Blog
601 Entries

Check back here for detailed information on updates to the reading orders or database, reviews by myself or any of the other site contributors, and general comic news we find interesting! You can also subscribe to an RSS feed for updates.

If you’re new here, you may want to know How To Use This Website. Alternatively, click on a reading order on the sidebar. The current pride of our site is the Recommended Reading Order for the entire DC Universe!

Up Down
By | Thursday, December 30, 2010 | 9:48 am | 6 Comments | Blog > Reviews
Find This Book At:
Amazon (Softcover)
Half.com (Softcover)
Ebay (Search by Title)
Ebay (ISBN/Softcover)
View our database entry
Includes Issues: Deathblow 1-9
Issue Dates: December 2006 – February 2008
Creators:
, , , , , , ,

This review contains minor spoilers. Skip To The Verdict? »

When a rescue operation on foreign soil goes wrong the squad refuses to return empty handed. In steps another prisoner. He claims to be a black-ops operative, previously thought to be deceased.

He is then brought back to American soil (following verification checks) and is told to take a leave of absence with his family. The problem is that he doesn’t remember his children, his wife is dead and, oh, the neighbor’s dog talks to him.

Clearly not all is what it seems in Deathblow: And Then You Live!

Is this a simple case of Michael going crazy from all those years held captive or is it some kind of built-in defense mechanism triggered by his niggling doubts?

The trade collects all nine issues of the second volume of Wildstorm‘s Deathblow. This series is written by Brian Azarello and the story is an explosive one.

It has everything from the aforementioned talking dogs to a slightly psychotic dinosaur robot. You might believe that Grant Morrison’s bizarre imagination had been consulted at some point during the writing process.

One particular concept in the book bares a very uncanny resemblance to a concept from Morrison and Quietly’s We3: rats that have been turned in the living weapons.

While the concept might be borrowed, the workings and execution is done in a different way, keeping the story fresh.

The book is penciled by Carlos D’Anda (Outsiders) and coloured by a regular Wildstorm colourist Carrie Strachan; both combining to make some high quality artwork. The visuals are similar to that in Mark Millar’s Nemesis and are just as violent/gory in places.

My main issue with the book is that Azzarello’s writing is not up to his normal standards, most likely due to it not being noir in any way at all. It is clearly born out his previous Deathblow attempt, Batman/Deathblow: After the Fire, but it quite doesn’t live up to that title.

While the plot isn’t up to his normal standards it is still one of the best Wildstorm titles I have read so far. It’s a shame this series only lasted for the 9 issues.

For under $10 you can get yourself more than 200 pages of vibrant, modern artwork as well as an explosive and exciting story with one the few characters strong enough to even get their own solo series in the Wildstorm Universe. If you are new to the imprint, this trade is a good pick as it requires no previous reading to follow the plot.

Deathblow: And Then You Live! is well worth a read, especially for fans of violent and weird espionage.

Verdict:
4 stars. A quality collection of the entire second Deathblow series, it stands on its own as a satisfying story within one volume.

Essential Continuity:
Almost certainly not – the Wildstorm Universe has a habit of not paying much attention to continuity from progressing stories. It does act as a nice introduction to the character.

Read first:
You may decide you want to read the 1993 Deathblow series, what little of it that has been collected, to give yourself an idea of who Deathblow is.

Issues 1-12 are in Deathblow: Sinners and Saints.

I would say this isn’t really necessary, since the latter book contains everything you need to follow the plot.

Read next:
Next up you could try Azzarello’s other attempt at the character, set while he was ”dead”, Batman/Deathblow: After the Fire.

Alternatively, you might want to try his critically acclaimed hardboiled crime series 100 Bullets.

« Back to the top?

