Review: Batman Vs Judge Dredd

Another day, another Judge Dredd crossover. And this time it's the caped Crusader who gets the nightstick, literally.

Please note. This is the British version from publisher Rebellion. This edition is NOT DC.

I'm not a superhero comic reader, mostly as I don't like the hero worship culture but also because: with my need for completing series; it'd be a bad can of worms to open.

But as I do want to read every Dredd comic I wanted to eventually read this one too.

Now I actually read this a while back and found that I didn't really like it. I recognized that some of  it was due to bias and as I didn't want to get supernegative I took a break to be able to come back to it later. These days however, all I can look at is this cover staring back at me in mute accusation.

SO... I guess I'll get it out of the way. With lots of pictures and a minimum of writing. Maximum quality entertainment from a minimum effort, or so I hope.

This book contains several crossovers; Judgment on Gotham, Vendetta in Gotham, The Ultimate Riddle, Die Laughing and the Lobo/Judge Dredd crossover.

Judgment on Gotham is probably my favourite. with Simon Bisley art and a cool, (almost) serious storyline where Dredd and Batman meet for the first time (see above).

The violence is brutal and yet there's occasionally time for some fun.

A SuperFiend.

Yes, that's right. A clash of the two most iconic (super)heroes from the british and american markets can't happen without their equally iconic supervillains. In Judgment on Gotham an alliance is formed between several key villains, including the always hilarious Judge Death, Mean Machine Angel and Scarecrow.

I always imagine Death's voice to be the voice that Barry Yandell used to voice Fink in Borderlands 2.
Sounds a lot like a naughty, sibilant Joker, as voiced by mark Hamill, I suppose.

The art makes Death twist in bizarre shapes and he pops like never before and it's quite alot of fun to see the bizarre shapes Bisley makes of him.

Some other things I want to mention is that there seems to be subliminal bat-styled art on every other page and it can be a game to spot how much of it you actually notice.

Also, Anderson shows up, heavily sexualized, and though I like it,  maybe your one strong female character shouldn't get this kind of treatment. Though again, I did like it. No, no pictures.

A nice wrap-up to the story too that isn't reliant on 'to be continued' deserves a mention.

Next, we have Vendetta in Gotham.

This short comic seems to be more of an intermezzo piece, and a bit of fan-service with Dredd and Batman just straight-up duking it out for whole pages (which is pretty cool).

With Cam Kennedy art that isn't bad and isn't good, just uneven, It's a step down from the promising start that was Judgment on Gotham. But maybe it's just that coming straight off the first comic, it can't help but be a let-down.

There are some inspired art moments but nothing that'll redeem the throw-away story.

Say what you want though, but this is damn good art.

Dredd literally comes back to Gotham to just beat the crap out of Batman on a night when Ventriloquist/Scarface (I don't really know much of Batman's mythos so forgive me if I'm getting it wrong) is brewing up a dastardly scheme. The story ends with the promise of something big yet to come... Judgment 3: die Laughing.

But first we have another story to go through; The Ultimate Riddle.
The name of this one will give away who the Villain is (just like Die Laughing does, really).
The story begins with Batman following up a riddle from the Riddler. He riddles it swiftly out though as he is promptly whisked away to an intergalactic cage match where he will have to fight against various baddies from far-away corners of the galaxy, including his old sparring partner; Judge Dredd.

The story isn't anything to write home about and isn't inspired or even very interesting in any way. If the stakes are only about the lives of your heroes it's hard to get invested, I suppose.

Despite the lacklustre story, the art is pretty good with chores divided between two artists; Carl Critchlow for the first half (which I personally feel is the better part, I prefer the thin lines of Critchlow to Power's thicker ones, or at least in this comic) and the latter half of the story by Dermot Power.

'Die Screaming': foreshadowing Die Laughing?

As I said, despite the cool art, if the ending is a foregone conclusion it's hard to be entertained. I did spot a cool little throwback to the first comic though.

It's as if we're just finishing that first conversation. Neat.

What bears mentioning is that all these stories were written by Alan Grant and John Wagner, the godfathers of Judge Dredd, and as such, despite their shortcomings, all the stories do FEEL like Judge Dredd comics.

