COMIC BINGE: The Spectre & The Legend of Zelda
It’s been a long time, but I’m finally back with some Comic Binge for y’all after a few weeks off. First of all, I’d just like to say I really miss this place when I’m stuck with work and school for weeks on end. I’ve been dying to read and write all month, but it’s been nearly impossible after reading and writing all day for school. I have written a song autobiography of my life for a class though, and I hope to share that with you soon if any of you are interested in reading. I spent a lot of time writing this paper about 8 songs that define my life at various points, and I think it’s worth sharing. Other than that, it’s been non-stop non-fiction up in this piece, and I finally got a chance this past weekend to clear my to-read shelf.
Collected editions of an old series from 1990s called The Spectre came out last year and we finally got our new copies in at the library. At first I was put off by the size, as they’re about the length of an average Hellblazer collected edition out right now. Knowing 90s comics the way I do now, especially the ones that handle darker themes and elements in their stories, I was expecting an unreal amount of writing. Comics with too much writing bore me to death, and I can acknowledge and respect where they’ve come from in the form of storytelling, but sometimes there is simply too much to read for how little is going on. I had to put down the new X-Men: Children of the Atom collected edition of the first 20 or so issues of X-Men this weekend, for exactly this reason. I enjoyed it, but reading every word was downright unnecessary, especially at the point which we know these characters now. So, The Spectre by John Ostrander was a 90s series of an already established character in the DC universe. Similar to other comics of the time, especially at DC, The Spectre takes a look on the dark side of heroics. It was apparent to me from the beginning that this book was mostly intended for an adult, or mature audience, but our library had it cataloged as a teen book. Reading from this perspective, maybe gave the book a little bit of an extra punch with some gory pages and out there stories. There was one panel in particular that was one of the goriest I have in memory, and I think I enjoyed it even more because I got to think of what a teenage comic reader would think when flipping onto that page. Either way, the character of Jim Corrigan, who is also The Spectre, is a great story by Ostrander. Best of all, he does what few did at the time and keeps the writing to a minimum while still having a very complex, introspective character. I appreciated this very much, and also Tom Mandrake’s perfectly fitting artwork for this book. This is probably one of my favorite horror hero titles, and I was really impressed with this character that I had no idea existed. The Spectre is much better than comparable titles like Hellblazer, and should be mentioned in the same conversations. Why have I never heard of this?
RATED : ( R )
STORY : ( 8 / 10 )
ARTWORK : ( 9 / 10 )
COVERS : ( 7 / 10 )
AWESOME : ( 8 / 10 )
FINAL RATING : ( 8 / 10 )
Also this week I picked up the entire The Legend of Zelda manga series. Each volume basically follows the stories of the video games, or a particular story from one of the video game titles. So far I’ve read mostly the popular ones such as The Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, but they all seem to be pretty consistent. Akira Himekawa is responsible for the entire series, and I enjoy his notes about himself in some of the volumes. The work is all around pretty good, even though the stories are already created for use so there’s not much that needs done to them. That leaves mostly the artwork for me to judge in my opinion, and I enjoy that part of this series a lot. Your typical manga art style suits The Legend of Zelda really well in the sense that it doesn’t stray too far from the original renderings. But also, it’s just different enough and another way to look at an already familiar story. I particularly enjoyed reading the volumes I’ve read so far, and I’ve got a few more left to go. I would recommend these quick reads for anyone who is a fan of the game series, or of video game adapted books. The illustrations alone in this book are awesome and are worth thumbing through for. By the way, do you remember that Legend of Zelda movie trailer from many years ago that came out on April Fool’s Day? I heard today that they were actually going to make the Zelda movie and it should be coming out in Winter 2016. Directed by none other than Peter Jackson. ARE YOU SERIOUS?!
RATED : ( PG )
STORY : ( 8 / 10 )
ARTWORK : ( 8 / 10 )
COVERS : ( 6 / 10 )
AWESOME : ( 8 / 10 )
FINAL RATING : ( 7 / 10 )