Brian K. Vaughan is one of my favorite authors of all time since I read Y the Last Man. We Stand on Guard is not a sprawling epic like several of his other tales. I wouldn't put it up there with Runaways, Saga, or Y the Last Man but it is a very intriguing read.
We Stand on Guard takes place in the near future in Canada. The United States was attacked in a similar style to Olympus has Fallen and they believe Canada is to blame. The opening of the book is the retaliation of the U.S. to Canada and our main character Amber is just a little girl when this happened. Amber along with her brother survive the initial attack. The book jumps ahead 12 years Amber is an adult now and she is on her own. Amber is trying to survive on her own and almost gets taken out by a U.S. scout when she comes across a group of Canadian freedom fighters. One of the freedom fighters goes on a great tangent about the origin of Superman during this long occupation war the United States has inflicted on Canada. Its a great little story and it adds some levity to this serious situation. It is similar to a moment in Saving Private Ryan. The freedom fighters take out a Gorilla unit but lose a man in the process this gives Amber the chance to step up and show what she is made of. The freedom fighter's leader is captured and we are introduced to a woman known as the American who is one of the leaders of this occupying force.
The story is told through present day events as we join the freedom fighters along with Amber and engage in a suicide mission to stop the Americans from their true purpose for occupying Canada. But the story also shows some flashbacks about how Amber and Tommy lived on the run. The story culminates in a suicide mission lead by Amber and the freedom fighters against the U.S. as they try to siphon off Canada's fresh water supply. There are a lot of great character moments in this book, but as I said before this is not about the war between Canada and the United States but this is about Amber and her place in this war. This book is not really about the war that it portrays instead it is allegorical in that it is about war in general. It is about war for resources, refugees, terrorism, manipulating the public opinion of war, all of these are issues raised in Vaughan's work and I like that he is exploring these ideas. This is by far one of Brian K. Vaughan's most violent books and but I wouldn't say most offensive. Saga can be quiet offensive at times. If you love Vaughan's work or you are a fan of Brian Wood, I would highly recommend this book for you.
This book has so much potential but the execution leaves a lot to be desired in what had a strong first issue. This book starts off with the title character Kingsway Law who is a war hero from a war that we don’t see but only hear about through dialog. The United States is divided up into five different empires. Kingsway used to work for the Chinese whose capital is the Golden City in northern California; but now he is done with them and he is looking to disappear. Kingsway comes off as an Unforgiven type of cowboy who just wants to be left alone. But when the queen of the Golden City has put a price on his head everybody is coming out to the wild looking for him.
After a gun fight with some of the queen’s guards Kingsway wakes up next to a campfire with a Mexican woman named Sonia. The Mexicans and the Chinese have been at war in western part of the country over the mining of Red Gold. Red Gold is a magical type of gold that can shift the balance of power to any of the empires that are vying for control of North America.
The book jumps ahead five years, Sonia and Kingsway have been living in the wild and created a life for themselves. The wild is a beautiful place the animals that inhabit this place remind me of the book Manifest Destiny. Their world gets turned upside down by a Chinese woman who shows up with her dragon looking for Kingsway to save her small band of rebel miners from the Golden City. Meanwhile the engineer of the United States of New York is coming across the country looking for the mother load of Red Gold. Strode is introduced as a winged African American scout for the engineer. Kingsway and Ah Toy go looking for Sonia and battling the United States forces along the way at the mine they battle the Windigo what guarding the vein of Red Gold. Strode joins the fight with the engineer and his forces not far behind. There is a final showdown fight with all three parties where the United States of New York’s forces take out the Golden City’s guards leaving the miners and our heroes make way to the freemen’s fort in the south. Kingway finds his wife but the ending is expected but it wasn’t executed well.
Greg Pak’s work is hit or miss with me I really like his work on Incredible Hulk over at Marvel Comics but this could have used a lot of more to expand upon. This type of western is a grand and new concept but it wasn’t executed very the art was okay but nothing special. Frankly I would love to see more and I would like to know more about each of the empires the world that these characters inhabit. I also think that (SPOILER) Sonia being a ghost that Kingsway met when he was close to death and a figment of his imagination was a cop out ending or that it could have been executed better.
