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PREACHER (The entire collection)

Time for my first comic book review. I have been collecting comics seriously since 1992 when I was but 12 years old, but I have to say that this comic really marked the change for me, it’s kinda what lead the way into the darker side of comics.

Preacher, is the story of a small town Precher by the name of Jessy Custer that has grown up in the deep south of America and has began to loose his faith. Jessy is of the rare disposition of being a direct descendent of the big man, Jesus Christ himself. Not only this but he is also possessed by a newborn offspring produced by the forbidden love between an angel of heaven and a devil from the deepest realms of hell. This leaves Jessy with a godlike power, “the voice of God”… this allows him to command a man to do anything he says… literally. This power has only previously been held by God himself and now god shit his pants realising this monumental fuck up and has fled heaven.

This sets off a whole host of people hunting down Jessy for their own means. First off we have a band of angles, that believe he has to be killed in order for the big man to return, they send in a relentless, unstoppable killer by the name of the Saint of Killers.

We also have The Grail, a world wide orginasation that has been around since biblical times to protect the bloodline of Christ. They aim to replace the pope with Jessy Custer in a bid to make the world fall at their knees at the sight of a true envoy of God, thing is they plan to use it to their own end.

Who could forget, Arseface… A teenager whos face has been chewed up in a botched suicide attempt with a shotgun. He has sworn to kill Jessy for ordering his father to go fuck himself, which he does by ripping his own cock off and shoving it up his own arse.

There is a host of other minor characters, ranging from gay private detectives to a Nazi sex dominatrix… yeah that’s right, a Nazi sex dominatrix.

Its not all bad though, Jessy has is one true love by his side, Tulip… a strong willed and passionate girl that would follow him to the end. And Cassidy, an Irish vampire that has a penchant for booze and blood.

Quite a lot to take in eh? Well it is everything you could ever ask for in a comic… funny, dark, violent, action packed, straight talking, hard hitting and very very sharp witted. Written by Garth Ennis, who for me is the greatest comic book writer ever. He may not be as intellectually stimulating as Allan Moore but for me anyway, he sure is more entertaining. Its the kind of writing that means you can’t stop flicking through the pages, it leaves you hungry for more and more and for me, it has left a void in my soul since it ended. Don’t get me wrong, the end was necessary and expertly executed. It ties up to many loose ends in the last book that you feel almost happy that its ended because Ennis just… well he just did it all justice.

As for the art, Steve Dillon is an old pro and these two work together like bacon and brown sauce in a Saturday morning hangover cure. His sharp inks and colours work well without being overly detailed and messy. A few other artists have a pop at some stories in the later books, but for me, it just doesn’t feel right unless its Dillon.

Sorry that this was almost a novel, but fuck me if you haven’t read this book… you really need to get your fat arse of the sofa and run as fast as you can down to your local comic shop and beg the vendor for some of the reprints!!!!

Verdict: 10/10

The most entertaining comic of all time… That is the word of God.

Battlestar Galactica Volume 1 – Dynamite

This more fucking like it, after the big let done and laborious effort that was the BSG manga this first of three in the official comic tie in to the TV series redeems the reputation of BSG comics fully. The action here takes place during the second season whilst Boomer is still in the holding cell. The Galactica encounters a distress call from a long since thought lost in action medical frigate but even stranger is the crew on board they are all people that died in air-borne incidents back on the colonies years ago then add into the mix a group of terrorists and a virus that stricken s nearly the whole fleet and it feels like getting into that warm pair of slippers on a winters day, this is familiar ground.

The writing here is inch perfect and truly feels like part of the BSG universe with all the story elements and plot lines that come about never feeling forced. The Identity of several of the “returners” as they are dubbed by the colonists will come as a big shock and that is where this novel will lose marks as the events in this book seem so large its impossible to believe that they will never be referred to in the TV show. But that aside the characters are also well written with Admiral Adama’s reaction to the identity of one of the returners being on the money.

