The Last Battle, One-Shot – Review

By: Tito Faraci (writer) and Dan Brereton (illustrator)

The Story: A Roman General in the Gallic Wars faces his former pupil.

Four Things: 

1. Nice period piece that adds some variety to your reading pile. – It’s nice to see creators using the medium of comics to do things besides telling superhero stories.  Even when we get “other” comics, they’re still usually made to appeal to geeky guys somehow.  The Last Battle is very different.  It seems to be a fictionalization of a snippet of true events (as “true” as anything in a 2000+ year old manuscript can be).  The central theme is that of a Roman General who is fighting in Gaul (i.e. France) against the barbarian hordes and is sent on a mission to kill a particular barbarian leader who was trained by the General as a boy.  So, it’s kinda like a father being told to hunt his own son.  Clearly, Faraci has lots of room to augment the historical story by doing things like giving the General a “dirty dozen” strike force and giving the barbarian leader a strong/proud barbarian woman, and that makes the comic more fun to read.  But, unless you read those awful biography comics, The Last Battle is a nice change of pace.

2. Dry and stuck between history & fiction. – This is a pretty dry comic and there was never much emotional connection with the characters (for me).  One area where it struggles is in straddling the line between history and fiction.  While the added elements were kinda neat, they come at the expense of it being a straight up history story.  I read a LOT of history books and many of them are dreadfully dry affairs, but they always have the saving grace of teaching you LOTS of names, dates and places that you can use to impress your friends later (or RULE at trivia games).  The actually history portion of The Last Battle is pretty light and mostly things I already knew and since the “add-ons” didn’t cause an emotional connection with the characters, I probably would have preferred a more straight-up account of the Gallic Wars painted by Brereton.

Franken-Castle #21 – Review

By: Rick Remender (writer), Dan Brereton (art) & Joe Caramanga (letters)

Back-up story: Remender (writer), Andrea Mutti & Luca Malisan (art)

The Story: Franken-Castle turns back into good, old-fashioned Punisher.

What’s Good: Everything comes to an end in comics and Rick Remender has caught a lot of flak from old-time Punisher fans for this Franken-Castle experiment.  That is very unfair as we should applaud comic creators who attempt to do something new and different, even if it is understood that the party must end eventually and the furniture must go back into its starting positions.

The story revolves entirely around how Franken-Castle morphs back into plain, old Frank Castle – The Punisher.  And to make this journey, he gets a huge co-starring role from his League of Monsters compatriots.  That was a lot of fun and almost poignant because you just know that we won’t be seeing The Punisher hanging out with a bunch of monsters that much in the future.  Probably the best part of the story was how Remender handles Franken-Castle losing all the metal and tubes all over him: he just ignores it.  You literally turn the page and that crap is gone which was nice because no one needed to see an unnecessary scene in a surgical suite as the monsters cut away the metal.

And, then if you were wondering whether this “new” Punisher would be the dude you’ve gotten used to over the last 30 years in the Marvel U., Remember gives us a classically styled Punisher short-story that both reestablishes the character AND makes the reader feel that the character is in capable hands with Remender.

Thor: God-Size Special #1 – Review

By Matt Fraction (writer) Doug Braithwaite (art) Dan Brereton (art) Mike Allred (art) Andy Troy (color) Laura Allred (color) Frank D’armata (Color)

The Story: After realizing that their collective memories of their former compatriot Skurge the Executioner have been manipulated, Thor, Balder and Loki travel the nine worlds to uncover who or what is behind this treachery. After a run in with Hela, the Mistress of the Dead, and battles with a horde of dark elves and a grumpy storm giant, the team finally learns who’s behind their maligned memories. But they quickly realize that not just their memories are at stake, but rather the fate of all creation.

What’s Good: Well, I’ve been sitting here for a few minutes thinking and flipping through this comic to recall or find something that I thought was good and nothing is really surfacing. The beginning and the end of this comic that deals with the fate of Skurge are the best parts of this read. Matt Fraction does a good job of painting him as a tragic hero. But this is only about eight pages of this oversize issue, which brings me to….

What’s Not So Good: This one-shot suffers from relying on strong characterization, rather than an actual good story when the former relies on the latter. The retelling of Asgardian family dynamics while Thor and his siblings  fight enemies that seem to come from nowhere and have no connection to the task at hand is tedious and boring. Fraction’s characterizations come off as pretentious and drain any sense of adventure that might arise in this story.

The idea of bringing in different artists to tell different parts of this story is novel, but doesn’t really bring anything to the over all tale. Sure, there are some pretty panels, but not pretty enough to save this comic.

Concussion: I’ve enjoyed all of Fraction’s Thor one-shots save this one. There’s too much back story and retelling of Asgardian personalities and not enough action and adventure. In the previous one-shots we were shown something novel about Thor’s persona, like his rebelliousness for example. But here we’re just treated to Thor the cliche, rendered by different artists.  Pass on this one.

Grade: D+

-Rob G.