Want to stay up to date? Click here to subscribe to updates by RSS!
You can also sign up to get updates by Email!
By | Wednesday, December 29, 2010 | 8:09 am | 12 Comments | Blog > Reviews
Find This Book At:
Amazon (Softcover)
Half.com (Softcover)
Ebay (Search by Title)
Ebay (ISBN/Softcover)
View our database entry
Includes Issues: Sweet Tooth 1-5
Issue Dates: November 2009 – March 2010
Creators:
, , , , ,

This review contains minor spoilers. Skip To The Verdict? »

I didn’t mean to pick up Sweet Tooth. I’d heard a lot about it, sure, but I had a lot on my plate already.

I just happened to be in on the bookstore level of the building my fiancée works in and slipped it off the rack while I was waiting for her.

I accidentally finished it.

Like the tempting candy that eventually lends the main character his nickname (along with the title of the comic), Sweet Tooth is undeniably seductive.

As the newest celebrated Vertigo title, in a long line of successes for that extraordinary imprint, it starts right off with the weird.

Artist/writer Jeff Lemire knows how to get pages turning and he isn’t afraid to take risks. Three sets of eyes and some feet? It’s not what you’d expect as the first page of a new ongoing, at least not if you’re used to comics-by-committee.

But, accompanied by Gus’ dialogue, innocent and frightened, it’s the right first page for this book. As a nightmare, it doesn’t hint at much besides tone, but the opening sequence makes things clear without feeling at all like exposition.

Gus has been living with his father alone in the woods. Something has happened, bad enough that Pa warns about lands of fire and brimstone, only sinners left, and keeps Gus close. He warns him not to go beyond the fence, teaches him to live on his own and run from the others.

Oh, and Gus is a hybrid – “My dad says so few kids was born after the accident, that god decided to make ’em special. So we got fur, or tails, or antlers.” (It’s almost a shame that the antlers are all over the promo materials, because it’s a few pages until we see them and I appreciated Lemire’s slow reveal.)

This “specialness” has resulted in the hybrids being hunted, hated. And Gus’ father tells him he’s the last left – and then, just 15 pages in, Pa dies. Gus is alone (and because the plot must move forward) the bad world outside soon finds him.

Sweet Tooth Vol. 1: Out Of The Deep Woods collects the first five issues of Lemire’s new Vertigo series. The creator is probably best known for Essex County, a small town epic now collected in one hefty volume, but he also received acclaim for his first Vertigo publication, The Nobody.

Sweet Tooth is his first major ongoing series (which he started just a little over a year ago), but Lemire is now a signed DC exclusive (though his contract allows him to work on his current Top Shelf project “The Underwater Welder”). In addition to this self contained creator owned work, he is currently penning Superboy. This Smallville-centered DC property is probably a good match, since Lemire is a writer very invested in strange little towns and equally strange young men.

In Sweet Tooth, this theme is distilled by the apocalyptic setting – with most of society gone, the entire world is like a small town. It’s disconnected, off the grid, populated by a few gruff characters. Gus, of course, a variety of crazies, and the other star of this first volume – Jepperd. The Big Man.

While there’s no telling what’s to come in this story, so ripe as it is for twists and turns, Out Of The Deep Woods is a fairly straightforward start. Gus is lost, new to a harsh world, and he latches on to Jepperd. As a manly figure that makes no move to hurt him, he’s the closest thing to a positive role model the boy has.

But it’s not likely we’ll be seeing blurbs such as “A heartwarming tale of family bonding – when all else is lost. A boy… who needs a father. A man who never knew he needed someone to love..” This isn’t a Hallmark Channel movie, it’s a Vertigo title.

This brings me to one of the weaknesses of the story so far. While the pacing and development is excellent, and there are enough hints of something interesting under the surface, this first volume is a little predictable in its general make up. The setting – while no zombies in sight so far, thank god – isn’t particularly original and neither is the small cast (young boy, gruff old guy – think Wolverine team-up.)

The hints of paranormal, scattered profanity, and the sudden spouts of violence are exactly what we’d expect from a Vertigo title. To compound it, I found myself blowing through this volume. It was over before I knew it, without much happening that wasn’t hinted at heavily from the first issue.

