Take It Or Leave It – August 15, 2012

Verdict: Probably Leave It

I picked this up just because the cover totally looked like Batman Beyond. I have to say I really enjoyed it. It’s got a whole Dark Knight Returns vibe to it. The main antagonist is some kind of like werewolf in presumably a drug addled future full of corruption who kills a judge on the take while making his wife watch, who wants to teach the wise cracking hero to kill like him, thinking they are both on the same side, and the city would be better off if they both used extreme methods. The hero prevails and sends him off the prison, but not for long. Overall, the book had a grim gritty feel that fit well with the art style, and whenever I read the villains word bubbles, I did it in the “Batman” voice. Since this is just a mini series, I’ll probably pick up the whole thing.

Verdict: Take It

I picked this up because it is a Dynamite book with a hot lady on the cover. Apparently it’s based on a roleplaying game, as it comes with an insert for a gameplay map, and fully half the book (the story ends on the page after the staple) is like a DM manual with charts and stat sheets for all the characters. Some research shows that Pathfinder is an extension to the Revised Third Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. The story reads like your average hack and slash campaign in any fantasy RPG with your standard fantasy character tropes. If you know a good DM, you’d probabaly have more fun just actually playing D&D. Or better yet, go watch the “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons” episode of Community. Way more fun, and you don’t need other people to do it. This is basically a marketing tool, not really worth your time unless you already play the game and dig it, a lot.

Verdict: Leave It

Yet another Dynamite book. I thought this might be a spin off to another Dynamite property like Jungle Girl or Red Sonja based on the cover. Nope, it’s an old pulp book from the 50’s, as you can tell because it’s another book that finishes on the page after the staple, and then the rest is a reprinted pulp tale. The reprint is much better than the new story. Thun’da is a pilot who crashes in what is basically the Savage Land, a land with dinosaurs and cave people. He loses most of his memory, but goes all Jason Bourne, and remembers all his military training, and manages to build a bow and arrow from scratch. His memory loss is shown by his thought bubbles never being more than three words long. On three separate occasions he has word bubbles that simply say “Gasp”, as if he’s saying the word gasp, not gasping. This book had me gasping at how much the writing sucks.

Verdict: Leave It

Witchblade is the type of title I have hundreds of issues of (because of the sexy covers), but never read. All I know about this series is it’s a sequel to a story by Mark Millar and Jae Lee that was supposedly pretty good. This was the third Dynamite book I bought where the new content ended at the staple. This time, it included a reprint of the original Demon story. Look Dynamite, I’m paying for new content here. If I want reprints, I’ll buy a trade. While I’m complaining, in his instance, it was actually very helpful. Not being overly familiar with anything but the basics of the Witchblade story, it was helpful to go back and read the original story, as I found myself confused a bit, and had to reread this issue three times before I understood that most of it was a dream of the main demon antagonist meant to punish him. The artwork in this is really nice, Sara Pezzini is a sexy beast. It looks like there is gonna be some awesome demon fighting, and the inclusion of the original story makes this a perfect story to jump on with.

Verdict: Take It