Marvel Comics

Written by: Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning

Pencils: Paul Pelletier & Bong Dazo

Inks: Rick Magyar & Joe Pimentel

     War of Kings is the latest space-faring spectacle from Marvel. Pushing its branding even more, Marvel labels this Lead-in issue not only with the new "War of Kings" Moniker, but also slaps on "Secret Invasion" for good measure...I suppose having all 8 issues of that series make the top 10 issues sold for 2008 makes it a lot like stamping "Buy Me" on the cover, but they should really have enough faith in DnA by now shouldn't they? And essentially that's what this review is going to have to rely upon.
    

    Who's DnA, you ask? None other than Misters Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, the Post-Annihilation conservators of all of marvel cosmic-dom(ok so they wrote the Annihilation: Nova lead-in). Much like Rumpelstiltskin, they've been spinning gold ever since, with the Nova ongoing, Annihilation:Conquest, and Guardians of the Galaxy. So I'm going to be giving them the benefit of the doubt here.
    

    Doubt? you ask? Well here's the thing, Secret Invasion: War of Kings, really isn't all that great. The lead-in one-shots for Annihilation and Annihilation:Conquest did their job perfectly : they got me excited about the story to come, but this seems a little like more old retreading. Adding in the fairly unexciting developments from Ed Brubaker's initial X-men arc doesn't really help all that much. Perhaps I'm Jaded here by that arc's particularly lame denoument, but Vulcan has never seemed like a terribly interesting character, so I'm not terribly excited at his apparently major part in the upcoming story. I suppose i can just hope that "War of Kings" will see his end, but if the Havok mini didn't, i sort of doubt that this will.
    

    Back to the main point tho. This book does serve its intent, setting up the story, and Paul Pelletier's Art is reasonably decent (if not his best). And i really do have all fath in DnA, they've earned it. So While Secret Invasion: War of Kings, wasn't a great comic, it wasn't horrible, so I'd rate it 3 out of 5, with hope for the future.

You've always loved comics, now tell the world why!

ComicReviewers.com is seeking more reliable reviewers to join our team. Graphic novels, single issues, web comics, you name it and we want to hear what you think about it. 

Getting review material is easy. Comicreviewers.com will supply you with prepurchased materials that you can request or you can pick up the comics you want locally and with authorization be reimbursed for it's purchase price once a review is posted. Reviewers are expected to follow our general format for reviews which now include a synopsis (with spoiler warnings where applicable), production quality review, and then your opinion. This ensures a robust and thorough review of all comics and gives you the freedom to say whatever you want about what you've read, good or bad. Genres are chosen by the individual reviewer and with the ID and private email you are given for the Comicreviewers.com website, you can post your review whenever you want to, be it 1 in the afternoon or 3 in the morning.

Writing reviews is a great way for student journalists and English lit students to add versatility to their resumes and extra curricular activities list.

Serious inquiries only. You will be required to share limited information with the head editor and be able to be reached by IM or phone on a regular basis for updates and notices. 

The Invisibles

A comic by Grant Morrison

Illustrated by Steve Yeowulf, Jill Thompson, Dennis Cramer.

I was originally enticed by The Invisibles.  The cover art lead me to be unconditionally intrigued, a stark white cover highlighted by shadows of characters in a Ralph Bakshi film.  All pulled together with a grenade in an almost tied dyed fashion.   It glowed with the secondary title that would tempt any cyberpunk loving social anarchist… “Say you want a revolution.”   You could say this graphic novel had me at first sight. 

Disapppointment is the keyword in what I felt after finishing this installment in the sage of the Invisibles.  The art was drab and rough as I’m sure was in part due to artisitic direction.  But it didn’t fit overall.  From the beginning the story was slow to start, unclear and blurry in its direction.  It seemed non-lineaer.

At times I felt like I was reading a comic that had been written before with characters reminescient of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series.  And I wish that the characters were the only things about this series that I felt that I had seen before. 

I really have nothing good to say about this comic… if you’re interested in it, I suggest reading Sandman, Transmetropolitan, The Watchmen, or even The Fantastic Four... anything. Really.

Transmetropolitan a comic by Warren Ellis

Once in awhile we read things or hear things, watch for a split second something complex and obnoxious.  It takes us by force, sits up down for a chat and then goes into a rant that you expect from a cultist leader who will then hand you kool aid.

Transmetropolitan is in the kool aid and the heavy William Gibson influence that is definitely dreaming of electric sheep is the cult leader.

That also makes New York City into Waco Texas if I were to continue down this line of thought, but I’m not. Instead I’m tying us all down with some alien hybridized sub standard contraption and taking us on what is a trippy ride of futuristic anarchy, free form journalism, neurotransmitters and what is most likely going to stroke every aspect that’s been asleep in my brain since I last played Mechwarrior.

