EVE: True Stories #1 (Comics Review)

EVE Online has been one of those games to come out in recent years that I’ve wanted to play for a long time. The entire world sounds exciting and intriguing and is full of the kind of awesomeness that I want in a game like that. Sadly, I have yet to get the opportunity, for fate always conspires to keep me away from it, sadly. But I suppose that a comic based on the game is the next best thing right? And what really could be better than a comic that is inspired by events that happened in the game as a result of player interaction? Sounds very ironically meta doesn’t it? Well, that was the hook for me to get and read this comic.

Turns out, its not quite what I was looking for. Nothing against the story itself, per se, its just that the art isn’t always clear, and the story is just slightly convoluted that I don’t understand what exactly is going on. But still, I got pulled into a mystery here, and since I love big, loud space opera, I did like this issue on a certain level. Time will tell whether or not this story will be good or not, since we have three more issue to go, but I’m hopeful nonetheless.

Tomb Raider #1 (Comics Review)

My first ever experience with Tomb Raider was this one PC game demo that I got off a magazine CD. I remember it clearly because I just ran around the starting area with no clue as to what to do. I just couldn’t find a way out. Then years later, I saw the two movies featuring Angelina Jolie. They were good, decent, but hardly exciting fare. Then again years later, when I finally got a Nintendo DS in college, I bought a Tomb Raider game on a trip to San Francisco for a gaming convention. And it was fun. A lot of fun. I’ve still got it, even though I haven’t played it for like 4 years now.

Last year Dark Horse announced that they would be doing a new Tomb Raider comics series and that this was going to be set in the aftermath of the recently released video game with the rebooted continuity. I was excited. I hadn’t played the game but the comic was going to be written by one of my absolute favourites, Gail Simone, and that’s all that I wanted. This week, the first issue got released, and it was everything that I wanted out of it, and more. And the art was quite good as well. Very different to what I expected but good nonetheless.

Comics Picks For 19.02.2014

Another very slow week, mostly due to traveling again. And now I’m in India for a cousin’s wedding, so I have big doubts that I will be able to read all that much in the next two weeks at least. Its certainly going to be quite a challenge.

Still, there were some really good entries this week, and I’d recommend almost all of them, barring like two of the issues. Definitely check out Kings Watch #1 if not anything else. More Phantom goodness? Hell yes, please!

Anyway, here’s another edition of this new feature. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

Comics Picks of The Week 29.01.2014

Not as busy a week as the last but fairly busy nonetheless. The new creative teams on various ongoing titles continue to go strong, particularly Justice League Dark and Witchblade while some of the newer titles like Black Science continue to be exception, so that’s one thing that I really liked about this past week. January in particular has been a really excellent month of comics what with Marvel’s full-on All-New Marvel NOW! launch and some really good issues for DC’s Forever Evil event.

Just one graphic novel again this week, the Lee/Buscema magnificence that is Silver Surfer: Judgement. I was meaning to read at least one more, but time wasn’t on my side and I missed out. Hopefully the new month gets off to a good start.

Anyway, here’s another edition of this new feature. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

Serenity: Leaves On A Wind #1 (Comics Review)

A few years there was this out-and-out space opera science fiction show called Firefly. It didn’t last long, only like half a season or something, but in the years since its untimely and abrupt cancellation, it has become one of the great cult classic television shows. Fan reaction to the show was so severe that Joss Whedon eventually came back to do a movie, Serenity, to tie off some of the loose ends that were left open. I saw all of it in my college years, and I remember that it was a really good show and movie. I certainly enjoyed both. So when Dark Horse announced last year that they were going to continue the story in a comics series, I was very ecstatic.

Written by Joss Whedon’s brother Zack Whedon, and drawn by Georges Jeanty, this issue is everything I could ask for, story-wise. It carries on from where Serenity left off and it lays some really good groundwork for what happened afterwards, since in the timeline, eight months have now passed since the truth about the Reavers was exposed in the movie. Art-wise though, I have my reservations, because most of the characters look nothing like how they are on the show/movie. I mean, I realize that there would be differences, but the differences here are on the order where I can’t even recognize them!

Comics Picks of The Week 22.01.2014

So this past week proved to be a rather busy week. Lots of comics came out and I think there were something like 30 titles I was interested in, not to mention my huge backlog which stretches quite a bit too. Still, I read quite a few, and I’m mostly happy with them. Interestingly enough I read almost twice as many Marvel titles as I did DC, which was a surprise considering that I enjoy DC far more and find it to be a much easier universe to get into. But, I suppose its the whole All-New Marvel NOW! relaunch at work since three of the titles I read were part of this.

My Superior Spider-Man read-through continued as well with Volume 2, which I really, really enjoyed, and will have a review going up soon for the first two volumes. I couldn’t really be bothered when the title launched last year but now that I’ve gotten a taste of it, I want more. Doc Ock as Spider-Man is really interesting and really good.

