Maximum Ride: The Manga: Free Preview

I have a lot of Free Comic Book Day 2008 comics in my stack of random unread comics. Here's one from Yen Press.



Title: Maximum Ride: The Manga: Free Preview
Date: 2008
Publisher: Yen Press
Writer: James Patterson, NaRae Lee
Artist: NaRae Lee
Letterer: Abby Blackman

I've actually already read and reviewed everything in this book, as it was reprinted in 2011, with some additional pages, plus previews for two other James Patterson adaptations in a manga-format preview volume that I got at New York Comic Con that year. My review of that volume is here. The only thing completely new to me here is the cover, which look great.

This is adapted from bestselling author James Patterson's prose novel series. Adaptation and art credits go to NaRae Lee.

Opening with a dream sequence involving the lead character, a winged girl, being chased by mutant-looking bad guys, the story then moves to a group of young characters sharing an isolated house in the mountains. They are all winged people, it turns out, and they all have additional superpowers, some of which are shown and some hinted at.

The whole thing had a very X-Men or New Mutants vibe to it. It did a good job introducing the characters, although this version ended things just as the action sequence was beginning.

I could have done without the fart joke, but otherwise, this was a pretty well-handled introduction sequence, especially considering the fairly large cast and the limited page count. NaRae Lee's artwork is lovely, and it will be fun to see what she can do with more flying sequences, of which I am assuming there will be plenty.

Rating: 7/10

Free Comic Book Day 2015 (Avengers) #1

When we moved to Vietnam, one thing that I figured I'd be giving up was Free Comic Book Day, which has been a fun event for me, whether setting up a table for my own comics, or just rushing around visiting a bunch of geeky stores.

So when I caught wind of a FCBD event here in Saigon, I was pretty excited. The Amazing Comics is just starting out as a dealer/distributor of American comics, toys, and gaming products, and they don't have a storefront yet, but they rented space for a day and pulled off an excellent Free Comic Book Day party a week after the official date in the US. We picked up three of this year's official freebies, and I also bought a couple of Marvel comics for the Kiddo, who the previous day went to see Avengers: Age of Ultron for the second time.

I have a small set of pictures from the event here.

And now, on to the first review!

Title: Free Comic Book Day 2015 (Avengers)
Issue:1
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Date: June, 2015
Writer: Mark Waid, Charles Soule, James Patterson, Marguerite Bennett
Artist: Mahmud Asrar, Brandon Peterson, Alex Sanchez, Stephanie Hans
Colorist: Frank Martin, Justin Ponsor
Letterer: VC's Joe Sabino, VC's Clayton Cowles
Cover: Jerome Opena, Frank Martin, Nick Bradshaw, Richard Isanove
Editor: Tom Brevoort, Will Moss, Jon Moisan, Charles Beacham, Nick Lowe

Not technically a flip-book, but it does have a fully-illustrated back cover featuring the Inhumans in addition to the Avengers front cover.

There are actually three stories. First up is the Avengers, which features the latest team lineup: Iron Man, (female) Thor, Vision, (Sam Wilson) Captain America, plus three younger members, Spider-Man, Nova, and Ms. Marvel, all depicted as teenagers.

This is something of a tryout for the new team members, and their first battle as Avengers against the Radioactive Man does not go well. Still, they pull together and learn a bit about the real meaning of what the Avengers are all about. Including a discussion of how "The Avengers" is actually not exactly a perfect name for the team.

This was goofy fun for the most part, although it had a couple of surprisingly grim moments considering the overall tone.

Second story was Inhumans, which features the creation of a couple of new Inhumans as a cloud of terrigen has apparently been wandering around the world, causing Inhumans to manifest their powers and abilities. There are also some Hydra agents, who are intent on collecting up and enslaving those new Inhumans in the hopes of using them as pawns in their usualy Hydra-ish schemes. Or something.

The beginning of this story features a lot of clunky dialogue as characters are forced to over-explain everything just to set the scenario up for the reader. It gets a lot better when Medusa and some of the Inhumans team (minus Black Bolt, but plus Human Torch, go figure). Medusa is great here, largely because of the thorough trouncing she lays down on the over-explainy Hydra leader. One of the new characters introduced, an engineer whose hands become weird energy-projecting coils, also shows a lot of potential, and there's some good dialogue between Medusa and Johnny Storm at the end.

The third story is a quicky: A four-page preview of Marvel's adaptation of James Patterson's Max Ride. It's effective and visually interesting. I haven't read the prose novel, but this was at least enough to pique my interest, which is about what Marvel was hoping for with four pages to work with.

Nothing here is stand-out great, but each of the three stories had their moments.

Rating: 6.5/10

Yen Press 2011 Manga Sampler

Manga freebie featuring the writing of mega-bestselling prose author James Patterson. I picked this one up at the New York Comic Con.

Title: Yen Press 2011 Manga Sampler
Date: 2011
Publisher: Yen Press
Writer: James Patterson, Gabrielle Charbonnet, Michael Ledwidge
Artist: NaRae Lee, Svetlana Chmakova, SeungHui Kye

This digest-sized book features three previews, all authored or co-authored by mega-bestselling author James Patterson, one of the few really successful writers who seems to work comfortably in a wide variety of genres.

First up is Maximum Ride, which proved to be my favorite of the three. The story features a family of teenaged winged people who are living in an isolated house away from the forces of civilization who would imprison them or worse for their differences. Nice job of introducing the cast up front, followed by an attack by (mutated, apparently) agents of the government, who lay a pretty brutal beatdown on the heroes. NaRae Lee's artwork is gorgeous, especially once the wings are in play, and the fight scene is well handled. I felt like I came to care about this group of characters very quickly and the cliffhanger ending left me eager to find out what happens next.

The second story was Witch & Wizard, and featured the (awesome) artwork of Svetlana Chmakova, who wrote and drew one of my all-time favorite manga titles, Dramacon. Unfortunately, I was not as impressed with the story here. A brother and sister living in a pretty generic near-future dystopian dictatorship are imprisoned for the crime of witchcraft. They have no idea why they are being accused of such a thing, until their (generic) magical powers manifest right on schedule. This is a very black-and-white world. The dictator is almost a parody of evil dictators, and the political statement about how the rights of the people were basically stripped away because no one was really paying attention is heavyhanded and not terribly interesting. Chmakova does a nice job on the artwork, especially with the villains, but there just isn't enough of a hook in the preview story to make it interesting.

The third story has more of a shonen flavor than the first two. It's Daniel X, the story of a young hunter charged with killing dangerous extraterrestrials who have taken up residence on Earth. Daniel has the power to conjure up objects from subatomic particles. Daniel creates constructs to replace his dead parents while he spends his time hunting down the fugitive aliens. Daniel is an interesting character who shows a good amount of complexity even in this short preview. The quest to defeat the list of aliens is a bit of a video game style plot, but it accomplishes the objective of keeping the plot moving.

This was free, and I would say it was definitely worth taking the time to read. Patterson has done his homework. The pacing and timing of the stories matches that of Japanese manga, and I was interested enough to want to follow two out of the three books.

Rating: 6.5/10