Logan #1 by Brian K. Vaughan and Eduardo Risso (Marvel)
The best love stories are the ones that end badly. That’s obviously the plan that Vaughan has in mind for Logan aka Wolverine, without the mask. The first of this 3-issue mini-series sets the background: in Japan during WWII Logan escapes from a prison and he seems to have more things in common with a young local girl who offers him help than with the American soldier he escaped with.
Eduardo Risso’s art accompanies this story perfectly, a story which promises to be a good read about choosing sides, jealousy and of course impossible love. Vaughan finishes the issue with a beefy but efficient cliff-hanger that will have me rushing to get the next one.
The New Frontier Special: Justice League by Darwyn Cooke, J. Bone and David Bullock (DC Comics)
Darwyn Cooke’s The New Frontier is one of the most enjoyable comics about the DC universe that I have
ever had the chance to read.
Out of the three stories of this special issue, only the first one was both written and pencilled by Cooke and it’s the best. Like in the Dark Knight, Superman is asked by the government to capture Batman. The fight is of course uneven from a physical point of view, but Bruce Wayne is ingenious and resourceful enough to turn this confrontation into an enjoyable cat and mouse play. However, the cat does not turn out to be who you might expect.
Darwyn Cooke’s art is absolutely magic, he really makes you feel like you’re in the 50s. The political background and the political stance that each character takes (Ah ! How beautiful is Wonder Woman when she’s rebellious) are clever and reflect pretty well some things that are happening now, like abusing the concept of doing things for the “greater good.”.
Read also: The New Frontier Volumes 1 and 2 (DC comics) (pas dispo en Français non plus)
Echo by Terry Moore (Abstract Studio)
The first thing you notice when you pick up Terry Moore’s new series is the awesome cover depicting the heroin standing under a downpour silver rain and the striking silver print of the title.
A few pages later we learn that this silver rain is what’s left of a nuclear combat suit. The suit’s first owner was shot by a missile, so we see the silver remains fall poetically from the sky on an innocent bystander.
We don’t learn many things in this first issue, but the scene when the silver remains fall and stick to the heroin and her car is a true moment of grace. After this nice introduction, let’s see if we can be surprised in issue #2.
This week was really good but two books stood out from the rest:
Young Liars #1 by David Lapham (Vertigo)
A comic that starts by giving Bowie’s “Let’s dance” and Battles’ “Atlas” as a soundtrack can’t be bad. Through Danny’s voice, the narrator, the first issue of Young Liars presents of bunch of interesting characters including a likeable tranny, an ex-teen model waitress, a billionaire high on mushrooms and Viagra and his daughter Sadie L. Browning. This last character is a 20 year-old babe whose life might stop anytime because of a bullet lodged in her head and this situation is her pretext to keep doing adrenaline-based activities like ripping off the nose of an armed bodyguard with her teeth.
Young Liars #1 is completely breathtaking from the first to the last page. It first looks like an enjoyable take on teenager (insouciance) with a rock’n’roll and clubbing background, but it might have other things to say unreciprocated love. What I really want to know is how and why she got shot. Bring on the next issue!
Dead Space #1 by Antony Johnston and Ben Templesmith (Image)
Prejudice before reading is sometimes a nasty habit. When I read that Dead Space was meant to be a video game, I doubted its ability to satisfy me. Fortunately I had the clever idea to flip through it when I bought my comics on Thursday, and Templesmith’s art made me buy it. Good on me.
Dead Space is a classic but efficient science-fiction story that takes place in a human colony that excavates a planet. The apparition of a marker, some kind of local philosophical stone, divides the colony between the followers of the unitology religion and the infidels.
The art is fantastic and serves the story that is building up at the perfect speed: we haven’t any of the cool Zombies like the one on the cover yet. From the first pages you can feel an amazing, paranoid and suffocating atmosphere in this book: when I read it I felt a bit like when I saw Alien for the first time. And that’s a damn nice feeling.
Apart from that I also read:
Cable #1 by Duane Swierczynski and Ariel Olivetti (Marvel): a boring and ugly action-packed story.
The Dark Tower: the Long Road home #1 by Stephen King, Peter David, Robin Furth, Jae Lee and Richard Isanove (Marvel): Lee and Ivanove’s art is not bad but I couldn’t get into the mystical and foggy atmosphere.
Secret Invasion Saga (Marvel): the Skrulls are coming in April, but they’ve been trying to take over the Marvel Universe for 50 years. This thoughtful memo reminds us about their previous attempts and how they were made unsuccessful, like for example that time when Reed Richards convinced the Skrulls that the best thing they could be on earth is… a cow. We’ll see if this technique still works next month.
Pax Romana #2 by Jonathan Hickman (Image): a small army with machine guns, satellites, tanks and helicopters is sent back in A.D. 350 to change history. Their leader decides to betray the Catholic Church and the Pope who sent them, and starts shaping the world his own way.
Hickman is back with his very graphic style and his conspiracy stories. Pax Romana looks very similar to the Nightly News. This series is a cool read but if his next project is the same again it might get annoying in the long run.
Read also: The Nightly News (Image) (pas encore dispo en Français)
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