Graphic Novel Reviews

One of Marvel's lesser known monster mags, featuring the adventures of a man turned zombie.

All ten issues of Tales of the Zombie, including the text features and pin-ups. There is a main series featuring a recurring zombie character, Simon Garth, originated by Roy Thomas, Steve Gerber and John Buscema, but mainly written by Gerber and drawn by Pablo Marcos. Each issue also includes other one-off zombie-related efforts from an assortment of writers and artists. The high point of this volume is the artwork, populated by horror vets working in material created for black-and-white. Buscema and Marcos' work on the main series is exceptional, as are many of the back-up efforts. Unfortunately the stories, even the main series by Gerber, just aren't very good. A character that says nothing and shows no emotion makes a bad lead character, and there's just not much Gerber or the other writers can do to negate that. Some of the art is so good I'm tempted to bust this up to a four, but with a few artistic misfires mixed in, poor stories overall, and the many waste of space text pieces, I just can't justify more than a three.

reviewed by jdp

Jessica Jones must face her personal nemesis: the Purple Man.

Not a strong finish to an up and down series. Gaydos' artwork is filled with qualitative peak and valleys, this storyline is at least two chapters too long, and the series ending is very abrupt and supremely unsatisfying. The whole shtick of a crazy character who knows/thinks they are in a comic book is old and has been done better elsewhere as well, although at least Bendis does use it for a bit of nice commentary about his own heroine.

reviewed by jdp

The violent adventures of a skater girl heroine in a mad world of time travelers, ninjas and things from outer space.

Read that solicitation copy… can you imagine any medium other than comics attempting something that hard to define? The truth is this series is a little bit of all the things comic book fans love, and while it’s far from a home run it is a lot of fun and I’d love it if the creators would ever decide to do more of it.

reviewed by jdp

A girl with her own personal god must try to find a way to survive his devotion.

A quirky comedic tale that is part love triangle and part supernatural spoof. It's a fun little read with artwork that's good enough though not spectacular; but the end product is not as interesting as the starting premise might lead on. The entire package felt a little too cutesy goofy for me, but I might not be the intended audience for this. It is by no means a bad book, and at the cheap price you can afford to satisfy your own curiosity, but I borrowed a copy to read and feel no real urge to add it to my own library.

reviewed by jdp

A collection of water-themed short horror stories by writer Koji Suzuki and artist Meimu.

I found this book disappointing. The title story, the longest in the book, is too predictable for the atmospheric horror style it is attempting to develop, while the other stories are simply too short to have much substance. As such none of the stories are even slightly scary or even disquieting. The artwork is okay but certainly no more attractive or exciting than any of a thousand other manga stories you’ve seen. Average all around, and it loses points for failing to frighten.

reviewed by jdp

A boy lost in the forest is rescued by a Bigfoot named Flink.

Another fun book by Doug TenNapel, even if it’s not quite as exceptional as some of his others. It’s a nice, albeit fairly short story told with typical TenNapel humor and charm, as well as his excellent black and white artwork. The brevity of the story costs it a little, as there are certainly sections that feel as if there could have been so much more to them, but what we do get is pretty fun in its own right. A bit better than average but not enough for the full score bump, it’s still worth reading, though you may want to find it cheap given how quick and easy a read it is.

reviewed by jdp

Covers from the Rise of Arabia to the Renaissance.

reviewed by DaveH

I enjoyed this dark look at the villains of Gotham City. Batman is just a side character in this savage drama about the various flavors of evil the city has to offer.

reviewed by dan

New solders begin their stories and others come to an end.

The one flaw with this event is that the series published at the beginning are better than the ones published at the end. The final three series -- Mister Miracle, Bulleteer, and Frankenstein -- begin here, but they are not generally as solid as the series that preceded them. The Klarion and Zatanna threads are ended here and, much like Shining Knight in the previous volume, their end serves the larger story well but at the expense of a satisfying finale to their individual tales. Mister Miracle has an interesting idea but the character himself is not terribly interesting in it, and the artwork (Pasqual Ferry in the first issue, Billy Dallas Patton and Freddie Williams II in the second) has a few moments but is otherwise unspectacular. Bulleteer, likewise, has some charm but a fairly uninteresting lead, though the Yanick Paquette artwork is nice. The Doug Mahnke illustrated Frankestein has the most potential of the three, but there's not much to sink your teeth into after just the opening issue. Still entertaining, though not as solid overall as the earlier efforts, and that's a shame.

reviewed by jdp

This is a pretty good history of comicbooks from the 1890s to the 1980s. Ron Goulart adequately covers the subjects involved with a loving and professional treatment.

In addition to the text, there are both black and while and color reproductions of strips, covers, and comic pages.

Probably most disappointing to me is the very short shrift given to the 1970s and 1980s and underground comics, which are covered in about 15 pages out of 307. I can excuse the modest coverage of the 1980s, as the book was issued midway through the decade, but underground comics had been on the seen since at least 1965 - 67. Given their importance to comics today, this is inadequate.

Aside from this comment, this is a pretty good survey and history of the field. The book was issued in 1986; I can't tell if there have been more recent updates.

reviewed by DaveH