Three for the road: Hibbs finishes 3/14

Weirdly unmotivated to do any work today -- I've been largely pretending I have a day off. BUt I said I would, so I will, and here's another couple of reviews from last week's books. Tomorrow, the new cycle starts again!! BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: CYLON APOCALPYSE #1: More of a "retail intelligence" thing than anything else, but man am I getting frustrating by how DE is handling (or having to handle, your call) it's BSG books. Mixing new and old, putting multiple titles in one week, and not being clear as to what's what, really.

Here's the solicit copy for this series:

"DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT presents an all-new, Battlestar Galactica event featuring the DYNAMITE Debut of Javier Grillo-Marxuach (ya know, the guy behind such hit shows as Lost and Medium) as he unleashes the Cylon Apocalypse!

Dual revelations rock the rag-tag fleet as a routine Viper patrol puts them on the edge of a bizarre scene - Cylon Raiders attacking one of their own Basestars! As the Cylon Basestar crashes into an ocean-covered world, Adama and Starbuck discover a bizarre creature that appears to be a Cylon Centurion engulfed by diseased flesh. The Cylons are sick and the apocalypse has begun!

Grillo-Maruach is joined by Battlestar artist Carlos Rafael, along with colourist Carlos Lopez for this special comic book event! Featured covers artists include: the legendary Michael Golden, the modern master Pat Lee, colonial warrior Carlos Rafael and master of all things time and space Jim Starlin! Don’t miss it!"

Which "series" of BSG would you suppose this was from, based upon reading that? Especially given that "Classic" BSG is marketed as, well, "Classic Battlestar Galactica". ANd there's the convenient "all-new" in sentence #1.

Well, it's not the modern version, it's "classic". But, of course, I ordered it like a "modern" BSG comic (we're selling roughly quadruple the # of copies of "modern" versus "classic") Double-plus foo.

The comic itself? Ah, pretty deeply EH.

THUNDERBOLTS #112: I liked the first issue pretty OK, and I thought issue #2 was even stronger, but the third one here was really pretty weak. In theory (though never claimed, lets be fair) this is Marvel's version of SUICIDE SQUAD, but issue #3 makes me think, no, not at all one tiny bit -- the beauty of SS was that anything (cast, circumstance, etc.) could change issue by issue, if not page by page... but given the cast of characters here the "most interesting" ones (Goblin, Venom, Bullseye, Speedball) can't really change, since they have other roles they'll have to go off into sooner or later; and the ones that COULD change (say, Radioactive Man) probably won't, because they don't appear to have any interesting hooks in the first place. I suspect that by the end of the first year, pretty much everything will still be in the same place, while that was never true for SS, or, really, even the "old" THUNDERBOLTS. So: EH.

My PICK OF THE WEEK this week? Probably (flaws and all) BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1

PICK OF THE WEAK: Dunno, think I'm going to go with TEEN TITANS #44 since its mostly torture and magic potions.

My BOOK/TP OF THE WEEK is easily JAMES KOCHALKA'S AMERCIAN ELF v2. Here's a rare case where a smaller book actually helps -- this isn't something you can sit down and "read" in any case, from start to finish.... best you can really do is, dunno, 4-5 pages at once before you start to get overwhelmed. My big downside is the book being in color. I really don't think it adds a thing, and the color wasn't designed for print, or with any idea of how the pages would go together, and the result is just a big garish mess that deeply deeply hurts your eyes when you look at it. STILL< there's some really wonderfully touching and human observations in here, and is an absolute hoot and belongs in your funny book collection. Jeff Lester had THE BEST line about the printing, but hopefully he's saving that up for tomorrow or Wednesday or something, and I shant spoil it.

(though I want to)

What did you think?

-B