Vertigo Comics has been going through a Renaissance of sorts and this story is part of that new push. If you love crime noir or any type of mob movies this is a book for you. If there is one other title I could compare this to it would be History of Violence. The whole idea behind this book is that the wives of three Irish gangsters step up to run the business. The three Irish hoods go to prison because they got arrested for beating the crap out of somebody. Jimmy, Johnny and Rob go to prison but their absence has left a vacuum in Hell’s Kitchen. Enter their wives Kath, Raven and Angie this book starts off pretty tame low level crime the wives are just collecting for their husbands while they are in prison but people keep shorting them on the payments. This pisses off Kath to the breaking point and when she snaps she winds up putting the relative of someone in the Italian mob in a coma. That’s not the worst of it however someone saw the whole thing go down. But this witness doesn’t want justice he thinks that because its just a group of women that he can blackmail them. This is where the book takes it dark turn down the road towards a life of crime.
The girl’s team joins forces with Tommy to run the Irish gang in Hell’s Kitchen. Tommy is Jimmy’s best friend but he has just escaped a mental hospital. The book gives very little back story to the characters throughout its tale. We do learn that Kath and Raven are sisters but once the book takes that deeper dive into organized crime we see that Kath isn’t as in charge as we expected her to be. Angie really changes as she becomes the enforcer for the group learning from Tommy everything that she can. The women make deals with the Jews and the Italians over the course of the story to completely take over Hell’s Kitchen. While their husbands have been locked up the girls reputations have surpassed their own they are released early. What they find when they return to the streets is that the women want nothing to do with them anymore. Raven is in deep with the Italians, Kath wants Jimmy to treat her equally as a partner and Angie has become independent.
The husbands try to take out Tommy but it doesn’t work. One by one the husbands fall to the women as they find they don’t have the credibility on the street that they once had. But as the girls continue to climb the higher they begin to split apart. Raven takes control of everything Kath kind of checks herself and Angie and Tommy take off for brighter shores. Later on Kath and Raven are talking and Raven confesses all she has done that Kath was too weak to do even killing someone she thought was going to drag Kath down over time. This sets the two sisters to fighting and Kath is killed when she falls on a kitchen knife. The story doesn’t end there as Raven continues to climb the ladder to success only to meet a very The Departed style end when she arrives home one night to find Tommy and Angie there.
Looking at this series as a whole I can’t say I’m impressed but I wasn’t expecting much from it anyway. I feel this could have been longer by including lots of character development and exposition. Probably my biggest complaint of this series was the art as a whole. I think the colors worked really well for this story I love the whole opening scene but I have a problem with the framing and perspective of the artist’s work some of the drawings are just painful to look at. I didn’t like History of Violence the book or the movie but if you liked either of those I am sure you will like this.
Back in the 1990s Image Comics was the place to go for comics that were not about superheroes it was a place to go to see what comics as an art form could be stretched toward. Mark Millar is one of those visionaries he has been crafting his own stories for some time now with several of them becoming films and even some of them surpassing the original source material. Reborn is one of those books. Now I’ll be up front this book may not be for everybody. There is a lot to like in this book but there are things that I did not like as well.
First off the art is simply spectacular as Greg Capullo is here to provide the art for this series coming fresh off of his run on Batman with Scott Snyder. The book starts off with a sniper in a public place taking out unsuspecting victims. One of the unlucky citizens wakes up in a green field much younger in what looks like something out of Lord of the Rings. The hero of this tale is Bonnie Black a school teacher who is very pessimistic about the afterlife as she is in a nursing home and has lost her husband, mother, father and best friend. When she dies she awakens in this realm in the middle of a warzone. She finds out well she’s in this new land with a new lease on life and a younger body that she is the savior of this realm. She discovers that she has some type of powers she is reunited with her father and her childhood pet. She is on a quest to find her husband in this realm and along the way she finds her best friend. At the end there is a big showdown between Bonnie and the demon like villain of this realm.
What I like about this book is this high concept of an idea that Mark Millar has come up with I like most of his books because of their concepts but I don’t particularly like his execution all of the time and this was one of those times. I really liked the first half of this book but I just felt that he didn’t stick to the landing. I also didn’t like the reveal of who the big bad was before he died. It didn’t sit well with me. I also didn’t like how bitter her best friend became when she discovered that her faith and beliefs had been dashed by this new reality. This book leave lots of room for improvement, I had hoped that this would be a one and done tale like so many of Mark Millar’s books but sadly that doesn’t seem to be the case.
