Cover to Cover: Lesbionic bloodbaths! How characteristic of life!

Reviews: always better late than never, am I right?


Hack/Slash #8
by Tim Seeley (w) and Rebekah Isaacs (a)

Did that cover grab your attention? People look at the covers for Hack/Slash and all they see is a book solely for T&A, but it's more than that: it's both a glorification and a spoof of the horror genre.

That doesn't change the fact that it's always embarrassing to pick up, though!

Anyways, in this issue, the two protagonists, Cassie and Vlad, patch up their friendship. It's really sweet how much Cassie cares about Vlad, who just got bludgeoned in the head by a birdbath.

There wasn't too much humor in this issue, which disappoints me to no end, but Cassie explores her possibly-budding lesbionic sexual orientation, at least. Can't go wrong with that, can you?

Along with her sexuality, Cassie explores the mystery of the "Tub Club," a society/cult (sociecult!) that sacrifices girls for "immortality and divinity." The plot point provided us a gratuitous shower AND death scene, but I'm still kinda disappointed.

Regular artist Emily Stone is on hiatus or something, and Rebekah Isaacs is covering for her, and it might be just me, but Rebekah Isaacs really does NOT like drawing backgrounds. Every other page had a blank background, I swear! The comic felt empty to me. . .

TWO out of FIVE closet lesbians. The writing is average, the plot doesn't move, and the art appears lazy. Here's hoping the next ish, the conclusion to the arc, is better!


Silver Surfer: In Thy Name #4 (0f 4)
by Simon Spurrier (w) and Tan Eng Huat (a)

Hey, this issue concludes the most recent Silver Surfer miniseries, in which our sullen sentinel of the spaceways found two warring races, the homely Brekknis and the royal Ama. I'm not kidding, the two races are so willing to wage war, they'll fake incidents for the sake of it.

Out of his noble nature, the Surfer tries to get involved. He even summons, uh, Galactus, threatening that if they ever did wage war, that he'd sic the devourer of worlds on 'em.

And what do the Brekknis and Ama do? THEY ATTACK GALACTUS!

There's a wonderful plot twist in this issue which explains why the Surfer might summon a being such as Galactus, but, to be honest, very little ground was covered.

We see nothing new about the Surfer. He's an idealist who sometimes borders on the cynical. He's traveled the cosmos, and yet he can still be naive. He holds noble ideas and tries to implement them, but it comes at the sacrifice of his own happiness, or it doesn't work at all. While this does have the ingredients for a "classic" Surfer story, it was kind of fighting an uphill battle with the premise (two alien races duking it out).

So people are primitively flawed. Okay, I get that. So it's "characteristic of life" to destroy. Okay, fine. There's no need to philosophize on that for four issues.

This mini might have been a good story in an ongoing, but certainly not a mini. A mini should be more important, I'd expect. It's an insightful character piece on the Silver Surfer, but not much else.

-Also, while artist Tan Eng Huat is not fun to look at, I think he made his style clearer as the issues went on. The guy's still no fun to look at, though =(.
-Much to my surprise, while the issue was solicited as $3.99, it was actually $2.99. Cool beans!

THREE hungry, hungry Galacti out of FIVE. Only Surfer fans would really recognize this story, because it's basically a character piece, and there are more clearer character pieces on Norrin than In Thy Name, such as the Essentials.

The ending is very slice-of-life-ish. The Brekknis and Ama continue their war, as the Surfer leaves them, disillusioned about the nature of rationality. It's well handled.