Then we come to the one we've all been waiting for; Die Laughing.

Aaaaaaaaaand... It's got Glenn Fabry art...

Thriiillllleeeeeeeuuuhrr!!!!

Glenn Fabry is incredibly talented award-winning artist who is revered throughout the comics industry. With truly iconic and instantly recognizable painted art stretched out over various well-known properties. Everybody seems to like his stuff.

But me personally... I just can't stand his faces. I've seen him in his run on Slaine and in covers for Preacher and Hellblazer but I've never been able to warm to him.

It takes an incredible amount of talent to do what he does, to sculpt bodies and faces into a anatomically correct and life-like painting, but I've never liked any of it.

Good then that there's more on display than faces in Die Laughing.

Mortis is born.

Body horror and grotesquerie backed up by some incredible talent. Truly a joy to behold.

The experimental work of Bisley from earlier in the volume on Judge Death's shape  is built upon and improved. We see the Dark Judges like never before.

Yes,  Die Laughing doesn't just bring the Joker, It brings all 4 of the Dark Judges as well.

The story begins in Gotham, where Batman sees the Joker use a warp jump device to transport himself into another dimension. Soon after, a wounded Anderson appears in his Bat-cave to enlist his aid in combatting the crisis that has been foreseen in Vendetta In Gotham.

Batman warps into Mega City 1 where 10 000 citizens are just about ready to lock themselves into a pleasure dome for an existence of hedonism and wild debauchery.

Trouble is afoot as Batman and Judge Dredd find that the Joker has allied himself with the dark Judges and that they're planning some fun mas- murder in the Pleasure Dome.

There's so many jokes here, and so much fun to see. but the fun is a bit offset by the sordidness of the plot.

Literally in a Theme Park Meting out Death, having the time of their lives undead existence.

 The bodies just look unappealing and half the people have got those crazed Glenn Fabry faces.

On the other hand, at least this isn't sexualized.

The only ones who look unapologetically badass are the ones with helmets on (or cowls).

And it's this that does it for me. Despite the bizarre faces, unappealing bodies, a plot involving hedonism and people strapped into clothes too tight for them. Despite any and all personal preference. What I'm here for is Batman and Dredd being badasses. And that is what we get. And They have rarely looked this good. Bisley's earlier work is almost consistently trumped.

So Yeah, still a very cool comic. And artwise it's undeniably the best one in the book.

And here we arrive at the last of the bunch.
It's the one that confirms my earlier held bias against comics and why I never picked up comics when I was growing up: they're just plain weird.

We arrive at Lobo/Judge Dredd: Psycho-Bikers VS. The Mutants From Hell.

You know, the Batman crossover I get, Batman I understand.

But look at this, What the hell is this?

Dredd is normal but his world for sure isn't, so I should really not be so surprised to be looking at what is essentially a buff Elric with a mouse as his favourite companion.

At first I didn't like it at all. And ending the comic with this bizarre thing seemed an ill-advised thing to do.

But, looking back and looking closer... It really is just another Judge Dredd comic isn't it?

Intergalactic bounty hunter tracks his quarry down to Mega City 1 and comes into direct conflict with Judge Dredd, Trouble ensues. We've had this exact scenario a couple of times actually.

Art by Val Semeiks and John Dell.

So why the negativity? I'm assuming it's because the story is uncluded in this book.
If it had been placed amidst the rest of the regular Judge Dredd strip it would've stood out more, Coming after the art of Bisley and Fabry though, it's just another step down.

However. on its own. It IS a good Dredd strip. It's some Classic 'Dredd in action' and the art is easy to keep up with and pretty, if you stop comparing.

All in all...

Having some time off and some time apart from this comic really helped because I'm brimming with positivity now.
It also helped me experiment with this review and how to quickly and efficiently do a comic review.

Now this comic can go on the 'Read' shelves and I can start looking forward to some more Dredd to buy.

Comic Book Haul and Slight Insight

And another heap of purchases...

By now it's probably clear that I get as much joy or even more from purchasing a new book than I get from actually reading one.

