COMICS: Wed. 12/15/04 continued

Girl Genius: I love Phil Foglio, and have ever since the days of "What's New?" in Dragon magazine and his Myth Adventures illustrations. This comic continues his winning streak, with great humor, great adventure, and his seemingly endless parade of fantastically inventive creatures and machines. (This issue featured an excellently chilling demon horse, and some tremendously cool giant spiders.) The world in Girl Genius is huge and fascinating, and the overriding mystery of the Heterodyne family is engaging. But (there's always a but)... when the title switched over from B&W to color (about six issues ago), the artwork got a lot rougher, sketchier; it looks like the colors are being applied directly to the pencils, with no inking stage in between. Am I wrong here? And the backgrounds being used during this forest storyline are photographs, which tends to pull me out of the art. Not photographs traced with pencils or inks, as I've seen in many comics: just undoctored color photographs of forest scenes, with the characters laid over the top. It has the exact reverse desired effect on me -- it makes the art look less realistic; when the cartoony characters are contrasted with the photo backgrounds, it's jarring to the eye. But hey, if it's a time-saving device for Phil, and it means I can get a reliably on-time supply of Krosp, Emperor of the Cats, then I guess I'll take it and be glad!

Ex Machina: Love the art, love the story, love the characters. The sequence in the subway was truly disturbing (although, and I'm probably not alone on this, I could've done without the use of the term "gay-ass" -- there's such a plethora of other wonderfully vile and descriptive curse words to be used; why are there suddenly a plethora of authors resorting to using the word "gay" pejoratively?), and I loved the reaction to Hundred's zap-gun. I was a little let down with the ending of the previous storyline; this arc is shaping up to be much more intriguing.

Fantastic Four: It's a shame this is Waid's and Wieringo's final story on the FF. It's been a great run. And I never would've gotten in on it if it hadn't been for that 25 cent (whatever happened to the cent symbol on a keyboard?) issue that started it off. Excellent marketing job, Marvel! (Wow, it actually hurt me to say that.) I'm not a fan of Galactus; he's always seemed like a pretty dopey character to me. But these guys have a way of making previously unenjoyable characters extremely fun and interesting. Has there been word yet on who's taking over after they leave? (Meaning, can I safely drop this comic again?)

Madrox: I have to say, this has been a very disappointing series to me. What's happening with Jamie and his malfunctioning duplicates is interesting, and I like Rahne and Strong Guy, but the stories they're involved with are... I don't know how to say this any more nicely: lame. Totally lame. I don't give a rat's ass about the case Jamie's following, nor any of the characters he's met, and I don't give a crap about who killed who or why. As a mystery, it's completely failed to engage me, which is frankly perplexing to me, considering how much I usually enjoy Peter David's work. And the less said about the philandering astral projection Rahne has been following (who's turned out to be seeing another man!! Oh, I'm flabbergasted, I'm shaken to my very core!!! By which I mean, what a stupid, stupid twist, a twist which stopped being shocking, or even mildly surprising, about thirty years ago), the better.

Marvel Team-Up: I liked it. I was actually surprised by the reveal on the final page. I'm interested in seeing where this is headed. Which puts this comic light years ahead of the previous Marvel work Robert Kirkman has done, like Captain America or the 2099 books. (Okay, I like Jubilee, too, but don't tell anyone.)

Demo: This completely failed to interest me in any way. I shouldn't have given in and bought it. I really don't know what all the fuss was about this issue, other than the fact that it was the end of an otherwise interesting series. Two people walk around town to bad poetry. Whoop-de-doo. And the back-up story? Even worse. I've said before that I've liked, but not loved, the issues of this series that I've checked out; this final issue, I liked nothing about it, nothing at all. Bummer.