I, Vampire Review By Kenneth Vazquez

Its Wednesday which means its new comic book day, head to your local shop and pick up today's books!
In the mean time enjoy a review of DC Comics I,Vampire by BOOM Page writer Kenneth Alexander Wright Vazquez

DC Comics: I, Vampire Review

By Kenneth Alexander Wright Vazquez

Gothic horror is one of the genres that I gravitate to as much as sci fi and fantasy if not more. That's why of all the non super hero books released within DC Comics company wide relaunch "The New 52" the one that I personally enjoy most is the modern day retelling of 'I, VAMPIRE'.

Originally introduced in the pages of DC's 'The House of Mystery' #290 in March 1981, 'I, Vampire' told the tale of noble man turned vampire/vampire hunter Andrew Bennett and his lifetime pursuit of his fomer lover and renegade vampire Mary Seward. After a succesful run in the anthology format of the book Lord Bennett died defeating Mary Seward only to be restored to his undead self and placed back to sleep by Doctor Fate himself. No one knew if he would ever rise and walk the Earth again.

DC The New 52 Just isn't Doing it For Me

Yesterday was Marvel Monday here in The BOOM Page comic book section, we had a brief review of AvX Round 6, talked about some Spider-Man stuff and put up what books were coming out this week. Marvel Monday's are easy and fun for me to do, today I'd thought I'd do a DC day to be fair, but I'm having some problems.


The New 52 in where DC Comics has rebooted their entire comic book universe and started all books with a new number 1 just isn't doing it for me. I was an avid reader of DC comics, I collected JLA, all the Green Lantern Books, Detective Comics, occasionally some Action Comics and a few others. The Justice League was one of my favorite books for the longest time, then DC changed everything.


Now I am not against change or mixing things up a bit, but to take away a story and characters you were reading and making it different, well it just made it hard to stay with them. The only New 52 books I currently get each week are Green Lantern and Detective Comics. Those two seemed to be the ones least effected by the reboot and still contain the primary characters with the similar story to what I was following.


Now I know I should be open to new things, and some of the new artists and writers they've brought in for the new 52 are great. The whole thing was masterminded by Jim Lee, one of my favorite artists whose work on X-Men is legendary. But this new Justice League with Green Lantern being a really big jerk and Batman pretty much letting him just doesn't feel right. 


Marvel comics had the right idea, they rebooted their universe as well and changed everything but they did so in what they call the Ultimate Universe. A series of titles about their characters like Spider-Man, The Avengers, X-Men but they're the Ultimate Avengers or Ultimate Spider-Man.They gave their readers a choice to see if they wanted to switch it up, the didn't just take everything you knew and dump it outside. 


Its only 10 issues in, I'll pick up a book here and there, sometimes I wait to get the digital version of the book and only pay $1.99 per issue rather than the $3.99 normal cost, but for the most part my relationship with DC just isn't there. 


So if there is someone out there who would like to be the official DC Comics correspondant for The BOOM page I happily invite you to send me a message, I'd love to welcome you to the staff.

Marvel Mondays! What's new in Marvel Comics Universe.

Avengers vs. X-Men Round 6 - This $@!* just got real!


Did you read AvX Round 6 that came out last week?! The X-Men have taken control of the Phoenix power, after Hope Summers rejected it when it came to her on the moon, five of the X-Men were given the power instead. Cyclops, Emma Frost, Namor, Magik and Colossus also known now as The Phoenix Five. 


So did they bring mass chaos and destroy the world as Captain America and the rest of The Avengers predicted? No, in fact they are working towards ending world hunger, thirst, and attempting to make world peace. Oddly this doesn't sit well with The Avengers. You would think a group of heroes who are constantly fighting to save the planet would welcome other heroes to step in and help save the world. The Avengers and even the President of The United States feel that the X-Men are a danger and far too powerful to continue on in this manner.

New Avengers #27 Review - Two Iron Fists Up!

New Avengers #27 hit the stands today, written by Brian Michael Bendis, art by Mike Deodato and coloring by Rain Beredo, it ties into the Avengers Vs. X-Men story currently running through the Marvel Universe. The last several issues have been how the history of The Iron Fist and the city of Kun Lun tie to the Phoenix force. 


The New Avengers is one of my favorite comics on the market today and when this story started I fully admit I was not a fan. They pulled away from the great characters that are normally in this book, Luke Cage, Spider-Man, The Thing, Wolverine, Daredevil and several others, this book is like the Oceans 11 of comics, every cool character from any book was on this team. To have a story that only focused on the legend of The Iron Fist, not even Danny Rand, it left me wanting more, but they were building me up to this issue. (Read on if you don't mind spoilers)

Marvel Monday!

