Xerxes: The Fall of the House of Darius and the Rise of Alexander #1

Xerxes #1 (The Fall of the House of Darius and the Rise of Alexander)

Written and Illustrated by Frank Miller
Colors by Alex Sinclair
Logo Design by Steve Miller
Published by Dark Horse Comics

The Wait Is Over

Twenty years after the release of Frank Miller’s opus 300, the master has returned to ancient Greece to continue the story of the god-king Xerxes. This series had been promised as a sequel to 300 but the first chapter actually takes place prior to the events of King Leonidas at Thermopylae. So Xerxes is a prequel/sequel hybrid instead.

Miller’s art is unchanged. His brilliant use of shadows, blinding colors and splatters of ink are just like the art was in 300. Miller studied the art techniques of the Greeks, Syrians, and Persians at the time of 490 BC and masterfully blends it into an epic retelling of war and honor. But visual appeal can only get you so far in a comic book.

Issue 1 of 5

I’ve been eagerly awaiting this book for quite some time. But when I first read 300, in was in a collected over-sized form. Unlike a majority of trades, 300 was published in a way that looked like an over-sized square children’s picture book. That same kiddie book format is how Miller has rendered this continuing story.

Unfortunately, Dark Horse decided not to release this book in the format Miller obviously intended. All of the proportions are thrown off. It’s like when you watch an old TV show from the 70s on a big screen 2018 model television. The characters look like they are being seen through a fun house mirror.

This change in format often makes the characters on film sound funny too. Obviously, there’s no sound in Xerxes, except what is in the readers mind. However, using a rectangular standard format instead of square like with Archaia’s Mouse Guard makes for some tough reading. The word bubbles and narration are so tiny in this issue that magnifying glasses should be sold with every copy.

Ready Upon Completion

As much as I am excited that the story Frank Miller began two decades ago is finally seeing print, I am going to wait for the entire book to be collected into one volume. I have very good reason to believe that Xerxes will be released in the correct format that Miller intended as that is what Dark Horse did 20 years ago with 300. Plus with the jumping storyline throughout the Persian Wars, I think the collected volume with be easier to follow especially with such a massive cast of characters.

Frank Miller proves in this first issue that he’s still got it. I just wish that Dark Horse had as much faith in him as this reader does and would have released this issue in a 9×9 sized. The production move would have made this issue much more easier to read. And in terms of plotting, the pacing of the book would flow much more smoother, like blood from the spear of a Persian warrior.

I’ll just have to wait until later this year in collected form to finally appreciate it complete.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

   It was with great sadness and irony that the day my wife and I choose to see the new Star Wars film, it was the day Carrie Fisher died. Work and holiday emergencies postponed our seeing the movie earlier. It's just how it worked out.
   Even 2 weeks after the movie debuted and on a middle of the afternoon workday, our showing was still packed. Critics have called this the best Star Wars film since either Empire Strikes Back or A New Hope. So, let's dig into the specifics of the movie and find out if the critics were right or just caught up in the hype.
    Rogue One has the unique distinction of being both a prequel and a sequel. The film tells the untold story of the construction of the Death Star, which had begun at the end of Episode III, along with how the Rebellion obtained the schematics to the Empire's super weapon just prior to Episode IV. The film also answers a lot of burning questions that fans of A New Hope have been asking for years, such as:

• Why would the Empire allow for a simple design flaw of a 2 meters exhaust port to potentially destroy their super expensive mega-weapon?
• Why does the Rebellion only have a small handful of ships to go against the Death Star at the Battle of Yavin?
• and there's several other questions I could post, but that would spoil many of the surprises built into the film.

   

    Speaking of surprises, there are references, Easter eggs, and cameos galore in the film. One that I will spoil involves on of the main characters- Grand Moff Tarkin! The actor who portrayed Tarkin, Peter Cushing, died almost 30 years ago. Yet, through the magic of CGI, the veteran actor lives again in a pretty convincing yet subtly creepy fashion. Along with Cushing's character, I counted at least 3 other smaller roles done in similar fashion. But honestly, I think it helped keep a decorum of continuity between Rogue One and A New Hope which was filmed 40 years prior. 

