Customer Reviews

Strange Tales HC

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book takes the same premise as DC's Bizarro books where well known comic book heroes appear silly and go on daffy adventures. It's the comic book equivalent of going on vacation.

So with that in mind I was looking for a good time, some jokes, some light entertainment. And most of the book is just this. I enjoyed James Kochalka's Hulk scripts where he has Hulk fight Rain (yes the weather) and write a diary. Jason's Spiderman is insecure that he hasn't ever been in a bar fight and so goes out to a bar and starts one. Nicholas Gurewitch, he of the excellent Perry Bible Fellowship series, writes two excellent one pagers of Wolverine and Hulk. Jeffrey Brown contributes a funny Fantastic Four strip while Peter Bagge provides the most substantial works found here with lengthy stories on both Spiderman and Hulk. He makes Spiderman a corporate shill after reading Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" and deciding to follow the book's teachings. Hulk and Bruce Banner meanwhile become embroiled in a disastrous love triangle.

But most of the stuff here is kinda dull. There are numerous strips here that go on and on: a Punisher strip that is drawn so poorly and is about nothing at all; numerous Modok and Iron Man shorts that never take off; a poorly conceived Brother Voodoo strip; Black Widow doing nothing more than what she usually does - surveillance and intelligence gathering. And so on. It showed that much of the book was made up of half-baked ideas at best and were trying to read.

So there's some stuff that's good but generally I found the book a bit weak. The stories never seemed that imaginative nor funny and it could've been a lot better than it was. An ok collection.

This book collects issues 1-3 of Strange Tales. With over two dozen of alternative and online comics greatest artists and writers featured in this book, there is a very good chance of you discovering a comics creator or three that you did know of before seeing them herein.

I came for Peter Bagge, and stuck around to enjoy Tony Millionaire, Stan Sakai, Max Cannon, Jason and the always zanny Johnny Ryan. What these artists are up to here is to take The Hulk, Ironman, The Punisher, Spider-Man and The Sub-Mariner, and knock our heroes down by a few pegs. And as these tales are both very weird and very funny, they might have gotten it right.

This book reminds me an awful lot of "Heavy Metal" magazine circa 1977, and as that was such a great way to introduce the world to the greats of that era, this is indeed a great thing to see in the year 2010, history repeats itself!

The color and print of this book is top-notch, and my biggest gripe is that I should have shelled out a few more dollars and gotten the hardbound edition as it seems to be the better buy over the paperback edition.
If you enjoy comics, this is for you.
(and if Baloney-Head, doesn't make you smile, call the coroner, you is dead!)
Three and a half stars!

I am a big fan of collections of comics by indy comic creators about mainstream super-hero types. Bizarro World, Bizarro Comics, Hellboy: Weird Tales, Vol. 1, and Hellboy: Weird Tales Volume 2 are all on my shelf next to this TPB. Strange Tales II would be there as well, but I am waiting for the soft-cover trade.

I felt like there was too much Bagge stuff and not enough of the other stuff though. Jhonen's short was my favorite, which is kind of funny since I am usually lukewarm to his work at best. I would put the collection overall on par with Bizzaro 1, but not as good as Bizzaro 2.

This is almost excellent, but the stories seem uninspired and like assignments to get finished. However, a few are good fun, and esp enjoying Bagge's Spiderman. LOVE THAT BAGGE, MAN! Now I'm hoping that "Bizarro" is maybe a little better...but I'll find out...

Like any anthology some are better than others, but I was really sad to get to the last page. Peter Bagge does a great job as does Jim Rugg, and many others. Can't wait for the next one...

What he said. A table of contents would have been nice...

I generally buy indie comics but lately have been buying Marvel (mostly for nostalgia purposes). I was really excited to read this but was disappointed. Unfortunately, it's pretty much what you'd expect when you give Dash Shaw and James Kochalka license to draw capes n' tights. That is, lots of poking fun, lots of irony, lots of absurdity. Some of that is great like Peter Bagge's Spiderman and Hulk. But a lot of it is throwaway junk and/or fairly obvious jabs.

This kind of satire is old hat. This book just allows the indies to do it more directly. Big deal. What would have been interesting is if, in addition to some of the better satire in the book, some of the indies took a crack at some straightforward stories using these characters. Didn't happen so all this is is a bunch of jokes about how silly the Hulk is (purple pants!!!! ha ha ha!).