boyajian@akov68.DEC (JERRY BOYAJIAN) (01/27/86)
Reviewed this time around: 'MAZING MAN #4 PELLEAS $ MELISANDE #1-2 [NIGHT MUSIC #4-5] REVOLVER #1 SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT #1-3 & 3-D #1 SECRET ORIGINS #1 STAR TREK #24-25 WARP GRAPHICS ANNUAL #1 WALLY WOOD'S T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS #3 And short notices: ARMY SURPLUS KOMIKZ FEATURING CUTEY BUNNY #5 ATARI FORCE SPECIAL #1 DEATH RATTLE #2 MICHAELANGELO THE OMEGA MEN #36 Ratings for the comics reviewed are as according to the Mad Armenian Scale, a shameless rip-off of the Moriarty Scale, stolen out from under the very nose of the Napoleon of Crime. Nyah-ah-ah!! "For a critic, it's better to have wrong standards than none at all." -- Elmer Allyn Craft ******************************************************************************** |=>A+< A veritable Classic. One of the best of All Time. Example: THE SPIRIT | |==>A< One of the best of the year. Ex: TEEN TITANS #38: "Who Is Donna Troy?" | |==>B< A very good issue, one of the best of the month. Example: CEREBUS | |==>C< A well done, entertaining issue. Satisfying. Example: JON SABLE | |==>D< Rather boring, or a few good spots mixed with more bad ones. Ex: ROM | |==>F< Boring AND stupid or childish. Example: MARVEL SUPERHEROES SECRET WARS | |==>Z< Actually offensive. Example: DAZZLER --- THE MOVIE GRAPHIC NOVEL #12 | ******************************************************************************** 'MAZING MAN #4 [DC, $.75] C+ 'MAZING MAN is, well, 'mazing! I never would have guessed that one could produce an entertaining comic with stories about someone getting a new car or visiting a dentist's office. But somehow, Rozakis and DeStefano have done it. While I liked the previous issues, I was still a bit dubious. With this issue, though, I'm a confirmed 'Maze fan. Try it, you'll like it! PELLEAS & MELISANDE #1-2 [Eclipse, micro-series, $2.00] C+ This two part series in listed in the indicias as NIGHT MUSIC #4 & 5. It's the latest in P. Craig Russell's attempt to bring "Culture" to the masses. Previous issues of NIGHT MUSIC brought (mostly) reprints of, among other things, adaptations of classical opera. This is in the same tradition, being an adaptation of Claude Debussey's opera based on Maurice Maeterlinck's play PELLEAS & MELISANDE. I found Russell's previous efforts just barely accessible (in the literary sense), very dense and ponderous (which is the way I feel about classical opera as well, incidentally). But I never claimed to buy any work by Russell for the writing. Russell is one of the handful of comic artists (among the others are Barry Windsor-Smith and Mike Kaluta) who are masterful in bringing the Romantic art style to comics, and every page here is a beauty. And to make it even better is that the writing is *not* overly dense, but is kept at a minimum, letting the art tell the story. If anything, the writing here seems a bit thin. Unless you insist on comics about people duking it out with each other on two out of every three pages, give this one a try. REVOLVER #1 [Renegade, black & white, $1.70] F+ This is an embarrassment. For the life of me, I can't imagine why Robin Snyder (the editor/packager) or Deni Loubert (the publisher) thought these stories were any good whatsoever. This comic gets up on its hind legs and barks! Perhaps they feel that the name "Steve Ditko" is a magic incantation for quality comics work. Ugh! Anyways, there are two stories by Ditko that headline this comic, both featuring a character with no character called StarGuider, a man who has an uncanny navigational sense and hires himself out to folks as a guide through explored space. Ditko's art here isn't *too* bad (though I feel he has fallen a long way since his 60's Marvel work), but the writing by Jack C. Harris bites the big one. Prose at its purplest, with one scene jumping to another like a movie with a terrible editor. To add insult to injury, a third story, by Rich Margopoulis (who had done some pretty good work for Warren in the 70's) and Tom Mandrake is even *worse*. Not simply incompetent, like the Harris/Ditko stories, but actively stupid. The only redemption (though too little and too late) here is a story by Bill DuBay and Vicatan called "Starlad". It's trite, but