Review: BatGirl

Heyo, Cody here with a short review on "Batgirl: Dream House" written by Dylan Horrocks, Penciller Rick Leonardi, Inker Jesse Delperdang, and Jason Wright doing the coloring.

Firstly I want to say this review will be rather short due to the fact that I read this like three weeks ago and have been unable to write this till now.



Story: The story to this one is that a killer is on the loose in Gotham, with a heavy trademark of leaving his victims in open places with full body makeup and posed perfectly as human dolls. All of his victims are big name models as well to further perfect his image. Batgirl catches wind of his killings and see's it as a personal vendetta to bring him to justice. Batman ask's her to back off the case but she chooses to avoid his advice due to thinking she may know the killer from her pre-Batgirl life.

Drawing: The drawing in the comic feels like the perfect Batman style. It draws out like a traditional comic that fits into Batmans perfection. Though I was never a big fan of the Batman comic books, This one has the same basic style but seemed to really bring me into it's stylized world.



Color: The color I think is what really brought me into the art style. it was perfect to match the art work and even better for setting the overall dark tone of the book. Sadness and regret. The color pallet makes up of purely dark colors and heavy shadows. None of the colors go to far above a light basing, a single coat of paint, if you agree to that saying.

writing: The writing in the book really would just flow perfectly, you'd never stutter a word in your mind or misunderstand what was going on. You can tell that the Writer wasn't just thinking about the money in terms of greatness. I became interested in this comic over the hand full of other Batman comics I have simple for the writing. it just felt, right.

I give Batgirl: Dream House, a pleasing 4 out of 5, and a reconmendation for you to pick it up.

Cody~Out.

Review: The Clock Maker

Heyo readers, Cody here with a Quick review on a comic called "The Clock Maker" written by Jim Kruger and art by Matt smith, Zach Howard, Michael Halbleib, Brett Weldele, and Guy Davis. Holy crap, that's a lot of people for one comic book. Oh wait, there are more people that didn't matter enough to make the cover so I won't bother with the rest.



The first thing I'll point out is how freaking amazed I was when I pulled this comic from its plastic sleeve. It looks like a rather thick comic and if you flip the comic over it says on the back "The clock maker #2" meaning this is a double issue. Alright, so I opening and Whoa, wait, what the hell? The comic unfolds into a huge comic book and is read more like a newspaper. Also to my surprise is that the duel issue is only a single issue. So why put "The Clock Maker #2" on the backside? I don't know. I guess it was just a really bad add.

Ok, so "The Clock Maker" is about a old man and his son that work on a giant clock hidden within a hollow mountain in Switzerland. But when something goes wrong and the clock (or something) lets a demon break free from hell, it hunts down dear old dad and murders both father and son.

The story picks up with his daughter, a late teens girl that was forced to live in America for most of her life due to her father and mother shipping her to her foster parents for some reason. Well she has to go back to Switzerland and bury her brother and father while confronting her mother who happens to be senile.

Once arrived in her homeland she is taken to the hidden clockwork in the mountain's. She is stunned to learn that she has become the new owner of this badass cog system of mass portal-opening-demon-releasing-clock.

With the story out of the way I must say, what the fuck went wrong? It's like Krueger just said to his group of artists, "Hey um, guys? I kinda ran out of toilet paper in the bathroom and all I had with me was the script for the book. So, your going to have to work around the brown stuff. Oh and we are missing page 4."

This may sound sorta dumb and harsh but if you read this comic you'd know what I'm saying. It seems like while he was writing he just said "Screw it" to all writing skills and just played Pac-Man instead. There are a number of times where the people are talking and then just go stupid for a sentence. Like here is a exact speech bubble for when she gets off the plane and sees her mom and some guy taking care of her. "I do not approve of your... what I'm saying is that your... is not appropriate for..." and then he walks away. At one point I thought to myself oh well maybe the writer was from Germany or was trying to go for a Swedish accent on the characters. But a little reading on wiki showed me that this was a Image comic written and inked in America.

Now, the comic can be understood and can be read through just fine, after you read it twice, but who wants to do that? Also the death of the father and son are just out of place. Like one second his father and him are running from the demon and then the father says go on without me and then teases the demon to get him to chase him instead of his son. But in the next panel the son runs and then finds puddles of blood leading to his dad, Um what? His father ran off in the other direction, but I guess it don't matter up is down and down is up. The son dies after he finds his dad, just in case you wanted to know.