The big plus here is the artwork and let’s face it the Japanese style does not suit a subject matter as dark and with such a heavy narrative as BSG. Character drawings are all spot on with my only gripe being that President Roslin looks a tad on the young side which we know will dissapoint McFlee given his lusty feelings towards the mature Roslin.

A lot of high points in this story the main revelation is a true shocker and provides the main meat of the story (will try and keep this spoiler free) and also the discovery of a fleet of old school Cylons that are still programmed to respond to human commands, and after the discovery upon being told to go frak themselves proceed to blow seven shades of shit out of each other.

In summary is best to look upon this as an alternative timeline entry, but is still damned entertaining and given that the TV series has just wrapped this will ease those BSG DT’s a little.

Rating : 8/10

Not just a good BSG but a great comic worth checking out.

Battlestar Galactica – Echoes of New Caprica (Tokyopop)

Now that BSG has quite literally gone of our our screens and into the sunset we need something to battle the withdrawals that we will all be feeling looking at that gap in the TV schedule. Thankfully the comic book world has stepped up to the plate on both sides of the globe and here BSG goes east – Manga Style. In the first ever BSG manga title what we have are three different stories set around season three , in fact these were plots that had to be cut from what we saw on TV due to running time.

The first is I think the weakest, not to say that its terrible but merely average. It focuses on President Roslin’s school that she taught on New Caprica under the menacing glare of the Cylons. The main thrust is that some one in the school is giving intel to the toasters and the path leads to one of the children in the class being a Cylon collaborator. Like I say this is an average story and it feels like the bog standard comic book tie in filler in between what we saw up on the screen. The plot is very basic and to be honest unimaginative but the artwork is of good standard and manages to make it look like BSG and traditional manga at the same time. But my mine gripe is there isn’t that much new in this tale it feels like going over old ground and if you wanted so interesting background info into the whole New Caprica affair then give this a miss otherwise it will pass away an hour or so.

Much like a good three course meal we started with a light entry and now we get to the meat and potatoes. The second volume is a Zarek centric story about the early days of the Cylon conspirator trials held on Galactica immediately following events on New Caprica. This story more than the other two does give us something new and that will enhance your viewing of the TV show. Zarek has always been one of the most intriguing players in the BSG mythos. There is a neat twist to this story when Zarek has to face one of his best friends and hand him over to the mob rule and this does have genuine impact. In the time line this follows immediately on from the liberation of New Caprica during Zarek’s very brief stint as president. Overall this is great little story whilst you could see why it would be dropped from the TV it does add something to the BSG story as a whole.

Like the three course meal we get to the sweet which is probably the best way to describe the third and final story of the book. This time the focus is on Starbuck and the child she accepted as her own on New Caprica. There is nothing much ti write home about here storywise and you won’t learn very much about Starbuck or anything else. Simply put Starbuck is haunted by visions of the child and tracks her down where she sees her on her own, abducts her then child returns to her mother and thats about it. Scrub what I said earlier this is in fact the weakest story of the book as nothing new or exciting happens.

Overall the book is a patchy affair but a decent start as there will be more on the way. I feel though that given the Japanese style of fleshing out characters to the maximum, maybe if the writers stick to the supporting cast of BSG for story lines then we will have something to look forward to in the future. The manga fails when the stories focus on the principal charcters as they seem unable to add anything new to what we know already. Overall I would say this book is for the seasoned BSG fan as the casual fan won’t gain that much from it.

Rating – 5/10

TAKEN

Seeing as there was no films about Zombie Nazi’s left at the old blockbuster store, Inferno and myself decided to rent a more mainstream, but still blokey film. I had only heard good things about this movie and I was pretty optimistic.

The plot: Liam Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a retired CIA agent who is trying to be closer to his daughter as she grows into a young woman. The pressures of his old lifestyle has already broken his marriage and his daughter now lives with her cunt of a mother who has shacked up with some old rich dude that keeps trying to buy her affection. Mills realises that he has to make up for all the time he was away on missions as his daughter was growing up, when she asks if she can travel in Europe for a few weeks with a friend, he is reluctant but realises that he may loose her if he doesn’t allow her to grow up.

