dmstarz

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1.8 stars

Average score of 175 user reviews

1985 1 0

This is an intriguing contrast with Miller's Kick Ass.  Both books feature a protagonist in his mid teens with comic book fixations.  And I guess that's probably where the comparisons end.  Whilst Kick Ass is squeamishly realistic in terms of what happens when a kid really puts on a mask, this concentrates more on the dreams and mundane frustrations of teenage life.  Sure, at one point a load of Marvel villians suddently and bizarrely appear, but ignore that for a moment.  This book really excel...

1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

Daredevil 6 0

Stan Lee is at his best when he's creating inner conflicts for his ongoing cast and, in this issue, he really amps up the unfortunate love triangle between Matt, Karen and Foggy.  Matt loves Karen but thinks she is only excited to see him because she is thinking about Daredevil.  Karen loves Matt but  can't understand why Matt is so aloof and unemotional, always running away (to change into DD, naturally).  Foggy loves Karen and because of this Matt won't dare tell Karen of his love for her.  Th...

1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

Uncanny X-Men 498 0

This has been a peculiar run.  With Uncanny 500 on the horizon, this storyline that started in 495 feels somewhat like a desperate filler to try to get there.  Still, it's not without its charm and, out of all this issues to date, this one is perhaps the most satisfying from a writing point of view, where Brubaker ties in the weird hippy vibe with the House of M loss of powers.  Perhaps Brubaker's stretching himself a little thinly on all the Marvel titles he's writing as he's yet really to conv...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

Ain't No Dog 3

Gosh, I can't tell you how disappointed I was in this issue, especially having just read X-Force 4 (see my review on that for further details).  Let me say straight off that I have loved Charlie Huston's work on Moon Knight and I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that we have something quite dark from him here.  My difficulty is that his Wolverine here seems completely at odds with the Wolverine Kyle and Yost are writing about.  He's the one dimensional psycho who's just left Sin City and the inc...

1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

X Force 4 0

Well, I've gotta say that up to this issue I was very so-so about this run to date.  But I knew that Kyle and Yost were quality writers and, at last, they really pull it out of the fire with this issue, primarily because there is some really impressive emotional depth in the characterization here.  This issue is, to some extent, narrated by X-23 and it's interesting what a bleak and barren place the inside of Laura's head is.  She is clearly emotionally stunted, much more so than Logan, who real...

1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

Secret Invasion 6 0

Probably my least favourite issue of this mini-series to date.  I have to say that I've genuinely enjoyed Secret Invasion, but then I'm a big fan of both Bendis and Yu.  This issue felt a little like a 'holder', with the writer lining up things in place for, perhaps, a big finish.  There's more stuff from the Skrulls addressing mankind and all the heroes are gathering in New York for one big, bad fight.  On that latter point, I sincerely hope issue 7 isn't just one big battle - I always find tho...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

Young X-Men 3 0

Okay, Marc, I said in my review for issue 1 that I would give this a few issues to get going but throw me a bone, man.  This is still, I regret to say, quite disappointing.  The story breezes along a little too jauntily for my tastes - although Guggenheim is building up tension there just isn't an awful lot of story here.  This issue involves the Young X-Men trying to take down Magma, Ink having already delivered Dani Moonstar (and Blindfold) to a shadowy Hellfire Club type figure at the beginni...

1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

Fantastic Four 557 0

I have never been a big FF fan.  However, the pairing of Millar and Hitch convinced me to have a go at the current run of stories and this first storyline, "World's Greatest" was pretty good, if not spectacular.  The cusp of the story was about a billionaire who has been busy creating an identical world elsewhere, due to our own world falling apart and about the fact that that world's protector had gone awol and trigger happy in our own world.  Whew.  Now that the plot's out of the way I can tel...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

X-Force 116 3

Wow.  I haven't read X-Force issues 1-115, so I can't imagine what a shock it was for that current readership to have gone from a book that featured 'regular' (if there is such a thing) mutants such as Cannonball, Warpath, Domino etc. to one with a whole new collection of very peculiar characters in a totally alien set up.  This comic, though, coincided with Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely on New X-Men, as well as X-treme X-Men.  The Marvel bosses had the minds firmly set on change and I must a...

2 out of 2 found this review helpful.

