A bit of a mixed bag here. Three stories, bundled together without much to link them in time or space other than being Conan tales.
The Jewels of GwahlA bit of a mixed bag here. Three stories, bundled together without much to link them in time or space other than being Conan tales.
The Jewels of Gwahlur is an original Howard short story, and seems to be adapted well. I have not actually read the original, but it definitely feels like a classic Howard tale and Conan feels very on brand and the world feels quite real. Pretty good, though I was not a huge fan of the art. It was OK. Laid out very well, and nicely designed. Good panels and lots of good action and design... But just a little flat.
The Daughters of Midora is a shorter piece. I liked the story of this more, and the art as well. However, generally as a piece of Conan lore and how it fits in, it is probably weaker. Shorter than the titular tale, but in some ways more to think about and less of a ripping yarn.
The Mad King of Gaul is a story set in Conan's early years and to me I just did not feel it gelled well with what I know of his history, even though it was clearly trying to lay the groundwork for Conan as an older and more rounded man. I was not keen on the art really - not the worst - but not anything I actually really liked. A lot of exposition. A lot of not liking Conan. A lot of wondering how this actually fits in. Very much a miss. ...more
I may be being slightly generous giving this four stars, but it was a quick and enjoyable read with two separate stories, both of which managed to surI may be being slightly generous giving this four stars, but it was a quick and enjoyable read with two separate stories, both of which managed to surprise me. For that reason alone it warrants a bit of a boost.
These books are very much of their time - perhaps even more so, as the art style reminds me a lot of such things as Masters of Thunder, written the decade before in the Netherlands, and of course such things as The City of Shifting Waters, going back another decade into the 60's. There is quite a lot of nostalgia in the artwork, and the story and dynamics obviously bear some similarities to such things as Conan, so in some ways it felt older than it really is. On the other hand, coming out of continental Europe, there is a different vibe to the stories, morality, and mores to my experience with American graphic novels of the same era.
The first story had a lot more of fantastic setting to it, while the second was a very different pace and the endings could not have been any more different. One following the other was very well placed and kept the pace quick and engaging. There are some issues with the convenience of certain things in the plot, but they did not get in the way of my enjoyment - perhaps in part because I am aware of the dated nature of these stories. They have aged pretty well, but the cracks are beginning to show. However, it is very easy to enjoy to enjoy them for what they are, and as a look back at what graphic novels from 40 years ago were like. ...more
I picked this up in a book shop, more or less at random, based on the beautiful art and the fact I have been mostly very lucky with Image comics so faI picked this up in a book shop, more or less at random, based on the beautiful art and the fact I have been mostly very lucky with Image comics so far. The description of it as steampunk horror almost put me off, as did the first chapter; but I am glad that I picked it up and on balance I am really impressed.
First off, I am not a fan of horror. I do not enjoy being scared or creeped out, so I avoid the genre in both books and film. I am not totally sure that Monstress is horror, to be honest. It is definitely dark, but for the most part I feel very much in the vein of fantasy. However, the first chapter was definitely quite disturbing. There are amputee children, slavery, cannibalism, torture, rape, murder, hints at paedophilia and probably more, all served up in a very short space of time. While this tones down considerably as the book proceeds, it did rather taint the enjoyment of the rest for me.
However, as the story goes on it gets a lot more interesting as more characters are introduced and we find out a lot more about the world. The world building and lore for the story were a real highlight and I was quickly drawn into the wider story; which was good as the main character alone is rather difficult to connect with - perhaps because she is presented with plenty of silences, monologues, and a mysterious secret background which keeps her at a distance.
The other highlight is of course the art. Cover and main art all by the same artist and beautiful. Great line work, glossy colours, plenty to see and well laid out panels. Even the dialogue boxes were nicely done. Really lovely to look at, with one exception - and that is just my own thing. I do not like the way the children are depicted. I am not at all keen on this manga style chibi kids thing to try to make them look extra cute. I find it jarring and the proportions are often off, especially in comparison with the other art. This is very much a style, and it is one I am not keen on. Here or there the strong Japanese manga background crept in overly in a few other places - such as massive unfeasible toothy grins on characters, but for the most part the style of art was absolutely top quality.
Keen to continue with this series and see where it goes.
Merged review:
I picked this up in a book shop, more or less at random, based on the beautiful art and the fact I have been mostly very lucky with Image comics so far. The description of it as steampunk horror almost put me off, as did the first chapter; but I am glad that I picked it up and on balance I am really impressed.