These problems are relatively minor and may indeed become irrelevant altogether as the series goes on – often the self contained Vertigo titles read best in a stack of trades. If I had discovered Sweet Tooth later in life, I could see myself sitting down with the complete run and devouring it in the course of a single afternoon. Even if the slightly predictable personae and situations persist throughout, the writing style and characterization is still a total treat.

Sweet Tooth is made even more delectable by Jeff Lemire‘s art. It’s a style that, after just five issues, I’d have no problem picking out in a crowd. And the art gets better as the title goes on (a natural progression – but also perhaps because a more successful title might allow more time, especially for the colors.)

Full of dark crevices, spilling deep shadow, his pages ooze the dusty nothing of a dying America. ‘s color palette is masterfully picked, accompanying Lemire’s work in complementary amounts of bright searing red or dark muddy tones (watercolor-esque, though they must be computer generated due to the overall consistency.)

It’s not all dreariness. Lemire throws in the occasional bright sunset, strange dream sequence, or stylized set of imagery. A personal favorite is the amazing bordered spread of Gus considering his father wasting away while seasons change in the background – all set inside panels adorned with green-vined framing.

Lemire is a comic artist with a more free-form approach to human figures and faces (and even backgrounds at times) so I can understand if his art doesn’t work for everyone. It’s odd, like the story, and (also like the story) sometimes brutal in the use of line and anatomy. Somehow this brutality leaves room for bright cartoony eyes and exaggerated emotion.

Personally, I love his figures, especially their shoulders, dynamic and expressive without being over idealized forms. Lemire tends to elongate arms and emphasize the upper torso, using this to exaggerate motion, from shrugs to painful convulsions.

The characters have faces hewn from rock, craggy things that posses the ability to move into forms of delight, but default to slates of prolonged pain. Faces of the world post-apocalypse.

I could go on longer about this Sweet Tooth Vol. 1: Out Of The Deep Woods‘s intricacies, but I’ll save further discussion for the next volume. I have no doubt that I’ll be looking at it soon.

The series is off to a great start. If you’re looking for a new monthly to pick up (with the first two trades already on the shelf) – this is one to support.

With my slight reservations about the few predictable elements, the real shame would be if Sweet Tooth never gets a chance to bring its extremely intriguing set up to a satisfactory conclusion. Far too many creator owned titles end before their time is up. My real fear is that this story, which could be an epic alongside Preacher or The Walking Dead, will be cut short. Unless Vertigo makes a move towards continuing in OGN form, that means we have to support titles like this while they are in floppy – no matter how good the story is, recent cancellations have proved that the bottom line will always be a factor.

Ideally, in a few years, I’ll be sitting down with a tall stack of Sweet Tooth trades, ready to experience the whole story through in one sitting.

Verdict:
4 out of 5.  Definitely worth getting into. Even with some things you’ve seen before (and hopefully much you haven’t!) the title is amazingly irresistible. It’s executed very very well and makes for an enjoyable read.

Essential Continuity:
This is a self contained title and the start is here – like most self contained ongoings, you should read it through by the volume numbers.

Read first:
This is the first book in the series. Lemire has other works, but there’s no pre-gaming required for this one.

Read next:
The next book is Sweet Tooth Vol. 2: In Captivity.

If you can’t stand the wait for the third volume and need more Lemire now, check out Essex County and The Nobody.

« Back to the top?

Want to stay up to date? Click here to subscribe to updates by RSS!
You can also sign up to get updates by Email!
By | Tuesday, December 28, 2010 | 3:13 am | 10 Comments | Blog > Reviews
Find This Book At:
Amazon (Softcover)
Half.com (Softcover)
Ebay (Search by Title)
Ebay (ISBN/Softcover)
View our database entry
Includes Issues: Superman Returns: The Official Movie Adaptation; Amazing World Of Superman: Metropolis Edition 1; Superman Secret Files and Origins 2005; Superman 185; Adventures of Superman 575; Action Comics 810
Issue Dates: 1973, February 2000 – August 2006
Creators:
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This review contains marked spoilers. Skip To The Verdict? »

In my previous review of the excellent Superman Returns: The Prequels, I mentioned that the actual film tie-in wasn’t of the same quality.

