Violet
I'm a big fan of the actual Ripley's Odditoriums so when I found out these comics existed I had to find out what they were like. This 2 issue mini-series contains a bundle of adapted true stories. If you're not familiar with Zenescope, they're what I would consider the Roger Corman of the comics industry. Cheap pulpy b-movie fun, perfect for Ripley's imo.
The art is generally nice, nothing groundbreaking. It doesn't try anything to out of the ordinary which I see as a missed opportunity for telling these kinds of stories.
I read this while in the middle of Batman: Eternal to get a better understanding of Joker's Daughter. I guess I know who she is now? The first half felt unnecessarily long since the New 52 appearances retcon it all anyways.
To be fair though I much prefer the earlier interpretation of a Girl who can convince herself she's anybody's Daughter than the much edgier New 52 stuff. Nonetheless, this compilation was well put together and did technically give me a better understanding of this character.
Read this as a part of the Solo Omnibus but wanted to make note of it. This is quite possibly one of the best single issues DC has ever put out. I can't stress enough just how incredibly produced this is.
Cooke had such a master on form and aesthetic, one that has never been matched since. Every panel of every page tells you everything you need to know about his world. His voice and vision are perfected here.
Favorite Issues:
#1 - Tim Sale - 5/5
#2 - Richard Corben - 4/5
#3 - Paul Pope - 4/5
#5 - Darwyn Cooke - 5.5/5
#8 - Teddy Kristiansen - 5/5
#9 - Scott Hampton - 4.5/5
#12 - Brendan McCarthy 5/5
I'm giving this a reluctant 5/5 because of the story The Sleeping. It's not often we get true metaphysical stories for Batman. Usually it's given a scientific excuse through strange chemicals and drugs, here it's purely up for interpretation though. Like a dream is.
Really beautiful work in text and image by Scott Hampton. Strange especially given just how much of a slog I found the first story in this collection, Destiny.
Only a partial log because I just read the story by Donny Cates
Uhhh just had total whiplash because this was published only a few weeks after Cates first comic credit. Yet this one didn't really have any of the charm from that first story? Strange.
Logging this partially because I only read the Donny Cates story. For a super short anthology segment it was kinda great? Cates clearly already has a good grasp on what makes a comic fun and gripping.
What can I say though, I'm a sucker for weird adventure stories.
So this begins my 2021 Halloween Special Marathon. I'm reading each and every DC Halloween Special released and giving them a short review.
These are all Anthology works so quality varies heavily from story to story. Anthology Horror is quintessentially Halloween to me so I'm well used to the format. I'll just be pointing out the best stories here, the stories are SHORT so if you don't like one it'll soon be over.
Kcirt ro Taert - This short starring Zatanna is written by the legendary Paul Dini and drawn by a personal favorite of mine, Dustin Nguyen. I love Zatanna stories and this one was a bit more morbid than usual so obviously I loved it. Paul Dini excels in short stories.
Red Rain: Blood Lust - Regardless of public opinion, I LOVE Kelley Jones' artwork. He's one of my all time favorites and this story is no exception. The writing is fine but god is the gothic atmosphere just beautiful. The red sky and endless stone architecture of this Gotham speaks to me.
Strange Cargo - This one was my personal favorite of the bunch. I'm a sucker for weird Superman stories so one featuring Zombies was right up my alley. Accompanying Steve Niles' writing was Dean Ormston in a rare painted style. Really beautiful nonetheless.
So I was hoping to see a continuation of the story started in Son of M and Silent War but...no.
A really inconsequential story for both Secret Invasion and The Inhumans as a whole. Easily the worst writing for these characters yet, mixed with some aggressively okay artwork means this is not only skippable but worth ignoring all together. Yikes.
Incredible art by Chris Bachalo. The writing was...not for me. Felt like a horrible Deadpool comic but instead it stars the Venom nobody likes. Yikes. I would like to give this a 3 just for the artwork alone but ehhh. Honestly just read another book illustrated by Bachalo.
