Hello everyone. Before I hop into the meat of my post I just wanted to introduce myself, since this is my first post. Dig the podcast, started listening back in August or September and I look forward to it every week. Figured I’d join the forums since it sounds like there’s a lot of fun stuff happening here.
Anyways, figured I’d start with a thread about what comic books I’m reading. Comic books are one of my favorite forms of media. They’re like the best parts of books and movies combined into one awesome experience.
Last night I re-read Powers: Who Killed Retro Girl, by Brian Michael Bendis. What a great series. If you haven’t heard about it, think of it like Law & Order with super powers. This police procedural follows 2 homicide detectives, Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim, who specialize in the investigation of super power related crimes. In this book they’re trying to unravel the case of Retro Girl, a recently murdered superhero, one who is nearly indestructable even after death, which is revealed in a hilarious autopsy sequence.
The story goes into some dark places and what really brings it to life is that it’s so believable. When you find out who killed Retro Girl, you think about it, and can imagine that if super powers really were real, that sort of thing would happen. Hell, you hear about similar stuff happening in the celebrity world.
the art is awesome in this book. It’s a simple, stylized look. Michael Avon Oeming does pencils and ink on this book. He had so much work going on when he started this series, so he adopted this simple look so that he could fit another book into his schedule. If you haven’t seen it, I find it similar to Batman The Animated Series with a bit more detail. There’s some great use of panels in this book, which have some really unique ways of delivering the story. While you’re riding shotgun with the 2 detectives, seeing intimately how they conduct their investigation, you’re simultaneously delivered a news broadcast completely devoid of details, and built entirely around sensationalism. One thing I will say, if you can spend the extra cash and find the monthly issues, it’s a lot better for the visuals than the trade paperback. The spacing and panelling are really designed for a book that folds flat, and in the trade, unless you break the spine open, you do lose a couple of the dialogue bubbles and a few transitions. Not a big lose as it’s easy to extrapolate whats happening, but it is a lose.
Anyways, this is pretty vague but I would hate to spoil much of what happens; the fun of procedurals is watching the mystery unfold. Hopefully someone else here has read it and can add to this. I’ll try and keep this thread going week to week as I read and re-read books.
