Hola, my wonderful and incredibly patient readers!
Sorry for the long lack o' blogging. Please know I am not dead, merely trying to write fancy-pants artsy-fartsy stuff, a poorly drawn webcomic and even a possible one-shot comic book for a non-major anything. Fingers crossed, I might even have something to put on display for my upcoming local comic book convention.
And yes, I know I deeply, terribly suck about my failure re: 14 Couples I Am Too Lame To Update. Again, sorry, about that and I hope to write something at least marginally coherent soon.
While I woke up too late for buying Wednesday comics today and have no limerick/haiku reviews as a result, I did find great news to share. I'm so enthused that I'm shamelessly regurgitating content I found at the always excellent Robot 6! Kathryn "Hellcat" Immonen
and Sara "NYX" Pichelli are taking over Runaways from Moore & Ramos starting with issue #11!
About Runaways - I love the book more than is healthy. For those of you who've lived under rocks, the series details the lives of a group of teenagers who find out that their parents are supervillains of the highest order. They run around the rarely seen West Coast of the Marvel U, just trying to survive, help out where they can and generally make amends for their parent's misdeeds. It's a brilliant premise with lovable characters and a pet dinosaur named Old Lace. Yes, that's right - a dinosaur named Old Lace.
Vaughan and Alphona's original run was something unique, fun and vibrant in the Marvel Universe - a breath of fresh air where continuity took a backseat to characters who mattered. A book where anything could happen, people could die and the unexpected was always expected. The series more than deserves the big screen treatment it's going to get and it's a flat-out great book, period.
Now, the downsides. I hate to say it but Joss Whedon and Michael Ryan's delay-plagued run just about killed the book. I'm usually a pretty big Whedon fan, so I feel bad to throw stones at all - hell, I imagine that writing a good story about a cyborg, two aliens, a mutant, a sorceress and a dinosaur can't be that easy. Still, several years later, I thought Whedon had written a good run but not a great one, Molly punching the Punisher aside. Putting Terry Moore and Huberto Ramos on the book after Whedon gave me high hopes but, well . . .
Regretfully, I say "meh". They just haven't clicked for me. While I've been flat-out loving Echo (I'd recommend this book and The Sword to just about anyone), I'm sad to say that Moore and Ramos' work on Runaways has left me more than a little cold. Ramos does great teenagers - his work on the excellent books DV8 and Impulse proved that without a shadow of a doubt. That said, his emphatic style's a bit jarring on the characters in Runaways, who've always been portrayed in an uniquely subdued way. Moore's stories haven't been thrilling me much either, which surprises me. His Chase is just a hair too obnoxious and I'm quite literally stunned that he got rid of a certain character. "Kill your darlings" maybe? Still, rather upsetting to see a character with such potential removed and such an fascinating relationship nipped in the bud.
In any case, here's hoping that Immonen and Pichelli can recapture that uniquely off-kilter mix of tenderness, hilarity, drama, dinosaurs and mutants that Runaways has displayed so well. Considering that Kathryn Immonen wrote the beautifully insane Hellcat series - wherein Hellcat has to defend Alaska all by herself, meets a talking calendar and then things really get weird - well, let's just say that I think she's got it covered. ;) And Pichelli's art is pretty damn nifty to boot (said art blog is NSFW, by the way).
(For instance, I LOVE the little details in this panel of Dr. Cecilia Reyes, folks. Sweatband drawstrings!)
What do you all think?
And as a bit of penance for my long lack of blogging, I bring you . . .
BONUS VIDEO CONTENT:
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