Joe Rice Media Review 9/28/06

First off, I just started Satsuma Gishiden, but it's so far frickin' awesome. It's a dirty, grimy, gory samurai manga. It opens with a convict being torn to pieces by samurai as part of a game to take his liver. That right there's enough to tell you if you'd like this 70s bloodsterpiece. So far I obviously do.

I also tried Silent Ghost, which seems to be another old-school kung fu epic, but I couldn't finish it. The art was sketchy, that I don't mind. But the coloring was so weird and muddy that the combination of the two (added to very wordy dialogue) made it a chore to get through. So I didn't.

Daredevil was good and kickass and perhaps the only time a matador has been threatening to anyone other than a PETA member. Uhh, that metaphor didn't work. I'm tired and not on my game tonight, folks. But Brubaker's on his game, Lark's on his game, and we get a Matt Murdock as James Bond kinda riff here with some interesting stuff going on behind the scenes. Also, very glad that Michael Murdock was a red herring. Good comics.

Eternals sported a twist I should have seen coming but didn't. This is fun adventure comics, a decent b-movie that you'd rent and not feel bad about. The art, however, is just beautiful. If I seem underwhelmed, I'm not, really. I look forward to this book. I'm just too tired to be too enthusiastic, I think.

I'll be honest, I'm having trouble remembering where all the characters in Punisher came from. I remember Rawlins, I remember the Russian hardass, but Yorkie . . .the IRA thing? And O'Brien? Not sure which girl she is. Nonetheless, it's a hell of a story. I don't get the people that don't buy the Punisher because he's morally abhorrent to them. That's the point. He's supposed to be. But the stories are good. Are fake people's morals more important than stories?

Batman. Christ. I dunno. This issue had none of the formal experimentations or twists that made the last so delightful. The art is very hard for me to look at. There were a few cool touches, like the Batcostumes and Batman's dressing down of his son (dishonored your sensei, etc). But I wasn't really feeling this book like I wanted to. It felt like . . .more current DC superhero melodrama. I dunno, man. That's sad to me. Last issue was so awesome. This one's just good at best, I think. Maybe I need to read it again.

I watched that Heroes show. What a lazy, easy-way-out show it seems to be. Sure, one episode, but . . .it seems so EASY. "We need sex appeal!" "Make a character a stripper!" "We need schlub appeal!" "Make characters 'lovable' losers the fatass nerds at home will love!" Some of the acting's OK, but I found myself agreeing with the "mean" brother about his dipshit little brother. The cheerleader I found interesting, some of the Japanese fella's dialogue was cute (but, really, "Hiro"? Ugh!), but I didn't really give a crap otherwise. Lisa might be hooked so maybe I'll see next week's episode, but I certainly wouldn't seek it out.