Friday, November 03, 2006

Friday's here... none too soon. Close out your week with a look at the latest issue of Jason Martin's SUPER REAL!

Here.

/Mason

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Two more for Thursday! The new DEAD @ 17 ongoing series and the second issue of A DUMMY'S GUIDE TO DANGER, both from Viper Comics!

Read up!

/Mason

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Keep on humpin'! It's Wednesday, and today brings a review of Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim's latest DUNGEON: TWILIGHT collection!

Read here, por favor.

/Mason

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

It's another two-fer! Reviews of TAG #2 and PIRATE TALES from Boom Studios!

Go check 'em out.

/Mason

Monday, October 30, 2006

Back to work after a long weekend! Start the week off with the SUICIDE GIRLS: ITALIAN VILLA dvd! It's another new Aisle Seat!

Read all about it!

/Mason

Sunday, October 29, 2006

CWR WEEKEND BLOG EXTRA

Welcome back to an all-new BLOG EXTRA. This weekend, we dance into manga-land, with three books from DrMaster Books!

First up is KING OF FIGHTERS 2003, VOL.1, written and drawn by Wing Yan and King Tung, with translation by Ken Li and Stephen Ip. Like many videogame adaptations to comics, KING OF FIGHTERS has a number of hurdles to overcome. The game characters are never defined much beyond their screen abilities, so finding a way to make them compelling on the page and giving them a decent story to get involved in can be very difficult. The only thing you can truly count on is that the action sequences will be elaborate and energetic. Unfortunately, this book struggles to make the characters come to life, and spends most of its 128 pages setting up the story, meaning the plot doesn’t really get started, either. The book looks fantastic, and it’s quite possible that the second volume goes further in presenting a more rounded story and character arc, but this is just a little too slow. With manga, 128 story pages don’t always go far, and that’s what happens here.

SNK VS. CAPCOM: SVC CHAOS VOL.3 &5 is written and drawn by Chi Wan Shum and is translated by Yun Zhao and adapted by Ken Li. Another videogame-based book, SVC CHAOS plays as a much stronger book. You could consider this something like an inter-company crossover, as the casts of two games come together to fight it out here; like a traditional superhero match-up, the players are brought to an alternate world and forced to go into battle both together and separately. The characters get the setup they need, the action is handled well, and most importantly, there’s enough story built in to why the characters have been brought to the parallel world that your attention is solidly held. It isn’t rocket science, and these types of stories never are, but it does deliver precisely what it should deliver, and that makes all the difference. I’d take this over another meeting of G.I. JOE and the TRANSFORMERS any day.

That’s it for this week. I’ll be back during the week with site updates, and back next weekend with another CWR WEEKEND BLOG EXTRA!

/Mason