Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
It seems strange in a way to read a graphic novel that is based on a highly rated television programme that in itself is based upon one of D.C Comics greatest publications and whose central character turned up from time to time in the American programme about Superman’s early life, Smallville. Go back far enough with this idea and the chicken-egg scenario will admit defeat and leave the comedy circuit and go back to the poultry farm to relative ignominy.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is trouble in the land of make believe, the images of fables have made their way into the world of humanity and are living amongst us, living their lives, their dreams and facing their nightmares in a world that is every bit as fantastical as their own but with none of the happy endings…legends after all still need to breathe.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Of all the heroes that you encounter when travelling through the world of D.C. Comics, it could be argued that Barry Allen, The Flash, is by the most accessible to both the relative new comer to the land where fiction meets graphic art and the long standing devotee of comic book/graphic novel publications to grace the pages in which the likes of Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman have gained the most adoration over the years.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
D.C. Comics’ Justice League has so many parts to it, so many interesting characters within its framework that at times the reader could be forgiven for overlooking perhaps one of the more interesting members within its ranks, that of Police Scientist Barry Allen, A.K.A The Flash.
With American television finally producing a television series of one of D.C.’s finest creations, on the back of the success that The Arrow has had, The Flash seems finally ready to take his place in the wider world of acknowledgement as the great hero he has always been.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Hell is a place that is reserved for the most evil, the most corrupt or those that have caused such monumental anguish to a fellow human being and it takes a great person to avoid its lure and perhaps aside from Faustus, only a daughter of Zeus might stand any chance of dealing with the realm.
For Wonder Woman, single handed the finest female creation in the D.C. Universe the reason she has to go to Hell is to return Zola, a mortal woman who is the latest in line to be carrying the father of the Gods’ child, back to realm of humanity and away from the lives of those who manipulate the lives of mortals for their own benefit or amusement.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Treachery, in the world of action comics or the graphic novel, not one plot device captures the imagination more and makes the reader feel aggrieved at the sense of injustice that has befallen the team or the solo hero. The disloyalty meted out is of such a despicable nature that it is akin to treason to the state. The betrayal of a handshake given in good faith is almost left hanging in the mind as you see in the other person’s eyes just exactly they are planning to do. When it is properly captured by the writer it is the most symbolic action to be placed down on paper and in the fourth volume of Justice League, under the banner of the New 52, The Grid, betrayal and treason come no higher that one of their own turns against them.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
After so many years of writing in a particular style that even the appearance of a full stop suddenly placed before the reader’s eyes was enough to have them scurrying for the covers and checking nervously under the bed, to witness Stephen King, the ultimate in the name of Horror in the 20th Century, take on a straight forward suspense thriller is akin to see him offer a book aimed at children…Mr Mercedes is no My Pretty Pony though, then again it is also no Under The Dome either.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
One of the most perplexing and perhaps insistent of all the creations by Marvel comics is The Guardians of the Galaxy. Unlike other explorations into the team ethic made by Marvel, The Fantastic Four, The Avengers, West Coast Avengers, X-Men for example, The Guardians of the Galaxy is one that doesn’t necessarily jump off the page and grab the sympathetic attention of the reader. It could be argued that it delves into a space that would have been more suited to the underworld/underground realm of comic books and yet given the amount of time it takes a class A comet to light up the sky and bring an end to all life on the planet, it grows upon you.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 71/2/10
There is no dispute to what the New 52 series has done for D.C. Comics. It has made even the most dedicated fan of Marvel and the independent Graphic Novel publishers fall in love for the re-branding of one of the comic industries’ big two. Where at one time, with the absolute exception of Batman, the very possible concession to Wonder Woman and certainly in America, the absolute mainstay of the franchise Superman, there was never really anything for a lover of the comic book to latch on to and take to their heart.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
The shadows are drawing in and the darkness has claimed yet more lives in the small American town of Lovecraft, the reckoning is yet to happen and it will take an strength that is far beyond the years of the two older Locke children in which to save humanity from a force that will destroy or enslave them forever. Such is the delicious darkness that lives within the final graphic novel by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez in the Locke and Key series that Alpha & Omega could well be the finest finish to a the finest set of graphic novels ever created.