Comic Book Round Up! "DC Legacies"

Well, I've already fallen terribly behind in the blogging thing. I was going to attempt numerous blogs a week. Obviously that hasn't happened. Fail! Anyways, here's a quick review I meant to write last week but didn't get to it.

DC comics is currently running a 12 issue mini-series called "Legacies". Basically it's a retelling of DC continuity from the first appearance of superheroes until (I'm guessing)the modern day. Now I'm woefully behind on DC continuity. The last series I read was "Batman: Cataclysm" back in 1999. Since then the DC universe has had about 3 crisis's, a couple of Bright Days, Blackest Nights, who knows what else. I'm guessing this series is an attempt to give 70 years of continuity another revision so that it all makes sense. The odd thing is, no one really notices continuity too much if they pick up a Batman book and start reading it. I've never really felt the need to read a 1960's "Green Lantern" in order to understand what was happening in "Zero Hour". It is a fictional world after all, and not a real history. Anyways, DC and it's continuity has been a real can of bees for the company since the first Crisis (of infinite Earths) back in 1985, so who knows how this will all play out in 5 years time.

That said, this book is good. It does a masterful job of updating DC history while telling a story that is genuinely interesting. I always have had a bit of a soft spot for these types of things, and this one succeeds wonderfully since on top of the great storytelling, the guest artists working on this are all pretty top notch as well (Joe Kubert kicked off the golden age!) It's great seeing the golden age heroes dealt with (the first two issues basically deal with the JSA, issue Three isn't out yet)in this manner, where you get a bit of nostalgia for the old books without it being corny. The creators also don't presume you know everything about these people, so you're never lost wondering who the hell Hour-Man is either so it's great for noobs or people like me who have fallen out of grace with DC continuity. Really great stuff.

So yeah, it's a recommend so far unless it all falls apart in the coming months. It might be worth waiting for the inevitable trade paperback, but if you're a weekly comics rack type of geek, pick it up and check it out. Now I have to find out if this real is going to be the bible to current continuity or not!

Comic Book Round Up! "iZOMBIE"

I read comics. There. Now that I've got that alcoholic like admission out of the way, I'm going to blather on about my pick for best comic of last week. I'm probably going to do this for my possibly one reader each week based on the comics I buy. Last week, I bought a whole 2 books, which considering I usually buy trade and hard covers, is a HUGE comic week for me.

Anyways, I was too intrigued by iZombie not to buy the first issue last month. The $1 cover price certainly helped. I love zombies, and I love the zombie genre. I tend to hate zombie comics. There's too god damned many of them! Marvel has a zombie-vers, DC had a bunch of zombie heroes come back as lanterns or some shit in the never read by anyone "Final Darkest Brightest Night Crises Day"... forget about all the independent publishers pumping out between 1 and a 1000 books a month. It's too much zombies!

So dear reader, you may be wondering "Gee mister, why'd you buy the zombie book then?" It's because I like Michael Allreds work. "MADMAN" comics (up until the yet unread IMAGE books from last year) was brilliant, RED ROCKET 7 was great, his Book Of Mormon was pretty to look at and ignore... I wanted to see what he did with the zombie books. It's also published by Vertigo, the DC imprint that is actually unafraid to deal with supernatural subjects in a non-retarded way. So it's all a recipe for success!

Except it isn't a total success. The art is fantastic as Allred tends to be. It's written by Chris Roberson, a writer I'm unfamiliar with. Issue one was a pretty good first issue in that it introduced a shit load of characters in an interesting way. The problem in issue 2 is that there's too much going on in too few pages so none of it really ads up to much. It's too cut up and this seems to be (as far as one can tell in one issue) a story that needs to breath a bit. It's not so bad that I'm dropping the book. It's more a case of being intrigued enough in the subject to want more then I got. Instead of quick glimpses of the characters, I want to see more of the characters which is impossible with about 4 plots that have yet to fully converge into a linear story. If this was a limited series, I wouldn't be as concerned. This is being billed as an ongoing though, so I fear that it will become a convoluted, rambling mess.

So there it is, "iZOMBIE" has been thoroughly judged before getting a chance to come in to it's own thing! If you're a zombie fan, I'm sure you'll enjoy this since it really is a different take on the whole zombie genre, and an interesting one. Just hold your thumbs that it doesn't all fall apart.

3.5/5