Steven W. Alloway (292)
Someday, I will read the original story of Tristan and Iseult. I’ve been meaning to ever since I started reading and reviewing Andrez Bergen’s Trista & Holt comic, because I want to understand better how this crazy, disco noir story relates to its source material. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet been able to get around to reading the original. Fortunately, you don’t need to be familiar with it to appreciate this comic.
Zodiac Starforce is a sendup of/tribute to those “Magical Girl” manga comics, like Sailor Moon, or . . . others, I guess. They tell me there are other comics like that. I’m not really the target audience for them, though.
So, why did I agree to review Zodiac Starforce? The blurb about it from an editor at Dark Horse read something like this: “I’m a 30-year-old man who’s never read Sailor Moon or any of those other comics, but, even so, I’m in love with this title. I think it’s an incredible, gripping, and funny comic.”
This is it. The final issue of Andrez Bergen’s gritty and exciting noir superhero comic, Bullet Gal. I’ve been reading this comic since it began over a year ago. I’ve become invested in the story and the characters. And now, it’s over. I suppose it goes without saying that I’m sad to see it end. Still, it’s been a pretty amazing ride all through.
After several issues of dancing around one another, moving in different circles, and catching the occasional fleeting glimpse, our two protagonists have finally come together. And now, one of them lies bleeding to death. Honestly, at this point, we should expect nothing less from Andrez Bergen, creator of the gritty, disco-noir comic, Trista & Holt.
Much as I’m enjoying the Tomorrow comic, I think it would be better as a standalone title. Instead, it interweaves with several other titles from what’s known as “The Tomorrowverse,” and not being familiar with any of those other titles leaves me kind of lost sometimes. Still, it’s a minor problem with what’s otherwise a solid comic.
Right from the beginning, the concept for Welcome Back is fascinating. By the end of this issue, it’s positively mind blowing. There’s a war going on between two eternal enemies. Soldiers are born with one mission: track down a specific soldier from the other side and kill them. Once both soldiers are dead, they get reincarnated, and the cycle begins again. And, again. And, again.
Christie Shinn’s Personal Monsters: A Compendium of Monstrosities of Personality is set up like a children’s book, but it’s clear from the start that it’s geared towards adults. First of all, there’s a bit of adult language. More importantly, though, the situations depicted in it are of the type that you’re more likely to encounter and relate to in your adult life.
As I’ve mentioned in several reviews already, over the course of Bliss on Tap’s Future Proof, we’ve seen our time-traveling heroes kill Kennedy and save Hitler, along with a number of other rather questionable acts, all at the behest of a benevolent artificial intelligence called The Sing. Both the characters and the readers have written these actions off as necessary evils. They have to be done to restore a fractured timeline. If Hitler dies young, or Kennedy lives to be old, a future much more terrible will come about as a result—which The Sing, in its infinite wisdom, has foreseen and wants to prevent.
At the beginning of I Play the Bad Guy #5, we’re introduced to two mildly comical guards named Rose and Stern—before being shown the title of this issue, “Rose and Stern Die in the End.” The issue would be worth reading for that alone, particularly since it seems to be a double reference, to John Dies at the End and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
We’re nearing the end of the Bullet Gal saga. After this one, there’s only one issue left. That being the case, things are really coming full circle. As I’ve mentioned numerous times before, all of Andrez Bergen’s works fit together like a giant puzzle. If you’ve read his novels, Who Is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? and Depth Charging Ice Planet Goth, then Bullet Gal #11 is a gigantic puzzle piece.