Purchasing a new book holds promise, of new lands and secrets, of untold and unthinkable knowledge, of a new author's style and themes, of loss and joy possible to be held off at a comfortable arm's length (the book to be put down whenever it's too much, like the ending to Y the Last Man...). the hope that this book, THIS BOOK!, will be the perfect book for me and that I will have never read a book that will touch me as deeply as this book, a book that'll be ideally for me in this moment, a perfect alignment of circumstance, a book so good it'll inspire me to do god knows what to god knows who and what and how.

It's mostly an idle hope though isn't it?
I don't know about you, but it's a rare book or book series that makes me a fan. and then usually only after some time when I can look back at it.
There are always exceptions though, but only the best break all the rules.

In general though, most times it's more fun to look back on a book than it was to actually read it.

As it happens I'm reading Elric: The Fortress of the Pearl and I've hit quite an interesting part of the story. In it, Elric and Oone are travelling through the dream realms, and they've just arrived in Marador, The land of old desires.
And here this conversation happens:

Better surely to continue looking, even when the reality can only prove inadequate when compared against hope. To do otherwise would be to give up, give in.

Maybe that's what all this manic buying is, a desperate gamble for fulfillment. and if not that, then at least a weekly dose of hope.
We all have ways to cope, this one's one of mine.

Here then we have Fell, volume 1. A comic I'd like to give a post of its own soon because it's really quite good. A plunge into darkness when you need it.

Next up, another horror comic. one that I won't read for quite a while. Though I am slightly and cautiously intrigued. Providence, Act 1.

I used a flash to take this picture. though things are certainly clearer, it does tend to spoil the background effect a bit. I'm not sure about it yet.

Anyway, Providence is a prequel and a sequel to Alan Moore's Neonomicon.

A comic both reviled and adored by horror fans. I'm not sure how I stand on it. You know, even despite being so damn nasty, there is a perverse allure to it. It's got Lovecraft horror and clean line art and there also might be more to it than meets the eye. And anyway. If you've stuck through the horrifying set-up in Neonomicon, why wouldn't you stay for the pay-off in Providence?
Or at least if this will eventually lead to what I think will happen. Either way, Alan Moore continuing with his meticulous take on Lovecraft's universe.

As I'm in the process of reading Elric I thought I'd pick up the comics as well, or at least those in stock anyway. So here we have the start of the Michael Moorcock Library, which will apparently run to 12 or 14 books (6 Elric, 4 Hawkmoon, 2 or 4 Corum, or is it the other way around?)
These will be read in the far future, when I'm done with both Elric, Hawkmoon and Corum at least. For now it's just fun to have them.

And here are is a deliciously grimdark version of Elric, and apparently quite gleefully accepted by Moorcock himself. I've taken a look at the art and some of the story and it is really quite bad-ass.

Up next is a project that I've had my eye one ever since I learned of the comic on the late blog of Graeme Flory some years ago; The Goon.

That man got me into alot of things, if I think about it. Judge Dredd for one, and his recap of the Black Company books was amazingly insightful. I wonder what happened to him?

Anyway,  with library edition volume 5's publication date looming close on the horizon I thought it would be a good time to start collecting. A very fancy edition. Dark Horse do tend to have high quality special editions. I'll continue collecting the rest next month.

And here are two books I bought without checking to see if they'd actually be worth it.
A very lazy thing to do, as Seven to Eternity is still on my shelf, bought specifically to see if Fear Agent would be my thing.
But, in the end I figured, why not just jump into it, it's complete at any rate. 

And lastly, A book I've already read. In its individual issues anyway.

I came to this one because it was written by Xavier Dorison, whose writing and themes I absolutely love, and because it had demons in it.

When Humanoids finally released the series in its own hardcover omnibus I knew I had to have it. I pre-ordered it a while ago and it finally arrived this month. A beautiful book.

The story is reasonably good, especially as in the end it really can only end one way. The art is so and so; what you see is what you get. Adequate smaller pannels and absolutely beastly big panels.

Dorison and Lauffrey, the same team that did the phenomenal Long john Silver comic book. That one still beats out this one in terms of quality, but it still isn't close to being bad.