This book has the same creative team but it doesn’t have the same scope as the two Batman stories because there are fewer characters. This book aslo strikes a rather different tone which grew on me after a while but I found a little odd at first. This book is funny because it teams up Catwoman with the Riddler and their association leads to all types of high jinx. Selena has gone to Italy to find out if Carmine Falcone was truly her father. Her quest leads her on several adventures and run-ins with the mafia in Rome she gets some answers and is mostly left with more questions. She has a final showdown with the Riddler who was playing on curiosity about her past to get her to steal this very special ring. In the end she is able to survive and get one up on the Edward but she did not find the answers she was truly seeking.
Again Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale deliver a solid story and art with this book. Is it essential to read this to understand Batman: Dark Victory, no. If you are a Catwoman fan or a completest of Loeb and Sale work then yes you will want to read this. I believe this is the version of Selena that Anne Hathaway based her performance on for the Dark Knight Rises. This title is not essential but it does open that world up just a little more.
Batman: Dark Victory picks up where Batman: The Long Halloween left off. The Holiday killer has been caught and is behind bars the Roman is dead, but our heroes are coping with the loss of Harvey Dent. Two-Face has taken over and the last remnants of Harvey Dent are slowly being erased throughout this book. There is a shining light in this book as it showcases how Dick Grayson became the first Boy Wonder to team up side by side with the Dark Knight. There are new characters to make there appearances as well such as Janice Porter. This book is sort of a mirror reflection to Batman: The Long Halloween because instead of the mob being targeted police officers are being targeted every holiday by a new killer called the Hangman and a piece of evidence is found at each scene linking Harvey Dent to each victim. Janice Porter is the new district attorney but she is hiding something that when it is revealed is one of the greatest twist that Jeph Loeb has ever written in a Batman story because it’s not something you expect. There is more of a shock value I think at the end of this book when it is revealed who the real Hangman killer is.
Like I mentioned earlier one of the shining lights of this book is seeing the origin of Dick Grayson how and why his parents died. How he discovered the Bat-cave and how he became Robin. It doesn’t take very long but it is something that felt quite fulfilling to see put to the page in this collection. There is surprisingly little Bruce Wayne in this book compared to its predecessor. The relationship between Bruce Wayne and Selena Kyle seems to dissolve in this book as he pushes her away in his grief over losing Dent. But on a side not it is because of events in this book that there is a spin-off story of sorts about a journey that Catwoman goes on in between two of the chapters in this book.
If you read Batman: The Long Halloween then you mostly know what to expect with this sequel closing out some of the early adventures of the Caped Crusader. I highly recommend it on the artwork alone as I love Tim Sale’s work but it is a very well crafted story.
Some of my favorite books to come out of either Marvel or DC Comics are the collaborations by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale. Batman: The Long Halloween is the start of the Holiday Quartet by Jeph Loeb in the other books in this are Batman: Haunted Knight, Batman: Dark Victory and Catwoman: When in Rome. Batman: The Long Halloween takes place after Batman: Year One. These stories are composed more in the vein of crime noir tales than Batman stories and that is what makes them so intriguing this is the era when crime shifted from the mob to Batman’s rogue gallery that we know and love today. This first book showcases the downfall of Carmine Falcone aka the Roman and the main kingpin of Gotham City. This book also gives us the origin of Two-Face and the downfall of Harvey Dent.
First off before we move on to story the art work is spectacular on every page a Tim Sales drawings are amazing and the colors work so well with the setting and tone of the story. Pretty much all of Batman’s villains appear in this book at one point or another. I really like the character development that was put into this story as we see the building of the relationship between Batman and Jim Gordon, Gordon and Dent, Batman and Catwoman. Again back to the art work in this book Tim Sale is masterful at framing and perspective.
The story centers on the Holiday killings in which a different member or groups of members are killed each holiday of the year and all of the victims have connections to the mob. This is truly a different type of crime noir story because it takes so many of those tropes and it turns them on their heads. The mafia is on the defensive the entire book instead of being on the offensive. Batman is trying to solve the case one way while Gordon and Dent are attacking it from another angle. This book also perfectly captures Bruce Wayne’s public life balanced with his private life something that can rarely be seen outside of Batman the Animated Series. The fall of Harvey Dent is the perfect cliff hanger to leave this book on because for those of us who are comic fans or Batman fans in particular we already know the story or at least the broad strokes of the story.