Don't have too much to say! This is by far the best Spider-Man I've read so far, ticks every box for me. The writing is spot on, this feels like the Peter Parker that's been in my head since childhood. It looks exactly how I imagine the classic Spidey comics looking, the colors especially. The choices made on artists between volumes was consistent making this 500 page long tome feel like one complete story.
Javier Pulido is pretty much the perfect Spider-Man artist for me. Really harkens back to style of classic comics while still creating innovative and breathtaking panel layouts.
200 pages of gorgeous painted artwork from some of the 90's leading British artists. What's not to love?
Counting this as all 6 issues since there was never a TPB. Overall this was missing the feel of the 90's Hellraiser comic series, only a couple stories had the abstract and grimy feel. Would only recommend to hardcore Hellraiser fans, which means I got more enjoyment out of it than most would.
Using this to log the first 3 issues of Tom King's Love Everlasting. At this point I think I'll give anything he writes a shot as it's almost always some level of brilliant. Saying anything about this series will spoil the experience so I'll just say it's been a consistently engaging and surreal ride.
The Magician and The Snake and The Prisoner of Mars are two of the best comic stories I've ever read. It would be hard to argue this isn't Mignola's magnum opus.
Mixed bag anthology starring Batman's Rogues Gallery.
The Penguin, Joker, Poison Ivy, and Clayface had the best stories. I was especially impressed by the game show nightmare tale βThe Joker's Mildβ and the great Clayface cult story βMudnight Madnessβ, the latter featuring some gorgeous gothic artwork by comic king Kelley Jones.
Did not anticipate my first read of the year to heavily feature the Bury Your Gays Gays trope. I typically love what Gerard Way puts out (both his music and comics) but this really missed the mark for me. It's really a shame most of the characters were either awful or LGBT rep that is killed off for shock value. The world presented here (as first shown in the Danger Days album) is unique and filled with interesting dystopian/cyberpunkish ideas. I'll give the followup series a shot since I love the album so much, maybe by 2021 they moved away from such outdated handling of gay characters.
I totally understand why this doesn't work for most, it's an odd mix of 30's pulp adventure stories with 60's/70's Psychedelia storytelling. The whole thing is told at a breakneck pace, feels like someone recalling a dream they once had. The characters all speak either in a sort of stream of consciousness or stilted exposition.
...
And yet I find it all to be really charming?
Review for the full 5 issue series. Feels like the modern version of a forgotten Vertigo title. The artwork is stylized, dark, and VERY sketchy. The surreal fuzzy environments work for the more dreamlike sections of the book but cause the middle chunk to feel rather confusing and dull. The action is extremely hard to follow because of it sadly.
This has some neat ideas, mostly in the last 2 issues, but overall it's not exactly something I'd recommend.
5 Stars for Ennis and Corben's Punisher: The End, a wonderfully bleak apocalypse. There is just something so comically horrifying about Richard Corben's artwork that suits the end of world perfectly.
The Tyger was really not too bad but is very much overshadowed.
Full disclosure I skipped The Cell for its use of both βTransvestiteβ and βFaggotβ on the first page lol, I get why they're used here but it just left a bad taste in my mouth.
A definite improvement from the last! There were more hits than misses so still pretty good for an anthology.
Continuing Stories:
Conquering Armies - This one is short and arguably sweet. I love this series so I was a bit disappointed by the length, still a very nice EC-esque tale.
Sunspot - Not my taste, skipped yet again. Won't be bringing this one up after this issue as I don't want to keep repeating myself.
DEN - So GOOD. Look I love Corben's work with Warren but his surreal void of a fantasy landscape is beautiful. So many strange structures and characters. No there isn't much in character development past DEN himself because it's so focused in world-building.
Age of Ages - Continuing on in it's strange collage world of victoriana, spirtuality, and myth, Age of Ages is still my favorite serial of Heavy Metal thus far. It's not exactly subtle and it certainly doesn't make much sense but that's what I love about it.
Arzach - Well this one took an interesting turn. I'm gonna get the obvious out of the way, Moebius is such a visionary and I adore his art. I know I'm late to the party but WOW. Here he gives us another perfectly silent, wordless chapter in the story of Arzach. Taking a detour from it's previous fantasy background, here we see a new character in a slightly more technologically advanced world. Can't say I understand it yet but it's a joy to witness.
