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.

Review: The Goon

Sup guys and girls, Cody here with a review of "The goon" series. Um, sorry it's such a huge post.

The reason I am reviewing it as a "series" and not a issue or graphic novel is because I recently went to my local Bookmans were Tim and I noticed that all comics were 50 cents each no matter what the comic was. The first comic I noticed sticking out of a long-box was The Goon issue #26. I had known about this series for a number of months now and wanted to check it out but was always stopped due to it being rather hard to find issue #1. Well I was lucky to find a slew of issue going all the way back to issue #3 original print too. But they were not in order, I found #3, #12, #16, #19, #22, #23, #25, #26/26 (same issue but different prints) #27, #29, #? This one was strange. It was unlabeled in the time line. its a full color high print and a first edition at that, it was labeled as a 25 cent issue instead of a number. It was the first one I read outta the bunch thinking it was possibly issue one. I was wrong but in good way. Issue "25 Cents" is what I assume a Issue to help people lost in the series find out whats going on.

The Story:

The story is about anti-hero The Goon and his sidekick Frankie. The goon is the right hand man of the biggest "boss" ever to rule the city. I couldn't seem to find out what he was in terms of being a boss so I just made the guess of him being a mob boss, but without the mob. Um, yeah. Or a hard core loan shark.

Anyways, Goon and Frankie are highly feared in the city by the living and the undead. Anything that the boss Labrazio says for them to do, they do it. And like most mob story's one boss wants the other dead, so they send their men to attack Goon seeing how he is the only one who has full contact with the boss. Only to reveal that Goon killed the boss in issue #3 and has been hiding this fact for over 20 years.

There, now that you know the story I gotta say, it was rather hard to explain that without just saying, "The Goon rules the streets and everyone is scared of him". I feel a strong need to talk a little about the Goon and his half pint sidekick.

The Characters:

The Goon Is a huge, thick jawed, short tempered, little worded anti-hero. I love this guy, he is the perfect build and style for when I think of anti-hero's from the time era given to us, which I think is somewhere between fictional 1850-1920's. He is the strongest, baddest mug and if you mess with him he will bust more than just your jaw in a single punch. His style of clothing suits the era and build perfectly making him look like a badass as well and someone that would be fun to drink with at a bar. (Odd way to phrase that if I say so myself)

Frankie, oh man. This guy is just insane. I don't think anyone other sidekick would have worked. Any other choice would have just been stuck in the hero's shadow, But Frankie? Hell no! Frankie jumps at the chance to make you remember him whenever you think of the Goon. Making himself noticed at times of pure silence, with acts of bi-polar love/furry like the heart touching vampire that was beaten nearly to death (ha, funny because the pun of, vampire, being, dead.. shut up) by the Goon and Frankie yet stands to help the Goon in time of need! To which Frankie responds with a heart filled Thank you, and "Knife to the eye!". Frankie's short temper and over abusive life style really grabs you by the hair and screams "LOVE ME!"

Eric Powell does such a good job on these characters that I even liked the sub-story with the Goon's foe about reviving a human head to figure out information on The Goon's boss.

The Writing:

Eric Powell did such a fantastic job writing this comic, he really brought you into the era and made you enjoy everything being said and made you feel at home. The characters never feel out of place or stale, with new foes and new plots, the story seems fresh after every issue and leaves you wanting more. Like I said above I even enjoyed the villain talking to his zombie butler about reviving a human head for information. None of the writing feels dull or phrased in a strange way, just perfect.

The Art:

The art in this comic really stood out to me, but not at first. I had walked right by this comic a number of times while at Atomic Comics while thinking "I really wish I could find the first issue so I could review that" but I never saw it as to much of a reach out, so I let it be. Once I got a hold of these issues though, I noticed that my choices of not searching hard enough was a wrong one. The style changes every few comics but really holds onto your desire of the comics. I can't really put to much detail into how it all looks because how much it changes. One thing never changes, the way the color is. It is always bright and eye catching, thick to the tip. Eric Powell doesn't do his own color (all the time) but his drawling style always stays the same so when the inker changes the color style it always flows perfectly because it still holds his style. Lovely.