First off, I am not a fan of horror. I do not enjoy being scared or creeped out, so I avoid the genre in both books and film. I am not totally sure that Monstress is horror, to be honest. It is definitely dark, but for the most part I feel very much in the vein of fantasy. However, the first chapter was definitely quite disturbing. There are amputee children, slavery, cannibalism, torture, rape, murder, hints at paedophilia and probably more, all served up in a very short space of time. While this tones down considerably as the book proceeds, it did rather taint the enjoyment of the rest for me.
However, as the story goes on it gets a lot more interesting as more characters are introduced and we find out a lot more about the world. The world building and lore for the story were a real highlight and I was quickly drawn into the wider story; which was good as the main character alone is rather difficult to connect with - perhaps because she is presented with plenty of silences, monologues, and a mysterious secret background which keeps her at a distance.
The other highlight is of course the art. Cover and main art all by the same artist and beautiful. Great line work, glossy colours, plenty to see and well laid out panels. Even the dialogue boxes were nicely done. Really lovely to look at, with one exception - and that is just my own thing. I do not like the way the children are depicted. I am not at all keen on this manga style chibi kids thing to try to make them look extra cute. I find it jarring and the proportions are often off, especially in comparison with the other art. This is very much a style, and it is one I am not keen on. Here or there the strong Japanese manga background crept in overly in a few other places - such as massive unfeasible toothy grins on characters, but for the most part the style of art was absolutely top quality.
Keen to continue with this series and see where it goes.
Merged review:
I picked this up in a book shop, more or less at random, based on the beautiful art and the fact I have been mostly very lucky with Image comics so far. The description of it as steampunk horror almost put me off, as did the first chapter; but I am glad that I picked it up and on balance I am really impressed.
First off, I am not a fan of horror. I do not enjoy being scared or creeped out, so I avoid the genre in both books and film. I am not totally sure that Monstress is horror, to be honest. It is definitely dark, but for the most part I feel very much in the vein of fantasy. However, the first chapter was definitely quite disturbing. There are amputee children, slavery, cannibalism, torture, rape, murder, hints at paedophilia and probably more, all served up in a very short space of time. While this tones down considerably as the book proceeds, it did rather taint the enjoyment of the rest for me.
However, as the story goes on it gets a lot more interesting as more characters are introduced and we find out a lot more about the world. The world building and lore for the story were a real highlight and I was quickly drawn into the wider story; which was good as the main character alone is rather difficult to connect with - perhaps because she is presented with plenty of silences, monologues, and a mysterious secret background which keeps her at a distance.
The other highlight is of course the art. Cover and main art all by the same artist and beautiful. Great line work, glossy colours, plenty to see and well laid out panels. Even the dialogue boxes were nicely done. Really lovely to look at, with one exception - and that is just my own thing. I do not like the way the children are depicted. I am not at all keen on this manga style chibi kids thing to try to make them look extra cute. I find it jarring and the proportions are often off, especially in comparison with the other art. This is very much a style, and it is one I am not keen on. Here or there the strong Japanese manga background crept in overly in a few other places - such as massive unfeasible toothy grins on characters, but for the most part the style of art was absolutely top quality.
Keen to continue with this series and see where it goes....more
If I could give this a bonus half a star, I would. But I can't... so I won't.
If you are a fan of old school D&D, and are particularly into the Crusty.
If I could give this a bonus half a star, I would. But I can't... so I won't.
If you are a fan of old school D&D, and are particularly into the Forgotten Realms, and have a certain nostalgia for bad comics from the 80's, then you will find this a lot more palatable than I did. I did finish it, and I am going to read the others (because I got them as a free bundle and I am reading them for research, and am kind of curious about how bad they be).
The artwork is truly horrendous. The colours are garish and weird, the proportions of everything are terrible, the backgrounds are flat, and the sense of style is horribly dated, even for the late 80's. This is the kind of dreck that comic books were putting out 10-20 years earlier.
The stories are somewhat better, but not a great deal. Considering that the default for a D&D story is 'an unlikely group of adventurers get into some random scrapes with evil-doers' then this is making sure to hit that very low bar and not exceed it at all. Explanation of why anything is happening, sometimes from scene to scene is woefully absent, but you swiftly conclude that it really does not matter as the depth to the plots are even more lacking in dimensional than the 2D art.
The dialogue is atrocious. I was literally cringing as I was reading some of it. Perhaps I should have been reading this as a pastiche and my opinion would have been different, because a lot of it is massively laughable. It is not even laid out particularly well, as you sometimes find yourself reading the wrong speech bubble.