The Rest: Gonna be brief here. The Vessel was a short and okay horror/science fiction tale. Enjoyed the twist ending. Rockblitz was silly and definitely not for me. Fear of the Blue-Eyed Sloane was so very French and fantastic. Going to be checking out more of this writer/artist as soon as I can. Vengeance felt exactly like a Warren Mag, which by all means is not a bad thing. Last story I want to mention is the last of the issue, Shells. A neat little plot about a future in which humans wear full body metal Shells. A couple explores a wrecked landscape and decide to risk it and see each other's real body for the first time. Fun read with some strange art. Worth a read.
Overall this issue was pretty well-rounded and continued with all that I love about this Magazine.
Decided to start going through as much of Heavy Metal magazine I can take. This first issue at times is pretty great, mostly due to it being translated french work from their magazine Metal Hurlant. To get it out of the way, I will admit the outdated depictions of women can be tiring. I didn't find it to be particularly bad in this first issue but the signs are there.
The standouts here are DEN by Richard Corben, CONQUERING ARMIES by Jean-Pierre Dionnet and drawn by Jean-Claude Gal, ARZACH written and drawn by Moebius, and AGE OF AGE by Akbar Del Piombo.
The rest are either trashy fun or offensive and boring. TRAUMWACH and SUNSPOT especially were just so far from my taste that I skimmed through them. Oddly enough one of the stories, SPACE PUNKS, seemed like satire but by the end I wasn't sure. It's definitely an interesting read.
As it stands (being the only one I've read thus far) It's a 3 and a half stars. Depending on how good or bad future issues are, I'll update this rating.
Well if you're a fan of Moebius than this is the issue for you. 28 pages of his mad beauty. Approaching Centauri was the standout for me, Moebius at his absolute best imo. Another chapter in DEN, this one being a bit less interesting for me personally. Lots of exposition as the plot is ramping up, rather liked when it was more mysterious. World Apart is a new serial that started in the previous issue, It's already beginning to lose me. Way too masculine and angry for me personally. Nep Simo was almost offensive in it's unabashedly horny portrayal of women? I can't say I love all the nudity in this magazine but at least it usually feels a little more...subtle than this. The sad thing is this story features some really bizzaro fun clown action so I ended up enjoying it nonetheless.
Conquering Armies was boring this time around, felt less like The Twilight Zone and more like an EC story (and a mediocre one at that). I said I wasn't gonna bring it up anymore but Sunspot finally ended, thank the gods. As the final panel reads Sunspot is dead.. The Golden Queen featured some great art but not much substance.
Finally we get to my personal favorite story this issue, Crossroads of the Universe by new favorite Enki Bilal. Won't spoil the premise but it very much felt like an episode of The Twilight Zone meets Labyrinth. Great stuff. That being said, the issue then comes to a close after another short Moebius strip. Much better than the last two, only a couple stories I didn't care for, the grand majority ranging from good to great.
Ugh. So this would've gotten a fairly decent review but it seems as if the people over at Heavy Metal have lost their damn minds. Among some real gems there is not only a fair bit of trash but also an article that goes against the very ethos of the magazine. Smack dab in the middle of this issue is an article with Keven Smith about his NFT movie. Not a movie about NFT's but a movie that IS an NFT. Not going to get into it, research it yourself if you'd like and you'll see the problem.
Not sure what if the editors at Heavy Metal have been replaced by pod people or not but christ, what a baffling decision. There are stories in this VERY issue that discuss Mankind's habit of destroying the planet...so here's an ad for something destroying the planet! Buy product, consume, ignore the planet I guess. Total trash.
Contrary to a lot of the reviews here, I think this is fantastic. Absolutely classic EC style horror with Corben's iconic visual flair. All the stories presented here are short and sweet, all with great crescendos of horror visuals. I even found the out of place serialized Greek epic to be intriguing, if only in that I don't know where it's going.