Champion of the Worms

Just read this at lunch. Picked it up from the comic shop I blogged about earlier. It's a nice read, the jumping point into Mignola's Zombie World project... the origin story, if you will. The artwork is good; a little too cutesy for me. I really like Mignola's Kirby-esque artwork. And the dialog was a little too cutesy, the bad-guy didn't see evil enough to make the overall story convincing for me. But overall: B+

Essential Fantastic Four, Vol. 1

Been reading through Essential Fantastic Four, Vol. 1 the last couple of days. Now, I'm not a Marvel zombie, but I did read some FF back in the 80's -- I've always had a fondness for the team. I've always been a DC reader -- Swamp Thing, Superman, Phantom Stranger, Batman, etc. But I decided to give Stan Lee and Jack Kirby a chance and let me say, I haven't been disappointed. Jack Kirby's creatures are cool... I can really see his influence, especially on Mike Mignola's artwork and for that I'm appreciative.

The funny thing is, with Stan Lee's writing, I get ideas for other stories... for instance, when the FF first encounter the Skrull, 3 of them were left on Earth after the first invasion attempt, hypnotized in to thinking they were cows. Not being a Marvel zombie, did a little research and found out they broke the spell and came back later in another story. But I wondered if they mated with normal cows during that hypnotic stage, why types of creatures would have resulted -- Shape shifting cows? Super-smart mutant cows? :) This in itself wouldn't be the story, but the backdrop for something more interesting... I'm wondering if there's enough loose threads like this for an interesting non-super-hero types of stories.

Rate: B+