Review: Your Highness (comic book prequel)

I shouldn't even dignify this 46 page comic with a post but given that I was pretty shocked when I accidentally learned that this thing even existed I figured I might as well spread some information about it (and thereby lessening other people's shock when they in turn find out).

Your Highness: Knight and Dazed is the comic prequel to the 2011 movie Your Highness,
A movie collaboration between Danny Mcbride and David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express, Eastbound and Down). A Sword and Sorcery movie involving stoners, raunchy comedy and magic (motherfucka).

It is generally considered to be one of the worst movies ever made.

Fuck those people though, because I still get a kick out of watching this one from time to time.

Eminently quotable, with a great and epic music score, beautiful scenery, naturally shot in Ireland (because of course), cool and fun swordfighting and magic battles, sexy leading ladies (Zooey Deschanel and Natalie Portman), the underappreciated acting talents of Danny Mcbride,  with James Franco at his most goofy hamming it up in every scene and with way more name actors than this movie has really any right to have (Including Charles Dance and damian Lewis).

Toby Jones, Damnian Lewis and Charles Dance.
Look at that hair; the Lion still hath Manes!
Fun fact; this movie come out the same year as the first season of Game of Thrones.

This is either your thing or it isn't.
There isn't a deeper message and no other need than to entertain. And it does that with a good and funny bromance set in a fantastical setting. It got way more stick than it deserved really.
Most every actor in it said afterwards that the movie was crap too, which can't have helped.

But I still like it, and if this post makes you interested, I'll have done something good today.
Go and check it out.

Now, onto the reason why I'm doing this:

Written by Danny Mcbride and Jeff Fradley and published by Dark Horse in march 2011 as a media tie-in to the movie, the comic book  is comprised of 2 stories:

The first; Knight, follows the exploits of prince Fabious as he goes on his quest to rid the kingdom of Leezar's cyclops, falling in love with Belladonna along the way.

Pencils by Gabriel Guzman, Inks by Jordi Tarragona, colors by Michael Atiyeh

There' some actual consistency to the movie's storyline with nods and winks to Bormont's sexuality, and infatuation with his prince, mechanical bird Simon, the stoner (pervert) wizard, manious' dung eating and the general setup for the movie; it's all there.

A straightforward and straight-faced adventure quest with some pleasantly bloody fighting and vibrant colours.

The second story; Dazed, follows the exploits of prince Thadeous as he is sent by his father on a diplomatic mission to get a trade treaty signed by the dwarf king of a neighbouring kingdom.
Less needs to be said here as the fallout of this particular adventure is  discussed alot more in the film.

Pencils by Sean Phillips, Inks by Paul Peart-Smith, Colours by Val Staples.

Odd art that is very different than that from Knight but since it's a stoner story it ends up working.
Very washed out colours until of course, Thaddeous gets high.

In the end, it isn't perfect, and maybe even only halfway decent. By any right it shouldn't even exist.
But as a fan of the movie I don't actually regret buying it.

I'm still not saying it's good though.

Review: Ombria in Shadow, Patricia A. Mckillip

Here is Ombria in Shadow, with its beautiful cover.

That cover art, btw, is done by the same artist that did the Mythago Wood and Lavondyss covers (the Fantasy Masterworks editions) that I might have shown before somewhere.
Really, stunningly beautiful work by polish artist Grzegorz Domaradzki, whose work you can take a look at on his site iamgabz.com

Alright. I have a thing that I do for every book that I review.
Whenever I begin a new review post I tend to completely rewrite the book's back blurb.
It's something that helps me put everything in perspective, refreshes my memory, gets me in the writing-zone and plants my mind firmly at the start of the book, so that I can keep my review spoiler-free.
Here, however I'm going to have to do it a little different.
For a normal book, my blurb doesn't give away much, has something to say about everything, while establishing names, motives, places and other crucial information. I try to let it flow smoothly and that can be quite a challenge. The whole blurb can take some time, let me tell you.

