Neil Gaiman's Mr. Hero: The Newmatic Man Volume One

I bought this one at my school's book fair back in 2018.

Title: Neil Gaiman's Mr. Hero: The Newmatic Man
Issue: Volume One
Date: 2016
Publisher: Super Genius
Writer: Neil Gaiman, James Vance
Penciler: Ted Slampyak, Bryan Talbot, Marc Sasso
Inker: Bob McLeod, Mike Witherby, Art Nichols, John Coulthart, Dave Hunt, Terry Beatty, Angus McKie, Bryan Talbot, Marc Sasso
Colorist: Kell-O-Graphics, Zachary Lynch, Angus McKie, Tony Kelly, Marc Sasso, Alan Craddock
Letterer: John Workman

Reprinting the first 9 issues of the 1995 series from Tekno Comix, which was a venture by Sci-Fi Channel (now SyFy; because things are cooler when spelled with y's, I guess) that brought in authors and media stars as creators and worldbuilders and then handed those projects over to the Tekno Comix writing and art teams for the production of the actual comics stories.

In this case, the "name" writer was Gaiman, who actually created five interconnected titles for Tekno Comix.

Mr. Hero tells the story of a Victorian-era steam-powered automaton, an intelligent robot used in magic shows in the 19th century, but whose real origin is a much more sinister one, linked to the demonic Teknophage, who has been manipulating events on Earth and other planets for centuries.

The Mr. Hero robot is discovered by aspiring magician and mime Jenny Hale in the basement of a museum of stage magic. The Teknophage at first wants the robot back, but later embarks on a more elaborate scheme of corrupting Jenny with wealth while using experimental brainwashing on her best friend.

Mr. Hero the robotic pugilist with a noble heart and 19th Century mannerisms does his best to protect Jenny, along with his alternate head, the Ratiocinator, who considers himself the brains of the operation.

There is a whole cast of oddball henchpersons and mysterious figures, and a fair amount of scheming, plotting, and infighting, while the friendship between Jenny and Mr. Hero shines through all of the mayhem.

The villains are the weakness of this story. They are SO incompetent. And a lot of that is intentional, part of the humor that makes the story entertaining. But it gets to be a bit eyeroll-inducing as they  just make dumb move after dumb move.

That being said, Jenny is a great character, and her chemistry with her robot friend is charming. Both versions of Mr. Hero are fun, and they are distinctive enough to add some variety to the dialogue.

The plot is more convoluted than it needed to be, but I really enjoyed this for the main characters.

Rating: 7.5/10

Sandman Special #1: Orpheus

From the Random Stack of Unread Comics.

Title: Sandman Special: Orpheus
Issue: 1
Date: 1991
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Neil Gaiman
Penciler: Bryan Talbot
Inker: Mark Buckingham
Colorist: Daniel Vozzo
Letterer: Todd Klein
Editor: Alisa Kwitney, Karen Berger

Neil Gaiman adapts the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus to the comic book mythology of the Endless in this pre-Vertigo DC Comics special from 1991. Here, Orpheus is the son of Dream, and the favorite nephew of the rest of the Endless.

This is a powerful adaptation with some interesting revelations about the Endless in the earlier parts of the story, with more of a straight-up retelling of the myth for the middle parts, followed by a very intense and original ending.

I particularly liked Orpheus' interactions with Charon, Hades, and Persephone in some of the story's key scenes.

This was a really good adaptation, and a nice addition to the Sandman's backstory.

Rating: 8.5/10

The Tale of One Bad Rat #1

About 14 hours until departure. Reviewing marathon is in full effect in between the last of the packing and cleaning. This was in the random pile of unread comics. Don't remember where I got it.

Title: The Take of One Bad Rat
Issue: 1
Date: October, 1994
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer: Bryan Talbot
Artist: Bryan Talbot
Letterer: Ellie DeVille
Editor: Dick Hansom, Randy Stradley

A homeless runaway girl tries to survive on the streets of London, struggling to find someone she can trust while caring for her pet rat. The story unfolds amid visions and flashbacks to trauma she experienced growing up, and to a strange connection she has to Beatrix Potter and her stories.

Great characters and dialogue. A gritty story that doesn't need to go into excessive gore to make its point. And the Beatrix Potter references are intriguing.