Art:

The art in the comic is sorta like the Hellboy style, sort of a chalking inking with faded colors making it light on the eyes and good for setting a dark mood but this comic fails to grab you in any style convincing ways and just falls short, the only the that I liked about the art was the comic itself, and I don't mean the ink I am talking about the shape of the comic (as described at the start of the review).

Writing:

The writing is poor due to it being slight hard to understand whats being said why people talk in stupid ways at times and fail really hard on telling us who everyone is. I don't have any idea who the guy helping her out and showing her the clock even is. Just confusing.

Story:

The story makes barely any logic at all and tosses names of people out into the air left and right yet are never spoken of again. Just like Lost we get a ton of questions and barely any answers.

See now I wanted to like this comic a ton, I loved how it flips open into a newspaper style and is like a giant comic book, though it did make it hard to hold and hard to flip pages without the staples overlapping and creasing the pages slightly. I wanted to recommend it so bad but I can't this comic was ruined from the start, it is interesting and I would like to finish the series but due to how strange it was and the newspaper style the comic failed to sell to the normally comic book fans and doomed the comic before the final third issue was finished and put out, so even if you bought it and enjoyed it, you'll never get the ending you want to see. Like Lost.

I give The Clock Maker a sad 2 out 5

Cody~Out.

"Unzip your head" with The Scribbler review.

Sup Gofio reader!? Cody here with a review on a comic book called "The Scribbler".

"The Scribbler" is a comic book series/graphic novel made by a man named Dan Schaffer. Dan Schaffer had attempted to put out his own twisted style, inking and writing into one comic book thus, we open our minds to The scribbler. The novel is about a woman with a extra large handful of personalities and her psychologist giving her a machine that "Burns" out the unwanted personalities. One of her many unneeded personalities is called “The Scribbler”. The scribbler wants to break out of Yuki's mind and become the only personality left in her skull. Yuki attempts to burn all her splits and ends up with just two of them.

The comic deals with one of my favorite subjects, Multiple Personality Disorder. Anything to do with split personalities, comas, advanced time travel, alternate dimensions, and black and white stylistics, I'm so there to help think about it with you. Back when Tim and I were writing film scripts and shooting short films, I always had a new script on the back burner, normally about one of the subjects listed above. When I first started reading this I really disliked it, but the art style kept me into it. I am really glade I didn't put it down.

The art in the book is a black and white/charcoal kinda look and it really feels like Dan Schaffer had taken pictures of people in poses and then sketched them into the book. I am truly unsure of how to describe it, it is an art to enjoy in person rather than a digitally scanned image. After staring at the pages for a number of time you almost feel disorientated, in a good/creepy way.

The writing in the book is straight forward and keeps you well informed of whats happening. You never make the mistake of who is saying what and they all have a interesting thing to be said. My only thing I didn't like about the characters speech is, at times they don't have a personality of their own. A difference in speech terms would have been nice.

The story as I told you above is a interesting one to me. The direction took about one to two chapters before I was even interested(enough to not put it down till finish). The flow of the book is straight to the point, tells you who she is, where she stays, and why she wants the voices in her head to stop. It quickly jumps from being just a simple story of a girl with more voices in her head than metro center mall, to a “Quick! Hit that button and get me some sugar, because I'm about to murder something!” The direction the book leads in makes me wish I had just a mere thousand dollars so that I could direct a fake trailer of the movie to show just how amazing it could be on the silver screen. Honestly, all I need is to pen up a script, find two female actresses and two male actors, a empty apartment and I could direct the hell out of the movie.

Wait, we are still in the comic review huh? Well The graphic novel is a mere $7.99 in stores, or on Tfaw.com it is $6.39, I got lucky. I got the comic for a dollar over at atomic comic's “Ground Zero” zone. If I had to repurchase this comic for $7.99 without any other choice, I'd be ontop of it so fast! I really enjoyed reading this one and I look forward to finding some of Dan Schaffer's other books.

I rate “The Scribbler” 4.5 out of 5.

Cody~Out!

"Haunt" #2 comic review.

Sup Gofio readers! Cody here dropping part 2 of the "Haunt" comic series.



Ok, so I know I kinda bashed the first one in the face a few times, but lets face it, it sucked. Well a week ago I picked up issue #2 like I said I would and I must say, this one might be just on par or slightly better.

