Mike Allred

This Dick Tracy reboot tries real hard to capture the wild spirit of Chester Gould's police detective comic strip but just doesn't do it for me.

Part of the problem is the setting which simultaneously tries to be the 1930s and the present day. How can Tracy's two-way watch radio be special in an era of ubiquitous mobile devices? By adding quantum entanglement so it's a smart watch with great reception? Really? Without cutting-edge technology and strict police procedures, we are left with show more Tracy just running around talking like a tough guy and shooting at everybody. And who wants to see that sort of rogue police work in today's environment?

Stick to the roots or revamp entirely to modern times. Pick a lane!

In the end, the plot is a tangled mess with dozens of criminals from Tracy's rogue gallery wasted in pointless cameos. show less

This is just great. With Northlanders, Scalped and DMZ all winding to a close, you always start to worry about Vertigo as an imprint without a few successful new titles on the go. Unwritten is doing well, and I really, really want iZombie to do well, too. Set mostly in and around a graveyard in Eugene, Oregon, our heroine is Gwen, a gravedigger and zombie, who is forced to dig up the freshly dead to eat their brains or risk losing her memory and turning into a shambling mindless monster. Her show more best friend is a ghost, her other friend is a were-terrier. Elsewhere, a coven of vampires is running a paint-ball game and a pair of monster-hunters are in town, hunting for monsters. Gwen's latest meal comes with an unpleasant set of memories: namely the murder of the deceased. To calm the dead she promises to track down the killer, but quickly discovers that nothing is as it seems.

Okay, remember Buffy? Remember how cool Buffy was, with her adorable friends and her heavy burden and complicated plots and clever stories? Well, iZombie is nothing like Buffy other than the obvious supernatural stuff. But it's got a vibe to it that fans of Buffy will recognise and appreciate. Strong female characters. Witty script. Dodgy romance. A weird world that promises to get weirder. Mike Allred's beautiful, distinctive pop-art. laura Allred's colours - seriously, lovely colours on a Vertigo book. It's like a goddamn miracle.

It's also, last but not least, a surprisingly fresh take on zombies. Who knew there was still meat on those bones? No? Um. Bringing a dead genre back to shambling life! Better? No? Okay, try: this zombie has beauty as well as braaaains! Oh, feck off. Write your own stupid damn pun. You think this is easy? Huh? Well it ain't. Can't get any apreciation around here, I swear. show less

Beautifully cosmic while anchored via Dawn so that it doesn't disappear up its own sci-fi-terminology butt.
Sometimes I see this series derided as Dan Slott's Doctor Who fanfiction supported only because of Mike Laura Allred's work, to which I say:
I wish Doctor Who was this consistently entertaining;
What's wrong with enjoying the visuals of a comic book?!

I had worried a bit about the direction this series would take once the Adversary was defeated. In true Fairy Tale form, peace would ensue, kingdoms would be rebuilt and everybody would live happily ever after, right? Sounds pretty boring. Fortunately, Willingham elects to take an approach truer to the Fable name of the comic--the moral lesson that comes at the end of the story instead of the vague and magical happy ending. War is messy and bleak, and never as black and white as the show more propaganda makes it seem. In this volume the fallout of the conflicts in the previous two volumes rears its ugly head, and the Fables cast is given a whole new set of frightening challenges to take on.

This transition doesn't feel gimmicky at all, and reads more like the introduction of a new thread from a much greater picture. In fact, if you've been keeping up with the Jack of Fables series as well, in the war's aftermath we start seeing hints of exactly how some of the stranger and sometimes more convoluted aspects of Jack's adventures are going to begin tying back in with the main plot again. This certainly isn't the most fun or satisfying of the volumes to read, but it feels like a very necessary one. A lot is set up here, but most is left hanging for continuation in the next volume. One of the few really bright spots was the introduction of Lord Mountbatten, who I suspect may become one of my favorite characters in short order.

Overall I wasn't thrilled at how unfinished this volume felt, but it's obvious how much is set to unfurl in the next. I still enjoyed it, however, and appreciate Willingham's focus on the quality of the overall plot instead of cheap thrills on every page as some comics are wont to do. I will definitely be buying the next volume as soon as I am able. show less