The Outhouse - The Greatest Comic Book Forum

[BlueStreak]

I think we should do Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #160 next week.

DEATH BAGS

The Coalition Against Deathbags disagrees with you.

[guitarsmashley]

Don't know if I'll be reviewing this week, We just found a house to rent and I'm still interviewing for a job and then we're moving so I might be out of the loop quite a bit over the next couple weeks.

[Eli Katz]

Don't know if I'll be reviewing this week, We just found a house to rent and I'm still interviewing for a job and then we're moving so I might be out of the loop quite a bit over the next couple weeks.

Good luck! Hope everything works out for the best in a quick, relatively painless way.

[Victorian Squid]

I went to two smaller shops, was told they only carry Northlanders in trade, haha. There's a couple lessons there, and a warning for the LCS when day and date digital is fully-accepted.

[Stephen Day]

My LCS gets in acouple of copies of Northlanders. Sadly they were sold out when I got there.

[Victorian Squid]

Eegah, it's hard when you want to like a comic book, Northlanders #41 for example, more than you actually do like it. Especially when the book has gotten the old Viking axe as well. It's not so much a bad story as it is a fairly familiar one made slightly confusing to read by the movements in time and the fact that all the men in the story look more or less alike. As a done-in-one, Northlanders #41 suffers for the fact that there's little investment on the reader's part in Birna or any of the other drab cardboard-cutout Vikings . It's a Too-Short Story, with all the weight of a predictable little vignette, and it gives us the end at the beginning much to its detriment because that's all there is to it beyond a lot of frowning Norsemen.

The art looked faded and I thought it was an opportunity wasted to make the story richer by really depicting the island and its inhabitants' lives there in more detail than just the empty washed-out backgrounds. Unless empty and washed-out was how the artist meant it to feel--but again, I don't think that did the story any favors even if so.

Good comics stick with you, make you want to re-read them and keep them to re-read in the future. Northlanders #41 just doesn't.

5

[Eli Katz]

Northlanders #41 is badly written. Not because it has hokey moments or stilted lines or illogical plot developments, but rather because it tells a story in a very inefficient manner. It's amazing that, three pages into the issue, there is no indication of what the story is about. There is a page of slight, mostly pointless narration, followed by two pages of wordless panels. After 15 percent of the issue, in other words, the reader still has very little reason to flip the page and see what happens next.

I understand that these pages are meant to provide a mysterious opening. But in a 20-page one-shot, the writer has to get to the point, fast. A 20-page book is probably the equivalent of a 2,000-word short story. There's no time to build an atmosphere of mystery. Just get to the main conflict and then wow the reader with tight plot twists. Brian Wood uses a modern, semi-decompressed storytelling approach here, and the book fails as a result. Fundamentally, there isn't enough story in this issue to make it a compelling read.

The art, on the other hand, is excellent. The clean, simple line work, coupled with the faded color, gives the book an appropriately ancient feel. I'm not familiar with Marian Churchland, but I'm now interested in seeing more of her work. She has a quiet style, but I can imagine her being a very good illustrator of non-action stories.

STORY: 2
ART: 8
OVERALL: 4

[Royal Nonesuch]

Oh crap, I still have to make a pick.

Man, next week looks really bad.

I don't know, let's do this: All Nighter #1

[thefourthman]

What in the fuck is All Nighter?

[Victorian Squid]

What in the fuck is All Nighter?

John Snow said it was rated For Teen Women:

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/05/2 ... ull-issue/

[Victorian Squid]

Bad news for Northlanders trade-waiters:

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/06/18/ ... g-presses/

[GLX]

Bad news for Northlanders trade-waiters:

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/06/18/ ... g-presses/

Ugh.

[thefourthman]

Looks like that one Freakangels trade.

[thefourthman]

speaking of hating comics, I want to punch the guy in the store in the fucking stomach.

[Victorian Squid]

I thought I was gonna have to headbutt some guy the other day.