Comics I Bought: April 24, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got 1 new comic plus a hard cover collection:

Supernatural - Rising Son - 1

Marvel Masterworks - Captain Marvel Volume 3

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

"Shanna The She-Devil" by Frank Cho

Frank Cho's art is the reason I picked this one up. He is really good at drawing pretty women. Other things too but you can tell he really likes drawing the dames. This book was originally supposed to be a Marvel "Max" book and have some nudity in it but then that idea was dropped. When I was working in the Marvel Bullpen I had to Photoshop the nudity out of the first few pages by the strategic placement of bubbles and frosted glass. I don't think Frank Cho drew and nudity past those first few pages and if he did I never saw or heard about it.

I would categorize this book as a horror story. A bunch of soldiers crash land on an island and find it is inhabited by dinosaurs. They also find a genetically enhanced women (Shanna) in a Nazi (?) lab in a giant test tube. They wake her up and she helps them fight the dinosaurs. Survival horror.

It's a well done tale. Nothing spectacular. No great insights into human nature or the inner workings of the universe but a constantly moving chase scene of a book with lots of great drawing and gore. It's the kind of comic you can pull off the shelf just to thumb through and look at the drawing. Good stuff.

There is one thing that bugs me about it though. It's not actually Shanna the She-Devil. The story has nothing to do with the Marvel character of that name. The story doesn't even necessarily take place in the Marvel universe. So why is it named "Shanna the She-Devil"? I have no idea. Shanna is hardly a character that sells a lot of comics. It's Frank Cho's artwork that sold this book to me and probably to most people so why not some new name? I know that these days everything has to be a retcon or re-interpretation of something but c'mon. If you're just going to take the name of of some fourth string character why bother? But anyway, pick this one up if your a fan of action and pretty drawings.