Kieron GillenRecensioni
Autore di The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 1: The Faust Act
Recensioni
El juego y el origen de este mundo en si mismo, están intrincados. Me gusta mucho lo que deja entrever, la idea o el concepto detrás de este mundo de fantasías.
Este cómic es demasiado bueno.
I feel like the alien Mother character/arc makes WAY more since now; I can't help but wish we had a little more insight into her motivations earlier on, but better late than never I suppose!
*The Characters! I really liked this team together, and I feel a good dynamic starting between them all. I'm not 100% sure how Kate ended up in space with Noh-Varr, or really why they're together, BUT I like the characters nonetheless. I'm especially invested in seeing more Wiccan and Hulkling's relationship develop, plus anything with Kate promises to be fun. *The Art (mostly)-I think the character design was solid, and the colors were working, but the backgrounds, interior settings, AND outdoor scenes felt weirdly empty, almost like this was taking place on an unfinished film set. I just wasn't feeling the vibes these parts gave off.
*The Plot: It's interesting but slightly disjointed. The Kate & Noh-Varr opening in space gives way to Billy and Teddy drama, which is where the freaky morphy aliens come in, and then America and Loki are going at it...I just felt a little whipped around and wasn't totally sure what was important. I think this will smooth over in later issues now that the plot has been set, so fingers crossed on that.
*The Spell? Okay, the ending (no spoilers) with the spell and having to stay away has got me ??? I think I understand it but tbh I'm not sure. It seemed a little vague.
*The Emotions! Loki is obvi going through it with his past self, Billy and Teddy are holding strong through all the turmoil, and I sense some other things bubbling. Despite the bumps of this issue, the emotions coming through were there and I FELT for this gang! The emotional aspects have hooked me and yanked me right into the world of the Young Avengers.
The art style is also good; I enjoy the use of the electric pastels, and the colors set the scenes very nicely.
But this felt confusing. There were multiple times that I had to go back and re-read a passage or a couple of pages. The concert scene in the subway tunnels was especially confusing! I also feel like that whole chunk of the story didn't add much but took up a lot of room (although maybe I misunderstood something? Again, confusing).
The main human character, Laura, is also severely underdeveloped. We don't know why she's so obsessed with the gods, or her motivations, or actually anything about her other than that she loves them.
I want to like this series, and I'm going to read Volume 2. But this just felt a little weak in some respects, although the premise is engaging.
(Note: I was very close to giving this 2 stars, but "rounded up" in a sense. That should give a little more insight into my feelings about this one)
In order to help her friend she will start series of events that, combined with Angela's nature (that makes Wolverine look like pacifist and peoples man in comparison), will bring the entire universe in state of utter destruction.
I like how people see Angel's and their "nothing for nothing" approach as "capitalism at maximum" :) Angel (beside being ultra Amazon society of bounty hunters and bad-ass warriors in general) are based on old ways so to speak. Even today in good part of the world it is custom to give something in return for anything received. It is just a way people try to enforce the idea that nothing comes free.
Of course for Angels (that are as warm people as Siberia in winter) this concept is basis of everything. If someone is indebted he better return the favor or ..... oh boy :) As a matter of fact all Angela's actions are as they are because she tries to pay off all of her debts in a way that will give her freedom.
So in all of this mayhem (center of which is Angela) we see Asgardians chasing her, Angels trying to figure out why is everybody from Asgard so hellbent to destroy them, Guardians of the Galaxy finding themselves played around by almost everyone (but hey in for a penny in for a pound, right:) ), Hella caught in a very surprising role of helping (instead of destroying :)), Malekith and Dark Elves getting struck by Angela (you truly feel sorry for them) and Surtur, that malevolent giant, trying to pry its way back into Nine Realms. Its constant action, action, action.
And ending, ending makes me eager to get the next volume as soon as it gets published.
Art is pretty good and I have to say consistent through all issues of this volume.
Highly recommended to fans of action stories full of exotic and ancient space civilizations.
Like a lot of Kieron Gillen comics, it's pretty good but it reads as though it could have been better, like it could have done more with its premise and its characters than it ended up doing. Once & Future has two big strengths; one is the way it uses its very concept to interrogate the idea of British identity. In the first volume, King Arthur is brought back by Anglo-Saxon supremacists... but what they've forgotten is that Arthur wasn't Anglo-Saxon, he was a Briton who fought off Saxons! So he turns on them and begins expunging what he sees as invaders from Britain. Bits like this recur throughout the series, deft moments of pointing out the way the stories we glom onto culturally often don't actually say what we imagine they do. A lot of the time the story is about the conflicts between different versions of the Arthur mythos, the early medieval version clashing with the later one; there's some fun stuff with Beowulf in volume two. The particular highlight in this regard is Boris Johnson's hilarious cameo.
