Quickies: Joe the Barbarian #4 & Buffy Season 8 #35
I work for a University, meaning this time of year is just a little bit crazy. As such, I've been keeping up with my reading but I haven't had time to write. To try to play a little catch-up, here are two quick reviews of a couple of books about which I've had some... strong opinions of late.
Joe the Barbarian #4: Another wild and crazy ride through this story Grant Morrison is using to torture me to death. I love the way he gets to continually build out the world of Joe's hallucination/initiation/spirit journey/whatever, and the concept of monk-knights so cowardly that no one ever attacks their fortress is a brilliant bit of circular character design. That said, gods, but won't this kid ever get down the damned stairs? It is almost physically painful at this point watching him wake up for a few seconds and be no closer to the kitchen.
All the bits where the prophecies and nonsense in the... well, not exactly fake necessarily, but... other? world in which Joe is this awaited savior, anyway, the parts about the open gate and the rain and the dog, only to see that in "reality" his front door is open, there's a dog, it's raining; all that kind of stuff completely works for me. It turns my crank with the lightest of effort. I can't believe it's half over already and at the same time I can't believe it's only half over.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 #35: Well, OK, at least the space-boinking is over. This isn't a good issue and it seems to continue the trend of sadism for sadism's sake. Hell, when a character actually takes a moment to acknowledge what all this Twilight business says about Angel they are practically interrupted mid-sentence by more violence being applied to the page like some sort of foul tincture.
However, it isn't a bad issue, either, and at least Buffy seems to have her shit together emotionally throughout. I am not terribly wowed by the idea that Buffy and Angel had the opportunity to go be the Adam & Eve of some new reality, or whatever, and I really don't consider it terribly in-character for Buffy to stand around arguing while her friends are being attacked, but she gets back in the fight and Angel doesn't leave her to do all the heavy lifting which is something, I guess. I hope to the gods Brad Meltzer finds another title to work on because he's not a bad writer but the Buffyverse should take out a restraining order on his pen because this storyline? Whew. Bad touch. Joss Whedon's return to the author's chair to finish out this Season 8 run keeps it in my bag for a little while longer and, yes, perhaps I am being too hard on it for a couple of lousy issues. After all, this is issue thirty five. That's three years of good comics on the whole - often very good - and maybe I shouldn't be in such a hurry to be a bitch.
Klarion
Posted to Review on 17 May 2010
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Other stuff like this: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Grant Morrison, Joe the Barbarian, Joss Whedon
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