Each month the staff at 8th Dimension Comics picks out the best book to review.
Tooth and Claw #1 Kurt Busiek's newest epic from Image comics had the potential to be one of the greatest fantasy books of all time. Though I'd still say that nothing can top Saga at the moment for sheer sprawling wonder, Tooth and Claw is a very close second.
It follows a world populated by anthropomorphic animals, each species segregated into castes. For instance, the Buffalo people are bottom feeding nomadic near slaves, while Eagles and Dogs live on high in floating cities. It's an amazing world that's beautifully rendered, but it is also dying as magic fades.
The answer from one wizard is to reach back through time and try to draw from antiquity a champion to open the gates of magic once more. It's like the Manhattan Project of sorcery, with even more tragic results. The giant-sized first issue is nearly a tale all on its own, and more than worth the cover price to check Busiek's strange and glorious vision.
Rating: 9 of 10
ODY-C #1 Matt Fraction is already well-known for thinking outside the box, and it's one of the things that makes his run on Hawkeye so endlessly enjoyable. This time, though, outside the box doesn't even begin to cover it. There is no box. The very concept of box has been eradicated from time and space. If Mark Z. Danielewski ever dabbles in the comic medium, this is the book he will be trying to live up to.
In simplest terms and most convenient definitions this is Fraction's take on Homer's Odyssey, which is of course one of the oldest and most understood epics in human history. However, Fraction's version re-imagines the Greek pantheon of gods as cosmos-spanning beings cursed with a variety of sexual oddities. The first page alone is actually a fold put poster taller than a kindergartner that lays out the whole stellar history in minute and bizarre detail.
Then you get into the story proper. It's hard to follow, I'm not going to lie. It reads like beat poetry shoved into an issue of Heavy Metal, but as lost as you feel in the pages there's no doubt that you are wondering among one of the great pieces of weird science fiction of the decade.
Rating: 8 of 10
Alice Cooper #1 I am a junkie for rock star comics, which is odd because they are terrible. Utterly terrible. I've picked up every KISS comic I could ever get my hands on and without fail they are unreadable garbage. Sadly, they are usually the best of the lot....
Except for Alice Fucking Cooper.
Cooper alone has really made a name for himself in comic books. it doesn't hurt that he often has talent like Neil Gaiman to work with, and now he's got Joe Harris writing his latest series.
It's no Last Temptation, sadly, but it does manage to miss harping on the self-indulgence of so many other rock books. Cooper exists both as a rock star and the secret lord of nightmares, but he has spent several years trapped by a demonic record executive that used him to snare current pop stars. Luckily, a boy band who idolizes the old monster and a young boy who picks up a vintage record help to free him and set the stage for his return.
It's quite silly, really, and Harris is borrowing rather heavily from Gaiman's own first Sandman story arc in crafting the book. Still, as far as rock comics goes Cooper is still the best, and this current series is worth of inclusion in his already excellent collection.
Rating: 7 of 10
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