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Yeo Jr., John – Battlefield #2
Battlefield #2
Oh small press comic collaborations, you are adorable. Last time around John was writing and Dru Daily was illustrating, and you’d think that they’d be able to figure out a schedule to make that work for a five issue mini series. Alas, you’d be wrong, as Dru has already become too busy with other things, and now it’s John illustrating and writing. Am I naive in thinking that it would be best to have at least a couple of issues completed before starting a project like this, which I’ll again point out is a small, finite series? It makes no sense, and the shift in art is going to be glaring by the time the collected edition comes out, assuming that John doesn’t also find himself with other obligations. Dru’s work was in more of an anime style, and it seems like John is trying to copy that style a bit (which he admits in his afterword), which probably isn’t the best solution. From samples on his website it looks like John already has his own style and maybe he should stick with that for the rest of the series. In terms of the story things pick up considerably this time around, as we get to learn a lot more about the various characters and their motivations (and the shadowy people behind the whole tournament and THEIR motivations), but I do have to say that it seems like a bad idea to kill off the character that we get to know the best by the end of the book. Surprising, yes, but this is a finite series and that time might have been better spent learning more about the six remaining survivors. As we’ve already learned that only one of these people can survive, this looks to be leading to a bloodbath in the final issues. Still, complaints aside, I am getting interested in the overarching story and exactly what’s going on. What can I say, when I see vaguely nefarious people stealing the eyeballs of the dead tournament contestants, I want to see where that’s leading. So if you liked the first issue this one builds on that nicely, but be prepared for a jarring shift in the artwork. $3
Yeo Jr., John & Daily, Dru – Battlefield #1
My scanner isn’t cooperating again and I can’t get a sample image of the cover small enough to post it here, so my apologies. Is it rude to say that it was a bit of a mess of a cover anyway? Yes, that almost certainly qualifies as rude. Check out their website and you can see a smaller version of it for yourself, but in case you were curious it depicts a battle between the eight characters who are involved in this tournament. Battlefield pits eight people (or creatures, as a centaur and a gorgon are also participating) against each other for the chance to win riches and fame. For the other seven competitors, it’s looking like death. The creators were nice enough to show pictures of all eight characters right at the beginning, but it would have helped tremendously to have short bios of all of them as well to try and get a sense of their motivations and/or what they are. When a character gets killed towards the end I had to pop back to those pictures to try and figure out which one it was, which is not a good sign. This is the first issue of a projected five issue mini series, and it deals with the competitors arriving on the tournament island, fighting off a giant monster (their first test), trying to get some food after not being fed for three days, and the other test where the one character gets killed. Anybody who has lasted this long into the review is probably sure of my opinion by now, but you may be surprised to learn that I kind of liked it despite its flaws. There were boobs everywhere, but they were awkward comic boobs, so it wasn’t that. It may be just that I’m a sucker for a tournament like this, or it may be the fact that I think there’s serious room for improvement here that might actually happen. If you don’t like mostly mythical characters and creatures fighting amongst themselves, it’s safe to say that you can move along. If you have a touch of dork in you and if you can overlook a few flaws, this is worth a shot. They also sent along the second issue of this series and I’m looking forward to it, which I wasn’t sure would be the case when I was about halfway through this. After that one we’ll see where my optimism meter is at… $4
Battlefield #1
