Publishers' Picks/ Retailers' Reviews -- March, 2001

Batman/Deathblow: After the Fire #1

Azzarello hasn't exactly gravitated to super-heroes (and has said that they weren't the kind of comics he liked as a kid), but gritty, tough-guy characters like Batman and Deathblow are right up his dirty, dimly-lit alley. This plays to Bermejo's strengths, too, and the result is pulp fiction (in both the 1930s and the Tarentino senses) at its most entertaining. If you're looking for lots of spandex, this ain't gonna do it, but if you like dimly-lit bars, seedy pawnshops and special-ops gone wrong, this is your comic. Grade: B+.

Batman: Nine Lives

This is the second Batman comic this month to deserve the label "pulp fiction," but here Motter takes Bruce Wayne all the way back to the 1930s costumed crime fiction that helped to spawn him. As an Elseworlds title, there are the inevitable spot-the-character games, with Dick Grayson as a private detective (Dick the dick?), a murdered nightclub owner named Selina Kyle, and hoods with names like Cobblepot and Jack Napier. The art's effective for the genre, and the sideways "widescreen" layout gives the proceedings a nice cinematic touch. It's an attractive package, although $25 would buy a lot of other good comics, too -- thriftier fans might want to hold out and see if it eventually turns up as a $12 trade paperback instead. Grade: B- (but B+ if it shows up as a tpb).

Copybook Tales TPB

Torres and Levins were young comics fans in the '80s, and this semi-autobiographical strip looks at similar fans struggling to find a life as twentysomethings in the '90s. Junior-high and high-school comics fans will like this, for the way it evokes just what it's like to be moderately geeky in high school (and I doubt most of the relationships have changed, even in 20 years); older fans will like the "present-day"material, with the post-high school struggle to do something you love and survive at it. Almost all of the material is previously-published, but much of it is hard to find, and it's nice to have all of this neglected little '90s gem in one place. Grade: A-.

The Crusades #13

Seagle's House of Secrets presented Rain, a seemingly-unsympathetic character who grew on the reader, and eventually became heroic; you just had to give her, and the series, time. The same thing's happening in The Crusades: at first, in this series about a knight going medieval on the butts of criminals in San Francisco, all the characters seemed repulsive (because, well, they WERE repulsive), but gradually the point-of-view focus has centered on Venus, the researcher and reporter, and now the story's about her own growth as a heroine. Add the Jones art, and you've got an increasingly-impressive little series here, with an issue that offers a perfect jumping-on point for new readers. Grade: B.

Komplete Kat Komics 1925 and 1926

It's sometimes hard for new readers to "get" Krazy Kat; it takes more than just one or two strips, because the reader has to allow the slow accumulation of dialogue and detail, the way Herriman wrings infinite variations out of his characters' basic relationships, to cast its spell. Once cast, though, you're caught -- this is one of the top comics creations of all time, and Fantagraphics is offering 120 pages of it, in a package designed by Chris Ware and with beautiful reproduction, for $15. If you're enough of a comics fan to be reading this in the first place, you need this book. Grade: A+.

No. 5

Matsumoto's Black and White was unusual in that, as a Japanese artist, he showed a number of American/European influences (instead of the other way around). This title continues the pattern, as its take on a super-hero group dealing with a rogue member shows a distinct Moebius feel, from its thin, obsessive lines to its desolate landscapes and dilapidated, high-tech equipment, all the way to its flawed, cynical characters. Interesting stuff, with enough different components to attract fans of manga, super-heroes and sf. Grade: B.

Poison Elves: Lusipher and Lirilith TPB

The "Poison Elves" universe is kind of contemporary medieval -- there's no electricity, or ballistic weaponry (everybody uses swords or knives), and there's magic and (naturally) elves and stuff, but then characters drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, and dress and talk pretty much like they would today. This collection of last year's mini-series is a story of doomed young love, since the principles are on two very different career paths -- one to become an assassin, and the other a healer. The art, darkly-toned and realistic (the elves look like us, except for the really long ears) is good at conveying both the teenage romantic yearning and the grungy violence of the streets. The $12 price tag is the same as the four original issues would have cost together; readers might want to dig around in their local store's discount bins for them before spending that much on a story that's a pleasant, but fairly average, diversion. Grade: C+.

Scorpion King #1

This is a typical Dark Horse property -- a competently-written and drawn take on a successful fantasy/adventure movie or TV series, the kind of comic that companies like Dell were good at producing in the '50s and '60s. Here, it's based on the Rock character in The Mummy Returns (soon to have his own feature film, in a theater near you), but from a time when he was much younger (and, presumably, looked less like the Rock, so Dark Horse could avoid licensing his features). There are some cool battling-the-desert-demon scenes, but otherwise this will be of interest mostly to fans of the various Mummy movies. Grade: C.

The 3rd Office #1

Cyberfiction, with underground hackers fighting for a free Net vs. the mega-huge, Microsoft-like corporation whose new platform just might be powerful and dangerous enough to take over the world. This seemed a lot fresher when William Gibson was doing it 20 years ago, but the 10 pages that NBM provided look like a competent enough version of the genre. As they say around here at CBG: If you like this kind of thing, here it is. Grade: C+.

Tigra #1

Tigra is one of those characters whom every writer approaches differently: There's the original version, the Isabella version, the Shooter one...put them all together, and it gets complicated. That's the challenge for a new writer like Christina Z.-- stay true to the past, without confusing new readers or alienating old ones, and still make it exciting and interesting. Given all that impossible baggage, this is a decent first issue -- it doesn't really break any new ground, or solve all the problems, but it clears up some of the confusion, gives Tigra a case involving crooked cops (one, possibly, her dead husband), and acknowledges her aimlessness while starting to point her toward the future. Add the Deodato artwork, and it's an encouraging beginning. Grade: B-.