So the art style is the same exact print and like I said before I loved the style it's inked in, messy/scratch-art/thick colors. I love the style they picked cuz how it draws to my eyes, I am a sucker for it.

The writing in this one is much better, never pulling the rug from out your feet. it always is keeping you on track. You always know who is talking and is a little more interesting in plot points. To solve the speaking issue on who was saying what, they made the speaking bubbles closer to the right person and even designed ones for when he is in his venom suit.

This one starts where the other one left off where he kills two guys that shoot at him, he then notices the ear pieces in their decapitated heads and searches out the other fools where he in turn also murders them, all in the name of protecting the crack addicted girl. Oh, well another thing that happens is they tell you who she is. She happens to be Kurt's(Venom's Dead brother) wife (Amanda/Crack whore.)who I guess is in big trouble in someones eyes because, for some unknown to us reason, someone wants her kidnapped and brought into wherever the evil head quarters is, where she will more than likely be taken after getting stolen from our hero, and then dangled like a piece of meat over a saw blade/lava pit where our hero(S)make a hard choice to save her. Thats my guess, wanna bet on it?

Oh I forgot to mention the sissy fight between Venom and The Cable/Punisher. Todd McFarlane is the designer right? I mean, he made Spawn! Spawn being rather Original and creative, this on the other hand, tired-poor-idea thief. He basicaly just drew Cable wearing weapons/colors of punisher. This feels like a fan comic, Create your own stuff please.

Tell me that don't look exactly like venom/dark spiderman's inbred brother.



Alright lets be fair, now-a-days everything is a rip off of something else, right? So okay copy right flaws to the side, this comic still is under par for bad writing and understanding what the point is. If we don't know the name of our super hero by the second comics end, then why should I keep buying these at $3.00 a pop? I don't care for the pointless killing or the wasted ideas they call characters.

I'm not sure that I will be wasting my money on the third issue. I have a number of new comics and I plan on read those before wasting my time on these. I will give McFarlane another chance though. I have picked up two Spawn comics so I plan on reviewing them soon.

Okay bottom line, 2 out of 5.

Cody~Out!

"Breathe" comic review

Sup Readers!? Cody here with a review of a graphic novel called "Breathe" by John Sheridan and Kit Wallis.

I picked this one up the other day at atomic comic's in the "Danger zone" for a mere $2 dollars. I thought it would be nice to review it due to the fact that the price being so low would mean it would be a horrible comic. So I dropped two bucks(normal price was $20) on it and also picked up 100 plastic covers for my unprotected comics. Anyways lets start this review.

Wow, I'm honestly surprised about the quality of this comic. The art in "Breathe" is so interesting to my eyes. The colors in the comic are a muted green with grey. The style of the comic is a mixture of "Samurai Jack" and "Avatar: the last air bender". The style really brought my eyes to the page and made me love the colors, but something stood out to me that you don't see to often in comics, that being the art of motion blur and depth of field. Nothing makes you feel like they are really running as fast as they possibly can like motion blur. The art was nearly perfect but lost a point for being unsure of itself. At times where you read the words you get a sense of them being worried or rushed, yet on the page the person speaking would seem sort of 'Blah' or even happy.

The writing in the comic flows rather well and brings in feelings of rush, worries, sorrow and excitement. The comic takes place in old china and holds tight to traditional terms of speech, making you part of the time with only a 1 or 2 out~of~place lines on one or two pages. The writer knew the story he wanted to tell to us and never wanted to let go but instead lost his touch in the very end. On the cover we see a young girl covered in blood(Honestly she reminds me of a anime version of Left 4 dead's Witch) and the subtext saying "tread softly in the bulrushes, lest you wake the dragon" which felt a tad bit misleading, the girl "Mi Ling" never really gets any blood on her other than her own and is never really violent at all. Though I enjoyed the comic I must admit I feel like the writer was unsure if he wanted to make the female the lead or the male, making the first half of the comic all about her and then the second half about the boy. The comic Ended with a sudden halt smacking us in the face with a "Really? Did he just do that to her?"

The only other thing that I can't leave out of this is, Why? Why the two page curve ball of our underage female lead getting nude to take a bath in the lake and then pointing out that she is becoming a adult(Psh, adult. Yeah, ok. O_o) by being on her first period. Where is the point in this? Why did this make it into the comic? My only guess is, they must of really wanted to draw a nude girl. Do us a favor next time, keep those drawing to yourself, unless it serves a purpose.

