Review of Ex Machina and Jack of Fables

So I decided to do something different this week and talk about two comic books. Particularly I will be talking about two comic books that I bought at the store. These two comics are Jack Of Fables #35 and Ex Machina #43.
A long time ago I used to buy a whole bunch of weekly comics, mostly Marvel superhero stuff, but I kind of fell out of reading those lately (they have jacked up the price to 3.99 per issue, and they are all interconnected so reading just one is hard), and now I just stick with the Fables series of books and Ex Machina. I think explaining what both of those books are about in one sentence or so will probably make them sound lame, and won’t do the stories justice so I will just skip that part and talk about the specific comics I got.

Jack Of Fables #35
(Note this is part 8 of a continuing story) This issue begins with two hilarious two-page spreads introducing all the characters involved for those unfortunate enough to pick up this issue without reading the first 7 parts of the story. Pretty much everything is hilarious about the first four pages from the character descriptions to the art work. My favorite are the descriptions of the Genre Characters mystery’s description is left blank, SciFi’s is a bunch of technobabble, and Fantasy’s is a bunch of mythical type stuff so convoluted that the author gives up midway through. Also this book has a two page spread of a little girl brutally murdering like 8 people with her bare hands. Yeah you read that right.
This comic book was awesome! Makes me excited to see how this whole thing will be wrapped up in the next installment.

Ex Machina #43


Hopefully with Lost on hiatus Mr. Big Shot Hollywood writer Vaughan will find some time to finish the last seven issues of this awesome comic in a timely manner. Because hell he has gained a name for himself by writing some of the best cliffhangers ever, and the one for the issue before this was brutal. From the first issue of this series we were told that the year 2005 was a disaster for Mayor Hundred, and this storyarc finally begins to reveal just what happened in “goddamned 2005”. So far the mayor’s political career could easily be killed by any of three threats introduced in this storyline, the mysterious box he kept locked away in a safe house, the resurgence of his old archenemy Jack Pherson, or the fact that he has resumed his role as vigilante(!). This is the first storyline to put the main focus on the Superheroics, in all the proceeding chapters the superpowers-related storylines always came second to the political action, and this shuffling up of the series is pretty intriguing. Also I was waiting forever to see more stuff about Pherson who I think is the most interesting part about the whole Ex Machina series. This book deserves full marks by beginning in the most awesome way possible, with the Great Machine facing up to the Zombified mistakes of his past. Yeah you read that right.

Both Jack of Fables #35 and Ex Machina #43 are highly recommended by me, but both of these books continue previous storylines so be sure to catch up before you read either of them.

Rabbit-man's guide to reviewing

Hello kids it’s me your uncle rabbit-man, and I’m here to lecture you all on the process of writing a review! I know you all are disappointed that I have abandoned my classic blog post structure of a paragraph justifying an insane rant, followed by an insane rant, but just like an insane homeless man without a recent acid trip to describe, I can’t think of a rant today. So instead I am going to discuss the process of writing a review. I promise it will hurt less than being eaten to death by a herd of ravenous puppies.

Alright if you are going to write a review you must make an important choice before you even put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard, or piss to snow, whatever the analogy is these days, and that choice is whether you will write a review with a numeric score, or grade at the end or not. Now both of these methods have their advantages and disadvantages, for example writing a review with a grade will allow you to simply rant about whatever you want as long as it is tangentially related to the subject matter, and you can just put a grade at the end to tell the reader what you meant. This also has a drawback, because most readers are either smart, busy, or illiterate, and will simply skip to your score and ignore the rest of your review. The flipside of this choice is writing a review without attaching a score, when writing one of these you must be careful to make sure that you convey a judgment on the subject that you are reviewing since you don’t have the luxury of just writing a score. Naturally not including a score will force those lazy bastards who read your reviews to actually read your review.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way let’s get to the next most important part of writing a review, coming up with an opening line. In today’s society of fast food, 24 hour news, and instantaneous access to internet porn, people do not have the attention span to read a long review about any subject, and the first line is probably the only thing that many readers will read in your review. In other words take care to write this it will literally make or break your review. Fortunately writing a first line is easy: just make a vague and generic observation about the subject “The conflict of profiting off of war, is explored through the lens of a superhero origin story in the summer’s first true blockbuster Iron Man.” Feel free to describe the plot of what you are reviewing, if there is one, but just make sure that whatever you are saying is vague. The first line has to be vague because you want to confuse the reader into reading more of your writing. Another method of doing this could be to use a question. Normally “who would have thought…” works pretty well, like “Who would have thought that an asshole could be so entertaining to watch?” and then write your review.

Now you get to the meat and potatoes of your review the part where you judge something. Now let me tell you judging stuff is fun, there’s no better way to make yourself feel good than putting something down. Next time you find out that your pet fluffly died make fun of some little kid’s drawing, or next time you find out that your track time doesn’t qualify you for the special Olympics, make fun of a little kid’s sandcastle. Don’t you feel better? It’s pretty much the same thing with reviewing. Think, if you get that much joy out of making fun of a small child how much more joy will you get when you make fun of a $100 million dollar movie? Now I know what you are thinking “Rabbit-man reviews aren’t always negative, critics do write a lot of positive reviews.” Which brings me to my next point: If you are going to write a positive review, write it so that you get your name on the movie poster or DVD cover. Just put in a bunch of sentences that end in exclamation points like “Iron man is a laugh a minute thrill ride of intense pleasure!!!” or “I count two moments in my life as my happiest my marriage, and the birth of my son, and the two hours I spent watching Iron man has surpassed both of them!!” or the classic “Iron man is better than sex!!!” See it’s easy, and if the movie is particularly bad like Uwe Boll’s In the name of a king a dungeon siege tale, then you can write a glowing review and know that your quote will make it on the DVD for sure, seriously there was only like one good review for that movie.

So I have now taught you dear reader everything that I know about reviewing. Be sure to use your powers for good, and never stray from the righteous path I have outlined for you. Oh and I actually wrote this article so I could review Iron man but I got a little bit side tracked. Yeah it was a good movie, but the ending fight kind of sucked, the movie would have been better if it just focused on Tony Stark, and not Iron man. I give it 11331 points.