BC Refugees Blog

THE WALKING DEAD Volume 1: DAYS GONE BYE (Image Comics, trade paperback) . . . Robert Kirkman, writer. Tony Moore, Art. THE WALKING DEAD (AMC television) premieres Sunday, October 31, 2010 at 10 p.m. EST I can't remember being this excited about a new television series for a long, long time. I'm very happy to see THE WALKING DEAD adapted for the small screen and invading homes nationwide this very Halloween night. I'm happy on a number of levels: 1) This well-deserved body of work should find a bigger audience through the medium of television, bringing more recognition to the team of Kirkman and Moore and also broadening the market for 21st century horror. There's been a renaissance of horror titles in the comics field in recent years - - - and the first zombie entry from comics to transition onto cable television could possibly open the doors for still more in the years to come. 2) Just as Hollywood has been mining the comics field for years and developing excell...

(Beginning a series of articles exploring the offerings of smaller publishers) ABATTOIR #1 of 6 (Radical Comics, October 27, 2010) Created by Darren Lynn Bousman. Written by Rob Levin & Troy Peteri. Illustrated by Bing Cansino. Mature Readers. This book had me feeling apprehensive before I found my way to the last page. That's a sincere compliment to the creators, because I've read and viewed enough horror storylines to be just a little bit jaded and normally immune to being moved by such fare. ABATTOIR managed to evoke a shiver from me; and while it was uncomfortable it wasn't enough to deter me from coming back for more spine-tingles. ABATTOIR is only scheduled for a bi-monthly release, with Issue #2 due in December. The combination of atmospheric art and coloring plus solid story-telling make this new title hard to put down and forget about for 60 days. It's going to take a full year before this story plays out to the anticipated grisly...

Avengers:EMH opening theme & closing credits. The new Avengers cartoon, story edited by Marvel writer Chris Yost, has begun. I recommend starting with the 20 5-minute mini-episodes that were done as prequels to the premiere. They’re not essential in the sense that you can certainly enjoy and understand the series without them – with one exception: the explanation of why Hawkeye’s in The Vault in ep. 1 – but they’re very good and they flesh out the background of the story. The Captain America shorts, set in WWII, are the best ones (look for the cameo in the Howling Commandos scene) but even the Ant-Man eps are pretty cool. You can view the mini-episodes on Disney XD's Avengers page , which for some reason wants to show you the last episode first. To view them in order, you have to scroll down and watch them from the bottom up. (I think the mini-eps are available in Comcast and Verizon’s “On Demand” too, but I haven’t verified that.) The initial two-part story in the full epis...

Black Widow 1-6: Marjorie Liu's first (and only) arc runs through the first five issues. It's a decent enough spy story with good characterization, but there's never really any doubt which side Natasha is on and the mechanism for raising that doubt -- she's collecting intel on her friends! -- has been done before with Black Panther and Batman. The first part of Duane Swierczynski's story in #6 was more to my liking, throwing us into the middle of an already exciting story and giving us a few pages to wonder about which character is Natasha and the rest of the issue to wonder what she's up to. So far "Hawkeye & Mockingbird" is the far superior Marvel spy book, but at least this one is improving. Gotham City Sirens 11-16: Paul Dini only wrote one of these last six issues (#11). I know he's busy with "Tower Prep" and "Ultimate Spider-Man" on TV, and that's fine -- I hear good things about "Tower Prep" but hav...

Supergirl: Death & The Family TPB: Although this book has the “New Krypton” banner on it, it’s only tangentially connected (mainly in the Superwoman origin story.) Instead, as the title suggests, Sterling Gates and Jamal Igle tell stories of the family Kara has created for herself on Earth, including Lana Lang, Linda Lang (Kara’s new secret identity) and the new Inspector Henderson. I was originally going to say that this was a good jumping on point for the current Supergirl team, but I found out in New York that they’re leaving. Still, these stories are good and the issues of the following story arc I’ve read are even better so I still recommend it. I’m sorry to see Gates and Igle go – they couldn’t tell me what they’re doing next – but new writer Nick Spencer (Jimmy Olsen, Morning Glories, Existence 2.0/3.0) is very good and new artist Bernard Chang is also terrific. Girl Comics HC: Part of the “Women of Marvel” initiative, this is an anthology by all female creators. All antho...