Comicsin' It Up Volume 6

Well, the pile of comics I accumulated from several local libraries has finally run out. Here are the last mini-reviews for now.

More albums by our own Petri Hiltunen. Riutta is a science fiction story about man's first encounter with aliens. It's a surprisingly happy and non-violent story for Hiltunen. Well, for the most part. Vala Auringolle is another historical story about the Sioux people, this one set in the 1860's. Unlike Aavetanssi, which focused on historical events, this one features entirely fictional characters and aims at describing Sioux life and culture, both the good and the bad. Because it's not forced around a series of historical events, it's actually the stronger story of the two, and really worth reading for anyone interested in Native American culture. Well, anyone Finnish anyway...

However, Hiltunen is arguably best known for his pulp fantasy stories. Kuninkaan lapset was the first Praedor story to be published in album form, and is, I think, the best of all the Praedor stories I've read. Mustan rannikon kuningatar is an adaptation of Robert E. Howard's Conan story Queen of the Black Coast. It's a faithful adaptation and very entertaining, except maybe it could have been a tad longer. Hiltunen, of course, is known to be a great Howard fan.

The Last Temptation, written by Neil Gaiman, is a comic book adaption of the Alice Cooper album of the same name, for which Gaiman and Cooper created the story together. Aside from that incredibly cool background, it's a very entertaining horror comic, even if the story itself isn't perhaps the most original ever.

Signal to Noise by Gaiman and Dave McKean, on the other hand, is very hard to describe. It's a very experimental work, in many ways, even though at its heart there is a fairly simple and touching story about a dying film director making his last film in his mind. McKean, of course, is one of the most original and experimental illustrators in the business and always manages to create a very surreal mood. I don't know quite what to think of this work. But that's really the whole point.

Memories is a collection of short stories by Enki Bilal from the 70's and early 80's. These are mostly science fiction and horror stories, often humorous, sometimes just plain weird or surreal. Not half bad.

The Complete Alan Moore Future Shocks is a collection of short science fiction stories written by (you guessed it) Alan Moore for the 2000AD magazine back in the early 80's. The stories are humorous and mostly quite clever. In fact they often reminded me a lot of Douglas Adams.

And that pretty much wraps it up for now. Sooner or later I'll probably wander into a library again, but hopefully won't be getting piles of books this size again very soon!

Comicsin' It Up Volume 5

My quest through the comics departments of local libraries continues.

This time I've read several more domestic albums by Petri Hiltunen. All of them were perhaps a little out of the ordinary. MacBeth should need no introduction. This is a fairly faithful adaptation of the play (adapted by Petri Hannini), but with a typical, dark Hiltunen look and fairly graphic violence. Aavetanssi, on the other hand, is a historical story about the Sioux Ghost Dance cult and the tragedy at Wounded Knee. Asfalttitasanko ja muita kertomuksia is a collection of short stories, mostly science fiction. Many of these were pretty cool, including one or two hilarious parodies.

Fantastic Four Visionaries: Walter Simonson Vol. 1 is another collection of (surprise) Fantastic Four stories, this time from the turn of the nineties, written and also (for a large part) drawn by Walter Simonson. I'm not quite sure how to feel about this. The first three issue story arc was mediocre at best. The second, longer story was over-the-top enough to be quite entertaining, but the storytelling wasn't exactly the strongest I've seen. It's also a lot campier than one would expect from 1990. Galactus disguising the ultimate weapon as a broken light switch? I mean, give me a break!

But I've saved the best for last. Neil Gaiman's The Books of Magic is a masterpiece! This wasn't the first time I read it, of course, but the time was just right to revisit it. The story's really very simple. Just four magicians from the DC universe (including John Constantine and the Phantom Stranger) introducing the universe to a kid who's got the potential to become a great magician himself. Even though not much really happens, it's just so well written and the characters are so cool! The art is also excellent. Each of the four issues is illustrated by a different artist. The continuation (not written by Gaiman) was pretty entertaining, but never quite got to the same level.

Well, I'm all out of Marvel and DC comics for the time being. Which means no more superheroes. Still got a pile of other stuff, but next time we should be getting very near the end... Unless I happen to wander into a library again and find some interesting comics I haven't read yet.

Comicsin' It Up Volume 3

Another handful of comics read. Still plenty to go, but I've managed to read more than half of the pile I got from various local libraries.

Fantastic Four Visionaries: George Pérez vol. 1 collects Fantastic Four stories from the mid 70s, all drawn by Pérez and written by Roy Thomas and Len Wein. These were plenty of fun. The art style can only be described as classic superhero comic book style. It might be a little crude by modern standards, but I found it quite pleasing, almost more so than some modern comics. The stories were of varied quality, some rather cliched and even campy, some pretty cool, some simply hilarious.

Daredevil: The Man Without Fear, written by Frank Miller himself, is a re-telling of the origin of Daredevil, dating from the early 90s. Story's well written, as might be expected from Miller, and the art by John Romita Jr. is quite good as well. I enjoyed this a lot.

I also read another domestic album by Petri Hiltunen, Laulu yön lapsista. This one's a vampire story set in 16th century Russia, and pretty good too.

