bals@nutmeg.DEC (Once, accident. Twice, coincidence. Three times is enemy action.) (02/11/86)
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THUMB IN THE DIKE REVIEWS
GRADINGS:
A B C
D F
Mean, generally what you'd expect them to mean.
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"Everybody thinks that just because you can *read,* you can be a professional
writer." -- Denton, from `MAZING MAN.
Reviewed this time around:
DAKOTA NORTH #1 NEW TEEN TITANS #20
MIRACLEMAN #5 DAREDEVIL #231
DAKOTA NORTH #1 (MARVEL) D- :
My continuing quest to find the perfect detective comic led me to pick up
DAKOTA NORTH #1 during the latest run to the "Back Issue."
I'm still looking. There's just so many synomyns for the word bad -- such
as inept, ineffectual, boring, and so on. All fit DAKOTA NORTH. The book
basically deals with a female detective-type (Dakota North, of course),
leather-clad, bike-riding, and extremely tough. We know she's extremely
tough because she target practices while talking on the telephone. We know
she's extremely tough `cause she crashes her motorcycle through a store-front
window while in hot pursuit. We know she's extremely tough `cause she judo
flips her snotty little brother.
Scripter Martha Thomases pulls out every hard-boiled female detective cliche
ever done and somehow fits them into DAKOTA NORTH, whether they're appropriate
or not. And speaking of cliches, I found particuarly annoying the
near-homophobic attitude Thomases' display when characterizing a male New York
dress designer. Of course, any man that designs dresses *has* to be effeminate,
right?
Bad. bad. I felt like washing my hands after reading this.
NEW (ORIGINAL) TEEN TITANS #20 (DC) B+
I turn to more pleasant things. I'm not a big follower of TEEN TITANS, and
basically picked this up since the "new" Flash appears in it. Interesting
things happening here, though. Most of the "old" TT's are in a state of
post-CRISIS funk -- Kid Flash/Flash determined to honor his predecessor, even
at the cost of giving up his own identity, Aqualad mourning Tula, Hawk
near-insane because of the loss of his brother. Speedy has his own problems
too, but mentioning them would give away too much.
Good characterizations of Wonder Girl as she tries to pull together yet
another Titans team, and wonders whether it's all worthwhile, and especially
of Jason Todd/Robin. A good read, and I'll be picking up more.
Extraneous thought that occurred to me while reading this; why doesn't DC
make Wonder Girl the "new" Wonder Woman instead of going through all this
nonsense of creating still another Wonder Woman? I find the Wonder Girl
character *much* more interesting than any of the past WW's. And isn't about
time we stopped calling her, "girl"?
MIRACLEMAN #5 (ECLIPSE) B+
Well, it finally had to happen, an issue of MIRACLEMAN I didn't think was
absolutely great. Mostly a plot expander here, folks, as we learn the history
of Dr. Emil Gargunza, and more about the "Vistor" and the *real* origins
of Miracleman. So, much explication, but little real action. Moore seemed to
feel that he had to give Gargunza the same depth of character he gave
to Miracleman, which was O.K., by me, but the parts about the Visitor and
the Miracleman origins seemed fairly redundant. On the other hand, Liz didn't
know any of that, so Moore had to find someway to feed her the information.
The "Miracleman family" episode *is* very good (an "A" to that alone), and
seems to explain the burning question; how *does* MM repair his costume,
anyway?
#6 should be especially interesting, as it winds up the WARRIOR reprints,
and will begin to delve into new, uncharted territory.
BTW, MIRACLEMAN's price has increased to 95 cents.
DAREDEVIL #231 (MARVEL) A+
Well, why not A+? I have now reread this issue five times, and find more
to it each time. This is as close to the gritty, hard-boiled, style that
I want from my detective comics as I'm likely to find. Simply beautiful.
Writing completely integrated with art. In fact, I've decided to buy another
copy of this and hang the full-page spread on my wall. Characters completely
differentiated. Completely real. Everything you could want a comic book
to be.
I gush.
Fred Bals (DEC - Merrimack, NH)