Reviews

Archie Firsts

This is a handsome hardback, with good reproduction, containing reprints of early Archie stories; a precursor to an already announced series of Archive volumes collecting Archie strips chronologically.

2000AD 2011

The 2000AD Xmas special proves to be not so much special as, by and large, a fatter regular issue.

Starborn 1

So Stan the Man is still trying to re-create Marvel of the early sixties. Why? All I can think of is that he has been treated as badly as he has treated other creators (mostly Kirby) over the decades and he’s trying to set up a financial legacy.

Let Me In: Crossroads 1

Dark Horse have long specialised in film and TV adaptations, with the results normally being of distinctly mediocre quality. Now here comes Let Me In: Crossroads, a comic book prequel to a film that’s a remake of the Swedish film Let The Right One In, which in turn was adapted from the novel of the same name. It’s a metatextual world we live in.

New Avengers 7

There’s a lot to be said against Brian Michael Bendis’ writing, and I’ve said most of it already; his overrated, sprawling style has become the industry standard, padding out storylines endlessly to fill the all-important Trade Paperback, with a multitude of costumes all saying the same ‘cool’ things in exactly the same voice, characterisation being subverted to a plot point or a ‘witty’ punchline.

Salvatore 1: Transports of Love

Nicolas De Crecy has the naturalistic fluid line of a master cartoonist. His work in Salvatore is deceptively simple, but it suits the story with the hand of a master tailor. Although the plot appears lightweight and may be too low-key for some readers, the accumulative power of the book is tremendous.

The Playwright

This is much closer to being a character sketch than a (graphic) novel – not too much happens, there are no substantial crises, and so on. This is not in any sense a bad thing, since it’s one of the most incisive and profound character portraits I’ve seen in comics.

FA - The Comiczine