      I enjoyed Rogue One. It was great getting to see some big budget production battles. It think they rival and surpass the prequels! I enjoyed how the film captured the magic of the original trilogy and finally, a film without any annoying characters like Jar Jar Binks! Alan Tudyk's (Firefly) voice as the droid K-2SO and Martial Arts master Donnie Yen's (Ip Man) portrayal as blind warrior  in tune with the Force Chirrut Îmwe stole many scenes. 

     

    So was Rogue One the best Star Wars film ever? Nope- because technically, it's not a Star Wars movie. It's set in the Star Wars Universe but it's really a stand alone film. You don't have to even know what's been going on prior or afterwards to enjoy Rogue One- but it helps! 

     The film pulls no punches and to many Star Wars fans, Rogue One has shown them that Disney has no intentions of turning George Lucas' universe into a version of It's a Small World with aliens. The House of Mouse is working on other 'Star Wars Story' films to release at a rate of about 1 a year. If they continue to follow the formula of Rogue One, then the fate of a galaxy far, far away is in very good hands.

    Worth Consuming

     Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

OK- fine. I'll rank them...

                1. Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

                2. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

                3. Episode IV: A New Hope

                4. Episode VII: The Force Awakens

                5. Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

                6. Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

                7. Episode II: Attack of the Clones

                8: Episode I: The Phantom Menace

    There... happy?

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

    Have you ever heard of String Theory? It's a principle of quantum mechanics in which you look at time as a string. On one end of the string is the past and on the other is the future. Now imagine that you put a little red bead on the string. That bead represents you in the present and as time moves on, the bead keeps moving to the right: the future. 

   Well, if you take that string and roll it into a ball parts of the past will touch the future. At the same time, some part of the past and future are touching the present as well. Some say this is how you'd be able to explain time travel. But this idea also represents how stories with time paradoxes can operate. In these type of stories, dinosaurs end up in the modern era or Ben Franklin goes on a walk with Marilyn Monroe and Brad Pitt in 1600 Venice. 

   So why have I am discussing temporal physics when I should be reviewing Sin City: A Dame to Kill For which isn't about time travel but a gritty crime noir film based on a series of comics by Frank Miller?

  A Dame to Kill For was like someone took all of Miller's Sin City tales and threw them into a blender. Characters who were killed off in the last film appear in starring roles. Stories that happened in the last film haven't occurred in this one yet even though some of those previous events did. Don't even get me started on one character whose new appearance is explained by a plastic surgery that happened in the last film but didn't happen prior to the beginning of this movie. It's all very confusing.

   The problem with all of this is that instead of making Sin City(2) either a prequel or a sequel. Co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller decided to make this film both! I'm pretty sure they teach not to do that in Film Making 101. But with the scrambled timeline, you really don't need to see the first film to understand what goes on in a Dame to Kill For.

   If you can get over the initial confusion of the warped timeline, A Dame to Kill For is a pretty good movie. But it's no Sin City! Both films use creative CGI and green screen techniques to make this look like a comic book comic to life. The acting, especially of Mickey Rourke as Marv and Powers Booth as the slimy Sen. Roarke was quite good. But there was a spark missing from the formula that just didn't make the second film hold a candle to the original. 

   With lots of gore, sex, profanity, and violence, this is a gritty drama done in the classic Frank Miller fashion. So, that being said, this ain't for kids. But if you are Frank Miller fan like I am, you will enjoy this. 

   Rodriquez is from that school of film like Tarantino in which they both love to play around with director's cuts and reissue 'definitive' editions of their movies every so often. I think if Robert Rodriguez would take both Sin City films and re-edit them into a way that they were as one film in correct temporal order, you'd have a much more superior film that's more enjoyable to watch and it probably won't have you pausing the movie every 5 minutes and going on Wikipedia to find out what just happened.

    I'm waiting for that edition and hopefully, it will come packaged with one of Miller's Sin City graphic novels as a bonus.

   Worth Consuming

   Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.
   

