Jim McCann (1)Reseñas

I'm really sad this is probably cancelled? or this is one long hiatus...

1413

Made me think of H G Wells Time Machine, adapted with (the Morlocks as) innocent children living underground, and machine people overground. I liked the element of the angel bringing hope to the children and power to the protagonist, after the Dapper Men rained in and restored time. The text had something lacking, felt like something missing, but the illustrations are superb, and overall the book has all the elements of a fantastic dream story with great potential for a sequel. Full colour.

Interesting premise. Little overdramatic.

Elle Peterssen must try find out who tried to kill her in the subway; the problem is that she's in a coma and now it's up to her spirit form to try in the gap between life and death figure out who attacked her and why?

You know the feeling when you think you have a couple of pages left in a book, but instead it's just the first chapter for the next book or some information about the author and stuff? Yeah in graphic novels there is always (as far as I know) all the covers of the issues collected in the end. So after being pulled into this story, wondering what the hell is going on, following Elle in the gap and her friends and family in the living it ends with a cliffhanger. Gah! I hadn't realized how invested I was in the story until the graphic novel ended and I just had some fancy covers left to look at...

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with a free copy for an honest review!

Review also posted on And Now for Something Completely Different and It's a Mad Mad World

Elle Peterssen must try find out who tried to kill her in the subway; the problem is that she's in a coma and now it's up to her spirit form to try in the gap between life and death figure out who attacked her and why?

You know the feeling when you think you have a couple of pages left in a book, but instead it's just the first chapter for the next book or some information about the author and stuff? Yeah in graphic novels there is always (as far as I know) all the covers of the issues collected in the end. So after being pulled into this story, wondering what the hell is going on, following Elle in the gap and her friends and family in the living it ends with a cliffhanger. Gah! I hadn't realized how invested I was in the story until the graphic novel ended and I just had some fancy covers left to look at...

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with a free copy for an honest review!

Review also posted on And Now for Something Completely Different and It's a Mad Mad World

Glorious pictures with no discernible story.

Try His Dream of the Skyland for great art & story

Excellent story told in graphically format. The art while nice is not the main attraction here, it is the story. I'm very eager to get to the next volume.

I love a good retelling, even if it is a bit crazy. And this is crazy. The art work is well done, where they added the zombie action works, and it filled my last needed prompt for #LitsyAtoZGN.

Read all my reviews on http://urlphantomhive.booklikes.com

Elle Peterson is young, wealthy and beautiful - and trapped in a coma after someone tried to kill her. Trapped in some kind of an in-between spirit world she tries to figure out what happened to her and how to get back into her body. Everyone is a suspect and it's impossible to know who to trust.

A very interesting graphic novel. The art work is very beautiful, with a lot of colour and it works great together with the story, which is also quite good. I was really wondering and trying to figure out who did this to Elle, so I'll have to read the next volume as well.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Who knew a game of marco polo could be so sad?

The best part of this volume is that the readers finally start to get some answers, which is good, because there's not going to be another trade for a long time yet. Some of the more villain type characters get some depth, and it turns out they're not really evil but rather misguided. I'm still not a fan of the regular art, but I liked the rough nature of the flashbacks.

Overall, I can't say I'm that heartbroken there's no fourth volume yet, but I'll probably pick it up to read when it does eventually come out.

This is not a story that spoon feeds you, it starts confusing, and only gets worse. By the end of the book I had more questions than answers, nothing is as it seems, but I'm excited to get on to the next trade. The only let down with this book for me was the colouring. The art is nice and clean, but the colouring reminds me of early digital before the publishers learnt what they were doing.

I'm not sure what to think of this. We finally know who's the good guys and who's the badies, but we don't know WTF is going on beyond that. I was eager to keep reading to find out what was going on, but at the same time the overly cryptic characters got on my nerves. It wasn't natural, and characters acting dumb to keep readers in the dark has always been a pet peeve of mine.

As for the art, it's just plain ugly, and the terrible digital colouring just makes it worse.

This collection contains various series starring Hawkeye that came out from 2008 to 2011. In my opinion they range from average in quality to very good, getting better as we go along. All the stories are written by Jim McCann and my feeling is that initially he planned a Hawkeye & Mockingbird ongoing series, but this was eventually replaced with a series of minis instead.

