Comics I Bought: June 20, 2008

I was a day late to the comic shop this week but now I'm back and I got 3 new comics plus a hard cover collection:

Ex Machina - 37

Grendel: Behold the Devil - 8 of 8 (Hey did I ever get issue seven?)

Rex Mundi vol 2 - 12

Spider-Man Brand New Day Volume 1 (HC)

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

"Shooting War" by Anthony Lappé and Dan Goldman

This is a 192 page graphic novel in a square hardcover format. It was originally a web comic which I had never heard of until I read on Amazon that it got them a film deal. This made me curious about the comic.

The basic plot is that the year is 2011 and the Iraq War is still going on and it's one big f-ed up mess. Jimmy Burns is our lead character. He's a left leaning video blogger who happened to catch, on tape, a terrorist blowing up a coffee shop in Brooklyn. This puts Jimmy on the map and make a big news company hire him as a correspondent in Baghdad.

After Jimmy hits Baghdad things go as you'd expect for a left leaning blogger caught in the middle of an Iraqi civil war and trying to report what is going on. No real surprises plot-wise. This doesn't mean it's a bad plot just that the plot is almost incidental compared to depiction of the f-ed up war Jimmy is in the middle of. They do a good job of capturing the chaos and violence of the world Jimmy has stepped into.

This is yet another comic (plenty of movies too) that uses the Frank Miller "Dark Knight Returns" "news to deliver story information" technique in which you have a anchor person telling you things that are going on. I find this technique a little old and tired but since the lead character is a video blogger who works for a television network I guess there is no way around it.

The artwork was all done digitally and often Goldman mixes drawings with photo backgrounds. This is really hard to pull off and I don't think he succeeded at it. But I understand it. This was a web comic which I'm sure didn't pay him well and he was trying new things to speed up the work. I know drawing backgrounds takes a long time so I'm sympathetic. Still the digital photo elements didn't work but I wasn't distracted by them too much. He was trying hard and I appreciate that.

Despite it's flaws I enjoyed this book. It's well scripted and is about something. Even if that something is just that war is f-ed up and bad, which I already knew, it managed to hold my attention. The art while not perfect was interesting. So if you're looking for something different. Something a little more "real" check this book out.