The Fog

   This Dark Horse graphic novel was written as a prequel to the 2005 remake of the Fog. However, as this incorporation ideas and story structure that John Carpenter wanted to include in his classic 1980 version, this book can act as a prequel to that film as well. That actually works quite well for me as I've seen the original (which scared the hell outta me) but not the remake.

    The prequel starts in China with a group of Shanghai traders fleeing a mysterious fog. They arrive in a coastal town in post-Civil War California, where they work in the town's mines and perform odd jobs. When one of the residents begins a series of gruesome experiments on one of the boat people, they unwittingly unleash the ancient curse hidden in the fog that the immigrants so desperately fled China from.

    The Fog was very good, but it wasn't great. (Which is what many people say of the original film from 1980.) The writing was good, the art was fantastic, and there was a great scare factor in the book, but something was missing. The story needed a little more tweaking in terms of plotting and pacing. Some scenes, that in my opinion seem unnecessary, drag on for several pages. Whereas when the story gets to the climax, and we have a chance to truly grasp what was done to cause the fog to come to America and curse the coastal town, everything seems rushed and vital information is either forgotten or glossed over in order to meet the page requirement of the book. 

    If this was a miniseries instead of a single volume comprised of 88 pages (really about 80 if you remove the forward and afterword) then I think more time could have been given to flesh out this story better. Like Carpenter's original film, this book was fraught with missing opportunities...

    I found this book at Ollie's for dirt cheap. If you don't find it there, Amazon has it few literal pennies on the dollar. This was a fun book and I probably should have waited for closer to Halloween to read this. But the awesome Mike Mignola (Hellboy) cover and dynamic palette by Dave Stewart (also of Hellboy fame) was too tempting for me to wait.

   Worth Consuming

   Rating: 8 out of 10 stars
   

    

Marvel Universe Live! #1 (Family Comic Friday)

This is the prequel comic that came with admission to the Marvel Universe Live! production I went to in July. The comic covers the how and why Thor goes in search of Loki and the Tesseract at the beginning of the show. This comic also features an anachronism. In the production, Peter Parker presents Tony Stark with a device called the ‘Lectro Link.’ In the show, this seems to be a completely new and cool gadget for Tony to play with. But in this comic prelude, Iron Man assigns Spider-man with the job of figuring out the bugs in its design. So, which was it?

The art is very good and clean. There’s not a lot of storyline or dialogue, but it does flesh out some of the storyline that is missing from the beginning of MUL. This issue also ties in the Avengers movie with this multi-media event.

I mentioned this earlier (in July) but I would’ve liked to have the comic before I went to the show. I think what Marvel should’ve done is when someone buys their tickets online then they are sent this comic as a teaser. I understand that if you buy tickets less than 10 days ahead of time, this wouldn’t work and it was used as a ploy to garner interest in buying a program of the show. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have like to have gotten my hands on this at least more than 40 minutes before the show started. (I’m usually anti-web comics but in this case, a code for fans to read the comic beforehand with the promise of a print copy to pick up at will call would’ve worked just as well for me in this case.)

Worth Consuming

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

GI Joe: Retaliation #3 (Official Movie Prequel)

sketch variant of issue #3

 

  While training under Snake Eyes’ Blind Master, we delve deeper into the origin of Snake Eyes. Here, we see Snake training to be a ninja and when his master is killed by Storm Shadow, he takes a vow of silence. We later see him joining up to be a Joe. So, here’s my question- if you take a vow of silence, how in the heck do you join the Army? I would think they’d require you to speak up during the application process and I am sure the drill sergeant would be pissed if you refused to response to his orders by not replying “Sir, Yes Sir!” At least in the Marvel Comics, Snake had joined the Army before becoming a ninja and lost his ability to speak during Vietnam. So again, I ask, how did this happened if he’s not spoken a word for years prior to ever enlisting in the movie universe?

 

Other than that nagging question I enjoyed this issue very much. There’s still that secret voice on the other end of the line talking with Gen. Hawk and I’m not sure who it is. We are informed that this “voice” is a sort of pro scout, seeking out the best of the best to join the Joes. But, I’m still not any further into learning this mystery man’s ID.

 

Worth Consuming.