Turns out this was a bad idea, as she is only in France a few hours when her friend and her are kidnapped by Albanian pimps. She is on the phone to her father as it happens and he talks to one of the abductors, vowing to use his CIA skills to track them down and kill them all. When he arrives in France, it doesn’t take him long to start putting clues together and soon he is on to there case. Cue the onslaught of uber violence as he beats, shoots, explodes and brutally tortures his way through the European underworld in order to locate his beloved daughter.

Neeson is outstanding in this movie. To be honest, he has made a living out of playing stony faced serious types and you know what? He does it here again… but he does it so well that you just have to love him for it. He is about 55 now, but he still comes across as a pretty fit dude. You can honestly believe that he can handle himself as you are presented with him taking on an entire crack house full of Albanian scum bags and handing them the beat down of the millennium.

The violence is pretty extreme, not overly gory, just you can see the rage inside Nessons character as he desperately tries to get his daughter back. It soon becomes apparent that he will stop at nothing to achieve this. One scene in particular conveys this, he tortures a man by ramming two 6 inch nails into his thigh bones, then attaches them to the house mains via crocodile clips…. OOCHAAA!!! Also heads get smashed in car doors, a dude gets a broken bottle stabbed into his chest, another gets a fire extinguisher rammed off his face 8 or 9 times and more people get chopped in the throat than I care to remember.

This movie is dark and violent, but I still think that most women will still enjoy it, as every moment in this film, you can see the love that Neesons character has for his daughter. You know that although he is being a brutal monster at times, it is all spawned for that love that can never be broken. Have to say it again, Neeson is unbelievably good in this!!!

Dark, broody, violent, intelegent film making, that is a relief after this years wishy washy cinema realises.

Verdict: 9/10

Let it TAKE your attention to the darker side of life.

Caprica Season 1 Episode 0 – Pilot

You have to hand it to the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica Ronald D Moore he knows how to get hard core fan boys in a tizzy and then silence them in style. Remember when it was announced that BSG was going to be re-imagined ? those fans boys where up in arms about the new elements Starbuck and Boomer re-cast as women ! Cylons that look human! it was going to be disaster they wailed but then when we actually saw that he had crafted the best Sci-Fi no scrub that the best TV show of recent years they went silent. And now The new BSG has a rabid legion of fan boys and as the curtain drew on BSG Ron Moore announced he was going to give BSG the spin off treatment by going back 50 years and fleshing out the back story of how the Cylons came to be. Then he announced it would be like a family drama , sort of like Dallas so light fuse and ignite the message boards were swamped with the fan boys enraged again and yet again, but one crucial thing they haven’t seen a frame of Caprica and yet again it looks like Ron Moore is on the money.

Like i said the pilot and the series is set some 50 years before the fall on Caprica and focuses on two families the rich Graystones and the brilliant scientist/robotics  genius man of the house  Dr Daniel Graystone and the civil liberties lawyer Joseph Adams (no prizes for what his real surname is). The two fathers are brought together when an act of religious fanaticism on a train takes their daughters away from them. Dr Graystone then finds out that unknown to him his daughter had been a genius at Artificial Intelligence and had created a digital copy of herself inside a sort of virtual reality chat room. Now obsessed with the idea of having his daughter back he enlists the help of Joseph Adams to commit industrial espionage and steal from a rival robotics firm an AI circuit to allow him to download his daughters personality into a robot. You see where this is all leading to, but like BSG you knew where it was going but they packed in enough subplots and story arcs to keep you glued to the set.

Here a good deal of plot threads are introduced : the genesis of AI, the religious element (polytheism v monotheism), The family tensions between Joseph and William Adams, How far would you to have a departed loved one back?, Anti-immigration attitudes of Capricans (The Taurans are looked down upon and hence why the Adams use the adopted surname). And in that way they similarities to BSG are evident. The main difference will be the focus on the family feud that is to ensue and also making this planet-bound (no shaky camera POVs of hyper-kinetic space dogfights here folks!).