it's still done well enough to not make one gag. This is the reason why I put the "+" after the "F" up there. Now the premise for this comic is, as I understand it, that we get three issues of one genre, then three of another genre, and so on. Perhaps after the "Sci-Fi" run is over (and this set of reviews is late enough that the second and third issues are already out) the magazine will be better, but for now, avoid it like the plague. SECRET ORIGINS #1 [DC, $.75] C+ I like the premise of this run of SECRET ORIGINS. In the odd numbered issues, we'll get the origins of Golden Age heroes, and in the even numbered issues, we'll get the newer heroes. What I don't like is that one of the newer heroes they are doing in the first half-dozen issues is Halo, whose origin was told just a year ago. But anyways, DC obviously wanted to start off with a bang, and thus gave us the original Superman for the first issue. Since the GA Superman will no longer be seen by anyone, this is a final look at him, and a nice tribute. Roy Thomas does a fine job of writing here, but the treat for me was the artwork of Wayne Boring. Boring will never be listed in my book as one of the comic book greats, but he was the principle Superman artist when I started reading comics in the late 50's (he's also the first artist to succeed Joe Shuster on Superman), and I've always thought of him as *the* Superman artist (and a big "blzzztthh" to you Curt Swan fans). And I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that Jerry Ordway is one of the finest inkers in comics today. Definitely a worthwhile comic to pick up. They're off to a good start here. SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT #1-3 [Eclipse, mini-series, $1.75] C SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT 3-D #1 $2.25 These are reprints of horror/fantasy stories from Standard Comics of the 1950's. From one perspective, they seem a bit trite and primitive compared to what we expect today, especially with what we're used to seeing from TWISTED TALES/TALES OF TERROR and DEATH RATTLE. They aren't even up to the levels of the giant of that time, EC Comics. Still, there's a lot to recommend here: the stories are brief (they didn't believe in padding in those days) and well-told, and there's a good amount of nice Alex Toth artwork here. Don't expect SWAMP THING, but these are a better bet for the horror comics enthusiast than ELVIRA'S HOUSE OF MYSTERY. STAR TREK #24-25 [DC, $.75] C This is a two-part story by sf author Diane Duane, who has two of the better (so I'm told; I haven't read them yet) Star Trek novels to her credit. i'd be lying if I said that this was a great story, but it's highly entertaining, and is good for a number of hearty chuckles. Reminds me of a better comedy episode of the series, such as "Trouble with Tribbles". I dare say that if this story had been done as a tv episode, it would be as highly thought of as "Tribbles" was, in fact. WALLY WOOD'S T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS #3 [Deluxe, $2.00] C Well, Deluxe won the court case, and is back in business with T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS. That's the good news. The better news is that this issue is a definite improvement over previous issues. The Dave Cockrum/Murphy Anderson T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents story is a lot tighter in both writing and art over the previous installments. The Lightning story gets top honors here, though, and what's even more amazing is that I actively *liked*, rather than merely tolerated, Keith Giffen's "new style" of art here. I hope the trend continues upward. WARP GRAPHICS ANNUAL #1 [WaRP, $2.95] D+ A definite mixed bag. First the dislikes: "Mythadventures" was a terrible disappointment, and if one wants to measure results against expectations, this will end up at the bottom of the pile. Valentino is a very imaginative and funny writer/artist; i like his NORMALMAN quite a bit. He seemed to me to be the natural choice to succeed Phil Foglio as the artist for MYTHADVENTURES. He couldn't even begin to approach Foglio for utter insanity, but still I thought his style might be suitable. If this story is a typical example of what to expect for Valentino onthe regular book, then it's bombs