Where fiction collides.
Mike Mignola is one of my favorite storytellers in comics, so the release of Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects from Dark Horse was hard to resist. All fangirlishness aside, find out whether the graphic novel hits its mark in my new review at OneMetal.com.
Speaking of OM, check out the website for some great Halloween goodies!
Calling all film junkies! New from Titan Books, The Art of Drew Struzan makes a wonderful fixture for your bookshelf or coffee table. You can read my full-length review at OneMetal.
Among the many stars and attractions of Hollywood quietly sits Drew Struzan, artisan and connoisseur. His fame belongs to the golden days that fewer people remember but many revere: the artistry of film posters. His diligently rendered paintings sell as collector’s items and hang in centerpiece frames, evocative of emotion and passion for classic films directed by household names like Spielberg, Lucas, and Guillermo del Toro.
The Art of Drew Struzan, a new coffee table-type hardcover from Titan Books, is dedicated to commemorating Struzan’s work over the last thirty-some years. Filmmakers David J. Schow (The Crow) and Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) introduce the book, 300+ pieces (both full color posters and compositions) sandwiched between crisp pages.
Cuba: My Revolution slides in comfortably amidst other “serious” graphic novels like Persepolis and Fun Home, and it’s worth every penny.
Check out my full review at OneMetal.com.
Lightly treading in the footsteps of Persepolis, a French woman’s portrayal of life growing up in Iran, comes Cuba: My Revolution. Born in Havana, novice author Inverna Lockpez spent her most influential years immersed in her country’s upheaval. In her recently published Vertigo book, Lockpez presents her tell-all through the fictional character Sonya, a smart-minded and impressionable young woman and proponent of Fidel Castro’s 1960s rise to power.
Despite sharing common ground with predecessor Persepolis, My Revolution singularly stands as a frank and unforgiving confession to not only Lockpez’s readers, but herself, as well. Trusting that Fidel will liberate her fellow countrymen, Sonya watches in disbelief as violence and oppression replace hopes of peace and innovation. Even more suffocating, as a soldier and artist, she learns firsthand the kind of ideology Castro has implanted in Cuba’s fertile soil. Her loyalty disregarded, her creativity stifled, Sonya desperately clings to murdered ideals as the ground gives way beneath her and her loved ones disband from Cuba one by one.
Reading Berona’s War took me back to my environmental biology and zoology days in high school, when collecting bugs and tree leaves determined my grade. But Berona’s War has to do with, well, war, so it also reminded me of Worms … the video game.
I don’t know if that’s what Jesse Labbé and Anthony Coffey were going for, but hey, they did credit memorializing their childhood as a prime motivation.
Head over to OneMetal to read my full review of the trade from Archaia Comics.
The first volume of Berona’s War does exactly what it advertises: gives readers a field guide … on a war between two furry critter races, the Ele-Alta and Cropones, and the smaller factions that lend a paw in the decimation over the enriched Amity territory. While readers might half-expect dried leaves and bugs to wind up pinned to the yellow-paged interior, creators Jesse Labbé and Anthony Coffey manage to assemble a scrapbook into a story.
Granted, their story won’t be blowing people away with its grandeur, and even though the destructive consequences of war litter almost every other page, Labbé and Coffey claim they’re writing and illustrating (each playing both sides) for entertainment purposes only. The comic feels disconnected, as though the various descriptions of weapons, soldiers, politics, creatures, propaganda, maps, and technology were pieced together haphazardly. Indeed, Labbé and Coffey spend a page or two outlining a certain subject, only to return twenty pages later. The approach at least maintains interest, never crafting the guide in a way that overburdens a reader’s attention span, but at the same time, making sense of events involves spinning a mental web.
Need a book recommendation? … This probably isn’t it. But for kicks, you can check out my review of the Terminator Salvation: Trial by Fire novel over at OneMetal.
Terminators: They’re the machines that keep on going, despite apocalypses, despite a hailstorm of bullets, despite Skynet and box office Armageddon. They can lose mechanical limbs, survival time warps, and outmaneuver even the smartest Resistance soldiers. Much like these metal exterminators, Terminator Salvation refuses to let humanity win … and by that I mean give humanity a break already.
Last year, director McG restarted the film series with Terminator Salvation, a movie starring Christian Bale and Sam Worthington. In yet another act of overkill, author Timothy Zahn expands on the movie’s events with his spin-off novel, Trial by Fire.
The movie Tank Girl grabbed my attention, showed it a good time, and then debased it (and my morals) while skipping around singing musical numbers and making out with kangaroo men. The new Titan Books trade Skidmarks pretty much pulls the same trick, only I’m wise to its act—or at least indifferent.
Read the full review at OneMetal, or hey, hunt down the book and see for yourself: Bollocks.
Conceived from the British minds of Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett, the punk rock female powerhouse known to indie comics readers as Tank Girl struck infamous gold for its brash dialogue and dramatic, almost psychedelic visuals (Hewlett would later animate the band Gorillaz). The title even inspired a film that bombed the box office despite rocketing ambition. Previously, Titan Books introduced audiences to a compilation book called The Cream of Tank Girl. Now Skidmarks ranks as the publisher’s latest, first appearing as a twelve-part series in Judge Dredd Magazine.
With her reckless friend Barney needing expensive medical care, Tank Girl enters the no-rules Watermelon Race at a chance at snatching the first place, multi-billion dollar cup prize. Rufus Dayglo, whose talent has decorated Tank Girl comic pages before with The Gifting and Visions of Balooga, illustrates Rebecca and her pals as they squash rival cars and speed toward the finish line, her beloved Balooga co-manning the tank. Of course, their hopeful clean victory hits a few bumps along the road, including a technical snag, a dangerous shortcut, and a lead-footed new competitor.
Yesterday I attended a demo for the upcoming PSP edition of Knights in the Nightmare. For those who have played the game on the DS, Atlus is tweaking a few key details that might have given you a headache before. Even I’m excited for this tactical RPG/bullet hell mania title, which hits stores October 19.
Check out my full preview at OneMetal.
Knights in the Nightmare, the tactical RPG that advertises “Bullet-hell heaven in the palm of your hand,” crashes onto the PSP this October. Atlus is adapting the Nintendo DS original that broke fingers and throbbed heads with its complicated and super real-time insanity into a much more user-friendly format. After sitting in on the latest demonstration, we at OneMetal have your inside scoop on both the story and fast-paced gameplay action.
During the demo, the good folks at Atlus stressed two main aspects of the Sting Entertainment-developed game: story and battles. A good chunk of our time was spent examining the actual battles and the renovated tutorial features, so let’s first breeze over the story highlights that will interest both new and old players.
Personally, I don’t get noir. I mean, I get noir, but I don’t understand why anyone in the twenty-first century still enjoys film or book noir, in which misogyny and frivolous women reside. Maybe it’s a girl thing, but hey, misogyny is kind of dumb if you ask me, not all women are fickle, and anybody who calls me a dame will promptly get punched in the face.
Anyway, Fogtown is a good example of what doesn’t work about noir, which is a tricky genre as it is.
Check out my full review over at OneMetal.
Vertigo Crime invites readers into the seedy underbelly of a 50s San Francisco with Fogtown, a noir-styled graphic novel told from the perspective of a private eye named Frank Grissel. The often drunk detective has more than a skeleton or two hidden in his closet.
