A Few Thoughts on Comics from The Past Few Weeks

Vincent Price Presents The Tinglers #2 (of 2) completes this sequel to an old Vincent Price film. Solid art, an interesting story, some pretty evil stuff, and a good ending make this work for me. Please note that when I use the term 'good ending' I mean 'the sort of ending that this might have if it was a movie from the late 50s/early 60s'. Nice.

Comic Book Comics #4 continues the book's fun view of the history of comics, focusing mostly on the early history of Marvel Comics and the Underground Comix of the 60s/70s. This is fun yet educational stuff with a clever art style. It's got a hint of parody to it, a bit like something from Mad Magazine. It helps keep things from getting too serious. The idea that the Star Wars comic adaptation may have saved Marvel and yet lead to things like Epic Illustrated (Marvel's attempt to compete with Heavy Metal) was a new thought for me. I feel not enough people are reading this book and it is very interesting. I hope they collect it in trade as that would make for an easy recommendation.

Doctor Who #5 continues the story of the Doctor being on the run. I am really enjoying the story now as the idea that the Doctor has 'dismissed' certain races over the years because they were 'bad' has consequences. While the Doctor might have done the right thing at the time, he may not have followed up enough to make everything as right as he could. It's an interesting thought that raises up what might be an otherwise simple story. That said, this thread gets raised often so it could be seen as a bit heavy handed as well. I'm not liking the art. The artist seems to have issues with humanoid faces. Details are rendered in a scraggly way. It's just off a bit. It doesn't flow correctly to me and my eye.

After a few years of miniseries, the Transformers have a new monthly ongoing title. It has been a couple years since the events of 'All Hail Megatron' and the Transformers still on Earth are all in hiding as humans are hunting them. It's an interesting development that makes sense considering the previous events. A early wave Transformer bites the dust and Optimus Prime makes a difficult decision. The art here is clean but a bit too detailed for my tastes. The Generation One Transformers have a 'blockiness' to them that the artist has captured but there's a lot of extra detail as well, as if the movie style Transformer faces were added. It makes familiar characters look weird. I'm not sure I care for that. I'm interested in seeing where this is going.

Last, but definitely not least, Muppet Peter Pan #3. I've said many things about the Muppet comics since they started and, as much as I enjoy them all, this may well be the best of the bunch so far. The art is excellent, with the characters looking like themselves, not stylized versions of themselves, not that I mind stylized so much. Does anyone else have the Muppet Show Book from the late 70s? The art in there looked almost like photographs. It's like that. The character voices sound correct, as I can 'hear' the characters speaking their lines. The only one that may not 'sound' right is Janice but that's only because the character tended to have a smaller role on screen and here, as Wendy, she speaks more than, well, maybe ever. The story takes a couple of twists here, ones that I'm not sure if the final issue will untwist or not. The biggest of these to me was the revelation that Peter Pan/Kermit may not be a fun loving adventurer that never grew up, but a man-child that refuses to do anything but 'play the game'. Captain Hook/Gonzo accuses Peter of seeing him as evil because he's dressed as a pirate, despite the fact that he claims to be a performer that was dressed as a pirate. I really liked this development and may still like it even if Hook turns out to be lying in the end. The issue ends with a moment very much from Peter Pan as Piggytink is left low by some harsh words. One more issue and I hope it doesn't fail me.