So, what does this even have going for it that I would like to bump it up half a star and am willing to waste my time on reading on further? Well, it does have lore about the Realms, and I am a lot more willing to flick through the pages of a bad comic for an hour than spend a day reading some horrendously written fanfic level of crud which is a lot of the official novels set in the Realms. Secondly, there is that sort of morbid curiosity that has me looking to see how far the genre and setting has changed in thirty odd years back from the first edition days when halflings still had giant hairy feet, and elves apparently had ears the size of halfling's feet. When racial slurs and casual sexism was the norm, even while the comic is probably far more progressive than the norm at the time.
Reading this is like finding a time machine and thinking how much fun it would be to go back to the Elizabethan period, only to discover that the plague was rampant through the streets of London... but then you see a leper's nose fall off, so that is pretty funny, right?...more
Good strong ending to this series, which turns out to have more to it than just these three books. I really appreciated that the story wrapped up enouGood strong ending to this series, which turns out to have more to it than just these three books. I really appreciated that the story wrapped up enough to consider this a trilogy, but the door is still open for another set of books, and these ones at least can be read as a discrete set.
Very satisfying conclusion, with quite a bit of a deeper story being revealed and the horror level moving to a somewhat different theme, but perhaps being all the more disturbing for it....more
Second instalments so often don't live up to a strong opening - especially in a trilogy. However, this one did.Second instalments so often don't live up to a strong opening - especially in a trilogy. However, this one did....more
Really good. This was just the right level of dark where I was totally sucked into it, but not repulsed. Devoured this in a single sitting and went stReally good. This was just the right level of dark where I was totally sucked into it, but not repulsed. Devoured this in a single sitting and went straight on to read the second one later on the same day.
I am not a fan of horror, and because of that would say this was more like a dark fantasy... but if some monster killing children in the woods is not horror, then I think a lot of things suddenly need to be recategorised. I got put onto this after I read The Woods series by the same author, and really enjoyed that, so thought I would check out some of his other work. I am really glad I did. This series seems to be a lot shorter than that one, and while is does not touch on as many issues and focuses on far fewer characters, it is a quite a bit tighter and more punchy.
I was genuinely gripped by this page turner, and sucked into the story fully. The artwork is not exactly the best, but it certainly fits the story well, and it is evocative and has a certain air of creepiness about it so it fits well. More!...more
This is essentially an extended advert for other series, or possibly for some different artists to showcase their talents. I suppose, it could work thThis is essentially an extended advert for other series, or possibly for some different artists to showcase their talents. I suppose, it could work that way for the writers as well, but with the stories being so short, it is hard to get much of an impact from any of them.
Avengers: Pretty basic art. Rather old fashioned, and frankly rather poor by today's standards. Incredibly forgettable story. Based on this, I would skip the Avengers comics entirely.
Strange Academy Presents: REALLY nice art. Great job here, and fitted well with the story, which was OK, tying both in with the Strange Academy and some previous Asgard stuff. Left me vaguely interested in the former, less so in the latter. Artist Mike Del Mundo, I think. There are also some single pages relating into other students at the academy with some excellent art, but I couldn't easily identify who was who. Dessy and Toth pages stood out particularly. Humberto Ramos maybe?
Spider-Man: Decent quality art that fits well with the character. Story seems to mostly tie into Spidy's clone and Black Cat dealing with some major events that happen elsewhere. If you are a Spider-Man fan, you will probably already be into that arc. If you aren't, I don't think this will make you care.
White Fox: Again, decent quality art. It doesn't stand out especially, but it it definitely does a solid job. I did not know any of the characters here, and am not sure how new they are, but I got a bit of a surprise and was quite curious to find out what happened next.
Blade: Really damn weird art. It's clearly a style. I am not sure I really liked it, but it worked well and particularly had a good colour scheme. This is also had one of the best self contained stories in the set. Yes, there were links, but it worked as a stand alone just fine. Artist: Dylan Burnett, and writer: Danny Lore.
X-Men/Black Knight: Art was OK. Not great though. Story was poor though. Mostly focused on the Black Knight, rather than the X-Men, it just felt like something to get through. Skip.
Bloodstone: Art was decent. Nothing much to say here. Story was a bit more interesting than I thought it would be and seemed to serve as a good introduction to Elsa Bloodstone, and I guess her brother, who I had never heard of. Clearly there is some kind of history, but this feels like a bit of a reset point, so maybe a jumping off point for those wanting to try out this series.
So, in the end, entirely skippable, but if you get to glance over it, it works as a showcase for a few artists.
Nice and tight story, drawing on the classic roots of Doctor Strange. Well illustrated and fast moving. Just the kind of thing I want in a Marvel comiNice and tight story, drawing on the classic roots of Doctor Strange. Well illustrated and fast moving. Just the kind of thing I want in a Marvel comic....more
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