Comics I Bought: January 22, 2009

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

Stormwatch Post Human Division - 18

The X-Files -3

"Spider-Man - New Ways To Die"

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

The Immortal Iron Fist - Volume Three "The Book of the Iron Fist" - by Matt Fraction, Ed Brubaker, and a whole bunch of artists.

I enjoyed the first two volumes of Iron Fist but I was a little skeptical going in to this one. Y'see this volume collects some of the one shot issues and extras that were not really part of the first two volume story arc. A collection like that is usually a mixed bad. And this one was.

It started out strong. As a matter of fact the first half of the book was some of the best stuff to come out of this Iron Fist relaunch. The stories concern Iron Fists of the past. We get three stories set in three different locations and time periods. They are historical adventure tales. Not quite super hero stuff but not so far removed from it either.

The second half of the book was not so interesting. We get a "Day in the Life" type story with Danny Rand (Iron Fist). It's not that it was terrible but it really didn't hold my attention. It didn't seem to have much to say. Someone else might like it better but I found it to be the definition of "filler material".

The book is rounded out with a reprint of the original two issue Iron Fist origin story from the 1970's. They are solid issues that I had read recently in the Essential Iron Fist volume. Not too much to complain about there except the coloring.

Almost all of the current issues of Iron Fist are nicely colored but these old stories have terrible coloring. They were re-colored badly. The original 1970's coloring was better than this crap. All the color is grayed out and murky plus lots of airbrush technique was used on art that was never meant to have it.

Back in the 1970's the inker used to add shadow and shading to the line art not the colorist. So when that type of art is colored with shading it makes a mess of things. And boy does it here. The storytelling is ruined so badly by the coloring that it's impossible to read. I wish they had re-colored it in a 1970's style. It would have suited the story better.

So there you have it. Half of the book is excellent, a quarter is okay, and a quarter is a decent 1970's story ruined by modern coloring. A mixed bag as I expected. You make the call.