Here in this blurb however, it hints at, but not confirms where everyone's individual stories are going and because of this, helps resolve some of the aimlessness of Ombria in shadow's plot; which was my intention. As a side-effect It also lends it an epicness that isn't quite present in the story. From Fairy Tale to Epic Fantasy, which is absolutely a bad thing if that's what you're expecting going into this book.

It also, maybe, takes away the appealing mystery that the Fantasy Masterwork's blurb gave it.
That blurb, specifically, was the reason why I picked this novel to read next. A really well done bit of writing that shows that less is better.
In more ways than one, it fits the book marvelously.
I'll show it here,  and I'll put mine after it. Then, if you care to read mine, (but be aware that it might give some slight stuff away if you DO want to read the novel) tell me which one you prefer.

"The prince of Ombria is dying, and already his sinister

 great-aunt is plotting to seize power. The Black Pearl
is feared throughout the land, and the city folk know

her reign will be a terrible one. Only the prince's son
can stop her from seizing the throne but he's just a
boy - barely worth the trouble of doing away with.

Ombria, it seems, is doomed. And yet, beneath the
streets, in a buried world of shadows and ghosts, a
mysterious sorceress is weaving new spells, watched
over by a girl sculpted entirely from wax..."

Mystery and shadows. Enticing huh?

And here comes my bit of blurb. Again, be mindful of slyness involving possible spoilers and hints.

In the ancient city of Ombria, in a castle riddled with forgotten rooms and hallways, hidden wealth and dangerous secrets, the city's king and the ruler of the noble house of Greve lies dying. 

Meanwhile, his mysterious great-aunt, the evil sorceress Domina Pearl, schemes to isolate his young son and heir, kyel.

She sends away the boy's closest friend, Lydea, a tavern waitress turned king's mistress and abandons her to the hostile streets of Ombria. Alone in the world, cut off from the people she loves, with her fate uncertain, Lydea will have to grow fast and so very far away from the flighty girl she was, into someone capable of navigating Ombria's shadowy dangers, Someone capable of saving Kyel from the unfathomable evils of Domina Pearl.

In the castle, Kyel's uncle, Ducon Greve, is the boy's last remaining ally. But, as a bastard, with no power and no claim to the throne, his influence is limited. Yet, for some reason, he is feared by the evil sorceress and goes where and when he pleases. Alone, he stalks the forgotten places in Ombria, drawing with coal and paper, he sees every shade of light and dark and not even Domina Pearl can tell how many of the ancient city's secrets he has unearthed.

Beneath the city, unknown to most and not understood by any, in a world of shadows and ghosts, between memories and dreams, a shapeshifting sorceress sells her spells to the highest bidder.

Aided by her wax girl, she deals in callous death and her magic may yet strike out at the drama playing out above.

But will these things even matter, in the end?

Because learned men, reading between the lines of history, have foreseen that an event is impending. A burgeoning darkness is moving the fate of Ombria out of balance and forward into a catastrophic metamorphosis that when it is over, will have left nothing the same.

Heh, I really am inordinately pleased with that.
Anyway, now that's done with, onwards;

Ombria in Shadow is a beautiful reading experience. A World Fantasy Award Winner for a reason.
The story flows, seemingly without direction. Like an exhausted reader's subconsciousness, filled with magic and intrigue, simply content to drift for a while.
The characters wander, and wonder at their darkening world. A figurative and literal darkness.

When I say figurative I of course mean emotional, and though the characters frequently exist in a state of emotional despair, it never becomes overbearing. This is mostly because the feelings of loss and hopelessness are countered by love. And with that I don't mean traditional romance, but  rather the love between family members and the love that parents have for a child. It's something that I can't recall ever having read before, at least not as the driving force for the main characters' actions.

The worldbuilding is seamless, effortlessly sprinkled within the narrative with vague scene setting relying both on the interplay between light and dark and a heavy dose of a melancholy entropy. And the gloom of the city of Ombria itself is just as much backdrop as it is one of the principal characters.

The writing is mesmerizing and like a dream, occasionally jumps around (even within sentences) and if you're not paying attention you'll be flitting from scene to scene without realizing it. It's like that way in which your dreams transition from one scene to another, the transitions are only noticable when you look back at them.
It really is quite well written.

