 |
Captain America: Hail Hydra - Sergio Cariello Jonathan Maberry
by broxi3781
My seven year old son has turned into an avid collector of comics and graphic novels, and he really does love to have as many characters as possible, so this book was a real hit as it has appearances from so many of the Marvel line up. Captain America is of course the main character here, but we also get Iron Man, Giant Man, Wasp, Thor, ... The Black Panther, The Falcon, Wolverine, Spiderman, Spider Woman, The Black Widow, Moon Knight and in a way - Bucky as well. The roles of most of these characters is limited, but it is pulled off well. The danger with putting to many characters in a comic is that it may have the feeling of being overcrowded. The legion of superheroes coming together seems entirely appropriate for this book.
We bought this book after my son was terribly disappointed by Captain America Civil War. He wasn't sure about trying another book with the Cap, but he did find the hero interesting, and I felt he had just started out with the wrong book. We were looking something with more action and adventure, and suitable for a child rather than complex political scenarios. I still feel that we missed something with Civil War - but I didn't want a comic we had to try to hard to understand. The whole idea of comics is just to have fun light reading.
This book begins with a flash back to WW2 and a battle between the Captain and Hydra. It does give some idea of the Captains Background, but it does seem to assume the reader already has some knowledge of Captain America, which my son and I really did not have at the time we bought this book. It then jumps forward to modern times, with no explanation as to how the Captain got there, and we get a horribly shocking visit from an undead Bucky. It's easy enough to figure out the Captain and Bucky had been mates. The Captain has a quick remembrance of Bucky, and it is obvious he feels responsible for his death, but now he needs to put him back into the grave - along with hordes of undead soldiers raised by Hydra.
There are a couple places where I feel some prior knowledge of the Captain America storyline would be beneficial, but overall, this wasn't a bad book to start out with. There may be a couple of gaps, but it can be enjoyed by someone who has never read any previous Captain America books, or even any Marvel stories. It gives us clear idea who and what Hydra is, and a good background into the conflict between this group and Captain America. It also has scenes through history, showing Hydra through the ages. The undead theme actually worked very well, and this book is packed with almost non stop action and epic battles. The art work is good. I wouldn't describe it as being worthy of an art gallery, but it is well drawn and both my son and I enjoyed this quite a bit.
This book does contain death and violence, and some gory scenes with walking corpses. I can imagine that some small children might be frightened by this, but I do feel that it suitable for most young readers, and even my 3 year old liked the parts with the Zombies. I enjoyed reading this with my son, but I wouldn't class this as one of my favourite graphic novels. I did find the plot better suited to a younger audience, but that is what I bought this for. If I were rating this as a book for adults, I would only give this 4 stars. It is still a good book, but lacks some of the depth of the very best graphic novels. But as I bought this for a child, and my son did love this, I am giving this the full 5 stars. My son did need some help to understand a few of the historical references, such as a scene with Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth, but I see this as an advantage rather than a disadvantage as the book does encourage children to learn about a wide of array of historical time periods.
Read the complete review |
 |
Amazing Spider-Man: Civil War - J.Michael Straczynski
by sparkymarky1973
Civil War was one of the biggest things to happen to Marvel in a long time.....its story-arc had ramifications that would last for many books to come and illustrated the real-life consequences of being a Superhero when, tragically, innocent civilians were forced to pay the price for merely being in the wrong place at the wrong ... time!
For those not in the know, the basic premise is thus; public opinion of Superheroes has began to wane after a series of incidents throughout the Marvel Universe that have seen innocent people being killed ~ most notably The Hulks latest rampage in Las Vegas. When the stars of a Superhero Reality Show fail to apprehend a group of Supervillains though, things reach crisis point! The New Warriors are all but wiped out and an explosion rips through several City Blocks taking out over 600 innocent people! All of a sudden there is a public outcry and people begin to question just how much use Superheroes are if they cannot even save those they are supposed to be protecting! Eager Politicians rush in and, seeing an opportunity to gain votes and gain popularity in the ratings, demand the launch of a Superhero Registration Act that will lead to all persons of Superpower ability being monitored and identified much as they were in Canada a few years ago shortly before Alpha Force were forcibly disbanded. Unfortunately, many of the Marvel Superheroes are less than keen on the idea and the resulting disagreements between them leads to a Marvel Civil War between the ranks as heroes from the Marvel universe all start picking sides!
By the time of this collection, things have even closer reached breaking point and the heroes are split between those who support the Registration and those who are strongly against. Friendships and former alliances are being tested and it all eventually comes down to someone being needed to lead by example. Tony Stark thinks he has found the right person in The Amazing Spiderman but the consequences of his actions, should Peter Parker agree, could change everything forever....for everyone.
Not too much weight on our favourite neighbourhood Web-slingers shoulders then!
This is a great chapter in Marvels infamous story-arc that answers many of the questions fans have been wondering for years such as what happens to the everyday man in the street after all the smoke has cleared and the Superheroes have all gone home, how come none of them are ever accountable for the mayhem, damage and disruption they help cause and how does this affect popular opinion? More importantly, what happens when one of those vheroes is forced to accept responsibility?
If you have not read any of the other Civil War graphic novels then this is probably not a very good jumping off point but for Spiderman fans, this book is a treat showing us a very different and more vulnerable side to Spidey than we have seen in a loooong time! Peter Parker has always been a man straddling two worlds and nowv those two worlds have collided!
