Miscellanea and Ephemeron
J LHLS Archives: October 2006
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Gen13 #1
Writer: Gail Simone
Art: Talent Caldwell and Matt "Batt" Banning
Publisher: DC/Wildstorm PressReview by Chad Denton
Nostalgia and relaunches are the watchwords these days in mainstream comics, and to go along with their reconstruction of the main DC line in the wake of the "Infinite Crisis" crossover/event, DC Comics is also rebuilding the Wildstorm line of titles from the ground-up.
"Gen13" is a surprising choice for a revamping for a number of reasons, and in fact if DC wasn't attempting a line-wide Wildstorm revival, it seems doubtful we'd even be discussing this title. First, "Gen13" was a thinly-veiled "X-Men" for the 1990s that became associated, because of the manufactured buzz around it and its 90s Image-style uber-cheesecake art, with some of the worst excesses of the comic industry boom of the mid-1990s. Then there's the fact that Gen13, in style and content, was very much a comic book for the 1990s -- there was even a character named "Grunge," which just really, really displays short-term thinking. Finally, there was the controversy over Rainmaker, a lesbian character that seemed to exist only to draw in the fanboys (although, curiously enough, Grunge, whose buff body usually went about topless, was very much a beefcake counterpoint). Despite these problems, "Gen13" was a title with promise, especially under Adam Warren who pushed the title into a niche that wouldn't have been thought possible to anyone who simply saw the basic concept on paper. Still, "Gen13" would have bee among my last choices for a serious attempt at revival. [more]
Posted by Chad Denton @ 08:02 PM PST [Link]
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Socrates in Love
By Kyochi Katayama
English Translation by Akem Wegmuller
English Language version published by
Viz Media, San Francisco 2005Review by Kelly S. Taylor
Socrates in Love is a sad, occasionally funny, frequently very wise, little book. Despite the utter simplicity of the plot (boy meets girl, boy loses girl) and the youth of its main characters, it is a mature exploration of the nature of love. In my opinion, it's the sort of book that Eric Segal's Love Story wanted to be but was too brashly bourgeoisie to truly achieve. [more]
Posted by Kelly S Taylor @ 05:08 PM PST [Link]
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Ontology on the go!
"Ontology on the Go!"
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