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By | Thursday, December 9, 2010 | 5:03 am | 2 Comments | Blog > Reviews
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Includes Issues: Jonah Hex 44-49
Issue Dates: August 2009 – January 2010
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This review contains minor spoilers. Skip To The Verdict? »

Jonah Hex prides himself on brevity.

Few words and a swift bit of violence to those deserving.

His comic is similar, a rarity among today’s mainstream books.

Most stories are over in an issue, with the longest arc thus far lasting only three.

The Six Gun War, then, seems practically epic, weighing in at 6 full issues for just one storyline.

Similarly, while we’re used to Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray writing every issue, it’s a bit of a surprise to see only one artist.

The newcomer is Cristiano Cucina, who illustrates every page of this trade, including the covers.

After I realized that this would all be one long story, my immediate fear was that it would drag on, losing itself in slow pacing. I was darn wrong.

I’m not sure how the Js did it, but Six Gun didn’t seem any longer than your standard Hex tale (which is both a testament to how much story is packed in a normal issue and to how well paced this book is). Not that it’s a perfect story, but I wanted to assure you from the start that it didn’t feel stretched out.

What we have here is a a bonafide shindig, bringing together almost every major character (that ain’t dead) from Hex lore.

It’s all on account of Quintin Turnbull. We last saw him in Welcome to Paradise (and the Showcase Presents) where he did his best to make life miserable for Hex (since Turnbull blames Jonah for his son’s death.)

Predictably, he’s back at it here. And he’s brought along El Papayago, a horde of his banditos, and plenty of other hired baddies.

Hex, for all his anti-social nature, has his own friends – DC Western heroes El Diablo, Bat Lash, similarly scarred Tallulah Black, and a whole tribe of Comanche, lead by ex-Union soldier Blue Eagle.

There’s even an unexpected appearance by another character from the current run, and with most of those people dead or out to kill Hex, that’s a mixed blessing.

With this cast, it’s not going to come as a surprise that bullets will soon be flying. And while it may not be the most drawn out conflict, but there’s certainly enough of a bodycount to earn the word “War” in the title.

The plot is classic revenge western. Parties have been harmed and they want comeuppance.

Pretty much every party, in this case, and if they haven’t been harmed at the start of the story, they’re in for it.

The straightforward plot is a strength and a bit of a weakness. While the story moves in every direction towards inevitable (and delightful) conflict, there isn’t much else going on either.

It’s like an action movie, good fun, great wisecracking heroes, thoroughly unlikable – if a bit shallow – villains, a plot twist or two (including one I didn’t see coming) and the inevitable explosive ending.

Except the ending here isn’t exactly what you’d expect either – unless you’re a long time comic reader.

In which case, it’s exactly what you were fearing.

Besides that, most of the deeper themes the Hex title has explored on occasion are absent.

Fun comics. Thinking optional, ‘s long as ya can read. I found myself happily turning pages.

The low points are when it falls into action movie cliches – the international roster of assassins called in to kill Hex, for example, feels right out of the 80s.

The high points for me involved the well written involvement of the other DC heroes, particularly Lazarus Lane, and the ongoing evolving character of Tallulah Black – easily the most badass of any of them. The gal deserves her own title.

The cast interacts naturally and their personalities and unique quirks result in some priceless moments.

Cucina carries his share of the weight admirably. His style is a good fit for this violent western, about partway between Hex regular Jordi Bernet‘s stylized cartoons and the more gritty work of or Hex co-creator . While there’s still heavy use of bold inking, it’s a bit more realistic.

The characters have the appropriate amount of grit and grimace to their faces and Hex looks nasty as ever. The baddies have been given a fair amount of attention and I thoroughly enjoyed any of El Diablo’s flaming appearances.

I did feel like Bat Lash looks a bit odd. My main complaint had to do with the difficulty in telling him apart from Hex in some of the more hectic scenes, or at certain angles.

On the whole, the art is detailed and distinct. The action is of the quality I’ve come to expect from this title and even the slower scenes are crafted with admirable attention.

It may not be of an individual style that I could point out in a lineup, but it does the job quite well here, allowing the story to flow smoothly.

The Six Gun War is a welcome addition to the Hex mythos – I’m always glad to see these western types working together.

The only true shame is that it feels a bit like the middle entry in a trilogy of action movies, produced to cater to fan desires, but leaving more than enough room for events to come.

I can see this being a bit disappointing to those looking for a solid conclusion to the Turnbull story.