 

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

GI Joe: Retaliation #2 (Official Movie Prequel)

Issue #2 starts offs with Road Block in the brig for knocking Gen. Hawk’s lights out. But Snake Eyes has a plan of some sorts, but since he can’t talk, we don’t really know what those plans detail.

 

You remember on Star Trek when the Captain or Mr. Spock would bend the rules a little in order to get the job done without totally running ramrod all over their prime directives? Well, that happens here, when Hawk and Scarlett allow Road Block to be released from the brig, but forbid him to go rescue Mainframe, unless he can get past the entire Joe squad. Well, thanks to a convenient power outage, Road Block escapes with the American Ninja on his tail.

 

Along the way, we see flashbacks of Road Block’s Childhood. As Marvin Hinton, a displaced Louisiana teen, the future soldier is bullied on the streets of D.C. In hopes of defending himself and maybe earn a little payback, Hinton goes to a local gym where a fellow class mate is an aspiring boxer. Determined to not give up, Hinton learns from his new pal how to pick himself up when knocked down- and bulks up in the process. By the end of the issue, we learn that the young boxer later becomes Mainframe. No wonder Road Block wants to head back to Borovia to save his comrade!

 

But in Borovia, Road Block learns on the ultimate fate of his friend and ends up running into a ninja master and Snake Eyes! Now Road Block must decide- return to the PIT in disgrace and a possible court martial or join up with Snake Eyes’ clan and learn to channel that hostility into a martial art.

 

The decision is left as a cliff hanger, but I think we know where this is going. Don’t we?

 

A much better issue, the art is very good. But the real star of the book is the fantastic back story into Road Block’s past. I am very much looking for to issue 3. More than that, the anticipation to watch the movie to which this mini-series is the prequel to is killing me.

 

Worth Consuming.

 

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

 

GI Joe: Retaliation #1 (Official Movie Prequel)



sketch variant cover

 

I got this series in November of 2012. I figured that I’d read these before going to the movie. Well, the movie came and went and I didn’t read these yet. So, I wanted for DVD and Redbox. The film hit Redbox and I still hadn’t read the books. So, I waited for HBO. But by the time GI Joe: Retaliation came on, I no longer subscribed to HBO. For a while, I just figured that I’d never get to this.

 

Well, just last night, the movie showed on EPIX- a movie channel I do get on Satellite. So, with it safely in my DVR, I figured now is the best time to finally read this prequel mini-series before watching the film.

 

The prequel takes place before events of the sequel- obviously. But I am not sure if this prequel occurs in between the first GI Joe movie and Retaliation or before. I say this because Gen. Hawk is drawn to look like actor Dennis Quaid, who played the character in the first film. But I thought Bruce Willis was tackling that part?! There’s a mysterious person that Hawk is talking to on the phone on a couple of pages- could that be Bruce Willis’ character? The “voice” on the line seems to have some sort of ulterior motive with Hawk, so is it a Juggler from the Pentagon? I’m not sure, but it will probably be revealed either by prequel’s end or in the sequel.

 

The first issue is about a mission involving Road Block, Snake Eyes, and Mainframe. Its Mainframe’s first ever mission as a Joe, but when he’s captured by a clan of Ninja (yes- that’s the plural of Ninja. Enjoy your vocab lesson for the day.) and the rest of the squad is ordered to retreat, Road Block takes it really hard. So hard he ends up in the brig after decking Hawk. It looks like a court martial for the soldier unless Snake Eyes plan for a rescue and redemption can save the day.

 

Since Snake Eyes doesn’t talk, and that plot ends the book on a cliff hanger of sorts, I won’t know what happens until issue 2. So far, the prequel is pretty good. I appreciate some of the subtle points I would’ve missed if not for reading the entire Marvel series. I like the first Joe movie, but I was very confused about things I thought I remember as a kid. With 155 issues of Joe under my belt, I can now pick up on those Easter eggs.

 

I can’t wait for issue 2. Hopefully, it will be full of more neat cameos, great action, and maybe a revelation as to just who Hawk was talking with on the phone.

 

Worth Consuming.

 

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.