Greetings true believers, if you're as old as I am you'll remember Stan the Man greeting us every Saturday morning to begin one of the classic cartoons of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends or possibly the misunderstood monster the Hulk, or the ever patriotic Captain America.


Today Monday June 11th lets see whats going on in the Marvel world:

The Recent Spark of Gay Characters in Comics

Last week DC Comics announced they were making one of their main characters in their new reboot gay, the then 'came out' and said it was going to be Green Lantern. This of course sent the internet a buzz and those who know nothing about comics all in a tizzy that Ryan Reynolds character in Green Lantern is now gay. 


However just like I did there, the teasing that a real main stream character like Hal Jordan, Green Lantern of space sector 2814 would now be a gay man is not the case. The gay green lantern will be Alan Scott, the Green Lantern of Earth 2 who is actually not even a green lantern. Sure he's accessorizing with his green power ring but its nothing like Hal's or any of the other thousands of green lanterns that make up the Green Lantern Corps. 

Incredible Hulk failed to Roar

Incredible Hulk #8 came out this week, its the first part in the new story called Stay Angry written by Jason Aaron with art by Steve Dillon. The cover was done by Michael Komarck famed fantasy artist, known best for his work with Game of Thrones. The cover is drawn beautifully and depicts a battle between Frank Castle, The Punisher against the star of the book, The Incredible Hulk.


Sadly the beauty of that cover is where the artistic greatness stops, the inside by Dillon really doesn't play up that well. Dillon is a British artist, his style seems very similar to Frank Quitely a Scottish artist, maybe it something with the European artists that have this like style, but it doesn't translate well to The Hulk.








Dillon's probably best known for his work on a book from Vertigo called Preacher but he has had successful runs with Marvel comics as well on The Punisher; probably why he was hired to do this part of the story. While his depiction of Punisher is fine, the way in which he draws the Hulk is terribly wrong.  On the third page in of art there's a panel where the Hulk is taking on three men in a hotel room. He looks to be only a little over 6ft tall and maybe 250lbs? He wasn't even Lou Ferrigno big. The Hulk needs to always be a monster, huge, giant close to 8ft tall and massively large. To make him just slightly larger than a regular man is wrong.


The story isn't bad, Hulk finds out that when he calms down he reverts back to Banner, something that hasn't happened for quite some time and shouldn't be happening at all since (spoiler alert)  the last issue showed the death of Bruce Banner. But apparently now Banner is the crazed person we all have to worry about and Hulk is a well spoken green giant that will indeed help people out if they need it. 


The villain in the story is a new comer, Pit-Bull, no he's not the Miami singer entertainer he's a dog man, seems mostly dog, but he walks up right and has human limbs, kind of like a Thundercat but doggy. Anyway he just seems stupid and forced, if you're a dog man how would you possibly become a drug lord, who would take you serious? I would think everyone would want to pet you, maybe play catch. Is his true arch nemesis the mail man? Its clear that the fact that he's some sort of hybrid will play a part in this story but why did he have to be the main villain? Its like the writer just thought it would be cool if he was a dog man so go ahead and make him be drug lord and we'll name him after Mr. Worldwide. 


Another thing that bothered my inner smart geek, why is Hulk is still bald in this issue? Apparently its due to a gamma bomb going off in his face, but I would think his healing factor would cure baldness as well. He started the new book with shaggy hair and a beard and now he's all smooth and clean shaven, another point that just seems dumb to ignore. I suppose artist continuity when it comes to small things like this doesn't matter that much to most. To me its a thorn.

I started reading this new Hulk book primarily because of the artist that started it, Whilce Portacio, Whilce a Filipino artist has an amazing style, the best way to describe it is refined sketching. I was a huge fan of his in the 90s with his work on X-Factor, some truly great stuff.


Mr. Dillon taking over for Whilce has some big Hulk shoes to fill, and I'm not sure I like his European look to the characters. Thank fully it seems this story of Stay Angry is one writer and a different artist each issue. Next issue we get Pasqual Ferry, a Spanish comic book artist. I know it seems like I'm really focusing on where the artists are from, but one thing I've noticed as an artist, the region you're from has a great influence on your art, and other artists from that area usually tend to draw similar. Spanish comic artist in my opinion are some of the best, Humberto Ramos, Carlos Pacheco and others, all of them my personal favorites.


There are some good scenes in this book, I don't want to give it a total bad review, a scene in which Hulk was realizing he was calming down and was afraid he'd turn back into Banner got funny when he told the Punisher to repeadetly shoot him in the face, the Punisher of course complied.


If you're in your comic shop this week and you haven't picked up any of the new Hulk books I'd say go grab issues 1-7, they are truly great books and really expand the history and character of the Hulk in a great new way. Then once you've gotten those read go ahead and grab this one as well, I mean we have to find out what Banner's up to and lets hope next issue the Hulk gets a little bigger.


HULK BOOM!