000077 - comics & stuff

going to do something a little different this entry, i'm going to blog and do mini reviews about comics i picked up over the past weekend.

hellboy: the island #2 (of 2) by mike mignola. we find out where exactly hellboy's "right hand of doom" really comes from in this issue. i've been a fan of mignola since he worked on gotham by gaslight. i've always enjoyed his artwork and the character hellboy (i like the design, page layouts and the colour schemes). it'll be interesting to see when artist lee bermejo takes on the art chores in the next mini-series. the only nag i have with the island was that it was a bit too compacted in story-telling in my opinion (always a tricky thing dealing with history/myths). some bits could have elaborated a bit more, especially, visually (the watchers for example).

invincible #24 by kirkman & ottley. this is a really fun book to read and it's pretty much on schedule. This issue kind of wraps up a building subplot about a scientist/alternate world traveller named Angstrom Levy who's been planning a merge of knowledge of multi-verses of himself. he's helped by a thug called the mauler and his clone. so mark/invincible is called in to investigate their plans. not the easiest issue for a new reader to jump onto i guess but this series is definitely recommended. and the next issue sounds like it's gonna be awesome already!

zombie king #0 by frank cho. some of you might have already heard about the little controversy with this issue's release. for those who haven't, i won't spoil it for you but it involves a cow... i'm a fan of frank cho's art, especially liberty meadows and the way he draws fine looking women. this issue of zombie king doesn't feature any women but it's quite interesting how the zombies became zombies. my nag is that it was told through talking heads rather than visualised as with a lot of comics these days (and yes i realise, i'm a culprit of the use of this method unfortunately). but fantastic art and the premise has got me hooked, which is the whole point.

100 bullets #62 by azzarello & risso. haven't had the chance to read this issue yet. the problem with reading 100 bullets is that it's really meant to be read as a collection, i reckon, and not as separate individual issues. ah well, guess i can always go back and reread them in chunks. it's still a really intriguing series to read for me and i love the art.

blade of the immortal #103 by hiroaki samura. one of my all time favourite manga series. again, haven't read the latest issue. in fact, i think i'm about 10+ issues behind. i've been naughty and reading both the manga summaries of the japanese phonebooks (afternoon) online as well as the chinese tankubons. i still buy the individual issues because i love samura's work and there's some goodies in the back of each issues like pinups, weapons profiles, etc. i can't recommend this series enough to people.

i also picked up the very last volume of GTO #25 by Tohru Fujisama. i think this series should have finished around the #15 point, meaning i think it went 10 volumes on too long! i really enjoyed the first 10 volumes, particularly #6 being a favourite of mine. i'll probably be reading this tomorrow when i take in my car for it's scheduled service.

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saw cursed and team america on dvd over the weekend. the former was pretty average, kind of like scream crossed with teen wolf (and yes, i actually like teen wolf). the latter, was just hilarious. i was more amazed by the amount of work that went into making this movie possible though.

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uni started again last week. very strange feeling. the project briefs they've given us are just as almost strange. well, not strange but definitely different. i'll have to talk more about that in another post sometime in the future.