Thursday, January 26, 2012

Reviews: Supergod; The Red Wing


SUPERGOD (Avatar, 2011; Softcover)
Collects Supergod Nos. 1-5 (cover dates October, 2009- October, 2010)
Writer: Warren Ellis
Artist: Garrie M. Gastonny
More of a terrifying look at our manmade need for salvation by the hands of something greater than us than a regular superhero book, Supergod is a mental exercise in fathoming the unfathomable. What happens when the deity doesn't need the disciples? Ellis writes some heady stuff here, and I enjoyed this immensely. I am enjoying everything that I read from Avatar Press.
The OCD zone- Wax coated cardstock cover, nice paper grade, this is par for the course quality product from Avatar Press. 
THE RED WING (Image, 2011; Softcover)
Collects The Red Wing Nos. 1-4 (cover dates July- October, 2011)
Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Nick Pitarra
Time travel is always an intriguing concept to explore, and Jonathan Hickman has a fresh spin on it. The problem with this series is that Nick Pitarra's artwork employs a 'cinematic scope' which basically means that they rely heavily on pictures and less on words. Cinematic styling does not work in comic books for a number of reasons. First, comic books have no sound. You, the reader, supply the sound of voices and objects in your mind. A movies does that for you, and it is part of the sensory experience. There is no musical score or soundtrack in a comic book to heighten suspenseful parts of the story. Using comic books as a storyboard flipbook is not only lazy, it is lame.
See that image up above? Looks like crap, right? Some stupid dot on a two page, all black spread. That's supposed to be a shuttle launching from a crashing ship. They show this same scene four times, with each double page spread showing the shuttle moving a few inches with no words on any of the pages. What a waste of time, and what padding! Eight pages of a comic book were dedicated to this. Horrible, horrible, lazy decompressed writing. That might have been effective for a half page layout, showing the shuttle touching down across 4 or 5 narrow panels, but eight pages? This outcraps the worse Bendis writing. Congratulations, Hickman! You've raised the bar on the suck-scale.
All in all, this is a mediocre read, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The characters are flat and lifeless, and the time shifts feel vanilla. I honestly didn't care if any of these characters lived or died. I am sure that this will sell boatloads because Jonathan Hickman's name is on the cover. I sure hope so, as I will be dumping this piece of crap on eBay during my next purging and would like to recoup as much of my money as possible.
The OCD zone- The production values on this trade paperback are top notch. High quality paper with a wax coated cardstock cover, this has a pleasing feel and heft to it. It's a shame that it sucked so much.

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1 comment:

  1. Did you forget about the Powers comic from Bendis that featured cave men talking to each other in cave speak through the whole comic? That was a complete waste of time and money. It didn't add anything to the story that he couldn't have put in a couple of pages.

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