The other highlight is the character of Bridgette McGuire, the retired monster hunter, a grandmother who gives no shits about your feelings and will do anything to anyone—including her beloved grandson—to keep Britain safe. As Gillen points out in the series afterword, she's the kind of character who can be a vehicle for adventures forever, but that doesn't stop her from developing and changing in ways both small and big over the course of the series. I always enjoyed her shenanigans and dialogue.
I reviewed the series as a whole under its final volume.
The series ultimately doesn't do enough with its interesting premise. There's a lot of big action sequences, and certainly Dan Mora does a great job illustrating them, but it felt to me like Kieron Gillen spent more time asking "how could this mythological idea be used to make a comic book action set piece?" than he spent asking "what does the Arthurian mythos tell us about modern Britain?" I loved those moments, like I said above... but honestly, there just weren't enough of them across the series's thirty issues. At time the overlapping mythologies get confusing, and not in a good way; I don't think the series adequately delineates the difference between the multiple Arthurs, for example, and some of it gets wacky. Why would Tennyson's Arthur be steampunk!? The last volume feels like Gillen thought the series was going to run another thirty issues but was suddenly given only six to wrap it all up... I was surprised to learn from the afterword that he actually had twenty-four more issues than he originally thought he was getting!
I also felt that Duncan and Rose, the ostensible leads, deserved more of a character throughline than they ended up getting. They often end up feeling along for the ride, and I wanted a stronger sense of their development and choices in the face of all the weird things they go through.
Other than some of the jumpy issues near the end, it is (as Gillen-penned comics usually are) a pretty smooth read. There's a number of clever ideas in here. Mora's art gets a bit too grotesque at times but is usually excellent; Tamra Bonvillain is a revelation on colors. But I can't help feeling there's another version of this story that consistently treats its mythology as something to be interrogated rather than as a basis for clever set pieces.
Plus to name your final volume "The Wasteland" but then claim the poem was written by "T. S. Elliot" is a pretty unforgivable mistake!
It's only fair to acknowledge it's no longer 2006 and this just isn't for me. Even worse, it's so nearly for me that it's so much less for me.
What if magic was focused through music and there were gods of periods, movements, and vibes?
It's an interesting question that other things, including Neil Gaiman's American God's answers better, but there are definitely some cool concepts and swings here, but it's all a bit incel hipster Constantine who's the lovechild of Stewart Lee and Mark LeMarr with very little self awareness in a nightmare High Fidelity.
I'm the right age for the references and I was/ am into a whole lot of the things referenced, but not in a way that this does anything for me. I'm also the wrong gender and sexuality to not find the trying to do a send up of the thing by having a protagonist who does the thing without engaging with it, so it's just doing the thing.
I get that they set the guy up as being the worst, but he's not really treated like that and saves the day like any other comic character, so it falls flat in celebrating an awful person with about as much self-awareness and lack or telegraphing it as Rick and Morty.
Maybe I'm missing something about it being so on the nose and exercise in epic cringelord hipster dudes rockness actually being good and clever, but it was just pretentious, annoying, and problematic for me.
This volume took a while to get going and was a lot of setting up for the continuing story, so I was a little cooler on it for a while, but, gee, does it end on a bang and I can't wait to pick up the next volume.
The idea is bizarre. The writing is brilliant. The art is gorgeous. Lucifer is a hot, Queer femme. The mystery and politics are fascinating.
I love it.
The first five issues are really an introduction to the world and a set up for our protagonist, so I'm left with a lot of questions and not really having too much of a clue what's going on. But that's the beauty of stories, especially comics, they don't have to make sense as long as the experience makes you feel something. I am absolutely bought in and this first volume has whetted my appetite for more of this and a need to check out other things the writer and artists have worked on.
Regardless of whatever else you do, you simply must look up the alternative covers for these issues. They are fucking sublime!
re-read 2022
Reread 2022: Doctor Aphra (alongside of Din Djarin and Han Solo) has become my favorite Star Wars character. This comic is a bunch of fun and Disney needs to get on making a film or TV show about Aphra and cash in.
But the overall plot feels convoluted.
Gillen - please give Aphra some depth and a story we will care about.
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I think this idea has a lot of potential. The strongest point for me was the characters - I think out of everything in the story, they were the most developed. Unfortunately I felt like most the the story was a "teaser" - that elements to the story would soon be explained more in-depth, but weren't. I really wish the world was better developed, and that there would be a motive given for these gods to reincarnate every 90 years, (the motive given is really weak). Additionally, I found the dialogue to be rather confusing and hard to follow. It took me way to long to get into the "flow" of the dialogue.
I've settled with a 3-star rating for this graphic novel. If you'd like to see a more detailed review, I'll have one up on my blog soon: escapinginpaper.wordpress.com.