Last, but not least, I re-read Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits, the first story arc by Garth Ennis after he took over the comic from Jamie Delano. This is one of my favourite Hellblazer stories, if not the favourite. The story is excellent, classic Hellblazer at its very best. The art is pretty good too. My only complaint is that the colours, at least in this edition, were a little bland. But, on the other hand, that fits the grim subject quite well... Much of the subject matter for the movie Constantine was taken from this story, and, alas, totally butchered. We can only hope that some day they'll make a real Hellblazer movie.

Comicsin' It Up Volume 2

I've read a couple more comics since the last post.

Koston merkki is a collection of short Praedor stories by Finnish artist Petri Hiltunen. They're pulp fantasy stories in the tradition of Conan and the like, and quite entertaining in their own way, if you enjoy that kind of thing. I do.

Banner is a Hulk story written by Brian Azzarello and drawn by Richard Corben. This pair was also responsible for the Hellblazer story Hard Time. Which is, I must say, my least favourite of all the Hellblazer stories I've read, so I didn't have my hopes up. I'm not sure what to think of this comic. The story had one or two good moments, but mostly it was barely average, just Hulk smashing the military to bits. I didn't like the art much. That was one of my main objections to Hard Time as well. Corben's characters look rubbery and bloated. They might look ok in a humorous cartoon, but not in a serious superhero comic. Honestly, there were one or two moments that looked like they could've come straight from an Asterix story! Ok, so it was a short comic and fun enough to kill half an hour, but the Marvel universe would not be any poorer if it had never been made.

The first volume of Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter was pretty cool. It's an adaptation of a novel series by Laurell K. Hamilton. I've never read any of the novels, so I don't know how they compare, but I liked this comic. It's published by Marvel, but it has nothing to do with the Marvel universe, being, as I said, based on a novel series, which tell of a world where vampires are legal citizens. The storytelling could have been improved in one or two places, but mostly it was fun and with a few original twists too. The art looks quite modern and glossy, which I'm often not all that crazy about, but in this case it worked well. And, perhaps most importantly, the lead character is very cute. Only one real problem: it ends in a cliffhanger, and, to my knowledge, further volumes have not been published yet!

It won't end here. I've got enough comics for several posts still to read. But bye for now.

Comicsin' It Up Volume 1

I consider myself a comics fan. Hardly an expert, though. There are a million things I haven't read. I've never gotten into the habit of actually buying comic books, either, mostly relying on what I find at the library, mostly trade paperback versions. There are several reasons for that. For one thing, English language comics aren't exactly available at every corner where I live, the selection of comics that get translated is fairly limited and I've never been that keen on translations anyway. But mostly I've never really had that much excess cash.

Strangely enough, I've only become a comics fan in my adult years. Of course I enjoyed comics as a kid, mostly reading humorous adventure stuff like Lucky Luke, Asterix and Tintin. Then in my late teens I discovered the world of Japanese comics. But it took me a long time to discover the more interesting, "grown-up" comics of the western market. Sandman was the one that first got me hooked. I'm a huge Neil Gaiman fan, so I decided I had to read it sooner or later, and was impressed. Then followed Hellblazer and Alan Moore's take on Swamp Thing...

Anyways, back to the real subject. Recently I raided local libraries for interesting comics that I hadn't read before. Some by authors or about characters I was familiar with, some entirely random picks.

The Goddess by Moebius was quite interesting. I enjoyed his drawing style as well. I can't believe I've never read anything by Moebius before. I'll have to keep an eye out for his works in the future.

The City, written by James Herbert, was amusing enough. Not the most original story of all time, but a suitably gruesome vision of a post-apocalyptic world.

Civil War from Marvel, written by Mark Millar, was quite cool. I'm not sure the story in itself was so amazing, but the idea of bringing together pretty much every big hero from the Marvel universe was simply insane. The art is quite good... but I'm not really sure I like the glossy, modern look. And the lettering is typeset. That's all wrong. Even though at first glance the font may look handwritten, it's just too even and clinical. It lacks soul. People don't appreciate quality lettering these days, which is a real pity.

Nightwing: Ties That Bind collects the first issues of Nightwing from DC, written by Alan Grant and Dennis O'Neil. I didn't know that Dick Grayson begun a career as Nightwing after leaving Batman. Shows just how little I know of even the most famous comics series. Artistically this collection, compared to Civil War, is very old school, even though it's from the mid 90s. And I almost like it better than many more modern comic books. It has real lettering, to boot. The story itself is pretty ordinary superhero stuff, nothing original, but entertaining enough.

I'm also getting acquainted with the works of domestic artist Petri Hiltunen, of whose comics I must shamefully admit I've read very little, despite having met him on a few occasions. Kuolleen jumalan palvelija, which draws influence from pulp fantasy, wasn't half bad. I also read the first Lordi comic, with which Hiltunen was also involved. That's likely to be of interest mostly to Lordi fans, though. Although it's largely the fact that the band members have cool fictional backgrounds that made me a fan...

This'll do for now. But I've still got a big pile of comics waiting, so it won't end here.