Generally speaking, comics based on films tend to be of a lower quality than most other comics. Superman Returns: The Movie and Other Tales manages to sink a new low.

The collection stands at roughly 170 pages in length with around 70 of them given to the film adaptation.

The other 100 are filled with rather mediocre one off stories intending to get first-time readers interested in Superman enough to purchase more titles in the future.

This is quite standard of movie tie-in collections and it means that the main story is squeezed into a space too short for the writer to be able to adapt the script with decent quality. More on this later.

Despite the overall poor grade of the book, the story starts off quite promisingly; however, it is short lived and soon spirals out of control.

The opening deals with Superman’s background before Superman Returns, with him setting off to find Krypton at the end of the second film. These two pages are drawn using a dot-screen effect and limited colours to give the feel of a comic from a previous era. It works quite nicely to separate the back story from the rest of the book.

The book then swiftly moves onto the main film plot, starting with a scene removed from the final edit of the film as it was deemed too costly: Superman’s return to Krypton.

It is a scene made semi-famous by the sheer amount of hype about it being a possible special feature on the DVD. Sadly it never was and this only added to it’s notoriety among the completionists. Unfortunately these few pages are the most they will ever see of this famous scene, but serve as a nice treat to the reader.

So far so good. Over the next 10 or so pages we have the several introductory scenes that set up all the major characters in the story; most of these scenes are entirely in the film.

There is one new sequence at the Kent farm. Martha Kent barely features in the film only appearing to help Clark out of the crater when landing back on Earth.

In one of these extra sequences it is revealed Martha is now dating Ben Hubbard and is planning on moving to Montana with him. Arguably not a real loss to be cut from the film, but a little bonus all the same.

From here on, the story follows the film with no extra bits or at least nothing good enough that I noticed it.

One apparent downside to having these neat little extras thrown our way was that it meant the number of pages left to complete the story were very low, leading to some disastrous consequences.

The most harrowing one can only be pointed out by telling exactly how it is in the book, so for this reason this next section after the image contains spoilers. Beware… there be spoilers ahead!

Spoilers: There comes a point in the story when Lois and her family are locked in a quickly filling container, which itself is submerged and sinking in the Atlantic Ocean. In the film they are saved by Superman flying in and heroically pulling the ship out of the ocean. It is probably one of the best scenes, the greatest depiction of Superman’s heroics in the entire film.

So now in the book we have come to that same scene but it plays out slightly differently:

– Oh no, Lois and company are trapped! How will they ever survive? Quick, turn the page to find out! (turns page)

– Why is Superman fighting Lex on the new island? This scene is another 5 minutes later! What about Lois? (turns page again)

– Oh, I see they were saved ”off camera” and then Superman flew to fight Lex Luthor once they were safe. How do I know this if it was off camera? Well, on the first panel on the next page Richard White (Lois’s husband) explains all of this to her…

As you can probably tell from my tone of how this scene was handled, it got under my skin just a tiny wee bit. They didn’t technically ruin one of the best scenes in the film, because they instead removed it altogether and replaced it with an 11 word sentence summing up what had happened. Badly, I might add.

The art for the title is provided by a trio of artists Matt Haley (Ghost), Mike Collins (Doctor Who) and Ron Randall (Predator). With quite a big team of artists, you might expect something of good standard, however we are left with artwork that’s pretty dull and tame, even awkward.

What makes the artwork particularly bad is that it is clearly intended that the characters resemble the actors from the film. Some of the characters look like bad drawings of their actors, with both Clark and Lois often looking more like actors than fully fleshed characters.