The ink is mainly heavy with bright yet muted coloring, making it perfect for pop-out-combat. From issue to issue I grow more and more into enjoying the style changes that take place in the color and outline levels.

The final say on the comic is a must read. I highly suggest this comic, might be better if bought in the graphic novel section though.

I give The Goon a 4 outta 5.

Cody~Out

Review: Dr. Herbert West.

Hey guys, Cody here with a quick review on Joe Brusha's and Ralph Tedesco's "The chronicles of DR. Herbert West"



Ok so as some of you might know, I have a unhealthy obsession for the zombie film Genre. A conversation for my plan in case the undead rise from the ground is a weekly based speech with Tim, Bre, Seba, and/or Josh. With that said I can happily say, I found the Re-animator films a great joy.

The other day, when I hit up my secondary comic shop (Hero Comics) I was searching for Johny the Homicidal Maniac issue 3 and Kick-Ass issue 3. I instead found the large table with numerous boxes of 1$ comics. Out of my poor side I always feel the need to find something worth buying in these (Besides most of them are just in the 1$ bin due to some punk kid bending a corner of the comic, crushing the resale value). I found this little gem hiding among a large number of slightly damaged Spider-Girl comics, I was excited to get home a read this seeing how I loved the films, but was cautioned to it ruin my idea of the series. I was Pleasantly surprised by this comic, here's why.

The story: the story of the comic takes place in the start of DR. West Becoming the careless monster we all love to hate for being a greedy, lying, backstabbing douche of a man. The comic starts as Herbert and his caring family visit church. After the minister finished explaining that the human soul leaves the body after death to heaven or hell, the family starts walking home. Herbert noticed his shoe was untied and asked his father to help him tie it. His mother in the distance caring his little sister on her shoulders, slips off the curb when her high heels snap, tossing herself and his litter sister into the street dying instantly when colliding with the front of a New york city bus. For some reason they don't seem to mention his father after this. I assume he wasn't very kind to Herbert.

So Herbert becomes obsessed with reversing death itself. He creates the glowing green serum that re-animates dead cells and tissue. After a large amount of attempts on bringing dead animals back to life, the school chooses to ban Herberts experiments due to lack of safety and insecurity in his work. Herbert then chooses to take up residents in his grandfathers house where he employs local gangsters to bring him fresh human corpses for exchange of 400$ bucks a corpse. Thus the Re-Animator begins his tell of horror.

Writing and Art: The writer's Joe Brusha and Ralph Tedesco and artist's Jason Craig and Axel Medellin Machain did a great job capturing Herberts stranger side and brings in the insecurity we all felt from the movies right to our hands and eyes. The comic gives you a overall dark tone, gives you a strong feeling that something will go wrong before it's finished. The inking is a light coloring with a thick gray scale that makes it feel like a older, darker, film. The perfect mood for this comic.

The writing in the comic never skips a beat. Right on time with the right choice of words. The team that made this comic put some time into perfecting the writing and I feel like a true fan of the films was inspiring them from within to write it. When I first grabbed the comic I had cold feet due to the fact that I thought, capturing Herberts personality and sinister side wouldn't be possible via comic panels. I was dead wrong.

Conclusion: The overall say on the comic is: great story, solid art, great inking, and fantastic writing. I rate this comic a 4 outa 5, I wanted to push it to a 5 outa 5 but the art could have been slightly better on a few panels and I couldn't ignore the fact that his father is never mentioned again after the tragic death of his mother and sister. Regardless of those two flaws, I still greatly enjoyed the comic and recommend it to all who like zombie comics or mad scientists, and greatly recommend it to fans of the film.

I plan on picking up the next issues as soon as I can.

Cody~Out.

Welcome all the changes.

Sup, Gofio readers, Cody here with a post about some of the new changes in my life that I wanna welcome.

