This Week's Comics - Buffy 5, LSH 32
Jul. 25th, 2007 02:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sdelmonteStill waiting on Gargoyles. Might start searching elsewhere next week.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Eight 5 - Wherein we meet one of Buffy's decoys, get rather tiny glimpses of some other slayers, have something vaguely resembling a plot, and learn that the Slayers ran ads to find newbies. Really. Joss is trying to fix one of the grand flaws with season 7: the lack of distinct personality in most of the potentials. And thus he focuses on the decoy. Only she is as much a cipher at the end of the story as at the beginning. Only the story is intentionally disjointed and is a hard read. Only we are introduced to some fairies and monsters and don't have a clue what's going on. The end result is not so much a story as a character sketch. One that succeeds mainly in telling us that the real Buffy is the only slayer who matters and the rest, despite being part of a chain (something we are told at least three times here), merely live in her awe-inspiring shadow. Joss wanted to go for poignant, but only created middling.
Next up: BKV and Faith.
Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes 32 - Star Boy, Mekt Ranzz and Sun Boy are looking on Ranzz's homeworld of Winath for Cosmic Boy, but find UP adjudicator Tenzil Kem, and a whole lot of nothing else (or do they?). What does Mekt's past have to do with this? And just why didBrainy Supergirl sent these three here?
A simple plot with some interesting twists is not the surprise. It's the script and the character play. Bedard does the one thing Waid didn't: he starts to give the characters here actual personalities. And then he has Mekt, Sun Boy and Star Boy play off each other very well. It doesn't hurt that we don't have the rest of the sprawling team (even Supergirl) in this issue. And it doesn't hurt that the new version of Kem (once known as Matter Eater Lad and possibly gaining that name again) is rather well-conceived. Then toss in strong art by the new artist on this series, Dennis Calero. He's a good replacement for Kitson and brings a good sense of menace to the tale.
So Bedard is doing well so far. Maybe the good things I heard about him prior to his arrival at DC are all true, and I'll have to pay attention to his other DC books.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Eight 5 - Wherein we meet one of Buffy's decoys, get rather tiny glimpses of some other slayers, have something vaguely resembling a plot, and learn that the Slayers ran ads to find newbies. Really. Joss is trying to fix one of the grand flaws with season 7: the lack of distinct personality in most of the potentials. And thus he focuses on the decoy. Only she is as much a cipher at the end of the story as at the beginning. Only the story is intentionally disjointed and is a hard read. Only we are introduced to some fairies and monsters and don't have a clue what's going on. The end result is not so much a story as a character sketch. One that succeeds mainly in telling us that the real Buffy is the only slayer who matters and the rest, despite being part of a chain (something we are told at least three times here), merely live in her awe-inspiring shadow. Joss wanted to go for poignant, but only created middling.
Next up: BKV and Faith.
Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes 32 - Star Boy, Mekt Ranzz and Sun Boy are looking on Ranzz's homeworld of Winath for Cosmic Boy, but find UP adjudicator Tenzil Kem, and a whole lot of nothing else (or do they?). What does Mekt's past have to do with this? And just why did
A simple plot with some interesting twists is not the surprise. It's the script and the character play. Bedard does the one thing Waid didn't: he starts to give the characters here actual personalities. And then he has Mekt, Sun Boy and Star Boy play off each other very well. It doesn't hurt that we don't have the rest of the sprawling team (even Supergirl) in this issue. And it doesn't hurt that the new version of Kem (once known as Matter Eater Lad and possibly gaining that name again) is rather well-conceived. Then toss in strong art by the new artist on this series, Dennis Calero. He's a good replacement for Kitson and brings a good sense of menace to the tale.
So Bedard is doing well so far. Maybe the good things I heard about him prior to his arrival at DC are all true, and I'll have to pay attention to his other DC books.
