Strange Skies over East Berlin #1
This was not one of my pulls. Despite an incredible track record of classic stories, I have an inherent bias against mini-series. Something about it must call to me and I have to say who wouldn't be entranced by that striking cover? The title also helps, I have a weakness of intriguing titles.
Many years ago I would not have been able to appreciate a title like this. The art is more impressionistic than clean, but who doesn't enjoy a good sci-fi story set in the backdrop of cold war Berlin? The story combines cold war anxiety with out of this world fear. As enjoyable as peanut butter and jelly.
Vampire State Building #1
Ablaze is a new comic book publisher, at the very least new to me. They have had some intriguing solicitations as of late, namely a Conan interpretation that they were forced to stop publishing. Here, we have Charlie Adlard's first post-Walking Dead art and he does an incredible job. What do you expect from a guy who has been a consistent monthly artist for more than 180 issues? This time we get vampies instead of zombies and I couldn't be happier for that.
I did find the panel layouts to be strange in that it feels like the panels are smaller than they needed to be, publishing error? There is a lot of white space on the top and bottom of the page and text is small and difficult to read as a result.
It's Walking Dead....only with vampires, and inside a skyscraper. Where is John McClane when you need him?
Dead Eyes #1
This series was originally published as Dead Rabbit several months ago, but ended up causing a copyright infringement. I have to be honest, calling this Dead Rabbit makes no sense. The rename to Dead Eyes makes all the sense in the world. While reading this issue every time someone said Dead Eyes, I would substitute Dead Rabbit in my head and it sounds bizarre.
This issue took me by surprise because I didn't expect to know the identity of the title character right away. I thought it would be one of those slow reveals, I was not really disappointed because knowing who it is makes the contrast between the persona and the real person very entertaining. This issue was a lot of fun and I am looking forward to the next one soon. They should have a pretty good head start by now, so hopefully no delays.