I fully recommend this book if you are a Batman fan by any means this is a title for you. I may be a little longer to get through but in the end you will be rewarded for sticking with it.
This isn't the book that started it all publishing wise but it is the story that started it all chronologically. The first of many Dirk Pitt adventures by Clive Cussler. Dirk Pitt is a cross between Indiana Jones and James Bond in tone. If you like adventure, history and action thrillers then this is the book series for you. This book is a short quick read but introduces us to a slew of characters that you grow to love the more you read this series.
The story starts off with the mysterious disappearance of vessel at sea this is how most of the Dirk Pitt adventures start off. One of the great things about this book is that you don't actually meet the villain until you are more than halfway through the book. The golden eyed villain is so close to a Bond Villain that it is laughable at some points but he is still terrifying as there is a mixture of Captain Nemo from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The characters are well put together in this series and very relatable. You have the damsels in distress and the femme fatales who both fall for our hero. The book not only introduces us to Dirk Pitt and the women in his life but to part of his ever faithful cast of supporting characters. Al Giordino and Admiral Sandecker are two of the series mainstays who support Pitt in everything he does.
The book also sheds light on the N.U.M.A. organization which is a real organization founded by Clive Cussler himself. Knowing little tidbits like that add an air of credibility to the adventures of Pitt and Giordino. The Pacific Vortex is similar to the Bermuda Triangle but it lead to a much more sinister end. Another trait of this series is that Dirk and company are always taking on the corrupt wealthy untouchable villains around the world. The more untouchable they feel the harder they fall. If any of this sounds like fun to you then pick up this book and immerse yourself into an adventure.
This Batman story takes us back to the early days of the Dark Knights career in Gotham. There are really two stories collected together in this collection. The first of which is The Man Who Laughs this is one of the quintessential Joker stories. The second is titled Made of Wood this is a story that teams-up Batman with the Green Lantern.
The Joker story is by far the main attraction of this book if you were disgusted by Scott Snyder's take on the Joker I would say you may want to shy away from this then. As this title starts out as a serial killer who done it story that Captain Gordon is investigating. This is considered to be Batman's first encounter with the Joker after the Red Hood at Ace Chemical. Joker targets people in this story in his usual fashion with chemicals poisoning them and leaving them grinning and bug eyed. Joker's introduction in this book is truly chilling I would love to see DC Animation take a stab at this story. Joker leaves a cryptic message at the newly opened Arkham Asylum even though he hasn't been incarcerated there yet. The Joker has set his sights on the rich men of Gotham City and to distract the police why he goes about his mission he arms prisoners who are set to be sent to Arkham Asylum. This story shows Batman's skills as a detective as he starts trying to figure out who the Joker is and it takes him back to Ace Chemical and that fateful night against the Red Hood. Batman confronts the Joker at the water reservoir. This tale is directly referenced in Scott Snyder's work and the way the Joker acts in this story is very similar to that of Heath Ledger's portrayal of the character in The Dark Knight.
The second story is a delight as it shows the history of Gotham City but the really selling point for the story is art by Tim Sale. Made of Wood is a straight up serial killer murder mystery. It is told primarily in present time with Jim Gordon taking a staring role as the retired police commissioner returning to the job to solve one last case. This story while not as gripping as the first is a great detective story none the less. The killer is nothing special in the story in fact you kind of feel sorry for them in the end. The team-up between between the original Green Lantern, Alan Scott and Batman heroes from to different eras. Working together to solve a case lost in between the cracks and forgotten for decades. Overall if you are a fan of Joker or Tim Sale art this book is a must read.
This is the last volume of Scott Snyder's run on the main Batman title but not the end of his run on the character. This collection is filled with little one shot stories setting up the next run. The few issues in this book explore the relationship between Batman and Gotham City. It also delves into part of his childhood and how Alfred motivated him to become the man he is at the end of this volume. The annual issue ties in with the events of Arkham Manor and the Superheavy story-arc. The Futures End one shot is part of this collection which ties in with that event. The gem of this volume is the inclusion of the Batman: Rebirth issue where Scott Snyder hands over the reigns to Tom King. in this volume readers get to see who Duke Thomas is about to become. The issue is very Calendar Man heavy and has portrayed him as interesting villain. I am interested to see where Tom King takes the Batman mythos as a whole. There is no doubt that Scott Snyder has left his mark on Batman similar to the way Grant Morrison did just not as jarring. It has been an enjoyable ride.
