moriarty@fluke.UUCP (Henry Vogel) (09/04/85)
It seems to me that all sorts of people are starting to do reviews on the net and I thought, hey, why not me too? Almost everything I'm reviewing (7 out or 8 titles) are published by one of the independant companies. Half of them are first issues. Being involved in the independant comics area myself, I find that I am always interested in seeing what the competition is like (besides, most of the good stuff is coming from there). So, here goes! The scale used is amazingly similar to the Moriarty Scale - this is due to innate laziness, not incredible criminal daring (like Boyajian). FEMFORCE #2 [Z] - I picked this up because the back-up feature was written and drawn by Mark Propst who is also drawing Southern Knights #12 and 13. However, having bought it, I thought I might as well read it. Quite frankly, it sucks. Badly. Worse than badly. Words cannot fully describe how ungood this "story" is. How Americomics can afford to publish this in color is beyond me. Do not, repeat DO NOT, spend money on this! Greylore #1 [D] - This is the flagship book for Sirius (I believe that's how they spell it) Comics. The art looks okay, not fantastic, but okay (Bo Hampton drew it and he can do better than this). However, the story is VERY disjointed and difficult to follow. I think they may have had an interesting idea here, but it got lost somewhere along the way. Maybe it will get better from now on though, since they seem to have set up the situation they wanted and introduced everyone. Still, it has a long way to go. New Mutants Special Edition [C+] - I liked this. The story was interesting - there was even some humor - and the art was quite good. Arthur Adams of Longshot fame drew this and I like his art quite a bit. My only complaint was, after a double length story we still don't get an ending! The story finishes up in the X-Men Annual. (The only reason I even reviewed this book was because I thought it was such an improvement over the recent New Mutant stories). Dreadstar #21 [C+] - Oops. Looks like I have two books from non-independant publishers. Oh well... My main reason for reviewing this is that I don't remem- ber seeing much about it on the net. Once again, we have a fun comic book. Nothing incredible, but certainly a book that I find consistantly entertaining. If you haven't been following it, check out the Dreadstar and Company reprints. I think you'll like it. Journey #22 [B] - One of the better books being published. This is one of those books you can show to people who think comic books are only filled with super heroes as an example of what else can be done with the medium. I should also warn any new readers that it will take a few issues to get into the book - as it would with Cerebus. However, as with Cerebus, it will be well worth your while to do so! Shatter #1 [C] - Not bad. Maybe now that the book is coming out monthly (and has more than 8 pages to it) I'll be able to keep up with the story. This book is a curiosity, of course, because of the computer generated art. However, I think the story is quite good enough to hold a reader's attention whether they the art is to their tastes or not. Of course, I'll read a book that has subpar art if the story is good (probably stems from being a writer myself). Wordsmith [C] - This is the first title from Renegade Press that I've picked up (and only the second they've released, I think). The premise is interesting. We follow the life of a pulp writer, but half the story delves into the stories that he is writing. I don't know how well this will work out, but I'm willing to stick with it for several issues to find out. First Adventures #1 [Overall C, Blazer Barlow [B], Whisper [D+], Dynamo Joe [C] I'm sure just about everyone out there has seen the ads for this book. It con- tains three seperate, continuing stories. This is the first time I've seen Blazer Barlow and Dynamo Joe. I liked Blazer Barlow. It was fun seeing them take on the God Squad (my nickname for a Squad of tough angels). The book may be worth buying for this alone. I'd picked up Whisper when it was published by Capital and wasn't that impressed with it then and find my opinion hasn't changed much since then. Dynamo Joe could be pretty good (hard to tell after only 8 or so pages). It's a big robot story, but seems to be different from the other big robot stories out there - in other words, the big robot is just a prop for the characters as opposed to being the entire reason for the story. Overall, I'd say the book is worth picking up for the Blazer and Dynamo stories. Well, that's it for my first attempt at reviewing comics. As you can see, I'm not much into describing the book itself. I don't do that because I think the writer of the book is much more capable of it than I am and I'll just try to recommend that you see what he has to say (that and I also have a tendancy to forget the details - maybe it has to do with following about 40 books a month plus writing one, but the only stories I manage to keep straight are the ones I'm writing). Well, that's enough for now. As soon as Jeff posts the results of his poll of the net.comics readers' reasons for buying comics I'll probably toss in my reasons for reading and writing comics. Henry Vogel