Tuesday, May 31, 2011

I Bought a Comic!!

As a kid and early teen, I loved comics.

Influenced as I was by my cousins, my taste ended up in the sword & sorcery of Conan the Barbarian and Americanized Manga of Robotech.

I lost interest somewhere in my teens and hadn't been back.  I still wandered into any comic book store I ran across over the years hoping to find something to lure me back--I still love the combination of both the visual and the literary that comic books can provide but just have never been a fan of "superheros".  Nope, not Batman, Superman, X-men, Hulk, Spiderman, etc.

To me they are all just silly, scarily homo-erotic bores.

Reading various websites in my daily search for something to keep my braincells from stultifying I ran across mention of this comic.

Created for "mature" readers there is a tad bit of violence, gore and extremely brief and ungraphic nudity, this still certainly not the Smurfs.

Contained herein are eight short stories from various artists and writers.  Ignore the cover--the girl and the spacesuit are not found anywhere inside and thankfully, neither is any Green Lantern story.  What can be found are an eclectic mix of science fiction and "weird" stories--not quite sci-fi, not quite horror...just, weird, very Outer Limits, Twilight Zone type stuff.

The art ranges from good to excellent while the stories range from throwaway to near great--unfortuneately not necessarily blending the best art with the best story many times.  Regardless, it was well worth the $8 spent on it if only to reaffirm that there are comics worth spending time with and--hopefully for what looks like a potentially excellent series.

The "Spaceman" intro story is exceptionally interesting involving some sort of future scrap collecter with his eyes set on a degrading satellite due to crash near him and the death of a NASA scientist to geneticly engineered human babies to be well suited to space travel to Mars.  Now that's the type of stuff I love!  The "Spaceman" series of comics is due the fall and I will be waiting eagerly for them.

3 comments:

RC Miller said...

So cool you posted this. I confused the release date of Strange Adventures, as it is the only comic of the past 6 months I've been interested in reading, so am eagerly waiting till next week to pick it up. The Azzarello 'Spaceman" info I've caught blurbed convince me that it'll be a fascinating series.

RC Miller said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
RC Miller said...

BTW, I read this Vertigo comic called Sweet Tooth recently: http://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Tooth-Vol-Out-Woods/dp/1401226965

which while flawed in art occasionally and certainly dialogue is a strange and memorable story, at least the initial 5 issues (I think that's what the graphic novel collects)