It is Lex Luthor that ensures that the artwork gets a slating from me. It’s doubly bad – not a single panel of him looks remotely like Kevin Spacey at all, and he actually manages to look like a different character in almost every panel.

I wrote earlier that the back-up stories in this volume aren’t of a high quality and don’t contain anything of real note. This being the case I feel it would have been far better to cut one or more of these stories and flesh out the film-tie in (originally released as a prestige format one-shot.)

If they had done this it still wouldn’t be a high quality book but it would be a book with some interesting extra scenes for a fan of the film. The downsides of the book outweigh the bonus of the extras and make the it one to avoid at all costs.

I bought my copy for £0.01, plus postage, off of Amazon.co.uk a few years back and I actually doubted whether it was worth the price.

It is still on the UK Amazon for this price (and a similar one cent at US Amazon). At the time of writing, 25 out of the 43 market place sellers with this book are selling it at this price. One particular seller is obviously very keen to get rid of the title as their description for the item it:

”RRP £7.99 Graphic Novel :)” – A 99.99875% deflation of the original retail price, yet it still wont sell. Perhaps that says everything you need to know about Superman Returns: The Movie and Other Tales.

Verdict:
1 out 5 stars, a real stinker.

It gets one star for the contents of the first dozen pages and the mediocre backups, which are of a 3 star quality; the rest fails to even rate 1 out of five.

Essential Continuity:
To even follow the book you would have had to watch the film. This contains nothing more and is strictly unessential.

Read first:
If you do decide to give this a shot, you may as well read the much higher quality Superman Returns: The Prequels first.

Read next:
Watch the film again and remind yourself how good the story is, if handled correctly.

Alternatively, read issue 1st Issue Special #9 (December 1975) by Pasko, featuring Dr. Fate, and you will be happy to see that not all of his writing is this poor.

« Back to the top?

Want to stay up to date? Click here to subscribe to updates by RSS!
You can also sign up to get updates by Email!
By | Monday, December 27, 2010 | 8:12 pm | 18 Comments | Blog > Reviews
Find This Book At:
Amazon (Hardcover)
Half.com (Hardcover)
Ebay (Search by Title)
Ebay (ISBN/Hardcover)
View our database entry
Includes Issues: Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Tintin in the Congo
Issue Dates: 1929 – 1931
Creator:

This review is spoiler free! Skip To The Verdict? »

Note: As Simon is a UK reviewer, this post deals with a UK release. US readers may be more familiar with this Tintin Vol. 1 which skips these even earlier adventures.

People often ask me about the first comic I ever read. Ignoring the regular children’s comics, it would be a either one of the Asterix books or one of the Tintin books. Both are great classics, originally written in French, although Tintin was a Belgian publication.

Given a choice between the two, I always pick Tintin.

The stories always contained more adventure and it is set in a much more realistic world than that of the potion drinking Gaul. Also I would consider Tintin, his dog Snowy (or Milou in French) and all the other characters to be far better than any from the Asterix titles.

For those who haven’t read Tintin before, here’s a bit of history.

He first appeared as a comic in the children’s supplement in a Belgian newspaper in 1929. The stories were created by and his assistants. They ran until 1976.

Tintin is a young Belgian reporter who travels around the world on assignments. He reports back to the Belgian public on world matters and is always accompanied by his loyal dog Snowy.

This hardcover collects the first two Tintin stories ever published: expeditions to the heart of Soviet Russia and the Belgian Congo. One thing to point out here is that these are the two most criticised stories out of all the 24 Tintin stories (and rightly so – as I will explain later on.)

Tintin in the Land of the Soviets

Tintin is sent on assignment to Moscow to report on the Soviet Union.

It turns out that the alleged wealth of the Soviet Union is false and the Soviet secret police want to stop the report from being made by any means.

