Game of Thrones #7 – Quick Review

By: George R.R. Martin (story), Daniel Abraham (adaptation), Tommy Patterson (art), Marshall Dillon (letters) & Ivan Nunes (colors)

The Story: About midway through the first novel we find the Imp hanging out with the Night Watch and Ned Stark in King’s Landing.

Quick Review: Now that the second season of HBO’s excellent Game of Thrones TV show is underway, it makes sense to touch base with the comic adaptation of the first novel in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series.

The story itself kinda “it is what it is.”  This is a straight adaptation from the novels, so there aren’t any surprises to be found.  Adapting a novel like GoT is always going to be tricky because knowing what to include, what to leave out and when to add breaks between issues is always going to be an inexact science.  Much like Marvel’s adaptation of Stephen King novels, this comic is kinda written for a whole different audience than the “Wednesday crowd.”  This is a comic to have on your pull list to share with a significant other or family members who have enjoyed the TV show or the novels.  Plus, it’ll make a splendid collected edition someday that’ll sell well in the bookstore.

A Game of Thrones #1 – Review

By: George R.R. Martin (story), Daniel Abraham (comic script adaptation), Tommy Patterson (art), Marshall Dillon (letters) and Ivan Nunes (colors)

The Story: Dynamite is kinda big on their licensed properties, so it’s not surprising to see a comic adaptation of A Game of Thrones in the wake of the successful HBO series.

Review: A couple of caveats that I should toss out first. One, I’m not usually a big fan of comics based on licensed materials whether they are new material (like Star Wars) or adaptations of existing media properties (like The Stand).  They just tend to not be my thing, but I wanted to pick this up to see Tommy Patterson’s art because Tommy is a twitter buddy of mine (and a wonderfully funny dude).  So, that’s caveat #2– I have a bias toward one of the creators.

It makes me happy to say that I think Patterson’s art is the best thing in this issue.  He accomplishes “basic task #1,” which is to make most of the characters look distinctive.  That’s no small task when you can’t put a character in Iron Man armor or have one be Hulk-shaped and you have to get all of your character designs approved by George R.R. Martin (as I’m pretty sure Patterson did).  Let’s just say that drawing a story like Game of Thrones is challenging for an artist.  He also gets an appropriate amount of storytelling and action into the panels.

I’ve heard a couple of complaints from the blogosphere and podcast universe about how the characters don’t look the same as the HBO series.  I actually think that’s a good thing because I can’t see any point in doing an adaptation of the novel that looks the same as TV series.  If you were going to do that, you might as well just do a fumetti story.  So, this was different, and it did a few clever things with some characters that the HBO series couldn’t do due to budget constraints.  And, there’s also the fact that HBO is only in ~9MM households, so despite the creative class thinking that everyone watches HBO, a lot more people have read the novels than seen the series.

I will say that I don’t think the coloring is doing this issue any favors.  Frankly, I’d have preferred to just see Patterson’s inks in the first portion of the issue that takes place in Winterfell.  The colors just make those scenes a little too bright and shiny and aren’t appropriate.

As for the story, I’ve enjoyed the novels and the HBO series, so I kinda know what will come next.  It wasn’t the smoothest flowing narrative, but adapting a novel to comic form isn’t easy.

Conclusion: If you’re a fan of the novel, this will be a fun graphic adaptation with nice linework.  It isn’t going to set the world on fire, but you could find much worse things to read.

Grade: B-

-Dean Stell

Follow Dean on Twitter.

Follow WCBR on Twitter and Facebook.

Vampirella #1 – Review

By: Eric Trautman (writer), Wagner Reis (art), Marshall Dillon (letters) and Inlight Studio (colors)

The Story: Vampirella gets updated for a modern age and sets out to battle some problematic vampires.

What’s Good: The art is pretty good.  The characters all look good and appropriate.  No oddly proportioned bodies.  Everything is nice and dark and moody.  This art will work for this series.

What’s Not So Good: Pretty much everything else.  It isn’t bad per se, but the overall direction of this comic is a little troubling.  Do a Google image search on Vampirella.  Chances are you are going to get a lot of cheesecake.  So when you slap the name “Vampirella” on the cover and have cheesecake cover art, you have some expectations of getting the 1970’s style Archie Goodwin/Frank Frazetta goodness.  I wanted a slight amount of campiness and I wanted cheesecake from this title.  Instead what we are served under the deceiving cover is an okay female vigilante story.  Vampirella now wears normal clothing and is a vampire killer.  And there is nothing wrong with that, but they just shouldn’t call it Vampirella.  Of course, if they called it something else, it probably wouldn’t sell very well.

The biggest problem with this book is that without the camp and cheesecake, there isn’t much to differentiate it in a very crowded comics landscape.  What we have is a mixture of Blade, Buffy and Batwoman.  Except those stories are already written.  I don’t need another one.  When I read a comic that isn’t Marvel/DC, I really want something that is edgier than what corporate editors at Marvel or DC would feel comfortable with…and this comic didn’t deliver.

Skull-Kickers #2 – Review

By: Jim Zubkavich (writer), Edwin Huang (art), Misty Coats (colors) & Marshall Dillon (letters)

The Story: The big-bald-dude/rampaging-dwarf continue their adventure to recover the body of a murdered noble.

What’s Good: “Romp…”  That is the word that best describes this comic.  The first issue of Skull-kickers was a little hard to review because of the hype surrounding it (with the first issue getting bid up on eBay before it even shipped).  In reading #1, there was a tendency to have a, “Well, it’s good, but it isn’t all that.” And some of that reaction was probably just blowback against the hype-train because (in a vacuum) issue #1 was just fine.

Ironically, this second issue is much better than issue #1, yet it is getting no hype.  There were no breathless pantings on message boards about how “Wednesday is the big day for issue #2!!!!”

What makes this issue such fun is that it just keeps bouncing along and alternating between action and humor.  First we get a big fight scene of our duo trying to reclaim the corpse they’re looking for from a troll and horde of bad guys. Then we see them interrogating a survivor for information about the bad guy’s hideout by pretending to eat him (trust me, it’s funny), then there’s a battle with orcs and we wrap up with the comical image of these two guys sharing a horse.  The action is pretty good, but the humor is really this comic’s calling card.

Skullkickers #1 – Review

By: Jim Zubkavich (writer), Chris Stevens & Edwin Huang (pencils), Edwin Hang (inks), Misty Coats (colors) & Marshall Dillon (letters)

The Story: A pair of mercenaries finds adventure in a swords-n-shields tale.

What’s Good: This book has gotten a lot of hype and was selling for several times face value on eBay before it even hit comic shops on Wednesday.  Hype around a comic is usually a good thing because it plays into the periodic nature of comic books and creates anticipation for the reader.  But, hype can be problematic if the book fails to deliver.

Skullkickers is (so far) a very solid offering featuring two nameless mercenaries (a dwarf & human) set in a medieval setting.  There is lots to enjoy as the brash dwarf charges into battle yelling in typical dwarf-speak while his more calculating partner lays back a bit.  And, that is pretty much the set-up for this first issue as only the vaguest suggestions of the bigger story are revealed.

The issue also had a mystery: why does one of the mercenaries (hint: not the dwarf) have a pistol in a medieval setting?  Is he “out of time” somehow?  Is this setting more steam-punk than it would seem?

The art is solid: characters are recognizable, nice linework, etc.  There is no “ooooohhhhh, ahhhhhhh” moment for the art, but it effectively tells the story.  It is also a very respectable effort considering that the art team seems to be fairly new to comics.