"Weekly Reviews" is a
column brought to you with generous support from our retail sponsor Yesteryear
Comics. Make Yesteryear Comics your first and only destination in San Diego for
great customer service and the best discounts possible on a wide selection of
mainstream and independent titles. Customers receive an attractive 20% discount
on new titles during their first week of release. Yesteryear Comics is located
at 9353 Clairemont Mesa Boulevard.
Think Tank #11 (Image/Top Cow): Matt Hawkins and Rahsan
Ekedal really amp up their bold approach to speculative fiction in this issue.
While it’s all based on real-world tech R&D and authentic tradecraft, it
leaps from those origins toward a startling showdown with China. Political
pundits and intelligence analysts in-the-know are betting that the “next” next
global hotspot will not be the Middle East, but probably some dispute (Taiwan,
North Korea) involving China and the general South China Sea Region. Hawkins
peppers the story with factoids and details that ring true (not just about the
cool tech on display, but about how money talks, or our modern surveillance
state, or how to navigate internationally) because, well, they are. The
transparency of the research makes for a very satisfying read. The final shot
is a nice callback to a historical event, like the BSG homage that preceded it. Now, I was perfectly happy with the
black and white art, but I’ll admit it will be a fun treat to see Ekedal’s work
in full color when Season 2 hits. As a side note, it’s interesting to see the
creators openly address sales, jumping on points, and roadblocks around
consumer perception. I wonder if some of these bold storytelling choices are
also meant to address that. They’re stripping away the excuses, so if you’re
not buying this now, you’d better start soon! Grade A.
Trillium #5 (DC/Vertigo): The individual pages in this book
are absolutely beautiful. I think it’s the best pure art of Jeff Lemire’s
career to date. There’s some sort of Kevin O’Neill LOEG-style stuff going on in the Brittania sequences as well, and
the prose is lyrical and very effective emotionally. My only real problem with Trillium is a structural one, this
shoehorned-in underpinning the series seems to want to build itself on. I’m just
not very enamored of the layout choices. I don’t think they’re necessary. Not
only do the individual issues not feel very connected, but all of the
flip-formatting, and dual strips, and turning shit upside down and backwards
doesn’t really add much beyond the gimmick that exists for the sake of itself.
They’re mirror images! I get it! Watchmen
did the symmetrical panel composition bit 20 years ago and I didn’t need an
arrow telling me to turn the book upside down to figure it out. I feel like
this will actually distract from the strengths of the writing and the very good
story would just be better served with crisply edited traditional layouts. I
can also foresee a problem with the eventual collected edition. Floppies are
one thing, but who the heck wants to have to manhandle some hardcover back and
forth, twisting and turning the thing a different way for each issue it
contains, leafing forward, and leafing back, and whatever the hell else it will ask of us? I’m giving a full letter ding for
this needless format experimentation, because form isn’t really following
function. Grade B.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home