If the writers have something up their sleeve for the next volume, I say bring it on.

Verdict:
4 out of 5. It’s a solid action movie style story. It drags you along through some riotous violence, and probably fills fans desires for a bigger western story.

While it’s not much deeper than that, there’s plenty to enjoy for those who have been following Hex’s adventures.

Essential Continuity:
This book is probably essential – it’s the next chapter of the story, connecting all the way back to Hex’s early adventures.

There’s a little retelling of Hex’s involvement with Turnbull’s son and it’s not too different from the version in the Bronze Age collections (though I like that one better, the differences between Hex then and Hex “now” shows character growth.)

Of course, any DC Western title only has minimal effect on the rest of the DCU continuity (though the characters do tie in, I promise!)

Read first:
You definitely have to read Showcase Presents Jonah Hex and/or Jonah Hex: Welcome to Paradise. Paradise contains the condensed version and a little more, but it’s an introduction to the villain of this story.

The contemporary series has been collected in Jonah Hex: Face Full of Violence, Jonah Hex: Guns of Vengeance, Jonah Hex: Origins, Jonah Hex: Only The Good Die Young, Jonah Hex: Luck Runs Out, Jonah Hex: Bullets Don’t Lie, and Jonah Hex: Lead Poisoning.

It’s light on continuity though, so if you’re in a hurry I’d recommend Vengeance, Origins, and then Luck Runs out to catch you up – but the last story in Only The Good Die Young is also an enjoyable crossover.

Finally, in order to get the most of it, you’ll want to at least read Showcase Presents: Bat Lash.

Read next:
Following along with the DC Comics Reading Order, the DC Westerns and Jonah Hex‘s own list, the next book will be Jonah Hex: Counting Corpses.

My copy is in the mail, so I hope it gets here soon!

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By | Wednesday, December 8, 2010 | 11:38 pm | 3 Comments | Blog > Reviews
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Includes Issues: Original Graphic Novel
Issue Dates: November 1, 2003
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This review discusses the basic plot with marked spoilers. Skip To The Verdict? »

The Life Eaters was dropped on my desk with little fanfare – not quite a recommendation, but a loan based on my friend Daniel’s understanding of my interests.

Having come completely unexpected, I approached this original graphic novel with no prior knowledge.

What I found was a premise perfect for an alternate history short story.

The Nazis were not defeated in 1945 – WWII outcomes being a favorite focus of speculative history authors.

The Norse gods have returned and have been swayed to Germany’s side, prolonging the conflict decades past its conclusion in our world.

The reason for these events is relatively unique and makes an odd sort of sense.

It’s also the focus of the original story written by David Brin in a 1986 novella and expanded upon here alongside painted art by Scott Hampton.

As I mentioned, the plot hinges on an interesting idea  but this unfortunately isn’t a short story – it’s a comic – and it falls a bit short.

The first chapter throws us into a suicide mission on behalf of the remaining Allied resistance. They’re accompanied by the one god that seems to be on their side, Loki. It’s this sequence that is based on Brin’s original story, “Thor Meets Captain America.”

This chapter ends with the reveal – how the Gods came back, how the Nazis turned the conflict around. The spoiler and discussion of it is contained between the next two images.

I’m putting this as a marked spoiler because finding this out was the most enjoyable part of the book.

In The Life Eaters, the Nazis won because mass sacrifices (in the form of concentration camps) had achieved their secret goal of summoning the ancient Norse gods through necromancy. These Aesir gain more power from the deaths of humans on the battlefield

These may not be the real gods, but mankind has a long history of belief in death magic, and only recently has pushed past it. This isn’t the first book to further investigate the paranormal dabbling of the third Reich, but it is the first where I’ve seen the entire holocaust presented in this light.

Finding some underlying reason for such insane mass murders – the quest for supernatural power, unrealistic though it may be, is easier to understand than the racial hate used to orchestrate the killing.

End Spoiler.

The “how” and “why” of the Nazi/Aesir victory is the driving momentum behind the first chapter. It allowed me to push past the clunky storytelling – often with huge blocks of text making this feel more like an illustrated short story than a flowing work of sequential art. These text blocks themselves are heavy on exposition and light on organic plot formation.

It’s possible that the book would have been better if the block text was spread out more, or dropped altogether, and the entire book was a longer reworking of this original text, relying on techniques that are unique to sequential art, instead of having some of the potentially strongest moments told in text over black background.