This is a great book with absolutely amazing and colourful artwork and a tense, gripping storyline that, at this point, shows no sign of concluding! How does it all end? Well you'll just have to keep reading the Civil War series to find out but this is va very, very important chapter indeed!
Read the complete review |
 |
The Monsters are Due on Maple Street - Rod Sterling
by Jake Speed
"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosives and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its ... own; for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone..." The Monsters are due on Maple Street is a 2009 graphic novel by Mark Kneece (story) and Rich Ellis (art) and is based on The Twilight Zone episode of the same name by Rod Serling. Maple Street is a quiet and ordinary American suburban sprawl. A somewhat detached place where the people are comfortable, middle class and all get along fairly well. The lazy contented atmosphere is about to be shattered though. A meteor is sighted over the street and this is followed by a series of strange events. Lights go on and off, the telephones don't work, cars move without anyone driving them. The inhabitants of Maple Street are very puzzled and unsettled by these inexplicable occurrences and lose contact with the outside world. A science fiction obsessed boy named Tommy then suggests that he has the answer to the mystery. Tommy says that aliens have landed and have begun a takeover of sleepy old Maple Street. Furthermore, he claims that one of the people on the street is not who he says he is. There must be an alien spy disguised as a human amongst them. After laughing off these theories at first, the people of Maple Street gradually start to think there might be something to it. The idea has been planted and man's irrationality and inhumanity comes to the fore as a panic driven witch hunt begins. Soon these respectable and apparently civilised people are anything but and have been seduced by the mob mentality. We will see just how easily frightened and prejudiced people can turn on one another in a time of crisis.
This is an excellent comic at times I think, probably the best of The Twilight Zone graphic novel adaptions I've read so far. A good amount of credit goes to artist Rich Ellis who captures the strange atmosphere and sense of suburban isolation with dark shadows and moody use of light and shade. What maybe isn't so great though is his occasionally blocky art and vague Manga style way of drawing people sometimes. He overdoes this (and having everyone drenched in sweat all the time) but the overall mood generated by the comic is very good. This is enjoyably reminiscent of old science fiction classics like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Invaders From Mars although the real monsters are of course ourselves rather than aliens. Surprisingly for an all ages comic this goes further than the television episode in depicting a street that has slid into anarchy and violence. The message of the story is that we are never too far from this frightening state of affairs no matter how civilised we regard ourselves to be. One nice touch I thought was the way that the book also tells you a little about the television episode it is based on and also the context of the era in which the story was written by Serling. It was an era of Cold War paranoia - something that The Twilight Zone and many science fiction writers tapped into at the time. There is of course a less than veiled subtext of McCarthyism in the story too with the people of Maple Street whipping themselves up into a frenzy and panic that may or may not be completely misplaced and looking for someone to blame or. It's a clever rumination on paranoia and the nature of fear and how we always look for scapegoats when something goes wrong.
It's nice too how they insert Rod Serling into the start of the story and reproduce his narrations from the original television episode. An affectionate touch that adds some Twilight Zone residue. "Maple Street, USA. Late summer. A tree-lined little road of front porch gliders, barbecues, the laughter of children, and the bell of an ice-cream vendor. At the sound of the roar and flash of light, it will be precisely 6:43 P.M. on Maple Street... This is the Maple Street on a late Saturday afternoon, in the last calm and reflective moment - before the monsters came." The story and themes have quite a timeless quality. It's about prejudice and fear of outsiders and also the nature of civilisation and how thin the veneer of it is. What would it take to break down that projection of civilisation and have perfectly ordinary and apparently respectable people submitting to the group brute entity? "Stop telling me who's dangerous and who isn't and who's safe and who's a menace. And you with him too, all of you! You're all standing out here all set to crucify somebody! You're all set to find a scapegoat! You are all desperate to point some kind of a finger at a neighbor! Well, believe me friends, the only thing that's gonna happen is that we're gonna eat each other up alive!" This comic is not a 100% transplant of the television version and goes off on a couple of tangents of its own but never to a distracting or detrimental degree.
These Twilight Zone comics all seem to be around 72 pages so the television screenplay is elongated slightly (the comic would be too short otherwise). It gives them more time to develop the story and while you are always better off with the television episodes I did enjoy this riff on The Monsters are due on Maple Street and thought it was fun to see the story in colour. The artist makes good use of this and I really liked some of the illustrations of the inhabitants of Maple Street becoming angry and turning on one another even if the sweaty Manga style was off-putting at first. I feel the art could have been better and there are many artists who might have brought something different and more glossy to the graphic novel but ultimately its effective in its own way and doesn't tremendously detract from what is still a good idea. I thought the art in another Twilight Zone graphic novel adaption called The After Hours was better but I still think this comic has the edge over that one because the story has more intrinsic drama and confrontational elements that work better on the page. The After Hours is very dreamlike and while it was a really good comic too it had a story that was more difficult to adapt than this one. This sense of anarchy in Maple Street becomes more pronounced in the third act and they sort of become a much darker version of the Gaul villagers having a free for all brawl and huge arguments in the Asterix books! This is a good solid adaption on the whole and certainly worth a look if you have been collecting these Twilight Zone graphic novels. At the time of writing you can buy this for around £7.
Read the complete review |