Lately I have have been at a slight pause point on my rate of producing my 3D models and animations. But in the past few days I have had a number of ideas for animations and models. A few days ago I had stayed up till roughly 4:30 in the morning just doing computer stuff when it hit me that my 3D skill has reached the point where I can now make some of the stuff I wanted to make when I first started, such as human heads, mutants and other things. I took some time out and made one of the deformed faces I had in the back of my mind for years now.




Other faces and things will be made soon, I will be starting another model of a highly detailed human face from my most recent comic book review "The Scribbler". Another animation I am working on as of this moment is one about a "Guy" that starts dancing, and ends with a bang.

And to finish the 3D section I am also lacing the finial touches on my "Gir" unit for my good friend Sebastian.

Lately some things have changed around to bring me to a greater state of happiness. Bre and I have decided to take the idea of our wedding to a outdoor wedding and a beautiful wedding park. We really wanted it to be a out door wedding from the start and we just love being near lively plants, we found a few japanses tea gardens and places like that with waterfalls and bridges and lots of bright green trees and grass. Another thing happening is about Tim and I. Tim has been re-writing his version of "Real: A documentary of a super hero" over and over again. Tim has been looking into renting a Red One camera for shooting the movie on the highest of quality film stock. I thought for sure that Tim and I were never going to be making another short film unless I saved up for a camera and asked him, so at that point I just turned my focus to nothing more than writing, comic books, and 3D. I greatly await shooting new footage with Tim and the new cast for the film he wrote.

I think that covers just about everything that has been lifting my spirts lately. Oh sometime this week I will be posting a new comic review, I'm not sure which I'll choose but I will try to put it in this week.

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!

Hack/Slash issue #11 review.

Sup fellow comic book readers, Cody here with a review on a comic called "HACK/SLASH" issue #11.



Okay so, when I first heard of this comic series I was at Atomic comic's looking for the free posters in the back that they often give away, and while I was chilling towards the back, a comic caught my eye. A super sexy girl in tight panties. Of course I picked it up and looked at it,(I am a guy after all :D) but after a moment of viewing it I realised it was in spanish. I was disapointed to see that, so I left the comic in the back and grabbed my star trek poster and left.

Fast forward >> six months later. It's a good day, rainy, and cold, I went for a visit to my comic book shop and arrive to see it's a sales day. 40% off back issue comics. I begun searching through every stack of back issues till I found a large number of interesting comics when I noticed, "Hack/Slash" stick out the top of a stack. I searched for the lowest number comic and found issue #11 for $5dollars minus the 40%.

Now I started reading the comic with high, but low expectations, I have been wanting to read it for months, kick ass looking art and sexy girls. This being issue #11 would mean I'd have no idea who she is, why she is fighting demons, who the people are, and so on. So I set my mind to a simple level and said to myself, "I'll read this one, and if I like it I will buy the 31 dollar graphic novel, but the chances are slim." Little did I know that the company "DDP" had a rocket of greatness packed away for me.

The comic starts off with a masked man with one eye killing people in very violent ways, we then meet our female lead, Cassie. Cassie(Our hero) searches for information about her father who left her when she was a baby. Now I could go into detail about everything but I won't. I'll just leave it at, She kills demons/murderers.

The art in Hack/Slash is a pale coloring with light sketching, the color puts you right in a dark interesting moods, really draws you in . The detail in the art really stood out to me in an odd way. I found myself studying the art work instead of flipping to the next page, constantly fighting with myself on wanting to get to the next sum of words and seeing the detail on the retarded demon dog.

For some reason I really want to create this demon dog in 3D.



The writing in the comic is amazing. I felt sorrow for the anti-hero, I felt the embarrassment from the demon dog and our hero's horny side. the love hate relationship of the vet assistant and our hero. every moment of the comic feels, solid, just perfect. This is the closest I will get to being able to say "I feel like the fans of the Buffy Comic series." I say that with pure hate for the Buffy comic's and the horrid fans that keep buying them. But it is of the same basic style, a female lead with a horny lust but is scared to be attached to someone for worries of hurting them, and spends every chance possible, she kills monsters/killers.

I couldn't be happier about buying this comic and I greatly await the time when I can buy the graphic novel. 4.5 out of 5 for issue #11.

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!