Lone Star Press

Battlestar Galactica is a gritty documentary style science fiction drama about the end of the world and what comes next. The first disc is a revelation with the whole mini-series running three hours without an episode break. The thirteen episodes that make up the first season move along pretty quickly and like the best science fiction, the stories address the topics of the day. The ‘Litmus’ episode in particular addresses the topics of suicide bombings and Independent Councils. The episode titled ‘33’ is entertaining as the crew is sleep- deprived in the wake of attack after attack as the cylons dog the fleets every move. Edward James Olmos is authentic as Commander Adama. James Callis is hilarious as Dr. Gaius Baltar, the best space doctor this side of Dr. Smith.

The DVD extras are loaded with the technical aspects of making spaceships and robots look real. Seriously, there is no shutting up the effects guys. If you doubt that, there is a three hour effects documentary on the Mummy on that DVD. There is a funny piece on Dr. Baltar and the cast all seems like they like working on the show. The set pieces that were made to sell the show are interesting and a bit dated. The deleted scenes are okay, but there is no way to navigate the scenes other than hitting the play button so some of it drags. Usually the deleted scenes parts of the DVD sets just serve to show how smart someone was to cut out the uninteresting chaff. The cast seems to be aware of the fandom and there is a lot of lip service paid to keeping the fans of the original series happy. Not being a huge fan of the original, I couldn’t care much either way. As far as I’m concerned, there should be only one Battlestar Galactica, this one.

 

The most important part of a story is the ending the same way that the most important part of a gymnastic routine is the landing. The 8-part Face-to-Face story does a face plant on the landing as it makes just about every mistake you can make when wrapping up a mystery. In the story so far, Batman has returned to Gotham after a time away. He tries to find out who has been killing his C-List villains when it should be clear to anyone with a room temperature IQ that Harvey Dent is being framed for the murders. Batman confronts his former friend and they have a ‘You not trusting me!’ scene. So, Dent wigs out and scarrrrrs himself again because he’s more comfortable in Two-Face’s skin than his own. Meanwhile in a back up story or a previous issue, Jason Bard catches the real trigger man in the story and finishes him. Batman has a final showdown with the freshly jilted Two-Face and then he goes off to confront the mastermind who hired the real killer. Finally, on page 14 of the final issue, a character with an amazingly stupid name is revealed to be the guy who hired the killer after never having been mentioned in the story.

One of the things I try to do in my little reviews of comics work is a courtesy. I try not to use a person’s name if I am slamming their work. If I have nice things to say, I’ll use a name. In this case, it’s hard not to make a bigger point about a writer disappearing up his own ass and squandering whatever good will he had from previous work. The best thing about this arc is the fact the the new run by Grant Morrison and Andy Kubert is that the series has nowhere to go but up from this garbage.

There has been some carping and complaining about this title in the blogosphere and I haven’t been interested in chiming in, until now. Charlie Huston is a novelist and has paced this mini-series like a novel, meaning that the pace slows and speeds at the direction of the writer. Rather than have a boring recap at the beginning of a series, he has placed it here and explained all of the time inbetween with a few simple writer’s tricks.  This issue is the recap issue, that fills in the blanks in the story so far and weaves Moon Knight better into the rest of the Marvel Universe. There are a few revelations and a clarification on the origins of the pale avenger as a mysterious man makes a presentation to a group called The Committee.

The art by Finch, Miki and D’Armata is polished and entertaining. The cover and a few interior pages have an edge of Sienkiewicz madness and that is a good thing. Once they’re done with the revamp on the characters, I’d like to see this team have another run at Moon Knight with something more in mind than a simple retcon story.

 

Neil Gaiman has been carving out an interesting niche in the Lost Gods section of the fantasy library. The Sandman comic book series worked that ground and forty issues worth of material was stretched out to seventy five so the back end of it feels a little thin by comparison to the fast start of the series. With American Gods, he flinched and took a short cut rather than show the resolution of conflict at the end of the final act. Good Omens was fun from start to finish and Coraline was just not my speed. Throughout all of those projects, Neil Gaiman was at least himself and true to his subject matter or his vision.

Here, Neil Gaiman is pretending to be Geoff Johns or Bendis! as he polishes up one of Kirby’s failed projects, the Eternals. Rather than launch a new interesting property, Gaiman makes a run at making a second rate version of the New Gods interesting. Its a little unfair to judge a first issue, but he performs a workman-like job of getting these characters polished up so they have something else to do in the rest of the mini-series. There are people that are big fans of John Romita Jr., but I’m not one of them. The art was just what I expected, but with some interesting color work by Matt Hollingsworth.

I’ll read a few more to see if Gaiman can make these characters interesting, but I can’t help thinking this was a wasted opportunity.

 

Mark Verheiden writes a quirky, fun story from a lost Earth. In this stand alone issue, Huntress and Power Girl respond to an emergency at a zoo only to find that the Ultra-Humanite has pushed Batman and Superman’s minds into the two heroine’s bodies as part of a revenge scheme. This gives Kevin Maguire the excuse to draw Power Girl and Huntress for twenty plus pages. Its nostalgic and fun and gets to the point and gets out.

 

Forget Spiderman, the character getting the biggest makeover of the year is Captain America. From freedom fighter in Civil War to 21st century cold warrior in his own title, the heart of the Avengers has a new lease on life. He has gone from jingoistic leaderman to full time asskicker with a ‘Die Hard’ moment every few issues. In this issue of the Ultimates, Captain America levels a legion of Schizoid Men, saves his girlfriend and retakes the White House. Its nice to see a great character get his due.

Now, if only he could lose the pokerchip armor…

 

This high concept OGN is a retro version of Ghostbusters with Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla out to extract personal gain from the world of science. They are against the forces of big business as represented by J.P. Morgan, Thomas Edison, Guglielmo Marconi and Andrew Carnegie who are black magicians in addition to magnates and inventors. The plot has science fringe fave Tesla contacting his pal Twain and the two of them scheming to sell giant robots by putting on a series of elaborate and destructive hoaxes that are aimed to convince the masses that they need the protection of the giant robots. The evil industrialists are just summoning demons using the construction of a building to mask the construction of a temple. The story is interesting and it has some fun moments.

The problem with this book is the art. The pages look like they were shot from pencils and colored on computer because they are muddy as hell. As an inker I have a certain bias, and I think the damage done here is done by the colorist. I’m sure that all of the pages look better backlit on a computer screen, but that is not the way that the readers see them. In the last fight scenes with black demons swarming around at night, the brightest thing on the page is the glare coming off of the gloss of the paper that the thing is printed on. Images made with only computer rendering looks great. So does pencil only work, but when the two are combined, they kill each other. It’s an interesting comic book if you can get past the mish mash art on the pages.

 

This last set in the collection of the color Saint episodes has Roger Moore going through the motions as Leslie Charteris hero just before Moore became James Bond. I find something charming about the rogueish Robin Hood archtype and some of these stories hit the mark. Others miss wide due to the drive to follow trends. There are a couple of good fair play mysteries and a couple of groaners that have borrowed too much from better shows like the Avengers.

Like most British TV of the time, the same sets are obviously used again and again and British actors flub around trying to act like American characters. The two-part Vendetta for the Saint has a character with a bad mishmash of an accent, before getting crushed in the conclusion. It’s interesting stuff, but by now, painfully dated.