The Story
Even if you don’t read the Ultimate Universe, any fan of the
X-men can feel this. We all wish we had more X books this good on our shelves. All you need to
know storywise going in is that in the Ultimate Universe, the @$#& has seriously hit
the fan. Most of the X-men are dead. This is a book about the very beginnings of
picking up the pieces. That gives it a raw, new and on-the-run spirit that the X-men
books rarely have anymore.
The Characters
The Writing
By far my favorite Jeph Loeb script. Usually I find him to
be predictable and too mainstreamy, but he’s in top form here. He clearly loves
to write for Art Adams (and who wouldn’t?). It’s air-tight. I don’t think he
wastes a scene in all five issues.
The tagline on the promo posters for this series was “THERE ARE NO
RULES”. Loeb embraces that spirit and runs with it. He treats the Ultimate
Universe like a playground where you can do stories they wouldn’t have the
stones to do on the other side. As it should be.
The Art
…is where it’s really at. Arthur Adams is the best superhero
artist in all of comics. I know he’s not as prolific as anyone would like him
to be, but it’s a damn fact that he draws incredible action, women,
environments, monsters, heroes, and everything else that makes a comic a comic.
Lots of expressive body language in his diverse cast of characters too.
As well as Loeb gives them different voices, Adams gives them unique form and
movement. He’s that good.
And
Peter Steigerwald is off the charts on the colors, so the whole thing is really a slam dunk visually.
Bottom Line
Characters. Story. Script. Art. Fight scenes. Excitement. Explosions. Girls. Mutants.
Kicks. Broken jaw.
Sigh. More like this.
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Michael Lagocki is one of the wheels within the wheel that is ArtLoveMagic, a massive collection of artists, musicians and poets dedicated to fighting evil with the power of good art.
ghettoManga.com
2 comments:
IN-teresting...
I may have to check this out. I've been an Art Adams fan since I picked up his New Mutants annual 85 (I think). Longshot was awesome and his FF vs. a lone Skrull was wonderful (alas mine was loaned out and never returned).
That said, I don't like his new art as much. Technically, it's very solid but it lacks the energy of his earlier works. I think its because, unlike Alan Davis, Art changed his style to match the newer (over-) coloring styles.
But, my thoughts on coloring is another annoyingly long comment.
Yeah, Art Adams provided the cornerstone that most of the Image class of artists built their fame and fortunes on.
I'd tend to agree about his arc of his body of work. His earlier stuff was more cartoony, but still more realistic than his peers (in America anyways). I'm still not a huge fan of modern coloring in comics. There are people that do it really well, but I don't want it to be the standard. In other news, nobody cares what I want. LOL!
I was reading a comic yesterday that would have been much better in black and white. The inks appeared to be very nice, but the colorist's obsession with dark purple was totally muddying the page.
Anyways, never worry about the length of your comments on this blog... I don't get that many comments, so I have plenty of time to read them.
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