New Warriors #2 (Comics Review)

Where one leaves off, another picks up. That seems to be Marvel’s motto of late, especially with their All-New Marvel launch/relaunch of certain titles. Marvel doesn’t exactly have all that many teen superheroes, unless you count some of the X-kids from their various team books. With the recent cancellation of Young Avengers, Marvel launched a new teen superhero book, New Warriors, last month and it seems to be stylistically somewhat similar to the other series. But this brings back (apparently) an old team but with some new faces, so things are certainly interesting.

The first issue was a bit all over the place, and was just about good enough for me to recommend it to you, the readers of this blog. With the second issue however, I am starting to have some serious doubts because this too was all over the place but much more than the first issue. The pacing was odd and the story just didn’t quite click with me either. There were some nice moments here, but I confess that I felt lost most of the time. And the art is okay, no major complaints about it, not at the moment at least, I must say.

New Warriors #1 (Comics Review)

If anything, February has been a bigger month for Marvel and its All-New Marvel NOW! launch than January was. More titles, a bit more oomph in general, and just as interesting in the final tally. And given that January was a pretty damn good month for the publisher in terms of unit sales and market share, I’m thinking that February is going to be equally good. I mean, when you launch these many new #1s and with many of them getting their sequel issues in the same month, that’s going to add a lot of padding to your wallet. Like a lot.

But that’s fine, as long as the titles being released are decent. And New Warriors #1 is kind of entertaining I suppose. There’s an overload of characters and everything is basically frontloaded at the reader as far as the team’s makeup is concerned, but that’s fine. This is not a group that I’ve really read about before (I hardly remember what I read in Civil War), so there’s that charm about them that I drew me to the title. Beyond that though, I can easily see this as being a good replacement for Young Avengers, following the cancellation of that title recently. Art is good, story is decent. All good.

Comics Picks of The Week 15.01.2014

Once again, a very light reading week, with no graphic novel reading at all. I took a trip to India and back over the weekend, mostly because preparations for a cousin’s upcoming marriage and mom’s treatment, so reading time was extremely limited. I’m even behind on my novel reading at the moment, so I’m generally not doing well on that front at all.

Some really fun titles launched this past week, such as Night of the Living Deadpool, so it was an entertaining week at least, for the most part.

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.

Best Movies of 2013

Its been an interesting year for the movie industry, whether we talk Hollywood or Bollywood. Big tent-pole movies were the norm at the box office, and there were both successes and flops from each region. It can’t be denied either that some of the box offices successes have proved to be quite surprising, such as the runaway hits Frozen and The Hunger Games #2: Catching Fire, which continue to tell studio executives that female-led movies, especially action movies, CAN be successful if given a chance and that hiding behind ridiculous sexist attitudes and thinking just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Or let’s talk Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim which underperformed in the US but was a big hit in international markets and the reason for the former can no doubt be laid at the feet of the subversive trend in American media of trash-talking movies that are different.

But enough of that. This post, the first such that I’m doing, is meant to celebrate the movies that I thoroughly enjoyed this year, whether Hollywood or Bollywood, and that’s what I’m going to focus on here. So let’s have at it.

Afterlife With Archie #3 (Comics Review)

After a two-month long wait, Afterlife With Archie returned last week with its third issue. Having debuted in the Halloween Month and received very well by fans, for me the series became one of the highlights of the year, so much so that I put it on my “Top 5 New Comics of 2013” list and the first issue made it to my “Best Comics of 2013” list. It was just that good. Mashing the zombie apocalypse with Archie and the Riverdale gang is something really amazing that writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and artist Francesco Francavilla have done, and I applaud them for it. It is quite a refreshing story in all respects.

But that’s not all of course. There’s a hint of subversion in the story and the way that the backstories of various characters are teased out in issue #3, especially with regards to Hiram Lodge, make this one of the best comics to come out this past week. But the best thing here remains the character interaction and on that note we get to see a lot of different perspective in this issue. The creative team is giving their all to make this one of the best series out right now and I’m fully on that train-ride, watching as these characters try to fight things out the best way that they know how.

12 Days of Best SFF Characters of 2013: Day #11

For this new seasonal list of the best SFF characters I’ve read this year, my eleventh and penultimate pick is Archie and the Riverdale gang from Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Francesco Francavilla’s Afterlife With Archie, a new mini-series in the world of Archie that deals with the zombie apocalypse, and in a really good way too. The series started off in the Halloween month and it continued pretty damn strongly in November. With the third issue due imminently, I’m very excited about the continuing madcap adventures of the Riverdale gang as they all deal with the outbreak of the zombie magic-virus.

Hit the break to see why I picked these characters.

Afterlife With Archie #2 by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Comics Review)

A month ago, I could never have imagined the concept of mashing Archie with zombies. I mean, that’s as far out of the norm as you can get right? Its like mixing Stargate with classical zombies. Which is why the execution has to be pitch-perfect. There can’t be any room for a drop in quality or anything. You have to be consistently good or the premise is going to just conk out like a bad engine. Which is why I approached Aguirre-Sacasa and Francesco Francavilla’s Afterlife With Archie #1 with a little trepidation last month, and why I was so impressed with it. They hit the exact right notes and delivered a fantastic story.

The second issue, which launched this week, continues the story of this quite horrifying zombie apocalypse as it ravages the quiet, wholesome and good-old-fun town of Riverdale. In the first issue, we saw how one person’s mistake, a second’s longing, and a third’s compassion brought about this whole event. In the new issue, we gain a wider perspective on things as the plague spreads through Riverdale and as the heroes begin to coalesce and decide their future.

Afterlife with Archie #1 by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Comics Review)

As a general rule, I don’t read zombie comics. I have extremely limited interest in the genre and it never really clicks together for me the way fiction in other genres does. But there’s always an exception to a rule right? Its inevitable since nothing is ever absolute. But, with Halloween just a few days from now, I suppose its the perfect time to be reading some horror fiction. And what better way to do that than read what is possibly the most… unexpected mash-up? Archie + Zombies? Whoa….

I used to read Archie comics as a kid. It all started when an older cousin took a novel from me and somehow lost it. In return she gave me Archie comics to read for a long while and got me absolutely hooked. I read the comics for a good long while and really fell in love with all the characters. It shouldn’t be a surprise really, then, that Archie, Betty and Jughead are my three favourite characters from the comic. So watching things go so bloody downhill for them with this issue was stunning to say the least.

The Cover Art Mega-Post Part 2

Two weeks ago I did the first of these kind of posts, which can be found here. There were some really fun-looking books on that list that I would love to read (all of them) this year, but given how these kind of things work out for me, especially of late, that is probably not going to happen any time soon. My only consolation is that these covers are so bloody damn good!

Hope you liked the previous post and that you’ll like this one as well.