Anyway, here’s another edition of this new feature. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

NANP: Naming For The Long Haul

Today’s guest on Names: A New Perspective is New York Times Bestselling author John Jackson Miller, who has worked on multiple Star Wars media in the past, particularly the really good Knights of the Old Republic comics from Dark Horse, and the recent novel Kenobi which is set in the aftermath of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. His Lost Tribe of the Sith series is on my “25 Series To Read In 2014” reading challenge as well and I’m really looking forward to those books. My experience with John’s work has been quite positive over the years, and he is definitely among my favourite writers, so its really exciting to have him on the blog and talking names in fiction. Here’s what he has to say.

Best of 2013 Part 2c: Monthly Comics

A few days ago I did my best of 2013 list for the books I had read in the second half of the year. In a departure from previous such lists I divided the books and the comics into separate posts so that I didn’t have one massive post up. Massive posts are a bit tough to handle, especially when you are promoting them on social media. And with the split posts, the directions are different and there’s no unnecessary crossover.

So, with the novels and graphic novels already having been covered, I now delve into my favourite monthlies of the year. This is the final “best of” list I’m doing for 2013 that involves reading.

You can check out my top-of-the-month lists on my Reading Awards page and this list is both an extension, and a continuation of what goes on there.

Let’s see what makes the cut and which comes close then!

Comics Picks of The Week 24.12.2013

Well, here we are. This will be the final CPoTW post of the year, even though today is the last new comic book day of 2013. Just the way these schedules all work out and all.

Moving on, this was a somewhat light week in some respects since I didn’t get around to as many comics as I wanted to. Quite a few titles slipped through the cracks, which is happening more and more given the sheer volume of how many comics are (generally) released each and every week. Still, one bright ray of sunshine in all of this was that I managed to read three entire graphic novels this week, all of them for Batgirl, with one featuring Cassandra Cain and the other two featuring Stephanie Brown, both characters who are much in demand among several outspoken communities of fans to be revived in the New 52. Having read these graphic novels, I certainly agree with that!

Anyway, here’s another edition of this new feature. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

12 Days of Best Covers of 2013: Day #9

The ninth pick for the “12 Days of Best Covers of 2013″ list is the cover for Martha Well’s latest novel, a Star Wars tie-in for the new Empire and Rebellion series, The Razor’s Edge. This new series takes place after the original Star Wars movie and continues the adventures of Leia Organa, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker in those early days of the Rebellion. It was a really fun book that did much to add to the mythology of these characters and add to the overall Star Wars lore as well. The most fun part was in seeing how these characters continued to interact after their victory over the First Death Star, and the primary protagonist was Leia herself, one of my favourite female characters in SFF.

The ninth comic cover that I pick is Nick Runge’s excellent cover for the first cover of J. W. Rinzler’s adaptation of George Lucas’ original script for Star Wars, The Star Wars. I’ve read the first three issues of the series and they’ve been quite interesting and fairly good. They betray a much more fantastical tone to the entire setting and its evident that George Lucas’ imagination really did run wild for that initial attempt. I’d definitely recommend the series!

Without further ado, hit the break to see both the covers in all their glory! The full list of all these covers is available here.

12 Days of Best Covers of 2013: Day #1

For this new seasonal end of year list, the first book cover that I pick is the second novel in the Night’s Masque series by Anne Lyle, published by Angry Robot Books. Anne’s first novel, The Alchemist of Souls, was one of my first Angry Robot reads last year and it got me hooked on to reading more of the publisher’s output. The cover for that novel too was rather excellent and that success was repeated for the second book in the series.

And the first comics cover that I pick is the first issue of Brian Wood’s Star Wars from Dark Horse Comics. As a life-long fan of the entire setting, it is one of the best covers I’ve seen to date and its what got me started on really reading again all the different Star Wars comics, regardless of where in the setting they are set. And it also gave me a good solid taste for the kind of books that Dark Horse puts out each month.

So without further ado, hit the break to see both the covers in all their glory! The full list of all these covers is available here.

Conan and The People of The Black Circle #3 (Comics Review)

With this issue, writer Fred Van Lente and artist Ariel Olivetti move into the second half of their 4-issue mini-series with Conan, an adaptation of a novel of the same name by Conan creator Robert E. Howard. This is all a warm-up for Van Lente since he is taking over on Dark Horse’s Conan the Barbarian from Brian Wood in a couple months or so and it gives a taste for what we can expect from the writer on that series, the premier Conan series being published right now. I’ve read the first two issues already and have found them to be quite decent in all.

The third issue isn’t like them so much. It is largely similar to the previous two issues but there are quite a few missteps made along the way, both in terms of the story and the art. The problems are with how the characters are presented and the lack of definition in the backgrounds, which seem interchangeable from one page to the another. The latter has been a growing problem in the series and it peaks in this issue, which made for some disappointing read.