Tintin finds himself in a dangerous, although often slapstick, situation of being stalked and regularly attacked by the secret police. The story acts as political satire against the Soviet Union and its propagandized well being.

Hergé withdrew the publication in the mid-1930’s due to the over critical nature of the material and it wasn’t republished until 1973.

This means that it was never redrawn (as Hergé redrew all his titles for re-publication in the 1940’s) so it looks fairly different than other Tintin stories.

The biggest difference is that the artwork is in black and white.

For me this doesn’t detract from the story at all, as this early work isn’t about detailed scenery.

It was about the story and the linework works well enough to pace the us along.

Additionally, this reproduction is historically interesting, allowing us to see a progression in Hergé’s work.

There are a few surprisingly true things portrayed in the book, such as the starving of peasants as they had to export a large amount of produce to seem successful.

Hergé also depicts the fixing of elections through the refusal to give food to people who wouldn’t declare themselves communists.

Detractors have criticised Hergé himself for over-propagandizing, but it’s unclear how much of his story is based on research and how much is based on popular conceptions of the time. His latter stories were certainly better researched, but perhaps some slack can be cut for his early work.

Tintin in the Congo

(Editor’s note: The images in this post are from an earlier French printing of Tintin Au Congo. Simon does not have a scanner and I was unable to find a copy of the newly remastered English edition. If someone has some quality scan samples to add to our review archive, we’d love to have them! -Ian)

Congo sees Tintin being sent off to the colonized Belgian Congo on a hunting expedition.

Already this story is dated, screaming very un-PC, as hunting is often frowned upon these days (especially the animals he chooses to hunt.)

To make things worse the native Congo people resemble Golliwoggs and are depicted as rather primitive persons.

Needless to say, this story is extremely controversial; it is why the book is wrapped in cellophane and has a content warning label on it!

In one particular scene Tintin uses explosives to blow up a rhino. Another sees him kill 15 antelopes instead of just the one by accident.

The story isn’t as well paced as Hergé’s latter works. On the whole, no real flow is evident and the direction is unclear.

Tintin does manage to expose a smuggling ring that links back to Al Capone, which leads nicely onto the third Tintin story, Tintin in America.

Unlike the first story in this collection, Tintin in the Congo was redrawn. It is in colour and looks far nicer than the first story.

One interesting fact about this story is that the regular characters the Thompsons weren’t included originally and were drawn in when it was republished.

Unfortunately, Hergé kept the naive 1930’s racism in the story. It is a real shame, as it was largely due to his employer on the strip who felt the “values” of colonialism should be taught to the Belgian youth.

While this is of interest to those of us who value comic history, it makes this book quite a bit less kid-friendly compared to other Tintin titles.

Summary

Other than the overt racism shown in the second story, there is one more thing that lets down this collection: the translation.

Obviously, both stories were originally written in French. Due to their more controversial nature they had no publication in English for many years.

This seems to have meant their translations aren’t of the same quality as the other stories in the series.

Still, I can’t help but love the first story and would give that a full 5 out of 5.

Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is dragged down by Congo, which would have been more enjoyable without the racism.

However, it would seem massively wrong to the creator if others had edited it, toned down the exotic hunting and racism. It would be a different story from the one Hergé wrote.

Tintin only gets better from here onwards. Personally I would say you cannot start anywhere but the beginning.

Verdict:
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets – 5 out of 5
Tintin in the Congo – 3 out of 5

Overall average 4 out of 5. Well worth a read.

Essential Continuity:
Not entirely essential – and totally omitted in many reprint series – although the 3rd story Tintin in America does follow on from Tintin in the Congo.

Read first:
This is where it began. It’s best to start here.

Read next:
The Adventures of Tintin Vol. 2, starting with the Tintin in America story. Or, if you’re American, The Adventures of Tintin Vol. 1 (the titling of which is slightly confusing.)

You may also be interested in Asterix the Gaul.

« Back to the top?

