PIPELINE COMMENTARY AND REVIEW #93
14 March 1999
by Augie De Blieck Jr.
http://www.nic.com/~augie/pipeline
PIPELINE IDIOT OF THE WEEK
(Now a recurring feature and soon to be, alas, a regular one.)
Awesome Comics. They get this week's award, which I'm subtitling
"Hellshock #1 Redux." This is referring to Jae Lee's failed mini-series as
opposed to his failed attempt at a regular series. But at least he learned
to draw inbetween. Remember his NAMOR work? How many faces did he draw in
his run on that series? The number was so few I gave up trying to figure
out what was going on in the comic and quit buying it.
ANYWAY ---
GLORY #0 came out this week. 32 pages. $2.50. Not so bad, eh? Written
by Alan Moore with art from Brandon Peterson, who signed an exclusive
contract at the time to draw this series when the Rob Liefeld company
declared financial incompetency for the third time and let him out of that
contract.
ANYWAY ---
GLORY #0 contains a whopping grand total of 11 pages of story, with a
double-page splash which, if I'm not mistaken, is the original cover to
this comic. Following that is 5 pages of sketchbook splash pages and --
get this -- a 9 page black and white preview of Chris Sprouse-drawn pages
for SUPREME: THE RETURN. They're nice, but I'd much rather pay for a GLORY
story and see those pages when I go to buy the book. Of course, I've read
half the artwork on that book now, it seems. . .
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
Lately, I've been having a little e-mail chat with Matt Hawkins, creator of
Image's LADY PENDRAGON. I say this not to name-drop, but because he talked
me into giving his title a try. I delayed a couple of weeks, for financial
reasons. But finally, I had a week which would allow me to buy the
remastered edition of LP #1. I walked into the store which in the previous
weeks had had all the issues of the mini-series up on the shelves to find:
They were gone. What was left was the last issue of the mini-series, with
the other slots taken up by the recently-released action figures of Lady
Pendragon.
So the release of the action figures - in one store at least - meant less
room for the comic book itself. Oh, the ironies.
ACTUAL REVIEWS
I wanted to review some comics this week. And they're mostly nice reviews,
which always gives me a special feeling. =)
In TRANSMETROPOLITAN #21, Spider sits down and has a face-to-face chat with
his arch-enemy, the current president. It's mean; it's brutal; it's rough;
it's somewhat violent; it's dirty as all get out. It's Warren Ellis at his
best behind the computer screen. This shouldn't work. Two people sitting
on opposite sides of the desk talking for an extended period of time is
supposed to bore the reader to death, but I think I found a couple of ways
to make it work.
First, have an artist who makes it look good. Mark Waid had Alex Ross in
that 8 page KINGDOM COME epilogue. And here, Ellis has Darick Robertson,
who has been under-rated, in my opinion, from the start. It's not just the
fact that the artwork is easy on the eyes, but the layout remains
interesting and varied and not just back and forth cuts between the people
talking. See page 17 for a great example of that. There's parallelism,
building action -- the whole nine yards.
The second thing is to have the character pretty well established in
advanced. It saves a lot of time and reader confusion. As challenging as
this type of story can be, it would be ten times worse with two completely
new characters that the reader has no previous involvement with. It allows
for certain shortcuts. When the big three order drinks in KINGDOM COME,
the reader immediately gets the 'gag.' If we didn't know them ahead of
time, we'd have to re-read the story to get the joke, since we didn't know
the characters ahead of time. And this would be a handicap to the writer.
Speaking of Mark Waid: I haven't read IMPULSE in a long time. I gave it a
few issues after Mark Waid left, but it seemed somewhat silly and redundant
without him. However, this week's cover made me buy the thing. Picture
Impulse asking The Riddler a bunch of questions. It's the standard case of
dumb luck winning over skill through hilarious cluelessness. But it's
still a fun read and a nice change of pace from the drab and dour issues
being focused on in the Batman titles this year. Bill Messner-Loebs writes
and Craig Rousseau draws. It's pure shtick, but enjoy it for what it is.
I almost forgot the other big Warren Ellis book to come out this week. THE
AUTHORITY #1 debuted on the stands this past Wednesday. Just don't ask me
who published it. Do I count them as WildStorm Comics, or DC Comics, or a
DC imprint or a separate company distributed by DC, etc. etc.
THE AUTHORITY is drawn by Bryan Hitch, who does a pretty good Alan Davis
impression, but with a slightly thicker line. This is all good stuff.
Wild, extreme, fast-paced, destructive. This is only part one of four and
a couple of cities have already been laid to waist. This does not bode
well. But the characters are all interesting and likeable and should prove
fun to watch. Let's hope this book sticks around for a while.
SO WHAT DIDN'T I LIKE THIS WEEK?
I had high hopes for MAGNETO REX #1. Brandon Peterson did a spectacular
job on his fill-in issue of X-MEN a little while ago. But his art here
does little to nothing for me. Maybe it's because the writer, Joe Pruett,
stuck him with a plodding plot filled with talking heads and a shock ending
which neither shocks nor surprises. (This is, of course, not aided by the
fact that the last page occurs on a right-hand page and so is spoiled as
you turn the previous page. UGH I hate it when companies do that.)
I also didn't like GLORY #0, but I beat that dead horse already. Notice
the two have a common artist? I have no idea what that means. It's pure
coincidence, but it's always interesting to have coincidence in our lives.
MISC. T.
I saw WING COMMANDER at the movie theaters this weekend. Just one quick
suggestion for you all: Go to see it at a time you're guaranteed to be
alone in the movie theater with two friends. Then divy up the roles of
Mike Nelson, Crow, and Tom Servo amongst yourselves and go wild. Never was
a movie made more deserving of a MiSTing than this.
I also watched the RONIN DVD tonight. Excellent movie. Lots of fun. Lots
of death and 80 cars completely demolished. It doesn't attempt to make a
statement. It's just a pure action movie. Good stuff and terrific car
chase scenes.
Finally, I've discovered eBay, the on-line auction house. This could be
bad. I get outbid at the last moment most of the time. But there's some
interesting stuff up there now. So consider this a plug:
http://www.ebay.com
And look up items up for sale by augiedb. That would be me. You still
have a couple of days to bid on that STRANGERS IN PARADISE collection I
have up there. =)
-Augie, shameless huckster
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