My final say on the comic is, 3 outa 5 stars. If you see the comic for a few bucks, please by all means, pick it up. If you can't find it for under five dollars, pass it up. Great comic for a low on cash, kinda buy, but nothing else.

I'll be reviewing "Haunt" issue #2 and "The Perhapanauts" within the week.

Okay Cody~Out!

"Frankenstein's Womb" Review

Yo! Cody here, dropping a review on "Frankenstein's Womb"



Now I received this comic from my brother and sister-in-law on Christmas, I got one look at this cover and leaped for joy on the inside. I love the idea of Frankenstein, But like I said I love "Frankenstein" The evil/insane/sane scientist that is extremely focused on bringing the dead back to life. This comic is not about Frankenstein, or about him making a baby monster. This comic mainly about a young woman who is married to a extremely time constrained jerk who demands they waste to much time letting his wife puke her guts out due to the fact of being pregnant. Along the strict journey they cross paths with Frankenstein's castle. She demands they stop the carriage to spare ten minutes while she explores his uninhabited castle, her sister in law asks her to stay, and her husband worries about the time and sends her off in a rush.

Once inside the castle Frankenstein's monster ambushes her and speaks with her about her life. Frankenstein's monster tells her life is short and that she is born from death, she opens up to the monster and tells him about her mother that died the week after birth. Suddenly we see her standing in the very room her mother passed away in.

So, I guess Frankenstein's monster is a missing ghost of Christmas past, because he takes our young woman with him to different places in time where he shows her the day she was born and the day a unknown man dies on a hospital bed and is brought back to life with a defibulation unit, as well as showing her that her husband will betray her and leave her for the, sister in law.

Wow, okay so lets hit the good points, the comic has amazing black and white art work that shows such great detail in the sorrow of their faces, also bringing creepy vibes in the right moments. The art work of the comic really drew me in giving me one of the better feeling of truly hard work and care for detail in the comic.

The writing in the comic flows rather well at first, but loses it midway and then picks back up in the end. In the start the conversation between the three people in the carriage is good but has its flaws, the husband has a gutter mouth and breaks the feeling of traditional speaking terms, the conversation between Frankenstein's monster holds up neatly until he travels through time, he then loses my grip for who he is and why I should care about him. The ending of the comic was rather well placed, it didn't feel rushed in anyway and flowed perfectly leaving me something nice to say for it.

The shading and writing of the comic makes for a nice old times feel, creating a interesting moment of reading, but is sorely ruined when attempting to add current trash talk and fowl language, it is also ruined when the monster brings us to current times and keeps explaining why she is extremely alike him in the ways of life and death but never gives us a reason to care.

Bottom line being, a 2 and a half out 5, Good artwork, horrible/pointless writing, misleading title/cover.

This was a review by Cody on "Frankenstein's Womb" and I say, don't waste your money, go get Watchmen or Kick-Ass.

Today was my 19th birthday, it's 2:45 am and my head is splitting in two. Thanks for reading and good night.

Cody~Out.

Kick-Ass comic review.

Sup Readers, Cody here with a review on a comic book my good friend Josh recommended me. Well it was a strange matter of timing really, I was staying at my friend Sebastian’s house and we were going to watch The Descent. I had got to talking about the second film that was supposed to come out this year (2009) but its already Dec 31 2009, I don't think its happening like that anymore. but it got me talking and I couldn’t recall the directors name, so I grabbed his ps3 controller and went online to IMDB and checked out his profile, I found out that another guy was directing The Descent 2, and was also directing a film named "Kick-Ass". Now of course I had to see what it was. So I read what it was about and then watched the trailer. I got so hyped for the movie when I saw that trailer. Link. When I got home my buddy Josh called me and I asked him if he had ever heard of a movie coming out soon called Kick-Ass. He paused and said, "You mean the comic book right? The one I recommended to you like three weeks ago? Hard to find?" I felt like a dumb ass. So I told him to check out the hella great trailer and I'd see if I could find any of the comics in my local store. I got lucky and got the first and second issues. So now I will Tell you what I thought of the first and second issues.