Iron Man 6 0

With Warren Eliis writing and Adi Granov adding his amazing art, it's hard not to think that this book should be knocking it out of the park (as you Americans like to say).  However, I must admit to being slightly disappointed with the conclusion to this story which is pretty much one big, huge fight between Iron Man and the Extremis adled Mallen.  Now, that's not to say that it isn't a good fight.  In fact, fans of good fights will probably like this issue a lot, especially the bit where Iron M...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

Captain Britain and MI:13 2 0

Okay, the award for the book with the most unfeasible title goes to..., seriously, it would take most of your lunch hour to get through that.  Anyway, the review.  I'm a long time fan of Mr Braddock, going back to the Alan Moore scripted tales in the Marvel UK titles in the 80s, so after a so-so first issue of this series, I wasn't sure I would hang around.  But this is coming along alright.  Now, Cap ain't around for this issue, having been blown up at the end of the first issue (though since h...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's top 25 2000AD covers no1! 0

Okay, I'm kind of hoping that this isn't anti-climactic as I appreciate that this cover probably doesn't 'grab' the reader's attention in the same way that some others of the list blatantly do.  That said, it is, trust me, utterly brilliant, primarily due to its subtlety.  The artist is David Roach, who drew the Nemesis the Warlock strip from which the characters on this cover come from (after Kevin O'Neill, that is).  Roach's style was very different to O'Neill's, his characters seemed more ful...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's top 25 2000AD covers no2 0

Did I mention that Mike McMahon did some brilliant Cursed Earth covers?  No3 on my list was the last cover of the saga, No2 is the first, a wonderfully exciting, iconic image that is so good that his Cursed Earth cohort, Brian Bolland (a big McMahon fan, incidentally), later did a homage to it on the cover to 2000AD Prog 1505 (Origins).  But Dredd has never looked as dramatic or as focused as this, practically blazing out of the cover on his harleyesque lawmaker, a punk to his right.  There's gu...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

Daredevil 5 0

Wally Wood is a new addition to the Daredevil ranks with this issue and his clean and handsome art style is a fine fit for the title.  Storywise, this is quite peculiar.  The Matador is a strange villian - possibly a D lister in terms of ability.  Still, Stan Lee cleverly presents him as something of suave swashbuckler and soon has the good folks of New York city treating him like he was some kind of latter day Robin Hood (even if he doesn't give his bounty to the poor).  There is one good scene...

2 out of 2 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's top 25 2000AD covers no3 0

The Cursed Earth saga which ran for 25 issues (from progs 61 to this issue) was the story that really put Judge Dredd on the map and, as you can tell from the cover above, really put him through the mill.  It was drawn exclusively by two artists, the uber clean Brian Bolland and somewhat messier Mike McMahon.  Guess which guy drew this cover.  Now, McMahon's art does take a bit of getting used to - it feels a little untidy, animalistic even and he does tend to overdo it on shoe size.  But boy th...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

Kick Ass 3 1

I've been a little ambivalent about this comic.  Sure it's a neat idea but, after the first two issue, I was concerned that it was dangerously close to being a one trick pony.  Still, those comics were pretty funny, in a sick kind of way - issue one concentrated on wannabe superhero Dave Lizewski getting seriously injured when trying to stop a fight, whilst this was pretty much repeated in the second issue, though on this occasion, Dave calling on a nearby crowd to call the cops, who instead sta...

1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

The Invincible Iron Man 5 1

Great writing from Warren Ellis combined with great artwork from Adi Granov really helped kick start a rebirthing of a character a few years back from bland billionaire to someone a bit more edgy and compelling.  Extremis is a great storyline, from the use of a parody of an old leftie journalist in issue one to some thrilling set pieces that lead to Stark being rendered helpless by, of all things, a car.  This issue contains a reimagining of Iron Man's origin with Ho Yinsen having a bit more sas...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

Secret Invasion 5 1

Spoilers, naturally.Well, I gotta say that Mr Bendis is holding this whole thing together very well indeed.  This is one of the strongest issues yet with frenetic pacing and scene jumping and an enticing ending.  As always, Leinil Yu is on the money.  Early on there's a terrific two page spread of the Skrulls broadcasting a message all around the world but they aren't scaring the Earthlings by using their big ugly Skrully faces to transmit the news.  Instead, they morph into the likes of Barack ...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's top 25 2000AD covers no5 0

Whilst Carlos Ezquerra was responsible for creating Durham Red artistically, she always looked a bit peculiar (notwithstanding the one very hot cover on this list).  However, when Mark Harrison took over, he really seemed to nail a consistent look for the character, one that was both sexy and deadly, appealing to both leather fetishists and middle aged goths.  Harrison has produced a number of outstanding portraits of the deadliest of all Strontium Dogs and a couple of others could easily have m...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

dmstarz' top 25 2000AD covers no7 0

The fourth Brian Bolland cover in my top 25 and this is the highest ranking of them all.  It's a pretty weird concept and, to be honest, if I hadn't read the Judge Child Quest, I may not have felt the cover a much as I do.  The storyline relates to someone called the Jigsaw Man, basically a fella who is slowly disintegrating piece by piece and the reason that Dredd is talking to a pair of lips on the cover is that that's all that's left of the poor man, like Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat.  Pat Mi...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

