COMICS: John reviews “Power Up” by Doug TenNapel

The premise of Earthworm Jim creator Doug TenNapel’s latest graphic novel, Power Up, is not unlike the Fantasti-defeat-Dr. Doom-ray. It’s so obvious and clever that it’s a wonder no one has tackled it before: Wouldn’t it be great if real life worked like video games, where you could have cool abilities like stop-time and extra lives? (EDIT: I guess you could say that the Scott Pilgrim series does this to an extent, but O’Malley tries to make the video game elements seem second-nature to the characters.) TenNapel takes this premise and blends in elements from a few classic wish-fulfillment stories like It’s A Wonderful Life and The Monkey’s Paw, then brands it distinctly with his own unique blend of humor and heart to create a compelling cautionary tale warning of the dangers of obsession and of getting everything you always wanted.

COMICS: John’s Wednesday Winners LIGHTNING ROUND

Yikes! has it been three weeks already? Well, with three weeks of comics to discuss I’ll have to trim down my reviews of each one. I present to you now the Wednesday Winners Lightning Round, wherein I quickly talk about one thing I did or did not like about each comic (a format borrowed from the Warren Ellis forums) for those in-stores 5/28, 6/3 and 6/10 2009:

COMICS: John Reviews “I Kill Giants” by Joe Kelly and JM Ken Niimura

If you’ve been reading the big comic news websites (as I have), you’ve probably heard tons of praise heaped upon a miniseries from Image Comics called I Kill Giants, written by Joe Kelly and illustrated by JM Ken Niimura. After reading the collected trade paperback this weekend, I can honestly tell you that this book deserves every single word of praise it has been given and then some. It is a truly spectacular work of sequential art fiction, one that transcends its genres (fantasy/drama/YA) and even its medium to stand on its own as an incredible story about youth, friendship, family, grief and – of course – giant-killing.

COMICS: petpluto reviews Zombies Calling

Let’s count the awesomeness of Zombie Calling, shall we? First, Whedony references galore. Galore I tell you! From Zombies communicating by saying “Grr”-”Arg” to the lead (female) character name being ‘Joss’, the comic is full of win. But going beyond that, it is full of feminist win too. That’s right, a book about zombies has [...]