Blogcritics Author: Bill Sherman

Graphic Fiction Review: Graphic Classics: Ambrose Bierce - edited by Tom Pomplun

Bill Sherman — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:35:19 EST

A new edition of comic adaptations of the great American cynic's writings proves as entertainingly bleak as any alt comic.
If ever there was a writer more aligned with the sensitivities of today's young cartoonists, it's Ambrose Bierce. The journalist and author, a master of the darkly cynical, provides plenty of good material for the grim at heart, and the newly revised and reissued Graphic Classics (Eureka Productions) devoted to his works ably makes this...

Graphic Novel Review: Hatter M - The Looking Glass Wars, Volume One by Frank Beddor, Liz Cavalier, and Ben Templesmith

Bill Sherman — Sat, 1 Nov 2008 09:43:53 EDT

A graphic novel series expands upon the fantasy world of Frank Beddor's Looking Glass Wars.
The first of a series of graphic novels expanding on Frank Beddor's as-yet-unfinished young adult fantasy trilogy, The Looking Glass Wars, Hatter M (Automatic Pictures Publishing) continues the writer's violent re-imagining of Lewis Carroll's beloved Wonderland books. In Beddor's world, young Alyss Heart is the princess of...

Music Review: Tom Verlaine - Dreamtime and Words from the Front

Bill Sherman — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 22:19:25 EDT

Two of the former Television front man's early solo albums get much-needed reissues.
Of all the major bands to come out of the CBGBs Era, it was Television who remain arguably the least fully appreciated. Despite releasing two magnificent albums of guitar-driven art-punk (Marquee Moon and Adventure), the New York band never passed into the MTV circle of their peers in Talking Heads or Blondie, for instance. Perhaps lead...

Comic Book Review: City of Dust #1 by Steve Niles & Zid

Bill Sherman — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:21:55 EDT

The newest Radical Comics mini-series is a dark and grisly dystopian sci-fi horror tale.
When we first meet Philip Krome, the cop hero of Steve Niles and Zid's futuristic five-issue horror series, City of Dust (Radical Comics), he's chasing a perp accused of "chanting curses at children." Said "curses" turn out to be, in fact, prayers. In Krome's future world, religious belief and imagination are...

Graphic Novel Review: Dugout by Adam Beechen and Manny Bello

Bill Sherman — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 02:22:34 EDT

A new graphic novel combines baseball and prison break yarn.
There's a neat little pun in the title of Adam Beechen and Manny Bello's new black-and-white graphic novel, Dugout (AiT/Planet Lar). Look at the cover, with hero baseball manager Cookie Palisetti in his uniform, holding onto a bag of bats, ball, and what you first don't notice as pickaxes - and you can see the joke. Dugout is both a...

Comics Review: Scrambled Ink edited by Diana Schutz

Bill Sherman — Thu, 9 Oct 2008 18:46:40 EDT

DreamWorks animators break from out of the studio and into book publication.
Paging through Scrambled Ink (Dark Horse Books), the handsomely constructed hardback anthology of illustrated stories by a group of DreamWorks cartoonists, I can't help wondering what a comparable collection featuring the Grand Old Men of Animation might've looked like if the leading lights at Disney, Warner, or Fleischer had been given...

DVD Review: Rebus - Set Three

Bill Sherman — Sun, 5 Oct 2008 17:56:29 EDT

Ken Stott's lived-in take on the popular Scottish police detective receives its third boxed set.
With the news that crotchety Edinburgh D.I. John Rebus is on the verge of retirement in the 17th entry of Ian Rankin's popular mystery series (Exit Wounds), it's a good time to do some catch-up with the TV version of this irascible homicide detective. Acorn Media's newest frill-free Rebus set, number three in the series, features four...

Graphic Novel Review: Locke & Key by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez

Bill Sherman — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 14:53:20 EDT

The first six issues of Hill & Rodriguez' entertaining horror fantasy are collected in a new hardcover edition.
Though he's established himself as a smart fiction writer in his own right, for many long-term lovers of horror fiction, Joe Hill King still remains the tow-headed kid who got smacked on the face by his movie father for reading a Creepshow comic in the Stephen King/George Romero flick of the same name. And while it may not be entirely kosher...

Comics Review: From the Shadow of the Northern Lights edited by Johannes Klenell

Bill Sherman — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 17:07:15 EDT

An Anthology of Swedish Alternative Comics presents a whole cadre of unfamiliar (and hard to spell!) names to alt comics lovers.
If you didn't have the subtitle on its front cover, you might readily assume that From the Shadows of the Northern Lights (Galago, distributed by Top Shelf) was a collection of North American alt comics. Marcus Nyblom's gloopy industrial nightmare image has more than a whiff of that old underground comix primitive Rory Hayes to it, while...

Music Review: Pacific! - Reveries

Bill Sherman — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 16:05:07 EDT

A Swedish studio duo's American debut -- electro-pop with one foot in the seventies.
The stateside debut of a two-man Swedish pop group, Pacific!'s Reveries (EMI) works hard to live up to its connotative group name. No less than three songs contain the word "sun" in their title, and if we don't see "beach" anywhere on the track list, at least one of the tracks takes us "poolside." The...