Nice text introduction by Neil Gaiman.

Rating: 8/10

Dan Dare / The Stranded / Ramayan 3392AD Reloaded

This is a 2008 Free Comic Book Day promo that I picked up at this year's FCBD.

Title: Dan Dare / The Stranded / Ramayan 3392AD Reloaded
Date: 2008
Publisher: Virgin Comics
Writer: Garth Ennis, Mike Carey, Shamik Dasgupta
Art: Gary Erskine, Siddharth Kotian, Jeevan Kang
Inker: Jyotsna V. Domse
Colorist: Parasuraman A., Anand Balusamy, N.S. Sathish Kumar
Letterer: Rakesh B. Mahadik, Sudhir B. Pisal, B.S. Ravi Kiran
Cover: Bryan Talbot, Marc Silvestri
Editor: Charlie Beckerman, Stuart Moore, Ron Marz
Dan Dare Created By: Frank Hampson
Ramayan 3392AD Reloaded Created By: Deepak Chopra, Shekhar Kapur

Flip book, plus an extra story in the middle.

Dan Dare arrives with a crew of marines on a colony world where a series of grizzly killings has taken place. The monster responsible conveniently shows up about two minutes after Dare sets foot on the ground. Unfortunately for our heroes, this beast isn't alone. The plot appears to be Aliens with a much less interesting adversary. Still, the pacing was good, and there was enough intrigue going on to keep things interesting.

Flip over the book and you get The Stranded, which appears to be about superbeings secretly living among us. Some of them are fully aware of who they are and are equipped with an array of super-high technology, while others are "sleepers" with no knowledge of their true nature. The opening bit focuses on a pair of human characters, and I'm assuming that at least one is a sleeper, but there's actually very little plot that occurs. They're just established as the bookish guy and the athletic and aggressive girl who are engaged. The action then abruptly moves to a woman of the other group (the ones who are aware of what's going on). She's chatting with a former mentor, now reanimated in a rat body. They establish that someone is killing sleepers, but are interrupted by a team of bad guys and it turns into a running fight for the remainder of the story. The best aspect of this was the alien/futuristic technology, which had a great look to it. Story and characters came off as generic.

In the middle of the book is Ramayan 3392AD Reloaded, one of a series of titles from Virgin comics that (loosely) adapts Hindu mythology. This features a pretty standard gladiatorial combat scenario with a rather non-standard opponent. We only get a couple of pages here, but it looked like an interesting change of flavor from some of the more western-based fantasy.

Rating: 6.5/10

Fractured Fables Free Comic Book Day Edition

This was a 2010 FCBD offering that I missed last year but picked up this year.

Title: Fractured Fables Free Comic Book Day Edition
Date: 2010
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Bryan Talbot, Doug TenNapel, Alexander Grecian, Derek McColloch, Ted McKeever
Artist: Camilla d'Errico, Doug TenNapel, Christian Ward, Anthony Peruzzo, Ted McKeever
Letterer: Ed Brisson, Doug TenNapel, Alexander Grecian, Anthony Peruzzo
Colorist: Edison Yan
Cover: Michael Allred, Laura Allred, Tim Daniel, Jim Valentino
Editor: Jim Valentino, Kristen K. Simon

This is a collection of "fractured" fairy tales and fairy tale variants. There are five stories in this sampler. I found it a bit of a mixed bag.

The opening "Red Riding Hood" was pretty run-of-the-mill, although the ending punch line was visually cute.

Doug TenNapel's take on Rumplestiltskin was juvenile and not all that funny.

Things got better with Alexander Grecian's "The Real Princess", a mash-up of different tales including Jack and the Beanstalk and the Princess and the Pea. Christian Ward's painted artwork was beautiful, but the ending came out of left field. It wasn't a terrible way to end the story, it just wasn't completely satisfying.

Raponsel was funnier than the first two stories, but had the same problem of fumbling around with some not-quite-good jokes before it got going.

The best piece in the book was the final one, a very clever wordless interpretation of the Mother Goose rhyme Hey Diddle Diddle adapted by Ted McKeever.

With the rich history and symbolism of faerie tales, I feel like this could have been a lot better.

Rating: 6.5/10