Giant Comics Round-Up

I stopped by the library the other day, just to see if they had anything new, and I happened across the graphic novel section, which actually had a fairly decent selection of collected comics. As I've said before, I balk at paying $20 for soemthing that will take me an hour to read, particularly if I don't know whetehr I'll like it. You can't beat free, though, so I checked a bunch of stuff out of the library to see what it's like. I'll collect them together here so as not to swamp the blog with separate comic posts.

100 Bullets I originally picked up just the first volume of this, and then went back the next day to get the next eight. This is good stuff.

The set-up is this: people in bad situations are approached by a mysterious stranger calling himself Agent Graves. He offers them a briefcase containing a picture of a person who has ruined their life, a gun, and 100 untraceable bullets. He promises that those bullets put them entirely above the law-- any investiagation into anything they do with the gun will stop as soon as the bullets are identified.

At first glance, it seems like Graves is just playing a game, to see how far people are willing to go when given the opportunity to take the law into their own hands. It quickly becomes clear that there's more going on, though. Graves and an associate of his calling himself Mr. Shepherd are linked to a shadowy and powerful organization called the Trust, and there's a dangerous and secret war afoot, with complicated allegiances and hidden agendas on all sides.

This is an extremely violent series, with gore aplenty and a high body count, but it's very well done. The plot is nicely twisty, the characters are interestingly complicated, and the art is pretty good. I ordered all the available volumes from Amazon last night (weirdly, volumes 3 and 8 don't show up on a search for "100 Bullets" and volume 8 isn't available new, though they claim to have it in a local Borders), and look forward to the next couple.

(Below: Astro City, Fables, and Lucifer)

Astro City was one of the things recommended when I asked for suggestions in the superhero genre, and they had the first volume in the library. They also had volumes four and five, but not two or three, but you get what you pay for.

I liked this quite a bit, too. It's somewhere between a straight superhero comic and Watchmen-- much more concerned with the inner lives of the heroes and the daily life of the ordinary people of Astro City than the conventional hero-ing. The big clashes with supervillains are almost relegated to the background, which to my mind makes it much more appealing than what I know of standard superhero stuff.

I ordered the first three volumes from Amazon last night, and will probably get more after that.

Fables. The recent 1001 Nights of Snowfall got a bunch of positive reviews recently from mainstream sorts of outlets, and it sounds fairly interesting. It's part of the Fables continuity, though, so I thought I probably ought to read some of the original stories first, before getting to the later ones (even though they're apparently prequels, and relatively independent).

The set-up here is that various characters from myth and legend are alive and well and living in the modern world. Old King Cole is the Mayor of Fabletown, but Snow White really runs things. Bigby Wolf is the Sherrif, Bluebeard maintains his castle, Prince Charming flits about leeching off rich women, and they maintain a farm in Upstate New York for those fables who can't pass for human. All of them were chased from their original homelands by a mysterious Adversary centuries ago, and have been hiding out in our world since.

This sounds very Neil Gaiman, but the execution is, well, sub-Gaiman. It seems like an inordinate amount of time is spent doing recaps and clumsy exposition, and there are some very ad hoc things about a lot of the characters and situations. Some of the setpieces are kind of entertaining, but three volumes in there really isn't much of an overall plot, and it's just not grabbing me the way the others did.

If it improves in subsequent volumes, make a case for it in the comments, and I might keep reading them out of the library. Otherwise, I think I'll probably pass on the rest of it.

Lucifer: Evensong. OK, this wasn't a library find, as I've been reading these collections as they come out. This is the final volume of the story, and plays more or less the same role as The Wake does for Sandman: it ties up most (but not all) of the loose ends left after the dramatic events of the previous volume.

While it's very well-done, there's really no drama here. It's sort of like a stand-alone version of the last third of Return of the King-- lots of touching farewell scenes, but no conflict. If some sort of accident had prevented the publication of this volume, I wouldn't feel terribly deprived-- the series as a whole is fantastic, but this is sort of a dispoable coda to the main action.

By all means, though, buy and read the earlier volumes. It's great stuff.