While there are other annoyances (I didn’t see the point of including a slang spewing beatnik – would the Beat movement even have come about without the end of the war?) my interest in the mysteries surrounding the Aesir kept me reading, and I genuinely enjoyed this first chapter, stumbling points and all.

I was a little confused at the end, though, because I didn’t realize that the main character for the first part (a square-jawed blond male) was not the character driving the latter two chapters (a square- jawed blond male). At some points the story actually seems to focus on a third character, an ex-weatherman drafted into the Nazi/American service.  But I never particularly identified with any of them.

Perhaps it was because of the slightly annoying long winded internal dialogues, which usually attempt to make a reader more aware of a character’s motivations but distanced me from truly empathizing. Perhaps silence would allow us to judge the character by their actions and ascribe our own feelings to the events.

Or give the art a chance to convey the character’s motivations through body language and expression.

I any case, I found the remaining two thirds of the book less enticing.

While there were some interesting ideas (a weather war motivated by each pantheon’s desire for ideal temperatures) there were also cliches (other cultures raising their gods, resulting in a battle royal of violent pagan pantheons; Hero saved from drowning by kindly intervention of dolphins) and annoyances (in-story contradictions;  an amazingly schmaltzy scene of the Abrahamites all coming together campfire kumbaya style).

There are a couple twists, though the main one is right in line with expectation of wayward god Loki’s “secret” motivations.

While the overall plotting didn’t seem particularly original or exciting, there were moments that spoke to the creativity of the author.

Thor referring to a puzzling situation as a “a riddle,” equating the world tree Yggdrasil to a space elevator. Such instances were sprinkled about enough to keep the book from being totally dross.

Also helping were Scott Hampton‘s illustrations. I’ve seen complaints about his art being stiff, and there were times where the critique seemed relevant – an strangely bent elbow here, an awkwardly frozen facial expression there. But he creates some very dynamic battle scenes, both of fields of soldiers and more intimate confrontations.

I felt that Hampton’s work was a good fit for the subject matter and enjoyed most of his painted panels.

His portrayal of the aesir seemed spot on, their self assured superiority dripping from their stances and expressions.

Hampton has composed scenes of smokey warfare, dark forests and murky depths, and some appropriately fantastical landscapes.

Considering his previous work on The Books Of Magic and Lucifer, he was a good choice for this book.

Watercolors, sometimes realistically rendered, sometimes shifty and ethereal, are excellent for images of the supernatural and I’m always happy to see painted panels when they fit the story.

There’s also a few pages in the back where Hampton shares his process with some charmingly humble insight.

As he notes at the painting stage:

“Here’s where the panel really starts to take shape, come into focus.”

“Drawing problems I hadn’t known about begin to stand out as the picture takes on weight and depth. This is always unhappy-making. I’ll usually keep working around the problem areas hoping they’ll just go away. (This almost never happens.)”

“Finally, the panel is finished with that awkward hand (or whatever) either – A. cast in deep shadow or, B. obscured by a passing bird or leaf or flailing body or, C. fixed.”

“Sometimes I opt for C, but not without at least thinking about A or B. Hey babe – that’s comics!”

It’s quite illogical to expect any artist to paint hundreds of panels and have them all come out with the same level of quality (especially under heavy deadlines).

It’s always nice to see people admit to the challenges of the industry.

I personally think that Hampton’s average quality is very high and look forward to seeing more of his work.

As for The Life Eaters, while there is much to like about it (most of all the interesting premise) it never quite lives up to its full potential, is never really a spectacular comic.

This is fairly common when prose writers make the move to this form of expression – their first few efforts tend to feel like novels adapted into comics instead of original works (even if they are.)

This isn’t Brin’s first foray into sequential art (it’s his second) but it doesn’t feel like he’s quite got it down yet.

Hopefully he will continue, though, since there is a lot of potential in this book – and I’m certainly interested in peaking into his award winning sci-fi prose work.

Verdict:
3 of 5. A very intriguing premise is burdened by some awkward pacing and storytelling problems. If you can get past that, there’s plenty of stunning art and a few interesting plot elements to be found here.

Essential Continuity:
This book is a standalone title.

Read first:
Brin and Hampton previously worked on a Star Trek OGN, Star Trek: The Next Generation – Forgiveness, which seems to have been well received by fans. It’s completely unrelated to this book, obviously, and may only be of interest to members of the Trek fandom.