So, already hyped up from the upcoming film I opened up the comic and noticed, the trailer was a near word for word about the crazy guy in the start, I found it pleasing. The story is simple about a teenager in school that lost his mother at a young age and lives with his father who works night shifts. the first thing I noticed was the writing in this book feels great, very realistic. The talking flows perfectly and its next to impossible to be confused on who is speaking. The art in the comic is really well done. The detail in the shadows really caught my eyes. Nice coloring and interesting style of outlines, nearly what I like to call scratch art. The story of the first comic follows young Dave as he attempts to become a super hero and prove people wrong about super hero being useful in the world, so he makes a costume and picks a fight with his first section of hooligans, which ends rather badly for young Dave.

Before I keep writing I am going to read the second comic so that I may see how Dave gets out of this mess.




Okay, so Dave got his ass kicked, and hit by a car. His body was totaled and he tries to make a fast recovery, while he swears off ever going near that damn costume ever again. Well that didn’t last long as he is back to trying to kick ass and help a man in need, and man does he fight!

This comic has pulled me in more than any other I have ever read, even Uzumaki (Manga) doesn't hold a candle to this, and I stayed up till 3:30 AM one night reading Uzumaki just to finish it, well lets hope that reading all of Kick-Ass doesn't end the same way for me, I hated the ending of Uzumaki.

Bottom line on Kick-Ass is a 5 out of 5. The Style, Writing, Tone, Color, Characters, everything about Kick-Ass is perfect. This is one comic book series I greatly desire having tucked neatly into my custom comic box.

Cody ~ Out.

SAW: the video game review

Yo Cody here. Dropping a review on the SAW the video game.

Okay first off I wanted to hate this game. I rented this game due to it being around Halloween, and because I heard the puzzles did make it worth it. Now with that aside I will move on.

The game starts off with you being locked up to a chair. You break the locks on your wrists by pulling up on them(because, you know, your super man) then you take control of the black man they like calling Detective Tap even though it looks nothing like Danny Glover. Now lets be fair, human likeness can be hard. So you move onto attempting to remove the reverse bear trap on your head before it goes off. This is the first of many easy puzzles. Your puzzle is twist the thumb stick 'round and 'round till a button shows up, hit the correct button and you break out, just in the nick of time. okay Um, really? "It's a trap!" achievement unlocked, okay that's a really stupid achievement, it's like getting a achievement for opening a glowing box for items and oh, "Treasure: unlock first container". Okay Imma be frank about this. I hate games that force you into a achievement, like as if you got one for your first time-leap back in braid. God I love braid. The one achievement I did want, never showed up. That part in the first movie where Adam is using a camera to light his way in his pitch black apartment and then is pounced upon. I used the camera to light my way for quite some time and even took pictures of foes. never got a achevment. So upsetting.

So aside from the massive achievement let downs, I'd like to point out how slow the fighting is in the game, I had assumed it would be like most games were you pick up a pipe and swing away at the foe till he dies. Well that works, really well. If you are fast enough to land the first hit, and are good at timing the speed of the foe as he runs at you. I started the game and found the first foe, he breaks through a door and runs at you, you pick up a pipe and wait for him to get close enough. I did this, and then swung at him, only he hit me first, canceling my hit, over and over again. I had to stop trying to him him and run away for a moment then swing well before he got close enough. The time span it takes to swing your weapons is just ridiculous.

For some reason Det. Tap is barefoot and is incapable of removing someones shoes to place over his own. This brings me to my next point, some tasks are just a waste of time, like the balance beams you have to cross, just run across and hold left and you'll make it across 9 out of 10 times. Broken glass is easy to see and is far to easy to side step past. digging through a toilet full of needles for a key is as simple as A button, A button.

In the menu of the game you can look at concept art as well as the E3 footage and other perks but the concept art is always something I look forward to in any game. after looking at the concept art it will then show the 3d model of the art chosen, this shows us how konami can not model a person very well.

The cut scenes in the game attempt to pull off the cinematography from the films, they need to watch the movies more than once before making a game of it. It has none of the saw elements to it other than the environment, the look and feel of the game is really the only thing they managed to do really well, the rest is very blah. I have yet to finish the game and I do look forward to finishing it despite all the horrible issues it has already. Something about the game keeps me entertained enough to have the urge to see the ending(Maybe because the movies always had interesting twists).

The only fun I had in the game was the first big puzzle where you feed the poison to the trash and the antidote to yourself. Also getting a achievement for each weapon drove me to keep playing, as well as the mystery in the game.

I would like to give this game a rating of 2 and a half stars out of 5. Nothing more than a rental. My say is final!

Cody Out~