Saturday, August 21, 2004

Quick GN Reviews

Autobiographix
edited by Diana Schutz
Dark Horse gives us an anthology of autobiographical comics by some top cartoonists, including Frank Miller & Will Eisner. As with most anthologies of this type there is a wide variety of styles, and some will work better for some readers than others. Unsurprisingly, the four page Eisner vignette, "The Day I Became a Professional," is one of the best, as is Sergio Aragonés' "The Time I Met Richard Nixon." Other stories I liked were the entries by Paul Chadwick, Linda Medley, Stan Sakai, and Bill Morrison. Wrapped up in a nice package by designer Paul Hornschemeier under a simple-but-effective cover image from Eisner, this is definitely worth a read.
Rating: 3.5 (of 5)



The Flash: Blitz
by Geoff Johns, Scott Kolins & Doug Hazlewood with Phil Winslade, Al Gordon & Walden Wong
Collecting Flash #192-200, this volume opens with Gorilla Grodd's army of mind-controlled gorillas parachuting into Iron Heights Penitentiary to pull off a jail break. That scene alone just about made this worth the $9 I spent to pick it up used. The Grodd story leads into the origin of a new Reverse Flash: Zoom (no longer a professor!) By coming up with a nifty way for Zoom's speed powers to operate different from Mark Waid's infamous Speed Force, Johns provides a worthy adversary for the fastest man alive. This is good, solid super-hero work, but is marred slightly by the fill-in art (I like Winslade a lot, but his style clashes with that of regular Scott Kolins) and the majorly stupid decision that Wally makes in the denouement of his confrontation with Zoom.
Rating: 3 (of 5)

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