I buy my comics once every couple of months. I have mostly given up the hobby, but I have a complete run of Hellblazer, so every few months I clean out my pull list. I just love the mutant Archetype that is John Constantine, and title generally has good writers.
But I was in the nerd shop looking at 4e Dungeons and Dragons stuff the weekend before last, and got sucked into looking at DC's new 52, their reboot of all their titles. I wasn't interested in all of the titles. I'd seen the list, and all I was really interested in were the titles I thought of as "non-standard" super hero titles, the supernatural/mythology based ones: Swamp Thing, Frankenstein: Agent of Shade, Justice League Dark. I loved Swamp Thing when I was in college, when Alan Moore was writing it. JLD has Constantine as a character, and Frankenstein has a picture of Frankenstein's Monster carrying a Gatling gun on the cover of one of the issues. Also, the Bride has four arm. It seemed like a calculated risk tilted in the direction of awesome. So I picked up the first two titles of each, and the three issues that led up to the re-launch of Swamp Thing, and with my regular Hellblazer issues, that was 40 bucks of comics.
I must say, I was pretty universally unimpressed. My first major complaint is fan boy haggis: They guys who wrote Constantine's dialog in Search for Swamp Thing and JLD made him sound like a peevish Oliver Twist as played by a sulky Ron Weasly. He was not a convincing John Constantine.
Beyond that, the stories were pretty blase. They all seemed to be reaching for Grant Morrison territory, piling crazy on top of crazy. Frankenstein's secret hideout is a 3 inch sphere designed by The Atom: EVEN KEWLER than the JLA's satelite, right? Eh. When the villain is as urgent and faceless as a venereal disease, the context becomes a little facile. And every villain in the three series I picked up were WORLD THREATENING, with a capital WORLD. Frankenstein was facing an army of elder gods kept at bay by children of the corn hicks. JLD was an insane, disembodied ex-super villain, whose name is the closest you get to a personality or goal. Swamp Thing was facing a knockoff of the end-game boss from Alan Moore's run. Pretty much pure insecty evil.
Meh. Meh. Meh. No personality, straightforward plot, poor writing in general. JLD was full of emo wheezing about how "broken" all the characters were. Swamp Thing was closest to good, but I was put off by the fact that they totally turned Alan Moore's brilliant run inside out: Instead of Alec Holland being the basis for the rather tender character that Swamp Thing became, he really is the necessary component, and the original Swamp Thing was a kind of mistake. That immediately lessened my interest in the story, and actually made me want to go back and re-read Moore's run.
In contrast, the current Hellblazer story-lines are just great, pitting the character of Constantine's niece, psychologically damaged when his lifetime of dabbling in the arcane arts finally bites her in the ass, against Constantine's wife: a much younger alchemist, daughter of a mob boss, who somehow thinks that a Middle Aged, scarred, half talented wizard is the cat's meow because he's tough as nails and has a heart of gold. Well... gold plated anyway. There's gold in there somewheres. Maybe his fillings. Oh, yeah, I think the story has some demons or ghost in there somewhere. But who needs monsters when you got characters?
So, luckily, I was saved from entanglement in an expensive habit by the poor quality of the product. And I still have my first comic book love, John. *sigh* He's so dreamy. I want to be him when I grow up. Except not in JLA Dark.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Thursday, November 03, 2011
11 PM Book Review: Fate's Mirror
Fate’s Mirror by M.H. Mead is about Morris, a mercenary hacker who never leaves his home. Who would want to? If you have all the bounty of the intertubes spread out before you, and crippling agoraphobia. Then his home gets blown up. Morris barely makes it to the home of a client, and possibly his only friend, Adria the detective chick.
As she tries to get him on his feet, avoiding legitimate authorities because of his hacker background, it becomes obvious that his home blowing up is the tip of the iceberg. Morris is being hunted, and he’s not sure by whom: the immensely powerful NSA, or a trio of rogue artificial intelligences that escaped from the NSA, and now pattern themselves after the Greek Goddesses of fate.
I would loosely describe Fate’s Mirror as “Urban Cyberpunk” or maybe “Romantic Cyberpunk.” Action keeps the pace moving forward, the romantic interest between Adria and Morris is delicate and funny, and I was really liking how the authors built tension with Morris’ tendency to have a puking-sick panic attack in a crunch. Morris is funny, sarcastic and defensive, and really vulnerable because of his panic attacks. The plot is full of twists that you wouldn’t expect from either Urban Fantasy or a Romance. And Morris accesses his version of the internet with a virtual pirate ship, which means all his cyberattacks take the form of sea battles, which gives a weight to the intertubes action.
I think this is a good pick for most Urban Fantasy readers, possibly romance readers who like a lot action with their romance, and fans of cyberpunk who don’t take themselves too seriously.
Fate's Mirror
As she tries to get him on his feet, avoiding legitimate authorities because of his hacker background, it becomes obvious that his home blowing up is the tip of the iceberg. Morris is being hunted, and he’s not sure by whom: the immensely powerful NSA, or a trio of rogue artificial intelligences that escaped from the NSA, and now pattern themselves after the Greek Goddesses of fate.
I would loosely describe Fate’s Mirror as “Urban Cyberpunk” or maybe “Romantic Cyberpunk.” Action keeps the pace moving forward, the romantic interest between Adria and Morris is delicate and funny, and I was really liking how the authors built tension with Morris’ tendency to have a puking-sick panic attack in a crunch. Morris is funny, sarcastic and defensive, and really vulnerable because of his panic attacks. The plot is full of twists that you wouldn’t expect from either Urban Fantasy or a Romance. And Morris accesses his version of the internet with a virtual pirate ship, which means all his cyberattacks take the form of sea battles, which gives a weight to the intertubes action.
I think this is a good pick for most Urban Fantasy readers, possibly romance readers who like a lot action with their romance, and fans of cyberpunk who don’t take themselves too seriously.
Fate's Mirror
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