World Comic Book Review

20th April 2024

Aliens: Defiance #1: Weyland-Yutani’s Rogue

Aliens: Defiance #1
(Dark Horse Comics, April 2016)
Writer: Brian Wood

One of the most striking characters in the movie “Alien” (Twentieth Century Fox, 1979) was the android character called Ash. The movie is set partly in deep space, and partly on a misty planet, where a face-hugging monster leaps out of eggs lurking in the ruins of a creepy spacecraft. Motivated solely by Machiavellian directives from executives at the sinister business venture called Weyland-Yutani Corporation, Ash the “synthetic”, as he is called, has a complete disregard for human life and objectifies his crewmates as either obstacles or suitable hosts for xenomorph incubation. Ash’s secret mission is to secure an asset capable of being potentially weaponised, the horrific alien spawned from the facehugger which has horrifyingly started to prey upon the crew of the freighter Nostromo. Ash’s betrayal of his fellow crew members is necessary to meet that objective.

Read more

Green Lantern #50-#51: Parallax Error (Review)

Green Lantern #50-#51
DC Comics, March, April 2016
Writer: Robert Venditti

In his book “Come in Alone” (AIT/Planet Lar, 2001), British writer Warren Ellis furiously laments the brand loyalties of readers of superhero comics, such that some of them publicly admit on message boards that they would rather read poorly-written material about favourite characters than suffer fundamental changes to those characters. In his book Mr Ellis lambasts readers of this ilk, describing them as essentially responsible for the creative malaise and commercial degeneration of the American comic book industry.

Read more

Micronauts #1 (Review)

Micronauts #1
IDW Publishing, April 2016
Writer: Cullen Bunn
Review by DG Stewart, May 18, 2016

Comics published in support of a line of figurines are often shaky texts. The writer of such a title can at best hope to impart a monochrome backstory and characterisation to the moulded plastic toys: a solid plot to accompany this artistically bleak mission is a rarity.

Read more

Empress #1-2: Mark Millar Delivers (again)

Empress 1, 2
Icon Comics, June and July 2016
Writer: Mark Millar
Review by D.G. Stewart, May 17, 2016

A critique of this title involves two curious vectors.

First, at some point in many people’s lives, sadly, they can become involved in very unhappy, abusive or even violent relationships. This can occur, particularly but by no means exclusively, when a person is young and lacks judgement and experience in respect of the substance of a happy relationship.

Setting aside the nature of mis-spent relationships for a moment, and on what might seem at first blush off tangent, American comic books seem to have a steady supply of science fiction villains (featured in superhero comic books, ordinarily) with beetle-browed, monolithic features, a grim demeanour, and who are exclusively male. These include, in no particular order:

Read more