Read next:
If you enjoyed this book, you might want to look into David Brin’s prose fiction.

For more alternate history stories, I personally recommend the anthology collection The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century.

For more watercolored vikings in comics, you may want to check out Viking Glory: The Viking Prince.

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By | Tuesday, December 7, 2010 | 7:02 pm | 7 Comments | Blog > Reviews
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Includes Issues: Jonah Hex 37-42
Issue Dates: January – June 2009
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This review contains minor spoilers. Skip To The Verdict? »

The best of the Jonah Hex collections have a theme that unites them. It’s not a series that runs on sequential storytelling, but an ongoing investigation of the lead character and the make up of western storytelling.

The first trade of this run, Face Full of Violence, reintroduced Hex to the contemporary audience.

Guns of Vengeance did its title justice by dealing with that common theme of the western. In Luck Runs Out, the stories supported each other in reinforcing the torments of a man who only has his reputation to swear by.

Lead Poisoning, the seventh volume in the series written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, also seems to run to a single theme: Hex is a mean son of a bitch.

Unfortunately, it’s one we’re well aware of and just isn’t as satisfying as learning something new. So that makes for a fun, but not particularly enlightening collection.

I must admit a slight bias here. Of the various artists who have contributed to this latest ongoing, Jordi Bernet is not my favorite.  It’s not that he isn’t a talented illustrator, I just personally prefer a dirtier style Hex.

Bernet’s work brings a lot to be thankful for, but it just doesn’t always do it for me. In this collection, he illustrates 3 out of the 5 stories, so my small bias probably works against this volume. If you like Bernet, this may be one of your favorite Hex books.

The first story, Trouble Comes In Threes, is a fairly light tale. The villains don’t seem so bad, there’s no particularly gruesome killing, and there’s even a happy ending. For a second, I thought I’d slipped into the wrong book. It’s kind of nice as a break though, not every story should be dark just to be dark.

Bernet shows his usual talent at drawing expressive figures and enjoyable male caricatures, but also shows his weakness with the women.

Since three of the main characters in this story are gals, it seems the creators cheated a bit by making one Asian, the other dark haired, and the third blond – so if Bernet has trouble drawing a unique looking girl, at least it would be hard for him to get these confused. Still, there are a couple panels where it seemed that he noticed they all had entirely the same face shape, so hastily redrew a line (even if it made the character look different than from how she looks in every other panel.)

I understand the appeal of the round faced cartoon woman (shades of Archie gals or even Betty Boop) but if the only defining characteristics are hair color and racial eye shape, I get a little annoyed. There’s actually a fourth female character who looks exactly like the main brunette, and if they didn’t call her by name and have her in a very different situation, I wouldn’t have even known it was a different woman.

I may be picking on a trait that’s found in any cartoony style – rounded, simplified anatomy (perhaps an apt description of a certain female trait in Bernet’s art – perfect circles.) It’s just weird to me that it’s only applied to the women when there is such a nice array of masculine characters in his work.

It makes sense in one respect – it’s easier for a reader to project his or her ideal woman onto a simplified form. So this woman is more attractive to a wider variety of readers – but it also means she’s more of a plot device than an actual character. The seduction/betrayal plot thread that this story centers on cements this feeling.

Bernet’s work on the second issue, Hell or High Water, is a little more solid all the way through. But as an offshoot of Four Little Pigs, it can’t help but be a little disappointing.

This one is by the numbers – Hex is underestimated, a story is told, he comes out on top, and there’s some morbid but satisfying comeuppance.

Cowardice features one of my favorite Hex artists, Rafa Garres. His work here, as always, is packed with amazing detail and distorted visages. It’s a vision of the West on Psilocybin mushrooms, organic vacillations of  backgrounds from detailed beauty to shifting patterns of implied shape, framing faces of intense beauty and horrifying exaggeration of expression – seeming to melt off the page with despair or exploding from within with violent thoughts.

While I thoroughly enjoyed Garres’ work on the issue, his coloring choices here were just a tad dull for my tastes. I understand the intention, but I think just a little more contrast and extension of the palette would have served the art well.

Escaped prisoners wreak violence on a town under the recent imposition of prohibitionists. The two plot threads wind their way around a mostly impassive Hex (who honestly seems more interested in his game of shot glass checkers with the town drunk) and culminates with the testing of a field promoted sheriff. The story isn’t bad, but the art carried this tale.

