Skip to main content

Featured

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
Post a Comment
Read more
Labels

The Middle Game: Superman Action Comics vol 2: Bulletproof

 

Cover of Action Comics vol 2

Review:

Grant Morrison is playing chess with the New 52 Superman reboot. Volume 1 was like a chess opening - familiar pieces of Superman history, moving in mostly familiar patterns with some masterful variations. Here in volume 2, it's more free-wheeling, less familiar, more freeform. Pieces we recognize are moving in sometimes unexpected ways. The feints, attacks, defenses are many, nothing gets fully resolved. We are clearly building toward a fantastic end game.

Rags Morales draws the main stories in the collection and turns in solid work in the demanding conditions of this cross-time storyline. Young and old versions of the same characters, tender moments and spectacular battles, Morales steps up to them all.

The artistic pinnacle of the collection, however, belongs to the pages by Ben Oliver, with their feeling of painted masterpieces. Superman has lost his cape, and a child finds it and feels invulnerable while wearing it, imbued with the courage to stand up to an abusive father. It is a powerful story, well told and portrayed in a soft yet strong series of emotionally evocative images.

Writer Sholly Fisch pens several smaller entries in this collection, backup features or segments of the Annual. With Cafu on visuals, they fill in some of the spaces between the larger story Grant Morrison is telling. Most appreciated is the short tale of people toasting the life and influence of their friend Clark Kent. He, recall from volume 1, was apparently killed in a bomb explosion, and their memories and testimonies are moving, and of course reach the super-ears nearby.

This is a fine collection, setting up a heckuva conclusion in the next volume.


Description:

Clark Kent is dead! When grave circumstances cause Superman to leave behind his alter ego, an unimpeded Man of Steel must face his deadliest foe to date: Nimrod the Hunter! Metropolis' newest threat has killed everything he's ever tracked, but he's never killed an alien. Will the red and blue Kryptonian be his first?

Legendary writer Grant Morrison (ALL-STAR SUPERMAN, BATMAN) continues his best-selling, critically acclaimed run on SUPERMAN: ACTION COMICS, with art by Rags Morales (IDENTITY CRISIS), Gene Ha (TOP 10) and a host of comics' finest illustrators.

Collects: SUPERMAN: ACTION COMICS 9-12, 0 and ANNUAL 1

Authors: Grant Morrison, Sholly Fisch, Max Landis
Artists: Rags Morales, Brad Walker
Published By: DC Comics
Published When: Dec 17 2013
Parental Rating: Teen
ISBN: 978-1401242541
Pages: 224 pages


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts