Tag Archive: joe hill


The Pullbox – Issue #4.2

Filed under: EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly), Written — Leave a comment
July 9, 2012

Another slow week for the most part, most likely because of the July 4th holiday, but the comics that did come out were mostly quality. So let’s see what we grabbed in this week’s Pullbox! Quick note: With EGM storming SDCC next week, the Pullbox will be taking a week off!

Marvel – Amazing Spider-Man #689 – Spider-Man, along with help from the living vampire, Michael Morbius, has found a way to once again supposedly cure Dr. Curt Connors of being The Lizard. What neither knows is that although they’ve cured him of the physical affliction of being The Lizard, Connors’ brain is still that of his reptilian alter-ego and sets plans in motion to continue his quest to make all of Manhattan populated by lizard people!

For the most part, I refuse to read Spider-Man comics ever since the worst storyline I’ve ever read in my comic book loving life in One More Day. But in honor of the new movie (which was awesome by the way) and new game (also really good) I figured I’d buck the boycott for one week, especially as it involves the Lizard. What perfect timing that he’s the main bad guy in the movie (sarcasm)! Seriously though, this was a solid comic if you’ve stuck with the wall-crawler through his ups and downs then you’ll enjoy the action as it sets up an epic storyline between Spidey and one of his all-time great foes. And Michael Morbius’s presence is the icing on the cake.

Marvel – Wolverine #310 – After being out of Wolverine’s spiky hair for some time, Romulus has found a way to escape out of Cloak’s darkness dimension and has also found a way to bring Sabretooth back to life. But was Sabretooth ever dead to begin with? Going back to where his most heinous memories originate, Wolverine searches Silver Fox’s cabin and the Weapon X facility and realizes he’s stumbled into another nightmare, a Sabretooth clone factory.

You knew it was only a matter of time before both Romulus and Sabretooth came back. The idea of clones though is probably the least interesting way they could have done it. Still, Jeph Loeb is one of the few people I trust with this and the set-up so far has been tremendous. Lots of action and making Cloak and Dagger major players will be interesting if they stick around for the whole of the arc. All in all if you like Wolverine, this will have everything you love about him in it, bub.

DC – Batman: Detective Comics #11 – Mr. Toxic’s true identity is revealed as…Hugh Marder?! The man Batman has been trying to save is also the same man who is trying to kill him and so there is a lot more science involved debauchery going on as the on going theme this week seems to be clones.

I understand that DC is still trying to build up Batman’s rogues gallery (for some unknown reason since it’s the most celebrated in comics already), but this story is a bit too sci-fi for me and Mr. Toxic looks like a bootleg version of the Atomic Skull. Honestly, so far this arc has been very forgettable and has done nothing to impress me and if it wasn’t a Batman monthly, I’d probably have dropped it from the Pullbox with a lot of the other ‘New 52’ garbage DC has tried to force down our throats. Hopefully this will start to pick up, or at least end quickly so that we can start a new arc that maybe I’ll care about.

DC – Red Lanterns #11 – The Red Lanterns continue their search for what has caused their power battery to become corrupted before it’s too late. The new human Red Lantern is lost in space and following his own trail of death, Bleez is trying to beat off the Star Sapphires, and Atrocius is still using blood prophecies to try locate his abomination that started it all. Who will find the source first though?

I liked that even though there was three different stories going on at once, the pace of the comic kept up throughout and there was just enough action to keep you intrigued about what might happen next with each major character and if any of them would finally catch their quarry. It does a great job of setting up the major confrontation in the next issue that we’ve been waiting for though and will hopefully end this ‘plagued’ Red Lantern Battery arc so we can get back to seeing what Red Lanterns do best and that is kick intergalactic butt.

IDW – The Cape 1969 #1 – Set in the midst of the Vietnam War, this origin story for Joe Hill’s The Cape sees how the main protagonist of that original volume comes into possession of the demonic piece of cloth and where it gets its power from as we watch his dad fight through 1969 Vietnam.

Joe Hill is one of the best comic writers of the day and seeing him branch out from his already amazing Locke and Key series is a real treat. What’s best about this comic though is that you don’t need to have read the original The Cape to pick this up and start enjoying it for what it is. This gritty, gruesome, swear word filled first issue will blow you away with its depth and action and make you forget that its supposed to be the origin story about a soul-consuming piece of cloth. Joe Hill definitely got his daddy’s writing genes.

