David tagged posts

Helm is an Eisner-nominated comic series that takes place in a post-industrial revolution fantasy world, from Action Lab Entertainment. Volume #1 collects the first five issues of the series.

I’m not sure what I think of this book. It’s objectively good, don’t get me wrong. Just bits of it felt off to me, and I just can’t tell if it’s only me. The first two chapters take place on a train full of students going back to school, complete with agents of the government searching the train for magical bad guys. My years of reading and watching Harry Potter tells me this is an entirely normal thing to have happen, if not actually a common occurrence. (Actually, the train part may well be in some places...

I can’t remember the last time I was legitimately excited to read Bat-anything. I was excited to read this. The Maxx is a hero I’ve always loved, I his much too short-lived TV run as part of MTV’s Oddities, and I loved the comic. Due to a number of factors, I’ve only read about 1/3 of The Maxx series, even with several reprints over the years, although this title allowed me to discover an upcoming omnibus collection coming in the near future. But that’s another story for another review. Today we are looking at what happens when you drop The Maxx into the slums of Gotham and when you drop Batman into the wilds of The Outback in Maxx’s head.

Issue #1 opens in The Outback of Maxx’s mind, as he gives us a brief setup of something strange happening there...

I love Usagi Yojimbo. I love the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When these two anamorphic powerhouses cross paths I love it even more. I love everything in this collection. Yet somehow I don’t think the timing for this collection was right. I think the main reason for that feeling is that the last story in the collection, Namazu has been published three previous times in the past 13 months, with Turtle Soup and Rabbit Stew being included with the last printing. At least the last of those editions didn’t really need to happen. But let’s forget about that, and look at the good things, shall we?

First up is Turtle Soup and Rabbit Stew, the first crossover story from Turtle Soup (Mirage Studios), a 1987 anthology of different artists/writers playing in the TMNT sandbox...

I think it generally accepted that any major inter-property crossover takes place in some alternate universe, out of the continuity of even the commonly accepted multiverse(s). Rarely has it be so blatantly alternate, as Injustice vs Masters of the Universe. So alternate that I’m not even sure what to think.

Lets split this up a bit, shall we?

On the one hand, we have Injustice. It apparently started as a video game, then spawned some comics, and I fully admit to googling that. There was a page of exposition where Batman tells Prince Adam the history of his Earth. For the casual reader, or at least a reader who doesn’t have to write a review, it was a decent enough summery. Although I still have no idea why there are two Batmans (Batmen? Batsmen?).

On the other side of the crossover, this ...

A few months ago I mentioned that one of my more recent comic discoveries is Aspen Comics. (Which is fairly embarrassing, since we often review them here at Geek-o-Rama.) This year marks their 15th anniversary and they show no sign of slowing down. So when the opportunity to review issues #0-2 of Portal Bound, I was quite excited. So much so, that I’m here with issues #3 and 4.

Portal Bound takes us into a new world, or more accurately two new worlds. One is the earth as we know it, as seen through the eyes of a young teenage boy, Eli. Eli is hardly hero material, he’s quiet, nerdy, and as unassuming as a teen can get. The second is Havos. In theory, Havos and Earth are the same, like two sides of a coin...