Out of all of the New 52 launch titles, the only one to get close to its issue 52 without cancelation or new creative teams coming in was Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman
Journey through Literature #37 (Prizefighter)
In this bi-monthly series, critic Sean Dillon interviews various weird and interesting people and talks to them about books, new and old, and how they relate to the people who read them. This month, Sean follows up his interview with director Mike Flanagan talking with the people’s champion, Prizefighter (as seen in Commanders in Crisis
Wikipedia Book Summary (italics added for clarification): 008 (Rebecca Swanson) has stolen a dossier of ongoing operations. From Operation Moonraker to Project Spectre, these projects have been key to MI6’s global operations for policing the world for decades. With the recent leakage of The Belgium Affair, MI6 has tasked its number one agent, James Bond, to hunt down and eliminate this rogue operative. There’s just one problem: they were once lovers. Many years ago, 007 and 008 were tasked with infiltrating a suspected Spectre cell in America. Their budding romance is on the verge of collapse and Bond doesn’t even realize it. With the world on the brink of devastation, will Bond be able to prevent his lover turned enemy from making things worse? And what secrets does Swanson hold of her own.
I was told that traveling via Atom Rider was a bit like being a washing machine. This is what I was told. The actual experience of traveling this way is perhaps more akin to holding onto a bear for dear life while lightning strikes next to you every five seconds. To say I was frazzled when I found myself in Berlin would be an understatement. Later, when I was asked if I wanted to go home the way I came, I instead asked for plane tickets and spent the night with a friend of mine who lives in the city of stones with their husband.
We meet in a place I am led to believe was once a speakeasy for various queer people to meet and hook up. It’s still a bar and it’s still extremely queer, but it’s a bit more legal now. Prizefighter sits in a booth a few feet away from the stage. No one’s performing right now, and it’s a real shame they aren’t. Prizefighter sits coolly in the booth, arms outstretched and resting on the shoulders of the booth. I sit on the opposite side of the table, placing my phone down, ready to hit record. He pulls out a copy of the book we are about to discuss. The cover is the American version used to promote the movie that was out at the time, so it’s rather bland design wise, with Daniel Craig posing like he’s Sean Connery. My copy, which I also pull out, is the more traditional international version of the cover. The logo was designed by Rian Hughes, and the art is that of a man cut up like in a Saul Bass cover while falling from a great height.
Prizefighter smiles at me the way one always imagined it’d be like to have Santa Claus in your kitchen. There’s a sense of warmth to the smile that contradicts the seemingly superficial nature of a man who needs the people to love him in order to save them. He is genuine even in the moments when he’s being disingenuous. I briefly lose composure thinking about this. When I gain it back, I hit record.
[Read more…] about Journey through Literature #37 (Prizefighter)
Screaming at No One (Lois Lane: Enemy of the State Review!)
When reading Lois Lane
This is the first major series for the character of Lois Lane since 1974. Why is Greg Rucka and not, say, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Marguerite Bennett, or Magdalene Visaggio working on this title? It’s quite possible that Rucka really wanted to write a Lois Lane book and, after the kerfuffle surrounding his Wonder Woman: Earth One book, maybe this was a means of making it up to him. Yet, Lois Lane isn’t one of his traditional spy/criminal/soldier/cop protagonists. She’s a reporter who is often at odds with her militaristic family. Why would Rucka gravitate to such a character? [Read more…] about Screaming at No One (Lois Lane: Enemy of the State Review!)
An Interview With Esteemed Author Henry Henry
Comic Book Herald scored an exclusive interview with renowned author Henry Henry, most recently depicted in the pages of Vault Comics’ Fearscape, about the upcoming follow-up work A Dark Interlude.
He sits across from the other side of the screen an ocean away. From what I had heard about the man, I was expecting a monster. Like one of those character actors who got type cast as the self-satisfied serial killer. Richard Brake in a Rob Zombie film or Lars Mikkelsen playing Rupert Murdoch for Steven Moffat. The kind of calculating man who would chew your ear off about the symbolic implications of a murder tableau while standing before your father’s corpse. The knife still embedded into his heart.
Instead, he’s twitchy. A sad, twitchy little man with a palpable sense of himself. He wants you to believe he’s so much smarter than he is, almost as much as he wants to believe it himself. He tries to hide it behind shadows. His cell is deliberately lit to make visibility more difficult like he’s the monster in a film noir. He sits cross legged with a slight smile on his face. [Read more…] about An Interview With Esteemed Author Henry Henry
Theses on Three Jokers by Geoff Johns & Jason Fabok
Ed. Note: Spoilers for Three Jokers (and more or less the oeuvre of Geoff Johns) follow!
0. Let’s just get this out of the way: The Killing Joke is not that good of a comic. Even by the standards of bad Alan Moore comics, this sticks out in terms of its quality. Where most other trademark bad Alan Moore comics are bad for more interesting reasons (Neonomicon and later volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are bad for interesting yet horrifying reasons), The Killing Joke
In short, it’s bad in the same way comics like the Vigilante arc “Father’s Day,” the Violator miniseries, and Three Jokers are bad. [Read more…] about Theses on Three Jokers by Geoff Johns & Jason Fabok