Recommended Reviewing

Nextwave #1
I’ve been trying to figure out what I think about this one for the last 24 hours, which mean Ellis and Immonen have succeeded on some level. I don’t know what kind of legs the whole thing will have, particularly because most of the over the top elements are its weakest (Dirk Anger?), but I’ll definitely be back next issue. I was left with the impression that I had just watched something on Cartoon Network that was pitched as a show for kids and then taken over by a show runner with absolutely no interest in appealing to children as the primary audience.

The Good:
The characters. I’d probably be willing to read twelve issues of these five talking.
Making Boom Boom and Photon interesting.
The Bad:
The Etheric Loop Recall Televocometer? Really?
The huh?
The voiceover-like omniscient caption boxes. Has potential but already threatening to get out of hand.

Local #3
First, we’re what an hour from Richmond? It’s always cool to recognize landmarks in a story. This is as slice of life as it gets, in fact it’s four separate slices of four separate lives. Wood does a nice job using the interview as a framing device since it allows for easy juxtapositions between what we see in the panels and read in the captions. An interesting story, a good read, but I’m left with the same impression that every other issue has left: where’s the rest of the story? Sure there’s enough there to make the point, but like issues one and two, it felt like a chapter, not the whole thing. I guess that’s a problem inherent to this format but it wasn’t nearly as obvious in Demo and is really exacerbated by having four leads in a 24 page story.

The Good:
The disappointed fan. We’ve all been there.
The awkwardness of returning home when it’s not really home anymore.
The Bad:
The missing bits of motivation. The reader can fill in the gaps but only by applying band clichés.
The huh?
There’s ambiguous endings and then there’s leaving the reader hanging. For a band’s break-up to have been “planned well in advance” there’s something missing here.

Ganges #1
Not a classic but definitely worth the time, particularly if you’ve ever had an interest in storytelling. The first half is essentially a visualization of the creative process and the latter half of being an audience (be it reader, listener or video game player). Not exactly action packed but its got some really nice moments and is definitely worth the effort.

The Good:
The various iterations of the Litterer. Anyone whose ever written a story gets that one.
“Not to scale.”
The Bad:
Trying a bit too hard, but to good effect.
The huh?
I like recurring motifs and bringing back the atom drawing for the sleepers, but what’s with the Litterer in the backyard?

Catwoman #51
The Good:
The Zooey Deschanel Cover. Yeah, sue me. Plus it’s got a Lost reference.
The Bad:
Yeah.
The huh?
Catwoman gets pulled over by the cops in a stolen car. Really couldn’t have done anything better with that page?

Other noteworthy releases: Truth Serum, Godland, Polly & the Pirates, Phil Hester's Oversight, Fallen Angel and Usagi Yojimbo.