NEW AVENGERS: THE REUNION #1-4, This mini-series centres around the reunion of the formerly dead Hawkeye with his formerly dead ex-wife, Mockingbird. Both are characters I enjoyed reading about together back in West Coast Avengers in the late 80s. Here I felt the writing didn't quite capture either character or the emotional weight of being reunited after all they have been through. To me this was the weakest arc in the collection.

HAWKEYE & MOCKINGBIRD 1-6; Following immediately after the previous series, which sets the stage Mockingbird and Hawkeye working together under a new organisation (the WCA - no, not the West Coast Avengers, but the World Counter-terrorism Agency), the story arc again delves deep in to the two heroes past and brings back Mockingbird's old nemesis, the Phantom Rider. Another interesting member of their team is the soldier-for-hire, Dominic Fortune who becomes more interesting as a character going forward. A decent enough story.

WIDOWMAKER 1-4: Again following on immediately after the previous series, Mockingbird has less of the centre stage here though she still features in the story, as does Black Widow. This arc is more story-driven than the previous two and this actually pay dividends, since there is less focus on stilted character-building. Fallout from Hawkeye's past as Ronin feature's prominently.

HAWKEYE: BLINDSPOT 1-4: The final story arc again follows on from the previous mini-series, but this time very much a Hawkeye solo adventure. Again Hawkeye's history features prominently, as do characters from his past, including Baron Zemo, Trickshot and another characters long though dead. This, to my mind was the most successful marriage of character development and action-packed story of all the arcs here and I feel the best of the lot.½

Not bad, but Hawkeye seemed really young, like he was a new recruit or something. I liked the new "damaged" Mockingbird though.

I've been in a graphic novel loving mood lately, and so I decided to try out something new. Generally what I read is dark, gritty and realistic. So why not take a step back and read something a little more light and fun? When I saw the cover of Return of the Dapper Men I instantly knew it was something I would want to read. From the gorgeously illustrated characters, right down to the steampunk looking gears, I knew this would be something I would fall in love with.

As always, let's start with the illustrations. Wow. That is pretty much as accurate as I can describe them. They are stunning. Multiple colors pop off of every page, and the attention to minute details makes it so that you can't bear to look away from a single page, for fear you might miss something important. I'll honestly admit that I reread this three times. Once to pour over the stunning illustrations, once to read the story, and again to fully appreciate both together. It was definitely worth it. Janet Lee has created a world that evokes thoughts fairy tales long lost. I don't like to compare books, but the illustrations greatly reminded me of the original Alice in Wonderland illustrations. Gorgeous, completely perfect on every page for the story that they were telling. Although the story is amazing, it is the illustrations that really bring it to life.

As for the story, Return of The Dapper Men is fantasy and magic blended together and penned upon a page. In the world of Anorev (Verona spelled backwards for you anagram buffs out there), time has literally stopped. Somehow all that is left are children and robots. Each has no idea of their past, or their future, and they separate themselves into separate parts of the world. Zoe and Ayden are the only two characters who understand that the divide doesn't make sense. They aren't sure yet just why, but they know something big is about to happen.

Zoe and Ayden are such wonderfully captivating characters. One a robot girl, the other a human boy, they find things in one another that are complementary and just perfect. As I followed along on their journey to find out why the Dapper Men had returned (bowler hats and all), I fell in love with the simple understanding they had. The city of Anorev couldn't have been named any more aptly, let's put it that way. The chemistry and mystery between Zoe and Ayden bleeds off the page, and it bled straight into my heart. Even if I had wanted to put the book down for a moment, I wouldn't have been able to. I was too enamored with their entangled lives.

Shades of fairy tales, morality tales, and so much more fill Return of the Dapper Men, and mesh into a beautiful and lyrical read. I quite truthfully was taken all the way back to my days of reading Grimm's Fairy Tales. Although the story may not always be happy, may not always be fair, it's as close to reality in the world of fantasy as you can get. Buried under here are thoughts, ideas, wishes and dreams that we all have hiding inside us. It's amazing graphic novels like this that remind us to bring them to the surface.

The artwork in this book is great. I love the big, flashy style. It suits the storyline beautifully.