Want to stay up to date? Click here to subscribe to updates by RSS!
You can also sign up to get updates by Email!
By | Sunday, December 26, 2010 | 11:37 pm | 13 Comments | Blog > Reviews
Find This Book At:
Amazon (Softcover)
Half.com (Softcover)
Ebay (Search by Title)
Ebay (ISBN/Softcover)
View our database entry
Includes Issues: Original Graphic Novel
Issue Dates: July 2003
Creators:
, ,

This review is spoiler free! Skip To The Verdict? »

Why does Warren Ellis keep writing silly little one-shots and why do I keep reading them?

Sometimes he seems to be the equivalent of Kurt Vonnegut using Kilgore Trout to ghostwrite his short story ideas in brief references.

Only Ellis can find some hapless artist to flesh out a haphazardly written outline.

Today I picked up yet another one, Switchblade Honey, assuming that it was some new little poppet of storytelling born of Ellis having too many ideas and not enough time to properly flesh them out.

So low and behold, when I peeled that pesky shrink wrap off, I found that the copyright date was 2003.

Eons ago in comic parlance.

In the case of Switchblade, the grayscale art by Brandon McKinney is mediocre at best. Barely adequate.

It almost smacks of a senior project rather than a professionally published trade, but then anything with Warren Ellis on the cover is guaranteed publication these days (and a piece of my wallet it seems.)

Ellis lays it out in his typically drunken and irreverent fashion (and some might say terribly contrived—I mean he says, “Fucking England, Innit,” in the preface.)

The whole story is naught but a middle finger to the bland Star Trek worlds of the time, with captains that, in his words, impersonate “. . . Katherine Hepburn impersonating William Shatner.”

But Switchblade Honey also comes off as such, with the casting of a real life actor to fill a fictional role in his sci-fi story.

Yep, again. Anyone remember the main character in Ocean?

In this case it’s Ray Winstone, famed British actor, a notable tough-guy with a perpetual “fag” hanging from his profanity laden lips.

Let’s just do it all up in typical Ellis style by using an accepted format and then putting lots of BANG, SHOCK, FUCK, all bollocks, to make it edgy, shall we? With a bit of British not-so-charm added, eh? What?

So, no, I did not care for Switchblade Honey.

The art is bad and the story is piss-poor. It tries too hard, too many times, to be too few things, strangely enough.

Ellis wants to make of all his characters heroes, who not only bucked authority but did it for noble reasons.

He uses a vaguely pushed love interest intermittently but to no effect.

The aliens are badly imagined and the world is meaningless.

To top it all off, there’s the typical bit of 20th century obsession that future stories always have (a la those Star Trek shows Ellis professes to hate.)

The characters make references to Viet Nam as if they were relevant in the year 2231.

It overall reeks of bad story telling and poor writing.

Still and all, there’s a bit of cleavage, some explosions, lots of anti-establishment, anti-authority dialogue, and a few nice space ship shots (okay, they’re mediocre), so it’s not a total loss. But then, I’m a sci-fi nut, so maybe that’s a little skewed.

Long story short, if you find Switchblade Honey for fifty percent off, like I did, buy it for the five dollars if a) you are a die-hard sci-fi lit fan or b) you are a die-hard Warren Ellis fan.

Otherwise, save your money for Orbiter (previously reviewed by Ian), or one of his other at least mediocre one-shots.

Verdict:
Overall I’d give it a 2 out of 5. A tad under mediocre and nowhere near the best of Ellis’ writing.

Essential Continuity:
Self contained. No outside continuity.

Read first:
No required reading before this title.

Read next:
I almost hesitate to put it in with Orbiter or Ocean. It could be argued that they had no better writing, but much better artwork.

Ellis’ most well known work is Transmetropolitan, though he’s had successful runs on many titles. (Ian loves Nextwave, a total farce in the Marvel Universe.)

« Back to the top?

Want to stay up to date? Click here to subscribe to updates by RSS!
You can also sign up to get updates by Email!