I’ve just got back from Excelsior comics in Bristol, where I picked up three recently released comic books that I didn’t pick up on their release, for one reason or another. Here’s what I thought of them:
Doctor Spektor #1 (Dynamite comics)
I didn’t pick this one up because writer Mark Waid often writes silly, throwaway material, and I’m getting fed up of the mainstream comic book style of treating everything as a joke whilst avoiding every single important issue of our times. This book also looked like a rip-off of Doctor Strange from Marvel, so I didn’t bother getting it when it first came out. However, when I saw the front cover in Excelsior was by one of my favourite cover artists (Francesco Francavilla) I decided to pick up the book and give it a chance. Halfway through reading the book and I hated it. It was all about an unlikeable television reality show host doing paranormal shows with real ghost’s etc, and he was far too handsome and generic for me to care about. The beginning was very Marvel comic mainstream, with a Vampire getting destroyed by our heroic host, and I was getting ready to sigh disappointingly and toss the comic away, but then it got a bit good. The television host was revealed to be a self hating complicated mess, two other characters were developed quite interestingly and the book ended with a death and a lot of scope for future excitement in the story. I’m not really a fan of Mark Waid, but this story idea interests me, and I’ll read it for a few months until the inevitable decline in writing that usually comes from big name writers. Rating: 8/10
Madame Frankenstein #1 (Image comics)
This was another book that didn’t interest me when it first came out, mainly because of the front cover I think. It just looked a bit too colourful and cartoony for me to be interested. If it had a more Gothic, dark and gritty cover I’d probably have picked it up, but I guess I was scared away by the bright colours. To my immense shock, when I opened the book I saw that it was all in black and white, a style that I quite like and would have been up for if I knew about it a couple of week’s ago. The story itself was a simple tale of a mad genius bringing a car crash victim back from the death, and making her into his ideal female, inspired by classic literature. That sounds a bit creepy, but the art had a soft playfulness to it, and that gave it all a bit of a different feel to your normal Frankenstein tale. The artist is a woman (Megan Levens), and that is very obvious when flicking through the pages. I like that, and it’s enough for me to stick this one on my pull-list as well. Rating: 8/10
El Bigote #1 (Tekilla Comix)
If this book was a Marvel or DC comic then it wouldn’t have interested me, but the independent aspect of it made me pick it up, and give it a chance. The art, like the previous book, is also in black and white, but this style uses darker inking, and although it’s good, sometimes the overall darknesss of the page makes it a bit difficult to read and navigate through the panels. There was probably too much text as well, and that lead to a feeling of the pages being a bit too cluttered and busy for my liking. The story was pure comedy, and it mostly worked. It was all about a dead Mexican lawmaker, but I got the feeling that the writer has about as much experience of genuine Mexican culture as myself, as this was all sombreros and tequila clichés, and not exactly based on anything resembling reality. That’s okay, and I knew what to expect after a few pages in. Loads of silly jokes and dialogue full of comedy one-liners. The book mostly held my attention, and the main protagonist on his Ostrich and firing cactus spikes at the villains is about as wacky as you can get. Could I read a lot of these books? Probably not, but for a comedy one shot it's pretty entertaining and well worth checking out for a giggle or two. Rating: 7/10.
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