The Amazing Spider-man 259 0

This cover's a take off of an old Iron Man cover... but we're not here to talk about covers (for once).  This issue has a very interesting, if not wholly successful, flashback into MJ's past life.  Up to this point in Spider-man lore, MJ has been the happy go lucky party girl with not a lot of backstory.  We know she lives with Anna Watson and she likes Petey, partying and talking in late 60s lingo.  Here deFalco attempts to flesh out the character.  It's quite interesting but it soon descends i...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's top 25 2000AD covers 0

Caballistics Inc is a very dark story in the 2000AD dealing with demons and possession and generally all things horrid.  Covers which are obstensibly a picture of a big house should, by rights, exist in estate agents and not on comic books.  However, this works really well, creating a sense of unease.  This is partially due to the building being old, gothic and rural - it's the old haunted house motif.  Then there's the curious use of what looks like fire in the foreground.  Fire - not the usual...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

Secret Invasion 4 0

After a very strong start, this story is ticking over nicely, though the last couple of issues have been slightly off the boil perhaps because so darned much seems to be going on.  But, don't get me wrong, it's still good stuff.  Leinl Yu's art continues to be amazing from a Va Va Voom Ms Marvel early on to a feverishly paranoid Tony Stark to a brilliant sequence of panels outlining the Black Widow kicking some serious Skrull ass (very, very cool).  Meanwhile Jarvis is still trying to force Shie...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

Daredevil No4 0

The debut of what would become a great villian much, much later.  However, I have to confess that I was a little disappointed with the first appearance of the Purple Man.  His connection to DD, first up, seemed quite contrived.  Purple Man uses his powers of suggestion to rob a bank and then meekly allows himself to be arrested, rather than tell the police officers they're after the wrong man (which he does later in the book).  This allows Matt Murdock to be his lawyer and hence set up the drama...

1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

Daredevil No3 0

This issue is notable for the debut of the Owl and not an awful lot else, to be honest.  At the beginning Owlie is pretending to be a respectable businessman who is being warned by his accountant that the Feds have cottoned on to his dishonest dealings.  In a magnificent display of true sadism, in probably the issue's best moment, the Owl turns round and tells the poor accountant that he knows and he's going to take the fall for him.  Nyah, nyah.  The poor accountant ends up throwing himself in ...

1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's favourite marvel comic cover no104 0

When I first saw this cover, I was wow-ed by the originality of leading a comic book, aimed primarily at blokes with the very feminine concept of a character showing off an engagement ring.  But this isn't quite the first time it's happened.  I'm not sure if Greg Horn was aware of the 80s series 'Marvel Saga', issue 22 of which has a very similar cover to this, albeit Mary Jane showing off her gems to Spidey (oops, that could be interpreted in more than one way, huh?).  I have to say that Horn's...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's 250 favourite marvel comic covers no105 0

Back in 1991, big Bill Sienkiewicz did a series of five covers on Moon Knight on a storyline called 'Scarlet Redemption'.  Forgive my ignorance of art history, but the covers seemed to not only reference Gustav Klimt (a favourite of Bill's) but also Renee Macintosh's art noveau stylings.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think Kaare Andrews was referencing these styles or at least Bill's artwork on those issues with this cover here.  This is my favourite of Kaare Andrews' frankl...

0 out of 1 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's 250 favourite marvel comic covers no106 0

So I'm guessing that Assistant Editors' Month at Marvel was when all the kooky types crept out from behind the woodwork and anarchy ensued.  I have to say, I adore the results.  First up we have the silliness of the Avengers being on a late night talkshow.  Secondly, said host, a very young looking David Letterman appears to have been drawn by Al Milgrom as a homage to Alfred E Neuman (see the gap in his teeth?).  Then there are all the little weird details - the warning in the barcode box, the ...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's top 25 2000AD covers no12 0

I think this cover is from the short lived 'Bad City Blue' story.  I can't recall an awful lot about the story other than the obvious fact that it wasn't terribly memorable.  However, this Brendan McCarthy cover is a serious piece of work.  I remember Brendan very, very well from another strip in 2000AD from around the same time, an idiosyncratic piece of work called 'Sooner or Later' which was brilliant and ran on the back page in colour with very similar art stylings to this.  The way McCarthy...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

Marvel Premiere 24 1

After a really good start to the Iron Fist saga, things, alas, started to go downhill quite quickly.  Issue 23 saw the arrival of Chris Claremont, who would later find acclaim with X-Men.  However, this, well, this is just bizarre.  First off, we have a very strange training workout between Danny and Colleen Wing.  Now, Claremont has always been one for equal opportunities and, of course, he brought in a lot of strong female characters into the X-Men.  And I think the point he's trying to make h...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's 250 favourite marvel comic covers no108 0

