Sorry I’ve been away. Like I said in my last post, I admire folks who keep up their blogs. It’s tough. I’m going to do this review a little different. Instead of a summary with some takeaways, I’m going to do more of a commentary on the issue as a whole. So, I would love some feedback!
This week, I was super excited about two things that I love coming together. That being Kevin Smith and Hit-Girl! To be honest, I’ve been a little behind in regards to the Kick Ass universe. It wasn’t until I downloaded this issue, that I found out there are a few other Hit-Girl series. I will for sure be checking them out since the first one I read a few years ago. The blood, the gore, the teenage angst. Hit-Girl is greatness! Now on with review! Oh, and as always, spoilers ahead. Shhh When I read through the book the first time, I didn’t pay attention to the title of this issue, “The Silent Era.” I kept waiting for dialogue… the wait was long. At first, I thought it was a little lazy, but on my second pass, paying attention to the title, I loved it. It was an interesting choice to open up this issue the way Kevin did. Btw, I listen to so many Kevin Smith podcasts, I feel like I can mention him on a first name basis. Two boys decide that they’re going to don masks, bring a duffel bag full of guns and shoot up their school. They head to the library where some boys are looking at naked women in a health book and blow them away. I mean heads explode. It was intense. As they make the rounds, Hit-Girl crashes onto the scene and gets to work. With a smile on her face, she quickly beheads the first kid. Again, no words have been said at all. She has a little fun hunting down the second kid and ultimately pins him under a bookcase. She’s about to slice him up when she’s sees a book (crazy, right… in a library), a book about her! A book soon to be a motion picture no less. Like any other kid would do, she hops on Google. Oh, before she does, she lips the other shooter’s head off right at the jaw line. She finds out the deets on who’s doing the movie and heads to Hollywood. I loved the way it ended. A creepy old man puts a move on her on the plane. She pins his head to the plane with a knife she hid and co era him up as if he were sleeping. I love that Kevin kept the violence flowing throughout the book… just what I would expect from a Hit-Girl title. Then, finally, we get our first word bubble. Last page, last cell… as she sits on top of the H of the Hollywood sign, she looks out and says “I see dead people.” No doubt, this is foreshadowing the carnage to come. Someone knows Hit-Girl better than she would like. They are writing about her AND profiting from it. She's pissed and has to get to the bottom of this. I, for one, am excited to see what mayhem is to come. I also want to mention the artist, Pernille Ørum, briefly. She is the artist who designed the DC Superhero Girls. So, it is fun to see her work in this teenage adventure with ultra-violence mixed in. The way her and Kevin crafted this story with no words was masterful and very intentional. Great work! All in all, it was a great pick up. READ IT!
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thI've said before, I’ll say it again. Keeping up with blogs is a tough task. Picking books to review is isn’t any easier. This one caught my eye though. I thought it’d be interesting to see how Marvel would do with a pure Sci-fi/horror-ish title. Let’s just say... I think they need to stick to making Spider-Man...
If you haven't figured out by now... these reviews typically sum up the story from the book, with some tidbits here and there, and then the main takeaways and whether we recommend the book or not is at the bottom. Read at you're own risk. Also, as always, spoilers ahead. Let’s do this! Validation We open up on some government agency in full hazmat gear hiking through the Ozark Mountains. They are looking for validation. A meteor hit the atmosphere but burned up. It did have some sort of energy hit the Earth. Another team had already been sent out. No one has heard from them since they hit the mountains. This group knows something is out there. They aren’t looking for the first group, they are looking for aliens. They are looking for validation that aliens have landed. The crew comes into a clearing to see a giant skeleton. It looks human but disfigured. So, this is ground zero for them. This is where they’ll set up camp. Later that night, Bryce, the guy running things, is called out of his tent to see something. He heads out to see one of his crew writhing in pain and his body starts to be on grossly disfigured. Shortly, the rest of his team is dead... grossly disfigured as well. One crew member did survive and starts talking to him in a strange alien language that Bryce can understand. Long story short... the aliens are a parasitic race that inhabits hosts and takes them over. However, human hosts aren't working out. Humans are mutating, then dying.. Killing both. Bryce and the disfigured crew member, overtaken by an alien host, head to Alpha teams base camp. The alien, part of an advanced scout team, wants to to send a message back to the rest of their invasion to warn them that both them and the human race will die if they come. However, the alien dies before he can send the message... dooming us all. What a bleak cliffhanger! That was story one of two in this issue. The second takes place in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Here we find a scout troop around a campfire telling ghost stories. They soon head to bead after their troop leader tells them to rest up so they can earn lots of merit badges the next day. We get a cut away to the loaner, pudgy, scout reading Sci-fi comics in his tent. He is taken by some other troops and strung up a tree in his sleeping bag. The troop leader breaks it up. As Billy heads back to his tent, he sees a meteor land in the woods not far from camp. Its as if his comics are coming to life for him. He is excited to see what is in the crater. As he approaches, the meteor cracks open and some sort of energy leaves it and heads to the boy. He stumbles back to camp, bulging from the midsection (chestburster, Aliens style perhaps?). He climbs into the sleeping bag still hanging from the tree. The troop wakes up to quite a surprise. The sleeping bag served as a cocoon for for Billy's alien metamorphosis! He emerges from the cocoon looking something like Baxter from the old TMNT cartoons. He attacks his troop and the next frame shows many cocoons hanging from the trees. This story wraps up with with some teenagers around a campfire telling the same story the troops were earlier. As one boy finishes up the scary climax, we see several sets of glowing eyes staring at them from the woods. Again... quite the ending! Takeaway
-CBD |