away. "Blood of the Innocent" went nowhere. I didn't care for the mini- series, and this added nothing to the previous story. I might not have minded if Shanklin, Wheatley, and Hempel had some sort of natural epilogue to the story from the mini-series that could be put in here, but it felt as if they were obligated to do a Dracula/Ripper story for the annual, and thus threw together whatever came to mind. "Captain Obese" was perplexing. Like REVOLVER's "Star Guider", I can't figure out why the Pini's think this is worth publishing. I didn't find it at all entertaining, just a tad grotesque. It didn't even have a good touch of humor to redeem it. Now for the ambivalents: "Elfquest" didn't excite me at all. It was well-told, but I did not feel entertained at all by it. This type of fantasy story just leaves me dry. "Panda Khan" I could never quite warm up to, even in its usual spot as the back-up strip in A DISTANT SOIL. Unless it's quite exceptional, I find that using funny animals in place of humanoids when there's no point to be made by it to be a sign of lack of imagination and creativity. "Unicorn Isle" looks like it could be interesting, but there was not enough here to give me a feel for what the regular series will be like. Unless there's a totally new wrinkle to things there, I'm afraid I'll pass it up. I just don't go for this type of fantasy. The two likes weren't the biggest surprises ("Mythadventures" was), but they were at least positive surprises. Though I've been reading A DISTANT SOIL and THUNDERBUNNY with regularity, neither of them rate very high in my book. Strange then that both of those features should turn out the best stories in this comic. They weren't mind-staggering; in fact, they were a bit on the light side, but they were well-told, concise stories. I expected a lot better from WaRP. Better luck next year. SHORT (relatively) NOTICES (no ratings): ARMY SURPLUS KOMIKZ FEATURING CUTEY BUNNY #5 is finally out after a long hiatus (not unexpected, since this happens between every issue). Cutey Bunny is very silly, but an amusing silly. It's probably not to everyone's taste, though. The last page of the first story alone is worth taking a look at. ATARI FORCE SPECIAL #1 has the feeling of being left-overs from the cancellation of the regular title, but if you enjoyed the series, you'll most likely enjoy this. DEATH RATTLE #2 is quite a disappointment. Like the first issue, these are reprints, two of which I've seen before. This doesn't bother me as much as *what* they chose to reprint. First up is a Jack Jackson (Jaxon) story that first appeared just last year in JAXON'S ILLUSTRATED TALES. Although that comic probably didn't have a large circulation, and this is the first time this story appears in color, it seems a bit too soon to be reprinting it. And judging by the blurb, the other story from JIT will be reprinted in the next two issues of DEATH RATTLE. To further the disappointment, the Will Eisner that has been heralded as appearing in this issue is a group of "Ripley's Believe It or Not" type stories from a paperback from ~10 years ago called something like THE SPIRIT'S CASEBOOK OF TRUE GHOST STORIES. Again, this is probably unfamiliar to a number of people, but I found it somewhat disappointing (it isn't all that good, either). MICHAELANGELO is the second of four one-shot comics featuring one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This is a nice Christmas story to boot. As I said about the first of these one-shots: if you like the Turtles' comic, you'll like this; if not, you won't. This also gives a preview of a new comic from Mirage, called GISMO SPROCKET. I didn't find this preview all too entertaining, though, so I can't say that I will be waiting on bated breath for the comic. THE OMEGA MEN #36 contains a nice in-joke for fans of old sf/ fantasy. In the back-up story, three of the Spiders are named Utpatel, Coye, and Bok. These are the names of three popular fantasy artists: Frank Utpatel, Lee Brown Coye, and Hannes Bok. --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Acton-Nagog, MA) UUCP: {decvax|ihnp4|allegra|ucbvax|...} !decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-akov68!boyajian ARPA: boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.DEC.COM