The next story stretches over two issues, and is a bit more of the grindhouse style horror this title dips into from time to time. Called Sawbones, it’s illustrated in a realistic style by David Michael Beck, who renders dark dripping interiors and a masterfully mustached villain.

The story itself contains some great moments (particularly a feverish Hex’s nightmares) and a welcome appearance by Tallulah Black, but also seemed a bit long.

The introduction of a “legendary” killer doesn’t seem to work convincingly and I never believed that he really was a match for our hero, so the extended conflict was forced.

A favorite moment in the telling of the legend was when the illustration obviously portrayed a different person than we later confront – showing the developing nature of the story.

There’s no real reason to believe that a character’s fame is all from his actions, and surely Hex has his own legend inflated from time to time.

While it moved a little slow for me, I could see this story being a favorite for horror fans.

The book closes out with another illustrated by Bernet, Shooting The Sun. The meat of this story is in flashbacks to Hex’s childhood.

I was pleased to see that Hex’s mother looks a bit different (and older) than the other brunette hussies Burnet draws (well, at least in most panels.)

Hex’s father, Woodson, is the real star of this issue. Burnet draws him soft and almost peaceful as he drunkenly slumbers, which makes his rage and displeasure all the more convincing.

Still, the end point of this issue is that Hex has had a tough life and so is a tough bastard.

For some reason, I don’t find that as satisfying as a story about someone who had good in his life, went through tragedy, and then becomes mercilessness and terrible as a way of coping.

I suppose that these stories are a way of keeping “a Jonah Hex style” action to his early life, but I wonder if it would be more moving to see soft moments contrasted with his later career.

Maybe there is room for that as well – I’ll be looking forward to later volumes to see if it’s touched upon.

Verdict:
3 of 5. Mostly satisfying on an individual basis, but not as fulfilling as a collection as some of the other Hex books. A couple of these stories suffer from being more of the same: good action and art, but not adding much new to the equation.

Essential Continuity:
If you are looking to get the whole Hex story, moments with his mother and Tallulah Black may make this volume an essential part of your collection.

Read first:
Read Showcase Presents Jonah Hex and/or Jonah Hex: Welcome to Paradise.

The contemporary series has been collected in Jonah Hex: Face Full of Violence, Jonah Hex: Guns of Vengeance, Jonah Hex: Origins, Jonah Hex: Only The Good Die Young, Jonah Hex: Luck Runs Out, and Jonah Hex: Bullets Don’t Lie.

Read next:
Following along with the DC Comics Reading Order, the DC Westerns and Jonah Hex‘s own list, the next book will be Jonah Hex: The Six Gun War.

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By | Tuesday, December 7, 2010 | 2:15 pm | 2 Comments | Blog > Database Updates

As part of our prep for the Marvel list going up (and the addition of all the taxonomies coming with it) I’ve moved all the “Series” taxonomy terms to a new “DC Series” taxonomy.

I had to do this one by one, so I updated some of the terms and double checked them while I was at it. The DC Series dropdown in the right sidebar works now, which should make navigating to those lists a tad easier.

The unfortunate downside of all of this is that a lot of off site links just won’t work anymore. I did my best to fix every internal link through some find/replace scripts (I think I got 18 in the blog posts and 9 in the taxonomy descriptions.)

Just to make sure, I’m going to go through and update the series descriptions and double check them.

I’ve got to do something similar to this for changing the tags to a custom DC Character taxonomy (which would free up tags for use in blog posts.) But there’s more than a thousand of those, so I’ve decided to wait until someone makes a bulk plugin for that mess.

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By | Monday, December 6, 2010 | 5:58 pm | 9 Comments | Blog > Reviews
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Includes Issues: Wolverine / Hulk 1-4
Issue Dates: April – July 2002
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This review contains light spoilers. Skip To The Verdict? »

Some books are of legendary quality, classics reprinted again and again because of their ongoing relevancy and lasting strength.

And then there’s the Marvel Legends series of collections. The banner up top comes with a weighty claim, yet most of these collections are long out of print and very hard to find.

Are they legendary like the city of El Dorado, sought after for the adventure involved in the search, delighted in for their scarcity – but possibly long picked over and sadly disappointing?

Or is there still gold to be found?

This book, Wolverine Legends Vol. 1: Wolverine / Hulk, certainly seems to glimmer upon first sight – it’s written and illustrated by Sam Kieth, undoubtedly a master and one of the most memorable artists from my own childhood. It stars two of Marvel’s heaviest hitters. It’s worth noting at this point that the book should not be confused in any way with Hulk Legends Vol. 1: Hulk / Wolverine: Six Hours, which will no doubt show up in your ebay searches.

