26 January 2009

Short Reviews: Batman: Private Casebook, X-O Manowar: Birth


Paul Dini's run on Detective continues to be collected and this time DC went with a hardcover edition first, those bastards! I prefer my books to be in hardcover but the first two collections were in paperback so it's gonna look weird on the shelf. I'm anal like that.

Anyway, Paul Dini continues his hard on for Zatanna, pitting her against the new Ventriloquist who gets an origin story. Other stories include a nice one with Mad Hatter, a Riddler-thinks-he's-smarter-than-Batman-at-solving-crimes story and Batman kicks Ra's Al Ghul's arse in an epilogue of the Ra's ressurrection storyline. Nothing to write home about but a nice collection to add if you already have the previous Dini Detective collections.



Collects the first six issues of X-O Manowar and issue #0. I heard that Manowar sold like crazy numbers at its height. God knows how because the issues collected here didn't do anything for me. They had six issues to rock me and I stopped reading after issue 3. Pity because a 2000-year old barbarian in an Iron Man suit should be a one hell of a comic. How the hell did they mess that up? X-O Manowar is not for me, I guess.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude, admittedly the first few issues of X-O Manowar were kinda rough. But I reccomend picking up subsequent volumes (if Valiant bothers to do so) as the series REALLY picks up from issue 9 onwards and is a great ride all the way until issue 42 (before Ron Marz and Bart Sears took over and turned it to shit)

Khairul H. said...

Ah, see but that's the point. If you want people to continue reading your books, you gotta grab them from the word "Go" and don't let go. You don't start grabbing them at issue 9, you should start from issue 1 (or issue 2 at the latest). Having not read X-O before I believe your statement that it will pick up pace later but will I be there for the ride? Right now the answer is, "Doubtful".

Anonymous said...

A lot of the early Valiant stuff were rather slow and plodding across the board, and it was only after the continuity gelling Unity crossover event that all the titles kicked into high gear. I can't reccommend the Valiant line highly enough. The Barry Windsor-Smnith run on Archer & Armstrong is a classic! Maurice Fontent and Sean Chen's Harbinger run (issue 26 onwards) was amazing. And the whole Malev War arc that ran across both Magnus Robot Fighter and Rai & the Future Force was the pinnacle of kick-ass sci-fi comic books. (yes, it's obvious I am an impartial Valiant fanboy)