The book advertises itself as being a caper, and it is, for the most part. Three-quarters of the book is fast and fun, but the ending turns away from the caper-style to something more serious, which felt like an abrupt switch to me.

I find that days after writing this that few of the characters are memorable to me. There wasn't much character development. However, based on the ending, I feel as if there would be if this comic chooses to run further.

(Provided by publisher)

Jo receives a mysterious and frightening call from her best friend, Elle. Not long after, Elle's mother receives a call notifying her that her daughter has been taken to the hospital. All signs point to Elle being attacked by some mysterious figure. But right now, Elle can't shed any light on what happened because not only is she in a coma, her consciousness is in some place called "the Garden" where coma patients are gathering and she can't remember her name, never mind what happened to her.

Based on the timing of the call Jo received from Elle, few people have alibis. The person in the hoodie who seems central to this mystery could be just about anyone. Elle's doctor is hiding something that another doctor and nurse are determined to find. Dane, Elle's boyfriend, is acting weird. And, finally, Elle's discovering some really weird abilities of her own.

There's a "big reveal" at the end that absolutely blew me away.

We have a lot of answers now, and even more questions. Who's working with (and for) whom? Who is the Fifth? And just what is it about Elle that makes her so special?

This set of issues felt as if they were moving at a rapid pace. I'm looking forward to re-reading them to see all the things I'm sure I've missed.

I received this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

After the initial couple of pages in which I was at a loss about what was going in, the story really picked up and pulled me in. Even though it was about 170 pages, it was a very quick read, and the suspense keeps ratcheting up with each chapter. And just like a good comic book, it ends with a cliff-hanger. One complaint (well, observation) is that the cliffhanger didn't work all that well. The way it was presented would have worked better on film/audio, since the voice that Jo heard couldn't really be shown as "different".

There's one comparison I'd like to make, and that's to the TV show, "Heroes". Not that saving the main character would save the world or anything like that, but the backstory in the graphic novel felt a lot like the show. Lot's of intrigue and I'm left wondering who's pulling the strings, who is tied to who, and how her parents are involved. That's the "Heroes" similarity, and it's not a bad thing. Makes me immediately want to find volume 2!

Fun mystery with a supernatural twist! Elle's been attacked and is now in a coma - but her spirit is awake and aware of what's going on. She's trying to solve the mystery of her attack - from beyond. Interested to see where this goes!

While beautifully illustrated this graphic novel started out slow and didn't actually pull me in until the very end. Elle is in a coma because someone tried to kill her, but she has no idea why she is a target. She is able to detach from her body and speak with others in spirit form and sometimes move into other peoples bodies. Elle is trying to put the pieces of her life back together and figure out what she knows about her life leading up to this point. This is a paranormal, mystery that is similar to Morning Glories in style. The story is appropriate for adults and high schoolers. If you like a good mystery and are willing to wait from volume to volume for more answers then try Mind the Gap and be prepared to want the next volume to see what happens next.

While beautifully illustrated this graphic novel started out slow and didn't actually pull me in until the very end. Elle is in a coma because someone tried to kill her, but she has no idea why she is a target. She is able to detach from her body and speak with others in spirit form and sometimes move into other peoples bodies. Elle is trying to put the pieces of her life back together and figure out what she knows about her life leading up to this point. This is a paranormal, mystery that is similar to Morning Glories in style. The story is appropriate for adults and high schoolers. If you like a good mystery and are willing to wait from volume to volume for more answers then try Mind the Gap and be prepared to want the next volume to see what happens next.

I liked this a lot more than I thought. Mockingbird was already dead when I started reading comics so I had no emotional attachment to her, no first hand knowledge of her and Hawkeye's relationship and no thought that she would ever come back.

Nicely-produced thriller with supernatural elements

This comic collection relates how an attack on the central figure leaves her in a sort of near-death limbo in which she can investigate how she was attacked and by whom.

Other characters include her family, her friends, the medical staff at the hospital where she is being kept and other characters in limbo.

There is a conspiracy going on which several participants try to unravel. The volume does not resolve the story and the reader will have to wait for Volume 2 to see how the story develops

It is well-illustrated and intelligently-written.

Recommended to anyone who likes a comic with twists and an intelligent plot.