The acting and casting is likewise on the mark with leading man Eric Stoltz playing Dr Graystone to perfection as a brilliant man wounded by the tragic death of his daughter and now pushed to do anything no matter what to bring her back from the dead. Likewise we see with Joseph Adams a hard working man also struggling after the death of his wife and daughter who oversteps the mark in a bid to get them back only to regret his decision  and then decide to re-connect with his estranged son. And so far those are the major players introduced in this feature length pilot the first series will air next year. Also there is something for BSG fans as we get to see the very first Cylon in action and here the immortal line “by your command” which will send a tingle up your spine. Overall this is a great pilot and does what a pilot should do introduce the protagonists, open up the plot threads and leaving you just chomping at the bit for more. This will be the series to watch next year and also you don’t have to be BSG mad to understand it ohhhh and do not not worry the young Bill Adama is handled much better than young Anakin Skywalker in Phantom Menace!.

In short if your a BSG fan and even if your not this is well worth checking out – bring it on!.

Rating 8/10 – A great pilot for what looks to be a very promising show

Frakkin great SO SAY WE ALL !

Jaws

Even the title should be enough to sum this one up, in fact no other movie could be explained and reviewed just by mentioning the title. Here I am after managing a keeping my attention span to 10 minutes of watching “An Inconvenient Truth” (hell even Ron Jeremy would be impressed with that stamina) i decided to reach for the movie that never fails when there is fuck all else on. To say this movie is re-watch able is akin to saying “here that Jessica Alba would be worth a go” quite simply my movie watching year is incomplete without firing this shiny disc up at least 20 times a year.

So you want to know the plot do you ?

Are you serious?

You really want a synopsis for this?

What fucking planet have you yet to evolve from to not know the story of this?.

Well i might as well entertain those who suffer the huge disadvantage in life of not having seen this. Small Island of the North East Coast of USA. Hippy late night party on beach. Drunk girl and drunk guy run of for skinny dipping. Drunk girl swims off while drunk guy passes out. Drunk girl eaten alive but you never see the shark. Police chief fears shark attack. Mayor says no. Little kid chomped by shark. Shark hunt catches a shark. Wrong Shark. Another bather chomped. Crusty old seaman hired to get shark. Police Chief, Crusty Old Seaman and Biologist go out after shark. Final third of shark getting chased by trio.

Now I can wax about what makes this movie a fucking masterpiece and one of the most iconic pieces of cinema in existence. It is no known secret that in making this movie the script was incomplete and was being written as it was being filmed hence a lot of what is on the screen is improvised. The opening scene sets the tone for the movie, The young girl getting eaten by the unseen shark is primal and chilling to the core but is just one of many classic scenes. In fact every minute of this movie is a classic scene as there is no one scene that does not contribute to the overall narrative. But the standout is the Indianapolis speech delivered by Robert Shaw as Quint is a show stopper and to think it was only going to be a paragraph.

The acting is spot on as the main trio each represent a different section of society. Rob Scheider as the middle class Chief Of Police out of his depth Chief Brody, Richard Dreyfuss as the Smart upper class marine biologist over confident of his abilities Matt Hooper and the working man hard as nails also over confident of his tried and tested methods Quint. The chemistry between Dreyfuss and Shaw is lightning in a bottle stuff and given the strained relationship between the actors on set is no surprise this comes across so well on screen.

Special effects are basic and in any other movie would be laughable but because they are used so sparsely (take note George Lucas) you never notice. Instead the tension and suspense do the work for you so when the shark jumps out its still a shock even after almost 30 years. But also we have to mention the sound track and THAT theme which is now so synonymous with sharks that if you go swimming and see a fin you have expect the thump thump to accompany it.

Overall all i can say is just go and buy this on DVD. Now don’t listen to me anymore just buy it and watch it, then watch again, and again, and again, and again. For a fishy tale this never goes off or loses its bite ever. Hell even Jaws 4 still can’t dent the reputation of this now can you say the same of Star Wars and Phantom Menace?.

Rating 10/10

You don’t need a bigger boat just a durable DVD that can take the repeated viewings!