Got the first three issues of this new series from J. Michael Straczynski and Colleen Doran from Millenium Comics (of Warrington and Northwich)'s stall at the Manc Comic Mart and have just tried issue one.
Initia; impressions are that it's very JMS and very Doran as well, almost a parody of their styles. That's not neccesarily a bad thing but it doesn't feel like they're flexing their creativity too much.
As for the plot it's gothier than Sandmand and whilst the set up for the book is made admitably clear by the end of the first issue how exactly things will play out issue to issus, story to story, remains to be seen. Basically a bookish Victorian who found no place in his world commits suicide but at the last moment is given a book. He returns to life in our world having been taught mysterious lessons in the intervening years. He now has a mission to tip potentially lost souls in his employers (one of the two) favour. He also has an associate, a pompous talking cat. I winced a bit there. Who his employer is remains unclear, it's implied it's the devil but that could be a feint. He shifted appearance several times through his conversation with our hero (who's name I either didn't catch or can't remember) which was a nice visual gimmick.
My biggest gripe with the book though was the placing of adverts. We open with a splash page then turn to a double advert, a page of comic, an advert, a page of comic, two pages of adverts and all the way through there wasn't two pages of story that ran succesively. As a result it was a fractured and messy read and if it weren't for the fact that I'd bought these as part of a bundle then I'd probably have been so put off that I wouldn't have bothered with issue two. I probably shouldn't let things like that get in the way of the reading but it felt like I'd overdosed.
So over to you, anyone reading this? Is it worth following past issue three? Heck for that matter what issue are we up to now? Over to you...
Babylon 5 was great at the time (well, appart from the dodgy last season) but hasn't really aged well. I have to conclude that J. Michael Straczynski can do grand plot arcs but can't really do people.
I flicked through one of his comics out of idle curiosity and put it straight back, having got the distinct impression that he wouldn't have gotten anywhere in comics if he wasn't a big TV name (see also Joss Whedon and Kevin Smith).
Also, talking of people from other media writing comics - Orson Scott Cards Ultimate Iron Man, what a mess!
"My biggest gripe with the book though was the placing of adverts. We open with a splash page then turn to a double advert, a page of comic, an advert, a page of comic, two pages of adverts and all the way through there wasn't two pages of story that ran succesively"
Which is why i've developed a "wait for thrade" policy on all Marvel/DC books (except Jonah Hex), especially the ones that are finite or mini-series. It's got to the stage where you're buying a monthly pamphlet of ads that are linked by a few story pages, that are almost unreadeble as a narrative.
Alan!
All Star Superman suffered from ads horribly... fortunately they seem to have toned it down a bit now.
Read a couple more and will buy the other two that are already out. It's very reminiscent of 80's or 90's telefantasy but I can live with that.
His 'Dream Police' one shot was a great read but the leads where anthropomoprhic atavars of human dreams based on t.v. cops, so that worked well. Still a great read but felt like a Sandman presents spin off. If it had been it'd have been one of the best.
And I reckon he'd have still made a name as a writer in comics without his telly credentials but it'd have taken him years and the experience of not being handed all the big characters straight away would have made him a better writer.