Comic Reviews by Walt

Scored a bunch of Zen: Intergalactic Ninja comics today at the local shop…a far superior haul to the week’s new comics (possibly excepting Shadowman #1 that I’ve looked forward to for awhile).

Probably the coolest of the bunch: 3-issue The Hunted mini-series AND the TPB, all $0.25 each.

Next seems to be a 3-issue mini-series and a special focusing on “Young Zen.”

I thought these covers were kinda cool…I like the trade dress of the things, anyway with the solid black background and the iconic-style images centered. Almost like portraits one could find hanging somewhere.

I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this really done before–a whole series of short prose stories featuring the character, but published in comic-size format. I think I’d actually quite enjoy seeing something like this on a regular basis…certainly would feel like a better value for contemporary $3.99 prices to have something 30 or so pages that might actually take a half hour to forty minutes to read.

These seem to be the start of some sort of ongoing series. Looks like there’s a #0 issue (shiny foily cover) followed by a die-cut chromium cover for #1. (I was amazed at just how many of these things have all sorts of foil stamps and such…prime example of the “darker side” of the 1990s).

Wound up with 5 (of at least 7, it looks like) issues in a Starquest mini-series. Kinda bummed about the partial…but I can probably track the other couple issues down later.

Not sure if these two actually go together, but the one on the right is toted as the first Zen comic from Eclipse, and is a #0 (while being the “explosive 1st Entity Comic”). The other is another #1. Crazy foil on these as well.

A couple more issues. The sourcebook’s likely going to be my actual starting point…figure out a bit of the publishing history of Zen so I can try to read some stuff in order.

These three are from three different publishers of Zen, including a Devil’s Due issue I didn’t recall existing, yet leaves me curious how many issues they put out.

And finally, I thought something looked familiar about the Devil’s Due issue…sure enough, looks like a clear self-swipe from Jae Lee.

I’d wound up with a bunch of Zen comics last year, and unfortunately, I imagine a bunch of these are duplicates. But a nice benefit of less than wonderful condition bag/boardless comics…easy to flip through these, see the copyright dates, read intros and see next issue blurbs to kinda get some idea of what actually goes together and when.

All the one-shots and mini-series, though, REALLY illustrate how confusing it can be for someone to try to piece a huge run together in any real kind of order…part of my complaint with Marvel these days, though a bunch of 3-7ish issue minis are–granted–a different animal than a half-dozen series with at least a year’s run apiece.

Filed under: NON-REVIEW CONTENT | Tagged: bargain bin, Bill Maus, Eclipse, Intergalactic Ninja, The Hunted, Young Zen, Zen, Zen Intergalactic Ninja |