Tag Archives: Unwritten

If You Could Only Buy Three Comics (Revisited)

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A couple of years ago, I wrote about cutting down the pull list by figuring out what I really liked reading, as opposed to what I just bought out of habit. This was followed up by a harsher test: if you could only buy three comics, what would you choose? At the time, I picked The Unwritten, Madame Xanadu, and The Unknown. Yes, at the time, The Flash wasn’t in my top three.

I found myself thinking about this again. Two of those series are gone, and I’m enjoying The Flash a lot more than I used to. What would my choices be today?

  • The Flash, definitely. While I didn’t care much for Flash: Rebirth, the ongoing series has proved to be a fun adventure.
  • The Unwritten. I think we’re approaching the half-way point with this series, which continues to be fascinating, thought-provoking, entertaining, and occasionally downright creepy as it explores the way stories shape the world. This book was one of my picks for the Read This Too! recommendation.

Those two are easy. The third one? That’s the hard part. The two contenders are:

  • Velocity. In the strictest sense of the question, I’d have to go with this one. It’s been a great story, and I want to see how it ends. But once that last issue comes out, I’d go with…
  • Lady Mechanika, which is shaping up to be a good steampunk mystery/adventure.

Actually, since Lady Mechanika is bimonthly and Velocity’s finale will probably come out between its issues, I could probably make a case for them sharing the third slot!

So what missed the cut, and why?

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If You Could Only Buy Three Comics…

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A few weeks ago I talked about decluttering the pull list. Over the weekend, noscans_daily took things it a bit further, asking people to consider how they’d cut down to three titles. I didn’t properly do the suitcase test last time, since I approached it from the “What can I drop?” perspective instead of “What do I have to keep?” but a specific number — however harsh — really puts things into perspective.

If I had to cut it to three, I think I’d go for:

  • The Unwritten – My favorite new series of the year. I’m always a sucker for stories about stories, and this one’s holding up well.
  • Madame Xanadu – My favorite new series of last year. I never had any interest in the character before, but casting her as a magical detective/troubleshooter rather than simply fortune teller, and making it possible to tell stories anywhere from Arthurian times to the present, has made this
  • The Unknown – Mystery, a protagonist whose key feature is intelligence, and exploring the boundary between science and the supernatural — or at least what seems to be supernatural to us. This is currently on its second 4-issue miniseries, and Mark Waid said at Long Beach Comic-Con that he could see it going for 3 or 4 minis depending on how long they can keep the artist.

The other more-or-less regular books, not counting miniseries with only one issue left:

  • Flash: Rebirth – At this point I’d be perfectly willing to wait until they launch the ongoing next year, by which time The Unknown should be finished. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I’m looking forward to Blackest Night: The Flash, which will overlap. But just based on what’s in progress now, I’d drop it if I had to. (Of course, since I run a Flash fan site, that’s not really an option!)
  • Fallen Angel – This would be the hardest one to cut. If I were choosing my top 4 instead of top 3, it would definitely be in there.
  • Astro City – I can wait for the trade on this one.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer – I’m pretty far behind on this, which should tell me something.
  • Dynamo 5 – It’s the best superhero book I’ve read in a while, but I’ve also been losing interest in superheroes.
  • Farscape – I’m waiting until each mini finishes to read it anyway, so I may as well trade-wait.
  • Wheel of Time – I half-suspect this is on hold anyway.

The surprise for me was finding that neither Flash nor Fallen Angel — two books which have been my #1 favorites at various times in the last few years — quite made the cut. I hope this will change once the ongoing Flash and Kid Flash series launch.

So…If you had to buy only three comics a month, what would you choose?

How Soon is Too Soon to Judge a Serialized Story?

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Flash: Rebirth #1Following up on my Lightning in a Bottle/Flash: Rebirth comparison, one of the issues I found myself flip-flopping on was how early you could fairly judge an incomplete story. In addition to my frustrations with Flash: Rebirth, I’ve picked up at least 8 other first issues over the last three months. Times (and storage space) being what they are, I’m taking a hard look at what I’m buying, including the new books.

To the Question

The UnwrittenSo, at what point is it fair to write off an incomplete story?

The UnknownOn one hand, I’m the kind of person who hates to leave a book unfinished. Even if I don’t like it much, I’ll generally slog through it (as I did with A Game of Thrones). So if I’d picked these miniseries up as complete editions rather than individual chapters, I’d probably read all of them through to the end.

But I’m not buying them as trade paperbacks or as hardcovers. I’m buying them one chapter at a time, and while I’m happy to let details unfold over time, if I’m just not interested, what’s the point in spending an additional $12+ to get the rest of a story I don’t want to read?