Yu-hoo!  Another terrific cover by Leinil Yu.  Whenever you produce a list of favourite covers, some make the grade because they're iconic, some have a sense of personal history that means they mean a heckuva lot to you, others have a strong single image that is hard to resist.  Others still, well, you don't quite know why exactly it is why you like them.  You just do.  That's the case with this little number by Leinil Yu.  Is it a great cover?  Well, probably not.  Is it doing something new?  N...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's top 25 2000AD covers no 13 0

Halo Jones is one of the most acclaimed stories ever to appear in 2000AD - I think it was the last thing Alan Moore wrote for the comic (though i could be wrong).  In the third volume of her ballad (from which this cover takes place), Jones joins the army and is somewhat traumatised by the experience.  Ian Gibson's cover sums up elegantly this sense of disillusionment and despair.  There's a wonderful piece of serendipity here in that the cover is also the one celebrating 'Happy New Year' and so...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

Daredevil 2 1

After a very fine first issue, things change completely with an extremely bonkers storyline involving the FF and Electro.  The idea of Electro trying to steal Mr Fantastic's secrets is fine.  However, having defeated Daredevil, his notion of deciding to launch the hero into space is one of the most bizarre ever.  In this issue, DD not only flies a space rocket, but also rides a horse and hitches a lift on a helicopter.  Had someone bet Stan Lee to include as many disparate modes of transport as ...

2 out of 2 found this review helpful.

Daredevil No1 3

So, the origin of Daredevil in its original form!  This is really a triumph of economic storytelling.  I mean, so much is introduced here that is intrinsic to the entire DD canon over its next 40 plus years, which is great work from Stan Lee, in particular.  Not only do we get the origin, but we meet Battling Murdock, Foggy Nelson and Karen Page, plus get a very nice precis of the first 20 or so years of Matt Murdock's life.  There's so much in this one issue.The artist here is Bill Everett and ...

8 out of 8 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's top 25 2000AD covers no14 0

This cover's a bit like those pieces of canvas that you sometimes come across in art galleries where it's all just black and you think initially "how lame" but then you sort of get pulled in to the concept, the cheek of it all.  Adlard's cover isn't quite as daring as that.  However, there sure is a lot of shadow and I really admire his attempt to produce an image out of very little.  Of course, Bill Savage being practically silhouetted is a very good piece of visual storytelling - the guy's kee...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's 250 favourite Marvel comic covers no112 0

So a case of fantastic Phwoar! perhaps?  This I think is the infamous issue of FF where Shulkie is snapped by paparazzi sunbathing on top of the Baxter Building.  Which when you think about it, seems a very prescient storyline, considering this came out in 1985.  What can one say about Byrne's She Hulk, except that he obviously really loved the character.  This predates her monthly comic, but Byrne has really nailed a priceless expression on Jen's face here, really capturing her character.  But ...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's top 25 2000AD covers no 16 0

More magnificent Bolland - Judge Dredd always felt like a rare treat whenever Bolland was on artwork duties.  In the early days, he rotated with Mike McMahon (a more acquired taste to Brian), but did significantly fewer issues than his counterpart, presumably because that gorgeous art takes time.  I really like this particular cover because I always rated Max Normal as a very interesting character.  The bowler and brolly combination always felt very out of place in Mega City One, like a Londoner...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's 250 favourite Marvel comic covers 114 0

Paul Smith's run on Uncanny X-Men was a short one but, boy, it was also very memorable.  His deceptively simple art always exudes emotion and character, at least to these eyes.  The drawing of Mastermind here seems so simple, there's nothing complicated about it, yet it doesn't need to tell you anything other than "here's trouble."  Meanwhile there's a beautiful little coupling of Scott Summers and Madeleine Pryor in the middle of the cover - I love the lines in the hair, signifying body and dep...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's 250 favourite marvel comic covers no115 0

Bryan Hitch is a mighty fine artist. The realism that he brings to his characters and also how their costumes fit them really sets him apart in a medium where exaggeration of shapes and forms is commonplace. I particularly love the way he draws Ultimate Cap with a very realistic fitting helmet. This, though, has to be my favourite Ultimates cover. It's such a simple idea, but so iconic too. The three titans of Marvel heroes - Cap, Thor and Iron Man together, like the freaking musketeers, recogni...

0 out of 2 found this review helpful.

dmstarz's top 25 2000AD covers no17 0

I can't say that I really liked Durham Red when she first turned up in Strontium Dog.  I liked Middenface McNulty  - he was a good foil to Alpha following Wolf Sternhammer's death whilst Durham, well, she was a nasty piece of work.  Still, Carlos Ezquerra worked overtime to make her look appealing and I guess the editors felt that the character had, ahem, legs so she got a solo slot once Alpha, shockingly, was killed.  Weird looking at this image now since Mark Harrison really seemed to nail the...

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.