Blood, Shells and Roses ~ Based on just the first issue of this, if I'm honest, I'm not really that jazzed about it. The opening was good, with a laboratory having a nasty accident leading to vampirism in those infected - the kind of sequence you see in a lot of vampire/zombie movies, but it's well done here, and has the guts to be really nasty to everyone involved, which is good, since the last thing you really want is a squeamish horror/slasher story. Naturally the infection gets out into the general population, and our attention shifts to a rock gig where, as chaos erupts, the band (with varying degrees of courage) take it upon themselves to beat the crap out of anything trying to kill their fans. That sounds a bit hokey, and I guess it is - that hokiness aside the action is good and the art supports the concepts well, with energetic and accessible lines and solid colouring as the vamps turn monstrous and lots of fighting ensues. I did find my attention wavering though, and right now I couldn't honestly tell you which of the band was which, aside from the English one who swore like Spike - but rock bands and vampires aren't quite my cup of tea, so if they are yours this may be worth a look.
The Lazarus Factor ~ This was an interesting read - I saw issues #1-3 (which are available for download on Wowio I believe - I'm not sure, since I haven't visited the site since the first time, when it told me to sod off because I wasn't in the USA, but if you are there's apparently lots of free stuff to read there), and my reaction on starting the first issue was "What the hell is this?" The writing - a first-person narrative, primarily - is accessible enough, once you wrap your head around the narrator being half-crazy, possibly hallucinating, and having been physically and psychologically abused constantly which makes her captions eccentric to say the least. But the art is very confronting at first glance - lots of photomanipulation, weird line work, smears, odd colours, indistinct shapes and all sorts of stuff that looks like the kind of thing psychologists show you to see if you're insane or not. I read through the first issue, thinking it was completely wrong for me... but then I found myself going back, because of the art. It's bizarre, but it gets under your skin - unlike a lot of 'experimental' art there's strong content within the madness, and even before I realised it, I was understanding the subtext of what I was seeing.
The story, without spoiling anything much, is that someone has been rounding up homeless people, including our protagonist, and doing bizarre experiments on them, while keeping them incarcerated in a brutal prison run by sadistic guards. It's gruesome and confronting - especially early on, before the weird genetic stuff kicks in, and it's just regular human beings being extremely horrible to one another - but well-written, and the pace doesn't sag throughout the three issues I read. The only real weakness is the lettering, which one of the editorials commented on there being issues with - regardless of why it's the way it is, the lettering isn't good work technically speaking, and I think that may have been part of why I at first underestimated the art. That aside, if you like R-rated suspense horror, this is one to take a look at - and if, like me, your first impression is that it's a chaotic mess thrown together in Photoshop, don't put it down right away, but take another look.
Countdown to Adventure #7 ~ This issue marked a change for me - it was the first time I went straight to the Forerunner story, and left the Space Crew one until later. Having read both now, I don't feel I made a mistake there - it's not that there wasn't some good material in the Space Crew storyline, with Starfire saving Rann and Buddy's marriage all in one day, but to me this storyline really doesn't feel like anything is at stake. No slight to the good people of San Diego, but the havoc the alien healers are wreaking there comes across as just the typical antagonist rampage, and introducing the healers as the 'villains' of the piece in the first place undercuts the menace of the Lady Styx virus - not that that seemed to be doing anything much, besides making people violent; I was hoping Styx herself would get involved somehow. Forerunner on the other hand is rocketing along her arc - and it really is an arc, as she's undergoing huge character growth from issue to issue. Perhaps it's too fast, in fact - I could have easily done with her story being the whole issues - but it's enjoyable nonetheless, and a pleasant surprise from a character many wrote off as soon as she appeared. This issue centres on her reappearance in Countdown, and thankfully she gets out of it in one piece, albeit with her world view rather shaken. At any rate, this does set her up to wander the galaxy with her misfit crew, Farscape-fashion, which is what I've wanted all along for her. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about her relationship with the Golden Eagle guy - he could be a bit deeper, but I guess he's had very limited page space for development - but I do like the notion of there being someone in that role, able to talk to her at least a bit. So far the 'three days later' captions and cutting to Viza and Eagle in bed is still funny, but I hope they don't over-rely on that as a running gag.
Secret Invasion Saga ~ Basically a big ad, but so far as ads go, this is a pretty generous one. What Marvel's done is offered up a whole comic book, for free, in the belief that the story inside - a potted summary of the Skrulls and their encounters with Earth and others, in the form of Iron Man collating data in preparation for startegising - will intrigue people enough that they'll pay money to see what happens next. I like that - it suggests Marvel has a strong belief in the value of its material, such that they're willing to advertise by showcasing what they've already done, as well as teasing about what they might do next (which seems to be DC's main angle at present). Besides general knowledge of their current activities, Annihilation, and that one-on-one duel thingy on the moon that happened in one of the John Byrne Fantastic Four Visionaries TPBs, I don't know much about Skrulls, and their race and storylines were laid out in a way that I found easy to understand, and enjoyable to read through - plus, it was cool to turn the page and see a panel I recognised, like the aforementioned FF bit. I don't know that I'm really that affected by it - I planned to get the Secret Invasion miniseries, but only the tie-ins that were in books I was already buying anyway, and that's still my plan - but at the end of the day, Marvel has handed me an issue for free, and I enjoyed it, so that's a big A+ for them from me.
