 |
| Cover D by Sean Chen |
Frankly,
not a whole lot happens here except that the Master gloats over his
plan. I still think he's the former District Attorney who was once
the masked crime fighter known as the Clock, and that ultimately
there will be a confrontation between him and the more recent D.A.
Tony Quinn, the Black Bat.
I
have two friends also buying this series. Unfortunately, I'm pretty
much the only one enjoying it, I think. And the truth is that
there's not much here. Were I not such a fan of the original source
material and characters – even some that this series pretty much
introduced me to, such as Miss Fury and the Black Bat, I can easily
see myself agreeing with them.
 |
| Cover by Lucio Parillo |
“Breeding
and Refinement – The Return of the Jungle Lord, Part 6 of 6”
As
a conclusion The
Return of Tarzan,
Dynamite's expandaptation is almost unrecognizable. On its own
terms, it's not bad, I guess, but it's still not really doing it for
me and I can see myself dropping this title at some point in the near
future. It's just too distorted from what I consider to be canon.
There's just too much imposition of modern values and sensibilities
on the proper early-20th-c. world for my taste. Most egregiously
submitting to modern political correctness (a term that feels
archaic, but …) is the footnote on page 2 regarding “Rhodes”:
“Cecil Rhodes,
British imperialist who devastated much of Africa in the late 1800s.”
Yeah. There's a lot more to it than that.
There
is of course a far more active role for the lady-folk here, Jane and
La working as unlikely allies. The issue climaxes with a knife fight
between Tarzan and Rokoff, and ends with Tarzan and Jane kissing to
the cheers of the Waziri. If it weren't purportedly a retelling of
such a classic story, I'm sure I'd very much like it. But as it is,
this series has gone seriously off the rails for me.
 |
| Cover B by Fabiano Neves |
Barsoom
has two moons, yes, but not two suns!
At
this point, I'm just running out pre-ordered issues, and there's
nothing here to bring me back. There is cannibalism, as well as
Dejah Thoris ridiculously defeating an armored assassin. There are
also unexplained transitions such as between pages 13 and 14 –
you'll have to count the pages just like I did to see what I'm
talking about. I really wish modern comics would number their pages
like they used to, but that would call attention to just how few
there are. When there's such big and few panels on each page,
twentyish pages is just not enough. But that's a separate rant.
Honestly,
about the only thing I really like at this point about this book is
the look of Kantos Kan. Well, yeah, I like all-but-naked women as
much as the next guy, but there's got to be more than that to carry a
book like this.
I'm
sure I've encountered this before, but look at the fall-off in issue ratings when Arvid Nelson handed over the writing to Robert Place Napton with issue #11(?). And I guess
there aren't enough reviewers bothering with this book after issue
#16 to even show up on Comic Book Roundup. How's this book
still around?
Reviews?
 |
| Cover by Jay Anacleto |
Same
reason as above for why I even got this book. And this is my last
pre-ordered issue, so I'm outta here.
In
the interest of saying something good, the covers on this series are
very
nice. I really like the colors, the borders, and the pulpish painted
effect. I could almost be persuaded to get the issues based on that
alone. Actually, not.
But
seriously, this issue does seem to raise the level of the story a bit
with some psychological cat-and-mouse (or the Barsoomian equivalent,
“banth-and-ulsio”?). Nevertheless, I won't see how it progresses
from here. Really, the literal butchery including the final image of
a Thark's brains spilling out of his shattered skull and an image of
a Thark's spilled entrails at another point is thoroughly disgusting.
Moreover, this has to be a low point for John Carter, portrayed here
as the village idiot of Helium.
Reviews?
 |
| Cover B by Alex Ross |
Here
again, I'm just burning through pre-ordered issues, but I'm not
dropping this title for quality. There does seem to be a bit of a
drop in the quality of the art with this second issue, but I'm really
wanting this series for the story by Matt Wagner – which is great,
but I decided to just hold off on getting any more individual issues
and just buy the publisher's collection when it comes, hopefully
pretty quickly on the heels of the last issue of the series.
Cheers!,
and Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment