Oh My Goddess Volume 1: 1-555-GODDESS

I picked this one up in the final fill-a-bag-for-a-dollar moments of the Falmouth MA Public Library book sale last summer.

Title: Oh My Goddess
Issue: Volume 1: 1-555-GODDESS
Date: 1996
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics (Studio Proteus)
Writer: Kosuke Fujishima
Artist: Kosuke Fujishima
Letterer: L. Lois Buhalis, Tom Orzechowski

College student Keiichi dials a wrong number and summons a goddess who promises to grant him one wish. Smitten by the goddess Belldandy, Keiichi immediately wishes for a beautiful goddess like her to be with him forever. Let's just say that Keiichi's life is about to get considerably more complicated.

And it becomes even more so, when Belldandy's rogue-goddess older sister (with greater powers and quite a bit less good judgement) arrives on the scene.

From wish-granting boardgames to exam-taking clones, everyone's best intentions end up going repeatedly and badly wrong.

This was amusing in a sitcom sort of way. It didn't really appear to be going anywhere after the arrival of evil-sister goddess Urd, so it felt like the story was spinning its wheels a bit in the second half. But it was still funny and entertaining all the way through.

Rating: 6/10

Savage Dragon #148 (Free Comic Book Day Edition)

In an odd coincidence, I pulled this out of the random stack of unread comics, and it had an odd connection to my previous review.

Title: Savage Dragon
Issue: 148 (Free Comic Book Day Edition)
Date: May, 2009
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Erik Larsen
Artist: Erik Larsen
Colorist: Nikos Koutsis
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski

Savage Dragon's children have been kidnapped, and he teams up with Daredevil (the original golden-age superhero, not the Marvel version) to rescue them. Daredevil, in turn, recruits the Wise Guys, a team of scrappy street kids.

Since this issue was a 2009 Free Comic Book Day offering from Image, there is a four-page "The Story So Far" segment condensing the previous 147 issues down to less than 30 panels. It's a bit helpful, but it has a hard time smoothing out what has clearly been a pretty convoluted journey to the current point in the story.

Once the Daredevil crossover gets going, the story becomes pretty straightforward and easy to follow. Daredevil and the Dragon have a good vibe, working together without needing to fight each other first or have a lot of macho posturing. In fact, it's their easy conversation through the story that really stands out in this issue.

In an interesting coincidence, the Daredevil character presented here, is the same character as the Death-Defying Devil, featured in the comic from Dynamite Entertainment that was my previous review. I don't know how I got these two comics, and had no idea that they shared a character.

Conveniently, this book featured a two-page text feature on the original Daredevil character, who first appeared in Silver Streak Comics from Lev Gleason Publications in 1940. The character may have been the inspiration for Marvel's Daredevil, and is now in the public domain, which explains why he is featured in books by two different companies under slightly different names. This was a nice little bit of comics history.

The story here doesn't resolve all that much. The action is fun, but nothing exceptional. I did really enjoy the dialogue all the way through.

Rating: 6/10