And no, there’s no direct correlation between Transmetropolitan and Mechwarrior.

With mismatched sunglasses that could possibly reflect two sides of a quirky, driven personality we meet Spider Jerusalem.  Technically we meet him in a Grizzly Adams stage that is entirely unbecoming of a man such as himself. Intelligence. An anti-hero.  And he’s tracking down a story. 

In the introductory issues of Transmetropolitan we are introduced to transients.  They’re sort of homeless. More to the point of the topic, they are a transient species more than the state in which they live. This counter-culture of people chooses to live between bodies; they are half alien, half human.  And they’re pretty sure they sent out a memo, but just to remind you they want to secede.  And have sex with your wife.

This story is to be the first we see of Spider Jerusalem, the first he tackles to refamiliarize himself with the city. How life has changed in the five years since he exiled himself to the mountains?

It never can be what you expect.

Instead, we face an assault on the senses! Really… okay, so not really.  But it’s a pretty assault of color and lines as brutal as Brock Lesner winning a UFC match and as tweakish as a cokehead trying to explain the intricacies of a free market Friedenist economy to a pothead.  This is not what you’d expect anything to look like except maybe a leets hallucination when it comes to the panels. Then again it’s a leet and if you never played Anarchy Online I just lost the joke.

But for those of you who have played, you get it.

I want to make a pie from this story, really, I do!

Take the artwork, the inking, the words, the story and place it onto of building in the body of wiry journalist with an attitude problem not only has my mind become giddy excited but my libido has kicked into overdrive.  This is hot. 

 Bring on the godless anarchy of a civilization in a technocratic decline.

And bring me the power of the written word unabashed by laws to tie it down.

Welcome to Transmetropolitan.

In a city as depraved as this one, it is oddly fitting that our journalistic revolutionary is one of the crankiest, obnoxious, intelligently stimulated, tattooed, vulgar and raw individuals to be thought up.  I think his creation really came forward after an acid induced trip through flying monkeys at a strip clubs happy hour.   Spider Jerusalem is both the hero and the anti-hero, he is his own antagonist and needs little help from his personal assistant, a former stripper, who at best calms the fits before the storm.

Why am I so reminded of Hunter S. Thompson?

 I highly doubt that it has anything to do with Mr. Jerusalem’s obsession with a bowel disrupter.

 I think it has more to do with the fact his wife won’t come out of cryonic freeze until he is dead.

 Through the eyes of the future planned out for us in this cyberpunk apocalyptica we find that life in this version of New York, is just as convienient with push button ordering.  And really, it is push button.  In issue five we find Spider trying to learn and understand the culture that surrounds him by spending the day watching television.  Which is in itself a modern constant.  Whatever you wish to learn about a people you can find out about them by just watching television.

 And find a commercial you like? Press a button on your remote and a customer service associate will be right with you to take that order and make sure a courier is dispatched to your position.

 Large pie extra cheese. Please.

 Shall we even touch on the mayhem of a call in television show?

 Or shall we travel to the New Religious Movement Convention?

 If you have any sense of morality that is not tempered by a sense of humor, this comic is neither for you nor for the weak of stomach.  It is a drug in of itself.  An addictive form of reading and watching as it the pages were moving themselves into a movie of proportions to which there is not a rating system.

 And this fact may be why we’ve been given the character of Channon, a former stripper and the assistant to Spider Jerusalem.  She acts as both the balance to his over the top nature and an instigator.  Not as if Spider needs anything extra to instigate him, but training Channon as a journalist is definitely an excuse to further his shenanigans.

Unfortunately she can’t seem to keep him from making enemies.  Then again with columns such as his own, how is he not making enemies?

 We bounce between socio-political issues of a time yet to come and as with other comics they directly mirror those we see today in our society.  From cultist leaders, to medical experiment, to the use of drugs or lack of and to the campaigns or corrupt politicians.

Questions of how to vote when you really are backing up the lesser of two evils rings too true in the minds eye of this American. Or even when do you start backing them up and begin to question?

Through the visionary eyes that Transmetropolitan tends to cater to we see the iconic idolization of those who have inspired us before falling and how in their deaths they become gods.  Which is a very cynical way of looking at things but there is so much evidence to hold it up to the light.  For instance, the rise of celebrity worship and the deification of political figures are something that we not only find in these pages but in the world around us today with things such as Obama Nation and Brad Pitt.

Trough a gamut of human emotion and tenacity to surreal mindsets brought on by states of mind foreign to those of us who have not delved into the depths of drug induced clairvoyance we see this story told of a modern day.  Of Hunter S. Thompson living in the world of William Gibson.

Armed with a personal assistant and a former personal assistant turned bodyguard, there isn’t much that can stop Spider Jerusalem on his crusade for a brutal array of truth and justice in cyberpunk apocalyptical journalism.

