Bill & Ted Go to Hell #1 (of 4)
Writer: Brian Joines
Artist: Bachan
Bill and Ted are back again, but this time they must assemble a team of old friends in order to save heaven from one hell of a team of bad guys.
Oh man, did I love this book. Full disclosure, I’m a huge fan of the Bill & Ted movies. I might be in the minority here, but I’m a bigger fan of the second one, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, as opposed to the original Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. This first issue of Bill & Ted Go to Hell definitely feels more like B&TBJ with all the supernatural shenanigans happening, but it’s awesome to see some familiar faces from all across time teaming up to take on Hell’s worst.
One of the things I use to base my opinions of adaptions is my internal dialogue; do the words I’m reading in my head come off like the characters the book is imitating? In this case, absolutely, thanks to writer Brian Joines I easily channeled the voices of Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter respectively, not only that but the side characters from the films too. The art is wonderful, but sometimes it looks like they tried to go out of their way to make the characters not look like their film counterparts; the only time this really bothered me was with Death. The story is fun and light-hearted, and the dialogue is spot on with everything that has come before it. I definitely recommend it for fans!
The Verdict – 9.5/10
Big Trouble in Little China #21
Writer: Fred Van Lente
Artist: Victor Santos
Winona and Jack Burton go back in time to the beginning of Chinatown to seek out a young Egg Shen to help them get back to the present.
This week’s issue of Big Trouble in Little China was a lot of fun, and it was more streamlined than previous issues. It was neat to see Jack Burton and Winona interact with a young and terribly opiate addicted Egg, but seeing Winona try to bargain with him using her cellphone was just silly and just another example of how sometimes this series has their characters acting just a tad bit too goofy and stupid; I know that’s in the spirit of the original film this comic book is based on, but sometimes it just goes way too far.
The art by Victor Santos is great, and it left subtle clues as to the true identity of one of the new characters introduced; it wasn’t too obvious, but I did figure it out before the reveal thanks to the way the character was drawn. No big complaints, the art flowed really well, and none of the characters bothered me. Fred Ven Lente’s writing was fun, but like I mentioned earlier, his characters need to be a little smarter and not as ridiculous. With that said, they are all very likeable, and the ending had a cliffhanger that left me interested in finding out where the next issue will take Jack and Winona. It’s the best issue of the series I’ve read in quite awhile, so check it out if you’re a fan.
The Verdict – 8.0/10
Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: Dragons #3 (of 4)
Writer: Hannah Christenson
Artist: Hannah Christenson
The Storyteller tells a tale of Russian folklore involving an evil dragon and a pair of warriors who are tasked with stopping it.
Once again, I think the biggest thing that hurts this series is that it’s a comic book; I would have loved to see this as a rebooted series of the BBC classic, because it would have been amazing to see how the Jim Henson Company would pull it off with their mastery over puppetry and animatronics, but since this is a comic review, Hannah Christenson makes up for my disappointment with amazingly satisfying and gorgeous art that fits the soul of Jim Henson’s The Storyteller world perfectly. Christenson is also the writer on the story, and she does a brilliant job on that too.
Speaking of story, I wasn’t familiar with this one. After some light research it’s based on Russian folktale about a dragon named Tugarin Zmey who fights with a Priest’s son who’s kind of a jerk, named Alyosha. In this issue, Alyosha becomes a gender swapped Albina and is far nobler. She is teamed up with a less experienced servent girl named Mara, and the two must band together to stop the evil Tugarin. It’s a simple story with no real twists and swerves, but it’s well written and entertaining enough to pick off the rack for sure.
The Verdict – 8.0/10
