Daily Archives: 23 September 2011

Planet of the Apes 29 (February 1977)

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Planet of the Apes finishes without fanfare. Sutton is back on he and Moench’s story of the seafaring humans and apes and I guess Moench gets to resolve some of the outstanding issues in the series. Moench has a familiar pattern though. He works up a bunch of interpersonal hostilities and calms them all down—returning them to their initial state—without any lasting consequences. It’s frustrating, but the point of the story isn’t these character relationships.

Sutton’s art is the sloppiest he’s done on the title. At one point I couldn’t tell a pair of ape feet from a human face.

Oh, speaking of the difference between apes and humans—didn’t anyone tell Moench (i.e. the editor) an ape cannibal would eat apes, not humans?

It’s an okay enough story, but a bad way to finish the series. Moench seems primed to excel… yet the series ends without notice.

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Birds of Prey 1 (November 2011)

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It’s been a while since I’ve read a Duane Swierczynski comic book, so I forgot how badly he writes dialogue. He should teach a class in verbose declarative statements.

That defect—and his interesting comfort having a female character refer to herself as “bitch”—aside, Birds of Prey isn’t terrible. Jesus Saiz is a good artist. In some ways, of the good artists DC has on these relaunch titles, Saiz is the only one who doesn’t let himself get lazy. He does his work.

There’s a fair amount of new origin stuff here, but Swierczynski’s a deceptive writer—one who doesn’t have enough faith in the material being good so he has to pace out revelations to keep up interest. I mean, Black Canary’s a fugitive. Batgirl doesn’t want to be her partner. Instead, the new partner’s Starling, which is pretty dumb superhero name.

It’s without value, but not worthless.