/iron-man-wolverine.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":44303,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/11\/no-more-mutants.html","url_meta":{"origin":2224,"position":5},"title":""No more mutants!"","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 11-Aug-14 9:02pm","format":false,"excerpt":"An article about (and feeding into) the paranoia of some of the X-title fans about how Marvel is neglecting the franchise in favor of comic books around properties which they own full movie rights to.Because, of course, if you were doing that, you would put one of your most popular\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}