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The Devil is in The Details

Filed under: Written — Leave a comment
June 5, 2010

Originally Published: February 15, 2010, on 1050ESPN.com (now ESPNNewYork.com)

In today’s fickle and over-stimulated world, it is hard sometimes to remember that literature was the preferred emotion evoking pastime for hundreds of years and that the Blu-ray movies we watch and video games we play all have to begin with a story, whether an original one like the one I am about to discuss or something inspired by a classical work. It is for these reasons I rarely review just a novel, so you know that this must be a book of the highest entertainment value. At least that’s how it was pitched to me.

Joe Hill, a relative newcomer to the suspense scene (you may know his dad, a guy by the name of Stephen King), is about to release his second novel called Horns on February 16, 2010, and was kind enough to send me an advanced copy to see if it could hold my video-game-addicted attention span.

Horns revolves around a young man from New Hampshire named Ignatius Perrish. Our sad and sorry protagonist has had a horrible streak of luck over the past year or so as he’s seen himself all but exiled from his community as he was accused of the murder of his lovely girlfriend, Merrin. Although cleared on all counts of the heinous act, Ignatius (Ig for short) has seen his life spiral out of control as the depression that consumes him over the loss of his one true love has left him a shell of his former self. That is until he wakes up one morning after drinking all night to find that he has two, small, black protuberances coming from his temples. After some haunting trial and error, Ig finds that he now has the ability to make people tell him their deepest, darkest secrets, have their entire lives of sin revealed to him with the slightest touch, and can bend their wills to his sinful suggestions.

Once Ig embraces his newfound abilities, he pledges to find out what really happened to Merrin on the night she was murdered and so begins a conquest for revenge that will put Ig through an emotional roller coaster the likes of which would break most men. Then again, you can’t really call Ig just a man now can you? When it comes to revenge, the devil is in the details…

I have to admit, like Ig is possessed by some awesome power in Horns, I was possessed to not put this book down. The book is about 360 pages, broken down into 50 short chapters, and by the time I was through the first five or six chapters, I couldn’t stop reading. I needed to find out more about what Ig would do with his powers and how they would evolve. The way Joe Hill describes the experiences Ig has when he reads people’s histories through touch is incredible, as if he was painting a vivid picture that cuts right to the core of human nature.

Also, the description of his main characters made me feel as if these were people from my own community, people who I could’ve grown up with. I felt like a silent witness within the tight-knit circle of characters with which all the action takes place in. I felt my heart strings tugged on with Ig’s unwavering devotion towards Merrin, even in her death, and felt an unquenchable rage boiling within my own gut at the betrayal and conspiracy against Ig that he must overcome.

There were a couple of drawbacks to this experience though. Joe Hill took 40% of the book just giving the back story on the characters to develop that connection between me, the reader, and his characters, mixing up action in present time with drawn out flashbacks over every 10 chapters. I felt that Hill could have condensed many of these flashback chapters and still gotten his point across and it would have given me a more pleasurable read.

These fodder chapters reminded me a little bit of his dad’s writing in how Hill became a little too detail oriented. Instead of letting the natural narratives of the story continue, the obsession on the details would shock you back out of the world Hill was trying to create and hurt the overall experience by creating lulls in the otherwise frantic action.

Of course, this could just be a suspense building tactic since Hill’s first 10 chapters are so brilliant that he more than likely will have you hooked for the rest of the ride (like myself) when you hit the first flashback in Chapter 11. Along with this, the ending seemed a little too anti-climatic. I won’t go into it any further because I refuse to give away any of the devilish details, but considering how much back story I was given, when I was finished with Horns, I felt like I needed something more.

However, I was happy to have read Horns and look forward to Hill’s next work. There were some very memorable passages in this original story that drew emotion from me and they easily overshadowed the lulls that popped up during the flashbacks. I would recommend Horns to anyone looking to read a very detail driven suspense story or maybe to kill some time on a cross-country trip. Horns hits bookstores February 16, 2010.

Horns by Joe Hill gets a 3.5 out of 5.

-Ray Carsillo

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