In Transmetropolitan we see a plethora of social commentary that is on par with that written in “The Wire.”  The series takes us beyond the normal moral questions of right and wrong and into vast grey areas that are often left untouched except in other great comics such as “The Watchmen” and the “Sin City” series.  Transmetropolitan cannot be touched.  It is an incredible epitaph to the world that we live in and the future we face.  I owe Warren Ellis, Derek Robertson and Rodney Ramos my ovaries. This is amazing work. 

I am in love with Spider Jerusalem.

Normally I would not even want to review a series as a whole, but it is the only way I find logically appropriate for Watchmen. It is not a series I recommend reading in “parts,” but rather looking at it as a whole because it is the only suitable way to read it and hold it to its’ truest perfection. I find that, when in separate parts, I was just not enjoying the novel at all.   I found so much respect for how the characters were written. I didn’t feel like I was having a genre cliché put out before me. This was odd for me because I really have a distaste for reading or keeping up with “super heroes” that are nothing more than masked vigilante. They are starting to grow on me. The ability to easily relate to human flaw adds a sense of realism to them that I know I won’t get in a lot of other comics. Twelve issues to build a big cast of strongly written characters is a huge part of the respect. When I read the last issue, the finale was full of events and reactions that I was fully expecting from each character with one minor surprise.

Honestly, with no disrespect meant, I found the artwork to be amazingly detailed, but set in colors that were unappealing to my appetite which made things harder to read. Dr. Manhattan and everything to do with his story line really redeems this for me. Some really amazing pieces of art come from events surrounding him. But to completely go 180 on my previous statement, the creativity was amazing. There are so many things imagined up and well played out. Every little detail is followed through in the rest of the comics (even posters in the background and other little “Where’s Waldo’s” in the background).

My only strong distaste for the entire series was the comic-in-a-comic portions, and they are plentiful. Just the concept drives me crazy. Trying to pay attention to conversations going on while reading a Scrabbled comic within the comic. In a long roundabout way I do see the story within the comic’s comic to be relevant, but it took so much more effort to think about it and relate it.

Overall, I really loved this series. I easily give this an 8/10 as a whole. But avid “Heroes” watchers be ware, you might feel like you’ve been cheated (by Heroes that is).

I didn’t want to review 300. Unlike The Watchmen, which I went into not truly knowing what to expect, I knew the story of 300 from the historical standpoint. An epic tale in itself of triumph against an undefeated army that had managed under two different kings, in two different wars to conquer most of the world, as it was known then.  Granted, that from the historical standpoint the story of 300 is fictionalized.  But it is fictionalized just enough to keep the story alive in a time when we’ve lost our long-term memories. We have forgotten and Frank Miller has been kind enough to remind us.

My professor of ancient history at Fresno State University gave me a well-worn copy of 300 after a paper I had written on the Greek ideal of arête.  I think there are few gifts I’ve received in my life in which I’ve been more thankful.  I stayed up overnight after completing my homework in order to read it before the movie opened the next day.  I skipped that history class much to the chagrin of my professor to go watch the movie at IMAX and I was just as impressed.

The 300 comics is written and illustrated in a style reminiscent of the tale of all past Greek tragedies. Stoic lines written to stand-alone and burn into your mind grace every page despite the sometimes incredible lines of text. And this statement goes without pointing out that every expression, every action coalesces with these words.  When Leonidas goes up to visit the Ephors we have in our un-movie-diluted minds a picture of these leper-ridden creatures.  Now, I personally imagined more of the leper ridden child molester leaning out the window of a 1984 Chevy van but I’m a slightly insane woman.

The story is brutal as is the artwork. As it should be considering the content.  Let us consider the origins of Leonides and the Battle of Thermopylae. The only reason we know of this battle was the original historian, Herodotus. 300 Spartans, 700 Thespian, 400 Thebans and a few hundred mercenaries and such fought the battle of on the shores of Theroplyae against a massive Persian invasion force. While Leonidas stood up against the Persians he also stood up against the Greeks who didn’t agree nor condone the Spartan culture. 

Many of these facts will be replaced by the fiction that 300 embraced.  But it will not change the history of how Sparta was remembered.  In the first issues of 300 we are told the beginnings of King Leonidas as a child fighting a wolf to prove himself as a man and as a Spartan.  It’s a common tale from the Greek polis as all young boys were put in a position such as that in order to prove themselves. Every Spartan man was a warrior and they accepted no imperfections of body and mind. 

Frank Miller and colorist Lynn Varley tackle this incredible piece of history with a gentle brutality and respect.  It is one of the rare quotable comics, conjuring images as powerful as the lines delivered.  Though the greatest feat of 300 is keeping the history alive for future generations.