30 Days of Night Slipcase
Digger #2
Doctor Who Classics Series II #10
Ghostbusters: Displaced Aggression #1
Locke & Key: Head Games Vol. 1 HC
G.I. Joe: Origins #7
Angel #25
Star Trek: Romulans: Schism #1
Transformers: All Hail Megatron #15
Transformers: All Hail Megatron Vol. 2 TPB
The Veil #3
Posts
2 comments:
To the entire IDW staff -
Your choice of bringing John Byrne onto various Trek titles a couple of years ago was a masterstroke. Brilliant.
I hope the sales figures remain strong -- and Mr. Byrne continues to be interested in doing Star Trek books for IDW.
The latest (Romulans Schism #1) was his best Trek issue yet. I REALLY enjoyed the artwork above, sans dialogue, just to soak my eyes in the glory of those drawings and colors.
Magnificent work. It's a pleasure to buy those books! Keep 'em coming! Really looking forward to the eventual Excelsior books -- and hopefully an Enterprise-C book, too!
Btw, any chance IDW's Trek license would allow you to do a sequel to "In The Mirror, Darkly"? Maybe with Mike Sussman contributing with the writing?
Since I'm pretty certain you don't browse the IDW forums to gauge critical reactions to issues, I'll just report my review of GHOSTBUSTERS: DISPLACED AGGRESSION #1 right here on th off chance you might read your blog comments.
Review:
So, wow, this was pretty bad.
I consider IDW’s last Ghostbusters miniseries, “The Other Side”, to be quite possibly the worst piece of Ghostbusters fiction ever written. However, I was willing to give the folks at IDW some slack, as the series had been written by a largely unproven amateur in Keith Champagne, so I figured it was just a fluke. When IDW announced that their next Ghostbusters miniseries would be penned by longtime comic book professional Scott Lobdell (Uncanny X-Men, Fantastic Four), I felt my worries subside.
Then I read the book and, yeah, it’s just about as bad as what Keith Champagne had churned out, though bad in some different ways.
The over-the-top violence is still prevalent, as Peter chops a zombie-ghost’s head in two with a tomahawk, sending gore and maggots and rotted flesh flying all over the place. I guess that might leave you with an “OMG awesome!!11!” reaction…if you’re in middle school. The whole “Wow, Peter, you are incredible in bed” bit seemed like it was trying too hard to be “mature” in the most juvenile way possible, too.
But what really makes this issue bad? Well, a couple things. First, the exposition is…crude. And that’s being polite. Peter’s longwinded and laughable description of how he came to be trapped in the Old West was pretty bad, but nothing compared to Rachel’s explanation of why “I’m the best new character ever!”
And that brings us to the other element that ruined this issue and looks to spread its pestilence across the remaining three installments: Rachel. There are lots of snappy terms to describe characters like her: “Mary Sue”, “Poochie”, etc, and they all fit the bill. She strikes every “awesome new character” cliché in the book as she shows up out of nowhere to save the life of an established character, is totally better than all the older characters at what they’ve been doing for years (she fixed a problem in the proton packs even Egon couldn’t figure out), is totally rocking hot and doesn’t mind letting the world know it, and last but not least, is apparently a super genius who has figured out the secrets of time travel as a convenient plot device to save all the characters.
She is every horrible fan-character ever conceived; “totally awesome” and flawless in every way with an introduction that’s so poorly delivered you’d think it was a joke. IDW seems to have a mad-on for these sorts of “original characters” being pushed hard into their licensed series lately. Anybody who reads their “Transformers” comic has no doubt had to endure the horrors of Drift-sama.
And, of course, it wouldn’t be an IDW comic if it didn’t boast their standard set of editing errors, such as type-os and continuity screw-ups (the train arrives at sundown when it was supposed to arrive at midnight). At least there were no repeated speech bubbles, mis-cropped panels or characters running around with six fingers, all editing mistakes Ryall consistently lets slip through the cracks in his other books. Of course, rather than make sure these sorts of mistakes don’t happen by, you know, properly editing the book, IDW’s solution is to “fix it in the trade”. So remember folks, it you at least want a semi-coherent product, always buy IDW’s trades, because they certainly don’t encourage folks to buy their single issues.
In a way, this was actually worse than “The Other Side”. At least that mini started out with potential and then dropped a letter grade with each subsequent issue. “Displaced Aggression” starts out at rock bottom and I don’t have much faith that it’ll move up from there.
Grade: F (as in, “For what it’s worth, though, Kyriazis’s art is pretty good”.)
Post a Comment