Monday, July 26, 2010

Comic Roundup: July 21, 2010

  • A quick note to start off this roundup. I'm pretty sure that not a single one of these comic came out on July 21. That might strike you funny; it does me as well. My comic purchases have dropped off dramatically so it has been a few weeks since I visited the local shop. I let issues build up until the trip is worthwhile. Enough of me. On with the comics.

  • Batwoman: Elegy deluxe hardcover edition - Collecting all seven issues of Greg Rucka and J. H. Williams III's run together on Detective Comics, there was now way I could leave this book on the shelf. I'm not a huge fan of most DC comics, but I'm a huge fan of Rucka. His work here, setting up a great character, along with amazing art by Williams, makes this a high recommendation for anyone with an interest in superhero comics. My one quibble is that the comics make great use of two page spreads that look beautiful in single issue, but lose the inter margins because of the binding. Read it; it's wonderful.

  • The Man With The Getaway Face - I loved Darwyn Cooke's first Parker adaptation, The Hunter. And now I'm eagerly awaiting the second, The Outfit, which is actually based on the third Parker novel. But instead of skipping the second book entirely, Cooke decided to adapt it as a prelude to The Outfit because it has some bearing on the rest of the series. Since it's scheduled to be printed as the opening chapter to the next comic, I was going to leave this one on the shelf. But curiosity got the better of me. Cooke's art, as in the previous book, is beautiful and expressive. The oversized pages in this issue let you really study it. The story was great, as well, though I wonder if the original was just as slight or if Cooke had to simplify a lot to get it all in. Either way, I'm looking forward to The Outfit even more now.

  • Scarlet issue 1 - Brian Bendis finally returns with a new creator owner book alongside Alex Maleev. Scarlett seems to be about a young woman how becomes a terrorist/revolutionary in the face of overwhelming corruption and apathy. I doubt I'll be back for the second issue. If it gets a lot of praise, I'll check out the trade down the line, but the story completely failed to grab me. Plus, Maleev's artwork has never really clicked for me. (That's all I'm going to say about that because I'm no artist and I don't want to come across as a d-bag.)

  • X-Women one-shot - The long awaited (by me at least) collaboration between Chris Claremont and Milo Manara finally made it to the U.S. in this one shot edition. As I expected, the art was wonderful while the story was rather light and fluffy. Honestly, that's all I really wanted from the book. Anyone looking for an important, mature story might be missing the point. I would like to see it in a large European-scale book though instead of the standard American comic size.


© 2010 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.

9 comments:

  1. Reading this made me miss my comics so much. I haven't been reading them at all lately, trying to save money as well as cut down on the amount of stuff I have at home (comics are such a hassle to move and store, which I learned last week).

    I'm like you; I'm not a big fan of DC comics, but I love Greg Rucka as well. And I own The Hunter too, just last week I gave it to my husband to read. I'm also a huge huge huge fan of Bendis...AARRRGH see, just reading this makes me want to run down to the local comic shop!

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  2. @ MMOGamerChick - First I get BlueKae to buy a bunch of gamebooks and now I'm tempting you with comics. I'm a bad person.

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  3. I'm loving my gamebooks tough.

    As for comics, I've always been more of a Marvel fan than a DC fan, although I do love Batman. I stopped reading comics for a few years, but have been picking some new stuff up lately, like Atomic Robo.

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  4. Eh, that should be though, not tough.

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  5. @ Blue Kae - I pick up only a few comics in single issues any more. Generally anything that isn't going to be collected or comics that I can't wait for the trade to read. But mostly I read collected editions only.

    Like Invincible, for instance. It's a great superhero book that's not tied down to Marvel or DC and it reads great in trades.

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  6. @Anjin - Invincible is amazing...I'm so behind though.

    I used to have a huge pull list every week at the local comic book store, and then I bought even more when I got a job there. It's such an expensive habit though, so I started just only getting the TPBs as well, and I'll read the occasional title digitally.

    @Blue Kae - A big Marvel fan here myself. The only titles I really look forward to out of DC are their Vertigo stuff. Some of my favorite comics of all time -- Preacher, Y The Last Man etc.

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  7. Loved loved Preacher. I think Metropolitan was a Vertigo title too wasn't it?

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  8. @ MMOGamerChick - Vertigo is great. I've been following Fables and Scalped for a while now. And Ex Machina, though that's Wildstorm.

    @ Blue Kae - Yep. Warren Ellis is awesome and I love a lot of what he does.

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  9. I can't believe I forgot about Fable. The march of the wooden soldiers story line was my favorite, if they ever make a movie out of the series (I wish!) I would want it to be based on that arc.

    And Ex Machina is awesome too. I pretty much love anything Brian K. Vaughan does. A friend of mine lent me the first volume of Runaways one day, and I just fell in love and started reading that. Then Y The Last Man blew me away and I started buying that too. I also read his Pride of Baghdad and then Ex Machina...there's a few more things in there, I can't remember off the top of my head though.

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