I'd like to add that, like a dream, when it's over it's quite hard to actually recount anything that happened in the book. Sure yes, you can talk about the various characters and the key plot events spring easily to mind, But when it's all over, the page count seems far too large to actually fit with your memory of what happens in the book. There's a specific reason for this, but to tell would definitely be spoiling it. Suffice it to say that it's pretty good.

Ombria in Shadow is a beautiful book and reading it can feel like a dream.
Don't go looking for answers though, because like in a dream the truth is hidden and up for interpretation, if any interpretation is even necessary. Because sometimes how the book makes you feel is more important than how it all fits together.

-----

But just in case you're looking for an explanation.

I spent some time trying to figure it out myself and I'm reasonably satisfied with where I eventually got. It's quite a read.

Go here: Ombria in Shadow; an Interpretation

Gear Shift

While adapting to a new daily schedule and the demands of a new job, I necessarily had to limit my ambition of being able to read 600-plus page tomes in a week.

So for now, the book I was planning to read; Kushiel's Legacy, with its relatively high page count and its daunting first person perspective, a perspective which I've never been fond of anyway, is off the table in order to make room for the shorter books which have already started stacking up again (and they're making the shelves creak ominously).

The TBR-shelf.
Stare in horror, or excitement
(depends on how you're inclined, really).

Anyway, I was looking for shorter books that were bound to be worth it. And looking at my shelves something quickly stood out.

Enter the Fantasy Masterworks; a series of books, by publisher Gollancz, collecting some of the greatest, sweeping, most ground-breaking and beautiful fantasy books ever written. including some less widely read fantasy novels that shouldn't have slipped through the cracks, but have and were/are in this series reissued in a new coat, award winners and books with quite a large influence on the fiction that came after it, genre or otherwise. Everything from Dunsany's beautiful fairy tales to Moorcock's multiverse, Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery and George R.R. Martin's mississipi fever dream, the list goes on and on and all of it's quite good (I can only comment on the ones I've read, and sadly that's far less of them than I'd like. Except that Aegypt one, I didn't really get what this one was doing and that probably is my fault. But why issue only the first book in a quartet that needs to stand together to be understood anyway? Damnit gollancz!!!)

Either way, though I had recently purchased a pretty big haul of the new Fantasy Masterworks I kept looking guiltily at a book that had been eyeing me for several years now, and vice versa.
The Old Fantasy Masterworks edition of the Riddle Master of Hed, by Patricia A. Mckillip, now with a new cover in the new editions.

I've tried to read it several times over the years but there's some weird thing going on where I just can't bring myself to even read a single page. I loan the book out, or I just suddenly find my interests switched around and no matter what happens; in the end I always put it back on its shelf.

So now, trying to go for a compromise I looked at the Fantasy Masterworks list and found 2 more of her books between its titles. Reading the blurb of the one with the pretty cover I was quickly persuaded to give that one a go.

As is usual for the Masterworks; I did not regret it.

Next up; a review for Ombria in Shadow.

HELSREACH - Part 1: Prologue - A Warhammer 40k Story

Wow, just wow.
Yeah, there's actually some incredible writing in the warhammer 40k universe.

And Helsreach is still one of my favourites. Pretty much anything Aaron Dembski Bowden writes is so much fun to read. These days I've moved away from most of both the warhammer worlds (40k and the old world), but I'll pick up anything with that man's name on it.

If you've ever wondered how that people can read these books. Aaron's work will show you.
He writes the most human and relatable Marines I've ever read.
There's so much depth to the character of Grimaldus in Helsreach that it was an eye opener, since this book I haven't been able to enjoy alot of the 40k fiction that I enjoyed previously.
It shows you that even with the melodramatic bombast that alot of this setting is, its vicious bolter-porn, the oceans of mindless brutality; the writing can work with that rather than just adhere to it like some mindless drone.

Seeing one of Bowden's best stories being given so much love in Richard Boylen's animation is nothing short of awesome. It brilliantly captures the introspective doom-laden feel of the book.

I can only hope that Richard can keep this up, because I'd love to see more.

Parts 2 and 3 are up as well. Go check them out.