I'm heading to Japan

Hey everybody! It's been a dream of mine for a very long time to spend some time in Japan and now after months of planning it's finally happening.

I'll be gone for three weeks so it'll be a little quiet here on my blog but if you want to keep up with my progress and see all the things I'm getting up to in the land of the rising sun you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

Love you guys 

Mama Jane xoxo

Sweet Tooth Deluxe Edition #1

Sweet Tooth Deluxe Edition #1

Sweet Tooth is written and illustrated by Jeff Lemire, colours by Jose Villarrubia, letters by Pat Brosseau and published by Vertigo. The deluxe edition #1 of Sweet Tooth contains issues 1-12 and like most omnibus or deluxe editions contains original sketches and a word from the author which can be interesting tidbits for anyone interested in the process of making a comic or the development from Idea to published comic. Sweet Tooth is a post apocalyptic story with a difference so even if you read other series like The Walking Dead or Spread, Sweet Tooth will not feel like you are reading the same story with different characters.

Sweet Tooth begins with our main character Gus, a small antlered boy, narrating how his father speaks to god who he says warns him to never leave their forest home or fire and sin will consume them. 7 Years previously a mysterious disease hit that wiped out a massive percent of the population, but even the surviving population will eventually succumb to the disease. The only people not affected by the disease are the children born after the disease originally struck. The strange thing is all the children born afterwards are a strange hybrid of human and animals with fur, tails or like Gus, antlers. Gus's father slowly succumbs to the sickness that took so many others, leaving Gus all alone in the forest. As he is burying his father Gus is attacked by two strange men saying that he will fetch a good price. Gus is saved from the hunters by the cold and mysterious Mr. Jepperd who violently slaughters them. At first Gus runs from Jepperd but after promising to take him to "The Sanctuary" where hybrid children are safe, Gus decides that he doesn't want to be alone anymore and decides to take his chances with The Sanctuary.

In the deluxe edition we do meet more characters than just Gus and Jepperd but to keep the spoilers to a minimum I'm only going to talk about those two. Gus I find written incredibly well exactly how you would expect a frightened child to act, he has been told his entire life that the outside world is evil and is therefore frightened of everything yet has an innocence about him that makes him have complete faith in those that promise to care for him. Jepperd is like the complete opposite of Gus in almost every way, Jepperd is cold, violent, bitter and cynical about everything seeing no good in the world. Despite Jepperd's nature he does still have some tender moments with Gus and some others they meet along the way, so no matter how suspicious you are of Jeppered's motives you are still crossing your fingers for a happy ending for him.

You can really see the innocence or lack of in their eyes

The art of Sweet Tooth I find really hard to classify as it can be both beautiful, grotesque and horrifying all at the same time and uses a lot of thick line work, flat colours and shading to make things look eerie and sick. One of the best things about the deluxe edition is having the textless covers of the single issues, which are just beautiful, at the beginning of each issue.

I actually really love this panel

After seeing the cover of Sweet Tooth on the shelf I couldn't leave the store without it and after I opened it I didn't put it down until I was finished. The characters are great, the story completely draws you in and the art is truly something different. Sweet Tooth is great for seasoned readers and could be an easy introduction for new readers if they have an open mind about different art styles.

I give Sweet Tooth Deluxe Edition #1 4 out of 5 hybrid babies.

Find out more about Sweet Tooth here.

Art Ops Issue #1

Art Ops issue #1

Art Ops is written by Shaun Simon, art by Mike Allred and published by Vertigo. I was really hoping that Art Ops was going to involve great works of art teaming up to kick some butt. I was also hoping to see The Mona Lisa battle The Scream or Michael Angelo's David fighting The Thinker (see I know art I'm cultured). But what I got was a secret agent organization full of, frankly, unlikable characters and so far a story that doesn't really pull you in with anything special.

Art Ops begins with a woman named Jones and her team walking through the Louvre, discussing the recent destruction of valuable works of art and there concerns for one of the most famous paintings in the world, The Mona Lisa. Jones is a team leader of the Art Ops, an organization tasked with protecting great works of art. The team uses a special device to pull the Mona Lisa out of her painting and replace her with a stand in, explaining that she is going into a sort of witness protection style program for famous works of art. We then meet Reggie, the son of the leader of the Art Ops team as he drinks, smokes drugs and messes around with his girlfriend, Jess, in his mother's bed (class Reggie, all class). In typical teenage angst fashion, Reggie whines about his mother's lack of attention growing up before realizing that his "buzz" is wearing off and him and Jess decide to go buy more weed (our hero everybody). During his transaction with the drug dealers, a painting on the wall comes alive and severely injures Reggie and during the commotion Jess is killed. As Reggie is dying his mother appears and saves him using art to heal his wound. Two years later Reggie is contacted and learns that his mother is missing along with the entire Art Ops organization and is asked to help find them.

I was super underwhelmed by the art of Art Ops, not because its bad but because it seems to have missed a fantastic opportunity to show more great works of art coming to life like the Mona Lisa., I wanted to see statues talking, graffiti murals giving directions and paintings giving advice. I was really hoping for a little more art in a comic called Art Ops.

Reggie is our main character at this point and so far I've found him entirely unlikable as he complains about his mother's lack of attention and messes around in her bed. It just seems like the lowest representation of teenage angst with little actual reasoning to back it up. Reggie says that his mother was often absent during his childhood but then goes on to say she would set him up with a colouring book while she worked not while she went out and partied or drank herself into a coma, she was working to provide for them.

I was really disappointed in Art Ops possibly because I already had my own ideas as to what I was expecting. But really so far I just found the characters unlikable and the story just a little "meh" for lack of a better word.

Arm removal usually works for DC why not Vertigo?

I give Art Ops 2 out of 5 plain clothes Mona Lisas

Find out more about Art Ops here

This has nothing to do with the comic I just thought it was hilarious