Quick Comic Reviews

Jeremiah Harm #1
by Keith Giffen, Alan Grant, & Rael Lyra

From the writers who once brought you DC's Lobo comes another comic featuring intergalactic badguys beating the snot out of each other. A couple of nasty SOBs escape from a prison satellite, so the warden lets out Jeremiah Harm--a prisoner with a mad-on for the escapees--to bring them back. The story is solid and sets up the situation with enough violence for the die-hard violence fan, but it could have used a bit more humor for my tastes. Lyra's art is appropriately grotesque for the story. Bottom line: if you've been missing Lobo, this may fit that hole for you.

Rating: 2.5 (of 5)



JLA #125
by Bob Harras, Tom Derenick & Dan Green

And so it ends. Not with a bang, or a whimper, but with a solid thud. Six issues of Batman and Green Arrow grimmacing at each other, and The Key doing, um, something. JLA was once a big idea super-hero spectacular, but it ends on such a sour note I'm glad to see it go. Let us hope that when Meltzer's new Justice League of America starts up later this year that he restores the bigness.

Rating: 1.5 (of 5)



Supergirl #4
by Jeph Loeb, Ian Churchill & Norm Rapmund

Yet another issue-long fight scene, with an evil black suited Supergirl split-off battling Lex Luthor and then the Justice League. Is this what the kids want these days? I guess it doesn't matter as long as Kara is wearing her midriff-bearing costume.

Rating: 2 (of 5)



Superman #226
by Joe Kelly, Jeph Loeb, Ed Benes, Mariah Benes, Jerry Ordway, Howard Chaykin, Tim Sale, & Renato Guedes (whew!)

Now this is a comic. In the midst of Infinite Crisis, we get the start of an overview of the career of Kal-L, Superman of Earth-2. It kicks off with a scrapbook of young Clark Kent by Loeb & Sale, recalling their work on the excellent Superman for All Seasons. Howard Chaykin provides the art for Superman's depression-era debut and WWII adventures, and Renato Guedes illustrates the JSA vs. HUAA portions. We even get the return of the old-style logo on the cover. An enjoyable and classy product all around. Let's hope the remaining two chapters unfold just as well ov erhte next two weeks.

Rating: 3.5 (of 5)



(A review copy of Jeremiah Harm was provided by the publisher.)

YAFQ: Are You Spending More or Less?

Yet Another Friday Question:

Are you spending more or less on comics these days than you have in the recent past?

For me, my monthly orders through DCBS had been going down; I was spending about 20% less than I was a year ago. But for this month's orders it shot way back up, mostly due to several high-ticket items.

What about you--are you spending more or less on comics these days?

Always Remember

Yeah, I know that the meme has pretty much run its course, but I couldn't resist one more.)

Review: A Trip to Rundberg

A Trip to Rundberg
by Nate Southard & Shawn Richter
Frequency Press, $11.95

Do you like zombies?

More specifically, do you think that zombies are best used as cannon fodder in an action/horror fest? (As opposed to a metaphor for the human condition or some such nonsense...)

If so, then A Trip to Rundberg is the graphic novel for you!

The situation is set up in the first 10 pages: A mysterious zombie plague has swept the land, but the small rural Indiana town of Millwood has been spared, mainly due to the fact that they're a small rural Indiana town. But food supplies are running low, and with winter fast approaching, they need to restock. So a group of volunteers (a term used rather loosely in a couple of cases) are selected to travel to nearby Rundberg to raid their food stores.

What follows then is a combination of interpersonal conflict and action zombie violence, complete with exploding zombie heads and dudes getting gnawed on, all in the best tradition of late-night cable tv.

Southard and Richter previously brought us Drive, and A Trip to Rundberg is in that same action-packed tradition. Richter continues to bring a action-movie quality to his art, using three 'widescreen' panels per page to give it a cinematic feel. His action-based storytelling is clear and never loses the reader--a definite plus in this type of story. His figure work is a bit improved though still rough in places on the humans, but he draws some pretty damn good zombies and imbues them with a touch of individualism--before they get their heads blown off by a shotgun.

So if the above description sounds like the sort of zombie comic you'd like, you probably will want to check this out.

Rating: 3 (of 5)


(a review copy of A Trip to Rundberg was provided by the publisher)

Viz OOP sale

Viz is having a sale on their out-of-print backstock. Most of these are older volumes done in their pre-manga-boom style: they read left-to-right and are slightly larger. A lot of the stuff also doesn't fit the current in-style mode (e.g. action comics for boys, shojo for teen girls, and fan service-heavy plot-thin books.) The books were also more expensive in those days, but the sale brings many of the titles closer to the expected $10-$11 range that many mainstream manga fans seem unwilling to cross, no mater the quality of the book.

There are several titles offered on sale that receive the YACB stamp of approval. They are:

2001 Nights by Yukinobu Hoshino
A, A' by Moto Hagio
Adolf by Osamu Tezuka
Benkei in New York by Jinpachi Mori and Jiro Taniguchi
Black Jack by Osamu Tezuka
Dance Till Tomorrow by Naoki Yamamoto
Eagle by Kaji Kawaguchi
Mai the Psychic Girl by Kazuya Kudo & Ryoichi Ikegami
One Pound Gospel by Rumiko Takahashi
Rumic Theater by Rumiko Takahashi
Rumic World by Rumiko Takahashi
Sanctuary by Sho Fumimura & Ryoichi Ikegami
Uzumaki by Junji Ito

And there's plenty of other stuff on sale too.

I'm not shilling for Viz here, just trying to help you all find some good manga reading before it's no longer available. It's also a crying shame that the market cannot support quality titles like these staying in print.

(Thanks to Chris for the heads-up on this.)

Free Talking Monkeys!

Johnny Bacardi is giving away his extra set of Banana Sunday, the YACB pick for best mini-series of 2005. Go visit his blog for all the details on how to enter.

YACB Bulletins

ITEM! Mike Sterling looks at the odd back-issue buying habits of customers.

ITEM! Heroes of the Information Age -- Librarian Super-heroes!

ITEM! Still on the fence about picking up The Middleman? You can download the entire first issue from Viper Comics and decide for yourself. (via Newsarama)

ITEM! This makes me sad. I loved reading the Curious George books when I was a kid (which probably contributed to my love of monkey comics), so the thought of it being made into a mediocre animated feature and marketed and licensed ad nauseum is very disheartening.

ITEM! Chris Sims looks to romance comics for How to Get a Girl in Ten Days. Only six days until V-Day though, so I'd better get cracking...