Marvel Legends seem to hold to this formula: popular characters with well known and talented artists. My focus as a reviewer (and reader) is often on the story though and I’ll tell you right away that many of the Legends books are lacking in this area. They’re usually self  contained and light on continuity, which can be nice, but they’re often  out of character and/or downright confusing.

And while it’s nice  to see a line of greenish numbered spines on your shelf, reading these books straight through might leave a sour taste in your mouth.

This is the first of the Wolverine Legends books and one of the harder ones to find. It’s not quite as bad as Snikt, which can go to a couple hundred in good condition for some reason. But it’s still selling for twice the cover on Amazon.

Is it worth it? Yes, yes it is.

I’ll get the problems out of the way first. While the story is classic Kieth, it feels written down (maybe for the perceived Marvel audience.)

The plot, which involves our two grumpy heroes trying to rescue a little girl, is full of overlong exposition and heavy handed foreshadowing. The dialogue can be a little clunky and obvious.

But even though I could see the end coming from a mile away, the book still gets me every single time.

Perhaps the art is just that good.

So while it may not be as subtle a psyche study as Ojo (which it’s thematically and visually similar to, at least in the design of the little girl) or any of Kieth’s other independent work, it’s still a good gateway into his world.

Because it is a Marvel book, the superhero meet up formula is followed – there’s a fair amount of Logan vs. Hulk action here before they’ve gotten their act together.

And the book has slight references to the Marvel U in the form of a couple cameos and discussion of Po’s place in Banner’s past. But it’s never really explained why the two heroes are out in the middle of a frozen tundra (and then, for some reason, a “lake” in the middle of a desert.)

It’s not important. Kieth isn’t interested in exploring physical landscapes past the challenges they allow him to render for the occupants – obstacles acting as symbols of mental and emotional barriers.

Deep pits, frozen wastelands, an angry mother polar bear, and even each other – they’re all stand ins for the actual struggle against the pain of loss that heroes with such long (and often dark) pasts have to deal with.

And the numbness and loneliness associated with their violent lives.

Likewise, Kieth’s art is shapely and crafted but never “realistic.” In fact, he often shifts to the childlike perspective of Po, with crayon-like lines and simplified faces.

The dialogue is similar, sometimes from her perspective, sometimes from that of Logan or Banner, at times talking to themselves, each other, or directly at the reader.

The heroes slip quickly from exaggerated caricatures to deeply moving renderings.

The necessary traits are still there, of course, with Wolverine bristling with wild hair and The Hulk’s shadowy bulk bursting out of the panels.

It’s wildly creative art and while there were times where I felt like the story could have been told at a quicker pace, I was thankful for the opportunity to see more of Kieth’s drawings on each page.

They never disappoint, in turns hilarious and heartbreaking, with a healthy amount of outrageous action.

For this title, “Legend” is fitting.

There’s no real indication that any of this “really happened” but it’s a powerful book.

Verdict:
4 out of 5 stars. If the plot flowed a bit smoother it would be a solid five, but it’s very much worth the price to see Kieth play with Logan and Banner for a hundred pages.

Essential Continuity:
This book doesn’t even make an attempt to fit into continuity at any time, but it does a good job of fleshing out the involved characters and doesn’t conflict anything I know of.

It contains one of the best Hulk moments I’ve ever seen, on the final page (that out of context might seem a little hokey, but works here.)

Read first:
You may enjoy this book if you are an existing fan of one or both of the characters (and Wolverine collectors are probably the most likely to have hunted this down) but I think the average pop culture knowledge of the two may be enough to let you jump in. It’s pretty self contained.

Read next:
The next book in the Wolverine Legends series is Vol. 2: Meltdown. But it’s totally unrelated and is a Havok crossover. Since I knew nothing about that character, it wasn’t my favorite book.

Instead I’d recommend getting more into Kieth’s work, starting perhaps with the novel I mentioned above, Ojo. Beth has said she may review it for us soon.

Another Keith series I liked a lot was Zero Girl, and his most well known work is The Maxx, which I’m lightly familiar with through the show that ran while I was growing up, but I haven’t had the pleasure of reading yet, unfortunately.

Probably because it can be so darn expensive to find in trade. New print run, please!

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