2016 Comic Challenge 131 Captain Harlock #02

TITLE-Captain Harlock #02
PUBLISHER-Malibu Comics/Eternity Comics

Long before the 2000's manga boom there was a small explosion of manga into US comic shops. Back in the mid to late 80s various indy publishers got the rights to reprint various manga in the states. So when on a trip to a not so close junk store and I found 2 issues of Captain Harlock I just assumed it was reprints of the manga. Turns out I was wrong.

Written by Robert W. Gibson and art by Ben Dunn,Captain Harlock is an Americization of the manga. Ben Dunn is obviously a big fan of Anime and manga. And this is the second comic I have read where he took an manga and adapted it for the US audience.

Since I have never read the original Harlock manga or seen any of the anime I can't tell ya how closely this adaptation follows the original material. I can say I did enjoy the story. And the art looks pretty decent.

Captain Harlock #02 gets a borrow.

2016 Comic Challenge 113 The Ferret #01

TITLE-The Ferret #01
PUBLISHER-Malibu Comics

Ferret was the Protectors' version of Wolverine. In his normal life he is your average rock guitarist. But once he throws on his costume he becomes the Ferret. Out of all the spin offs from the main Protectors comic this was the best.And also the one that ran the longest.Now it is hard to tell from the above picture but the cover and entire comic was die cut in the shape of the Ferret's head.

Like with Airman we get R.A. Jones writing this title. But they did get a decent artist to handle the interior art.Dean Zachary handles the pencils and Ken Branch is the inker.The cover was done by Mike S Miller and Dean Zachary.

I noticed that in these solo Ferret stories he took on lots of drug dealers and street level villains. So while he was a Wolverine clone,his rogues' gallery was more like say Daredevil's or Green Hornet's.

Sadly like all the Protectors stuff ,the Ferret had a short run. Lasting only 10 issues. Now all I gotta do is find issues 4 and 8 and I got a full run of this series.

The Ferret #01 gets a buy.

2016 Comic Challenge 112 Airman #01

TITLE-Airman #01
PUBLISHER-Malibu Comics

Between the time when Image left Malibu,and the start of the Ultraverse,you have the short lived Protectors series. Were Malibu took a bunch of Golden Age public domain heroes and revamped them a bit for the modern age. After a few issues of the Protectors had come out,Malibu started pumping out lots of spin offs and one shots. Airman #01 is one of these one shots.

Honestly if I hadn't been trying to get a complete run of all the Protectors comics and stuff connected to them I wouldn't have held onto this comic. The story by R.A.Jones is bad. The interior art by Matt Reynolds is crap. But I can hear some people saying "The art on the cover looks decent." Well that was one of the drawbacks to the Protectors stuff. They usually had a good artist on the cover and a much inferior one doing the interior art. The cover artist for Airman #01 is Tom Derenick.

The comic feels like they thought it would sell well enough to merit an ongoing series. But since this is the only issue I must assume sales were not that good.

Airman #01 gets a  pass.

2016 Comic Challenge 082 Yakuza #01

TITLE-Yakuza #01

PUBLISHER-Eternity 

After how bad the last comic was I just wanted something to get the stink of that comic out of my brain.So I dug into my longbox full of random comics I have bought cheap and never read. I saw the cover and thought Hey this might be OK. I was so wrong.

The story,what little there is,is crap. The art,even with Jimmy Palmiotti doing the inks,is terrible. The best parts of this comic are the cover and the fucking ads.

Yakuza #01 gets a PASS!