People tend to believe that there is a specific kind of readers usually buying and reading comic books, the same kind of readers that have to go through a pretty hard time of acne in high school, listen to music genres that would make their parents’ ears bleed and play video games all night long. Well, there are of course exceptions but let’s face it, people tend to be right. That is precisely why most widely known comics’ publishers choose stories and series with subjects that would be familiar to their potential reader, like mini series about famous serial killers from horror movies (God only knows how many Jason, Freddie and Chucky comics we had), cliché stories about your usual misunderstood teenager whose skills are revealed in 10-75 issues (depending on the sales) and, why not, adaptations of video games. How long did you think it would take them to make an ongoing series about the most played game in the world?
There have been a few tries to adapt the versatile and unique universe of World of Warcraft in many different ways but most of them lead to disappointing, at least, results. There was the Sunwell Trilogy, a manga about a dragon and those trying to kill or help him, I read it about a year ago but wasn’t impressed at all, black and white, not much of a story and female characters with big boobs (I really have no idea if they published the other two parts of the trilogy). There are also some soft cover books with stories based on the WoW mythology but still, none of the really big names in the comic industry had shown actual interest in the potential of a huge world with an immense storyline that keeps about 8 million people occupied in the biggest massive multiplayer role playing game ever made. That’s not the case anymore.
Starting this November Wildstorm will try to fit WoW in a monthly ongoing series and although available information are extremely limited it seems like pretty serious work. The first story arc will be about a human (warrior by the looks of the cover) found on the shores of Kalimdor with no memory of his past whatsoever. He is soon captured and enslaved by an Orc Shaman and finds himself fighting both Horde and Alliance characters with the aid of his new companion, most of who are not even of the same race.
For those of you that are familiar with WoW it seems like a pretty standard rpg story, a man starting from nothing, creating a party with different characters and fighting everything in his way. Will the main character change after the first 6-issue story? Will it cover the known WoW mythology or expand and create new stories and heroes (that might also appear in the new upcoming expansion for the game)? Will it be good for Warcraft fans and other comic book readers or just another rip-off of a successful series of video games? We’ll know pretty soon!
(I have to admit I was desperately trying not to quote Illidan “You are not prepared”, darn I knew I wouldn’t make it to the end…)
Your favorite Vertigo series is back and the synopsis of the July issue is released! Marching towards the last 15 issues 100 Bullets becomes more thrilling than ever, the plot is finally being revealed step by step and the dark characters of Azarello’s and Risso’s noir vision approach the grand finale. What really happened in Atlantic City? What’s agent Graves’ secret agenda? What will be Dizzy Cordova’s fate and what about the rest of the Minutemen? Well, in a little more than a year there will be no secrets left so enjoy it while it lasts!
After the events of #81-83 in Rome the story shifts to two other heroes, the Minutemen Victor Ray and Remi Rome, the description in the official site of Vertigo is the following:
“Minutemen Victor Ray and Remi Rome are in need of a vacation, so they head to scenic Lake Tahoe for some R and R with the beautiful people. But you know what they say — “All play and no work make The Minutemen dull boys…””
So is this going to be a revealing issue about the facts of the past through a seemingly indifferent event or a break between two big story turns? There have been quite a few of both in the past 83 issues so any bet is not safe, but really who cares? This is one of the best written comics ever made, a masterpiece of narrative coming to a peak, are you really going to ignore it?
An easy way to figure out which modern comic series is popular and a good suggestion to start reading (most times by searching its TPB’s) is to check the prices of its older issues on line, do that and extremely interesting information will emerge. Like the fact that the fifth issue of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with Moore’s fight with Marvel (before it was edited) is the rarest modern comic in existence. Or that the first issue of Y the Last Man, although not really old, is worth more than 150$. Well, there are specific reasons for that.
The sun is shining, the birds are singing, people go to their works expecting a normal day and then boom, it’s the end of the world as we know it. Every male human or animal drops dead in front of the terrified eyes of the women, in minutes there’s not a Y chromosome left on the planet, or is there? Yorick Brown, son of a US senator and amateur magician, mysteriously seems to be the only person in the world with immunity to the cause that exterminated all the men on Earth, suddenly becoming wanted, in danger and really attractive to the desperate other sex! Governments fall, fanatics called the amazons roam the cities, women mourn and fight to live alone in a hostile mayhem, countries on fire and the last man hidden in the shadows, trying to find his fiancé and figure out what happened and everything stopped making any sense.
Written by Brian K. Vaughan (Pride of Baghdad, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dr Strange: The Oath) and drawn by several artists, Y the Last Man is a comic book shocking, funny, hard to pass and impossible to ignore. Yorick travels around the world fighting to survive and find his remaining family while everything around him is going crazy, political structures fall like card towers in the wind, people he knew change, agencies go after him and too many people want him dead in a story that most of us would consider as the ultimate male fantasy, the law of supply and demand in its best (for the lucky guy)! This is part 1 of the 5 issue story-arc “” so go get it now, this is your last chance to get some issues of it since its ending in issue 55, go go go!
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Nope, Spidey’s not performing AC/DC songs, this is even more unbelievable as the most popular character of Marvel the last half century goes dark once again in many years! After the cataclysmic events of Civil War and the changes in the Marvel Universe (the much, much more realistic changes than the House of M) Spider-Man returns in the black outfit, the symbiotic alien suit we knew all these years as Venom. The very few info released by now mention that Peter Parker is left in a dark place where he meets the shadow of his past, and from there things are only going to get worse for him.
So is this an actual turn in the development of Spider-Man or just a publicity stunt for the upcoming movie, where the story of the black suit will be told once again? These last years there have been so many changes in the Marvel Universe that promised long term effects and very few of them lasted more than a few months, is this also going to be one of them? No matter, for many readers, including myself, Spider-Man’s dark alter ego was the most interesting part in the character’s evolution, a time when he had to face his wildest instincts and a look more stylish than ever! If this is an attempt to promote the upcoming movie, a branch of the Civil War story or a totally different matter that may grasp us with its own advantages, nobody knows. The next 4 months will show, for now this is the Checklist for March:
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #539
FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN #18
NEW AVENGERS #28
SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN #36 –>
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