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Of Embassies and Origins - Justice League International Part 2 (Eaglemoss Collection v77)

  Review: Since we are doing a series of reviews focusing on Booster Gold over his nearly 40-year history, we include this one as a collection of some of his earliest appearances, dating to late 1987. That places the original publish date of these tales while his original solo series was still going strong.  This book is a beautiful, glossy hard-cover with smooth and heavy-stock paper inside, although the sometimes-low print reproduction quality leads to blurred and hard to read word balloons on occasion. It is also a rare book here in North America, as Eaglemoss Collections targeted UK fans with this series. At this point in the history of the 1987-rebooted Justice League, they have gained official United Nations recognition and sanction. To ensure their reach truly is global, they rebrand as Justice League International (as does the title of the series!) and they open new headquarters buildings around the world: New York, Paris and Moscow are included here. As this is a product of 19
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A Sketch of a Story - Marvel Knights X-Men

Cover of Marvel Knights X-men TPB


Review:

The creator of this book, author and artist Brahm Revel, is not a widely known name in comics and graphical literature. He is most famous for his odd but critically acclaimed Guerillas series, published by Oni Press, about a squad of elite chimp-soldiers in the jungles of Vietnam.

His unique, off-the-wall, independent-press influences and storytelling sensibilities peek through here, even within the constraints of mainstream Marvel (or at least the mainstream-adjacent Marvel Knights line) and these well-established characters.

Consider the elements in this collected limited series; a mutant with the ability to give physical form to memories; another with a mind-control power of compelling suggestion; both hunted by the hippy / hillbilly clan the Cooks, who literally cook psychedelic drugs from the secretions of a spooky green mutant.

It is truly a dizzying ride. Whenever the story's pace starts to flag, one or the other of our young, untrained new mutants slips their control an a new lethal twist takes the plot careening in a new, usually violent direction. Cris Peter's colors (and it is not often that a Colorist gets their name on the cover) add to the psychedelic feeling, jumping from monotone beiges on one page to pops of greens, pinks and yellows on the next.

Revel's images and visual style ultimately fail the story. It's a sketchbook, resembling a film storyboard more than a finished comic. Flat faces, roughed-in figures, outlined poses all feel incomplete. So when the narrative falls apart under its strangeness and the compounding out-of-character actions and decisions, the visuals are unable to cover for the weakness.

This wild ride rates 1.5 capes out of 5.

Description:

It's a gritty mutant murder mystery! Wolverine, Kitty Pryde and Rogue travel to a backwoods town to save new mutants' lives. But their help may not be welcome - and the murderer may be closer to them than they think. In a small cabin in the woods, the X-Men find a young mutant learning to control her powers...but she's not alone! As the X-Men are ambushed by a horde of supervillains and two new mutants' powers begin to spiral out of control, can the X-Men save an entire town? Or, as infighting threatens to pit teammate against teammate, will the scattered and manipulated X-Men fall to an army of foes ripped from their own minds? What happens when your past comes back...to kill you?

Collects: Marvel Knights: X-Men #1-5

Authors: Brahm Revel
Artists: Brahm Revel, Cris Peter
Published By: Marvel 
Published When: July 10 2014
Parental Rating: Teen
ISBN: 9780785185468
Pages: 112 pages


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