Blog Archives
Lapaix, Juan – Reality on the Rocks #1 (written by David Arroyo)
Reality on the Rocks #1 (written by David Arroyo)
If you’ve read the other stuff on this page, you’ll be happy to know that this issue is better than the other ones. The only real gripe I have is that the black people in this book are written like they’ve never seen a black person, or if they have they’ve only seen them in bad movies. The boobs, which were almost overpowering at times in the other books, have been trimmed down to more realistic levels, which is a good thing, because this book is about young people going through life as realistically as possible. It’s basically about four people. One of them is addicted to video games, another one is doesn’t have much of a personality at all yet, and the other two are the very odd black guys. It’s hard to say too much about a book like this until you get a few issues worth of personality. I don’t know how good the prospects are for that, frankly, because there wasn’t any kind of publication date for #2 in here and it apparently took about three years just to get this issue yet. If I had to give Juan any advice at all, I’d say to stick to one series and get a few issues out, see how that goes. If those aren’t the characters you want to deal with, move on to another series, as you have a few to choose from. Just my advice, anyway. Contact info is up there, as always…
Lapaix, Juan – Esoteric Hunters #1
Esoteric Hunters #1
Just yesterday I was begging to read a crappy book, as I had read nothing but good stuff for a long time and was afraid that I was going soft. Well, this is a crappy book. It’s half of a split book with Faire, reviewed a bit further down. What’s this about? Well, have you seen the movie Blade? Do you remember the scene with the vampires dancing in the spray of blood from the sprinkler system? Substitute werewolves in for vampires, and you have this issue. Oh, and somebody named Cristopher in the role of Blade. Yes, it really is that simple. The art’s not terrible, although it’s one of those “boobs a’plenty” artists (which is odd, considering that Michelle, the artist, is probably female). The writing is pretty much the cliched stuff that you’d expect from a movie ripoff, with the added bonus that the grammar is terrible and punctuation is nonexistent. Look, I always try to say something nice about the comics I review, but there really isn’t much positive here. The stories might be going somewhere, I guess, but they’ve both gotten off to such a terrible start that I don’t really care where they’re going. They should (if they want my advice) consider this a learning experience and start on their next project. Here’s a website, check out their stuff for yourself.
Lapaix, Juan – Faire #1
Faire #1
Here’s the first line from the book, and you can tell me what you think: “Like all other fairy tales, this one starts like all the others.” Now, class, can you break that sentence down and tell me what’s wrong with it? I don’t mean to pick on Juan, but I get the overwhelming impression from this that English isn’t his first language. There’s not a thing wrong with that, but if it’s in English, that’s what the majority of your audience is going to be reading, so get an editor! Ahem. The story is about a young, lonely girl who doesn’t fit into any of the cliques in high school, but she is into the dark arts. So, naturally, a “Pan” comes down to make her taller and her boobs much, much bigger. He also throws in some powers. Apparently these powers come with a price, but we’re not going to learn about that until the next issue. Pet peeve alert: in two sentences, one after the other, he uses “there” and “their” in “there boss” and “their queen”. Maybe he didn’t know which one was right and figured that at least he’d be right half the time, I don’t know. The art in this one is a bit better than the art in Esoteric Hunters, as there are only giant boobs on a few pages. Still, not much to recommend this split book at all. Here’s hoping they work the bugs out, get an editor and come back with a better second issue. Contact info is up there, but if you don’t feel like scrolling go here.