Making the Cut

Mysterius the UnfathomableAll those new books I’ve picked up in the last few months are at #2 or #3 now, and I’ve realized that’s my threshold these days. If I really don’t like a first issue, I’ll stop there, but if I’m sort of lukewarm toward it, I’ll usually give it a second chance. That worked out well with, for instance, Ignition City and Mysterius the Unfathomable. In both cases I wasn’t quite sure about the series at the end of issue #1, but issue #2 sealed the deal.

Ignition City #1So, The Unwritten and The Unknown, both of which grabbed me in the first issue? Already on my list. Final Crisis: Escape and Unthinkable, both of which had me just intrigued enough to pick up a second issue? Gone after issue #2. Still not sure about Final Crisis: Dance, which I think I’ll give one more issue. If not…it’s on the chopping block.

And yet…

Epiphany

The IllusionistA few weeks ago I watched The Illusionist. I won’t say much about the plot, because it’s better without spoilers, but…I hated the first hour of the movie. Just couldn’t stand it. The two leads were just acting so stupid and self-destructive that I couldn’t sympathize with anyone except the police inspector, and even that was probably in part because he was effectively narrating the story.

If it had been a two-part TV miniseries, I wouldn’t have bothered with part two.

But I stuck through with it, and the tone changed significantly in the second half…and then the ending was so good that it completely made up for everything that had bothered me about the beginning.

So I have to wonder, what might I be missing by dropping a book two issues into a 5– or 6-issue story?

Any thoughts? When do you decide to stick with or drop a miniseries?

Reviewing the Unwritten, the Unthinkable, the Unknown

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I’d been planning to pick up Mark Waid’s The Unknown since learning about it back in February. The Unwritten sort of snuck up on me, but I read a preview in an issue of either House of Mystery or Madame Xanadu, and decided to check it out. The 99-cent first issue cemented the deal. Then there’s Unthinkable, which isn’t usually my type of story, but I was amused by the fact that all three first issues were coming out on the same day…and then I read quite a bit about it when the TSA found the script for an issue and detained the writer at an airport. So I grabbed that one as well.

Now all three series are on their second issues, and I’ve just caught up on all three of them.

The Unknown

4-issue mini by Mark Waid and Minck Oosterveer from BOOM! Studios. Cat Allingham is a world-class genius problem-solver who makes her living as a consultant to unsolved cases of all types, and has turned her attention to the greatest unsolved problem of all: what happens after death? Her assistant is a former bouncer who happens to be an expert at reading people, and has a mysterious background of his own.

It’s a combination mystery and action adventure, with some bizarre twists along the way — including one at the end of issue #2 that makes you rethink just what’s going on in the previous 40-odd pages. While the Macguffin itself strains my suspension of disbelief, the story around it has been interesting, especially the interplay between the two leads.

Verdict: Definitely on board!

Unthinkable

Mark Sable with Julian Totino Tedesco

5-issue mini, international intrigue and military action. After 9/11, a Tom-Clancy-like action writer gets hired by a think-tank to come up with doomsday scenarios — the unthinkable — before the bad guys do. Nearly a decade later, someone has started putting his ideas into practice.

The first issue is mostly setup, introducing the players and leading up to the attacks. The second issue picks up with the writer trying to get someone to listen to him and anticipate the next steps, which of course goes horribly wrong. (We’re at issue #2 or 5, after all.)

After the first issue, I was solidly onboard for #2. But after #2, I’m not sure I’m interested in continuing. It’s oddly disjointed, with a lot of critical story bits told in narration instead of being shown on the page. And characters shifting sides and motivation apparently with no cause. I’m not sure I’ll keep going with this one, but then as I said, it’s not a genre I’m usually drawn to.

Verdict: Not sure. If you like military action/adventure, you might like it better than I do.

The Unwritten

Ongoing by Mike Carey and Peter Gross, Vertigo.

The main character, Tom Taylor, was the inspiration for his vanished father’s best-selling not-quite-Harry-Potter fantasy series, and is about as self-absorbed as you might expect from the focus of a media empire. At least, that’s what he and everyone else believes until a fan’s question suggests that he’s a fraud. Then there are those who believe he’s the actual Tommy Taylor from the books, somehow brought to life in the real world…and they might not be that far off.

The first story arc is about Tom trying to learn the truth about his origins, and fighting for control of his public perception (con man or messiah?). And then there are the people who want him dead…

The books are filled with literary references (Tom’s father drilled literary geography into his head when he was a child, so he can’t help but remember details when he walks past, say, the building that was the inspiration for the Ministry of Truth in 1984), and the major theme is the intersection of fantasy and reality in the form of stories.

And let’s just say I’ve always been a sucker for stories about the nature of stories. Yes, even before I read Sandman.

Don’t forget to read the text pages. There are fragments of notes, news articles, forum discussions, chat logs, etc. and they all figure in. The first time I read issue #1, I missed the page in the back, and was glad I noticed it this time through.

Verdict: Heck, yeah! I don’t know how long they can keep this up, but I’m definitely along for the ride!